Cripping Masculinity

Cripping Masculinity explores how Disability, Deaf, or Mad Identified Men (Cis or Trans) and Masculine Identified Non-Binary People create and experience their identities through clothing in their everyday lives.

We welcome in the ways our stutters, dissociations, aches and pains — alongside our genders, races, and sexualities — greet our clothing to fashion our identities. Here, dressing becomes a practice of crip imagination, connection, and rebellion. We salute the uneven shapes of our bodies, the caress of fabric on our skin, and the metal chains with which we stim. We honor the sneakers that stare back, the shirts that reinforce our words, and the sweaters that cocoon us in crowds.

This exhibition showcases a selection of the everyday clothing and re-made garments from participants in Cripping Masculinity. The clothing and stories highlight the fashion imagination and wisdom that comes from the experiences of disabled masculinities, demonstrating how closing off access to prevailing systems of fashion and masculinity opens up alternatives that foster belonging, creativity, and desire for disability.

Here’s to the convictions and trepidations, the wisdom and frustrations, the joys and challenges, the reached for and not yet grasped.