Living out of bounds, pushing toward normalcy: (Auto)ethnographic performances of disability and masculinity in wheelchair rugby

Sport recreation promises therapeutic benefits for physically disabled persons. However, the ideological foundations of sport, rooted in traditional conceptions of gender, sexuality, and ability, may circumvent these benefits by fostering constraining notions of competitiveness and equality. The masculine bravado that pervades "Murderball," or quadriplegic rugby, makes the sport an ideal site in which study potentially therapeutic sport recreation experiences. Using ethnographic methods, this dissertation employs a performative voice that invokes the author's experience growing up the son of a wheelchair athlete. The juxtaposition of the author's narratives with those of quad rugby players, as well with the autoethnographic interrogation of fieldnotes and interview data, provides a richly textured understanding of masculinity and disability.;The findings of this study highlight performed contestations of disability, gender, and sexuality. Male and female athletes' incongruous on-court displays emerged as a playing activity that aligned frames of meaning about athletic ability, the perceived invulnerability of the disabled sporting body, and the performativity of disability. Off the court, male athletes constructed disabled sexualities in everyday storytelling that emulated able-bodied sexuality, sexualized their female caregivers, and further marginalized disabled females as sexually undesirable. Some players challenged hegemonic notions of sexuality by formulating counter-narratives that positioned disabled sexuality as unique and separate from able-bodied conceptualizations. Storytelling among teammates also helped newly injured players learn to better function with a disability. Through these stories, experienced players taught others how to do everyday tasks. Such advice often countered that given by physical therapists during players' rehabilitation. These stories also helped players contain the literal and figurative "leakages," or the loss of control, of the disabled body.;This dissertation concludes with practical, methodological, and theoretical implications for recreation practitioners and scholars. Among its methodological and theoretical contributions are the value of alternative ethnographic representation practices in sport research and the important role performance studies plays in understanding disabled masculinities. This project illustrates the utility of performance studies and communication in studying disabled sport recreation, illuminating how sport as a playing activity and as everyday storytelling offers participants liberating and constraining understandings of disability, masculinity, and sexuality.