Sexuality on screen: a feminist disability studies reading of Izzy Armstrong in Coronation Street

This paper employs textual analysis of long-form storyline arcs, informed by Feminist Disability Studies, to explore how Coronation Street, a long-standing UK soap opera, represents disabled women’s sexuality through the character of Izzy Armstrong. By examining Izzy’s sexuality-related storylines, this paper contributes to addressing a gap in disability, sexuality, and soap opera scholarship. The analysis exposes a series of tensions and contradictions. Izzy’s early romantic storylines disrupt normative understandings of sexuality, yet her pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage frame disability and pregnancy through discourses of medical risk. Her route to motherhood via surrogacy is simultaneously empowering and constrained, while her co-parenting arc offers a scarce portrayal of disabled motherhood as capable and conventional. Through this, it is argued that Coronation Street challenges and reproduces ableist assumptions, highlighting the complexities and tensions involved in representing disabled women’s sexuality within a mainstream soap opera.