Comments on: Disability and Sexuality 101, or, Do disabled people have sex?

By: Disability and Sexuality Co-Exist - The Pursuit of Harpyness

Disability and Sexuality Co-Exist - The Pursuit of Harpyness — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:01:54 +0000

[...] (?), Chally at the FWD blog covered this in a post on Sunday. As she points out, people with disabilities (PWD) are often characterized as [...]

By: Shiyiya

Shiyiya — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:18:45 +0000

I’ll second kaninchenzero with that. That’s…. utterly baffling, Steph.
Shiyiya´s last blog ..Identifying

By: kaninchenzero

kaninchenzero — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:53:14 +0000

Steph, that’s mind-boggling. Do these people not think at all? I’m stunned. And yeesh, someone owes you an apology, so: As a Representative Sighted Person, I’m sorry so many of us are so insensitive.

By: Steph

Steph — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:32:48 +0000

Rainbow,
I too am totally blind and have had similar experiences. The other problem I constantly encounter are people questioning my sexuality. I identify as a lesbian and constantly have people telling me things like “You can’t be gay… You’re blind. How would you know?”

It gets frustrating when people assume they know more about you and your own sexuality than you do!

By: Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:39:21 +0000

Meloukhia, I’ve got a blog post in the works about that subject. A while ago I discovered a video which was ostensibly a “tribute” to so-called “quadriplegic goddesses”, a sequence of pictures pinched from others’ websites, and from news sites, of women with obvious quad paraphernalia like wheelchair straws, ventilators, paintbrushes in their mouths etc (nearly all obvious high-level quads, one or two with just a power-chair and none in a manual who could be mistaken for paraplegics). I recognised two of the women and tipped them off, and both said they disliked being put on a pedestal and “worshipped” like that. One of them, who only got back to me last Friday, said her pictures had been “borrowed” and used on websites which she found disgusting and threatening, which is why she had stopped maintaining her own website a number of years ago.

It’s interesting that they call themselves devotees but show no respect to the individuals they are supposedly so “devoted” to. They also use the language of religion (as with the word ‘devotee’ itself), and when you find religious cults which also fetishise one sort of disability or another, the individuals get no respect there either – consider the murders of albinos in east Africa in which body parts are used in “traditional medicine”.

By: meloukhia

meloukhia — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:17:07 +0000

Rainbow, disability fetishism and the devotee culture really squicks me out too (as it does other site contributors as you can note from the fact that we specifically address it in our comments policy). It’s frustrating that the attitude towards people with disabilities from the temporarily able bodied community seems to take opposite extremes: Either we are desexualized, or we are fetishized for our bodies and treated explicitly as sex objects/playthings for able bodied fetishists. I’ve actually been ruminating over this for a few days, so I sense a post coming on…

By: Chally

Chally — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:58:32 +0000

That’s such a good point, Rainbow. I’m sorry you’re being treated that way.

By: kaninchenzero

kaninchenzero — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:50:29 +0000

I’m sorry, I should have mentioned in my comment — I don’t like the BDSM community trope that leather sex is better and I’m part of the BDSM community. I’m less active in it these days and don’t volunteer for stuff or go to meetings and events, but I’m definitely oriented that way and have been since I can remember having sexual thoughts (like when I was six or seven). So I’m cranky about the attitude because I run across it all the time. That ‘they’ should have been ‘we.’

That said, I very much like the BDSM community’s inclusion of people with disabilities[1], fat people, older folks. The sort of people who ’shouldn’t’ be running around naked do and it’s excellent. Most events I’ve been to recently have at least one workshop on disability sexuality issues and there are lots of folks with assistive technologies; sign interpretation is provided to make events accessible to Deaf people.

[1] Though one of the few Dallas hotels that’s willing to host our events and is big enough is not accessible; the only elevator that goes to the meeting space floors (there are four levels of them) is a service elevator in the kitchen. Seethe.

By: Rainbow

Rainbow — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:54:13 +0000

This is a great post, very observant about the way PWD can be desexualised by TAB culture. I do have a point to add though based on my own experience. I have a fairly visible disability in that I’m totally blind (I prefer visually impaired but no TABs seem to know what it means so I’m forced to only use it in PWD friendly spaces to avoid having to explain all the time) anyway, this combined with the fact that I’m quite petite used to mean I got harrassed all the time at college by guys who seemed to be turned on by my apparent ‘vulnerability’, this was very creepy and also incredibly frustrating as they’d pretty much reduced me to my disability. I’m not ’special’ and I don’t need ‘rescuing’ and I’m definitely not playing the damsel in distress to fulfil anyone’s fantasy. The problem seems to be that if you’re blind then you’re allowed to have a sexuality as long as its passive so you just become an object for somebody else’s fantasies. Well, I’m sexually dominant and bi (predominantly interested in women) so where does my sexuality fit in this? Also, though my friends at uni were trying to be nice, the boys in particular had a nasty habit of ‘vetting’ any boy (never the girls) I bought back to my dorm to make sure I was going to be safe with them (these weren’t serious relationships or anything!) as though I wasn’t capable of making judgements myself because I might have missed some visual clue to them being dangerous, not sure what, having 666 tattooed on their forehead maybe? They definitely didn’t do this for the other TAB girls we lived with. Anyway, think my point is that sometimes the fetishisation of the disability to the exclusion of the person can be almost as bad as total desexualisation.

By: Bri

Bri — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:28:02 +0000

I have heard that Big Big Love by Hanne Blank is a good resource for large people in relation to the ‘logistics’ of sex. I have the book but haven’t read it yet (I have a to be read pile of about 400 books). Personally, I don’t consider fat to be a disability (I think I have said that before on this blog, sorry if I am repeating myself) but sometimes the mechanics of sexual activity can be challenging for large people and any decent info needs to be shared.
Bri´s last blog ..The TV segment