Sex, Lives, and Disability
March 3, 2015 5:41 PM Subscribe
Most debates around sex and disabled people in the mainstream press mirror those of medical ethicists, by focusing on whether disabled people have the ‘right’ to pay for sex. But this is just one small part of the overall picture. Disabled academics and activists paint on a much larger canvas, writing about issues such as consent around mental capacity, the forced sterilisation of disabled people, the rights of disabled people in institutions to have sex and be free from sexual abuse, and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) disabled people."Sex, Lives, and Disability", from Mosaic Science, covers a lot of ground on many issues relating to including history of disability rights movements, what role sex workers may play in the lives of some people with disabilities, barriers often faced by LGBT people with disabilities, rethinking definitions of sex, and consent when verbal consent may not be possible. In sidebar videos, journalist and disability activist Mik Scarlet tackles Ten Myths about Sex and Disability and Alternate Erogenous Zones. Mik also co-authors The Love Lounge, an advice column focusing on love, sex, and relationship advice for people with disabilities. (Links contain possibly nsfw images and video, depending on your workplace. Clicker beware.)
Also related: a discussion on Ouch episode 100 about sex and relationships. Direct download from this archive, (direct mp3 link here) and transcript available here (RTF file).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:31 PM on March 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:31 PM on March 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is timely - my college is starting up a SIG for disabled alums and we had just been talking about sex/dating challenges as disabled students. I was not disabled while attending, but did take medical leave.
posted by Dreidl at 8:49 PM on March 3, 2015
posted by Dreidl at 8:49 PM on March 3, 2015
Great post.
Everyone deserves quality sexytimes--including senior citizens with issues with mobility and pain, who may not even think of themselves as disabled.
posted by kinnakeet at 3:57 PM on March 4, 2015
Everyone deserves quality sexytimes--including senior citizens with issues with mobility and pain, who may not even think of themselves as disabled.
posted by kinnakeet at 3:57 PM on March 4, 2015
I really appreciate this post, too, and I'm surprised to see so little activity in the thread. Of course, I came across part of this post elsewhere and bookmarked it to read later, and have intended to read the links in this post later, but haven't yet, so maybe it's partly a matter of the post having so much good content to read.
Last night I started but abandoned a comment about how my disability affects my sex life. If seems to me that culturally we're very confused about sex and disability in that either we don't really think it's an issue at all, or we think that it's so much an issue that someone just becomes asexual. We ignore it, either way.
I'm in the group where I think most don't expect it to be a problem. But because my genetic illness is a collagenopathy that causes severe early onset osteoarthritis, it actually is quite problematic. Sex is inevitably somewhere between mildly painful to severely painful, depending upon how foolishly I've attempted to ignore my body's limits. And, regardless, there's a lot of things I simply can't do.
And then there's the issues surrounding being disabled and how that involves our cultural attitudes about sexual attractiveness, and also about disclosure with regard to things like online dating.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:06 PM on March 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
Last night I started but abandoned a comment about how my disability affects my sex life. If seems to me that culturally we're very confused about sex and disability in that either we don't really think it's an issue at all, or we think that it's so much an issue that someone just becomes asexual. We ignore it, either way.
I'm in the group where I think most don't expect it to be a problem. But because my genetic illness is a collagenopathy that causes severe early onset osteoarthritis, it actually is quite problematic. Sex is inevitably somewhere between mildly painful to severely painful, depending upon how foolishly I've attempted to ignore my body's limits. And, regardless, there's a lot of things I simply can't do.
And then there's the issues surrounding being disabled and how that involves our cultural attitudes about sexual attractiveness, and also about disclosure with regard to things like online dating.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:06 PM on March 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
i moved out of an "independent living" facility for adults age 20-50 b/c overnight guests weren't allowed--they threatened to kick me out for having my boyfriend overnight.
nurses also had a tendency to let themselves in to apartments (they had keys), without waiting for a response. once i ended up screaming as my door was opening--i prevented the nurse from walking in on me & bf, just barely.
dignity!
posted by JBD at 4:38 PM on March 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
nurses also had a tendency to let themselves in to apartments (they had keys), without waiting for a response. once i ended up screaming as my door was opening--i prevented the nurse from walking in on me & bf, just barely.
dignity!
posted by JBD at 4:38 PM on March 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
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Ahem.
We have a friend who works in a community living home for adults with fairly severe developmental disabilities. She's bought sex toys for some of her clients and made sure that they have some private time because everyone has a right to some sexytime.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:55 PM on March 3, 2015 [3 favorites]