Disability Blog Carnival: Sexuality, Disability and Controversy... (warning: long)

This post is part of the Disability Blog Carnival, which is being hosted by the rather lovely Zephyr, whose blog, Arthritic Young Thing, is here. It isn't quite the post i'd intended/hoped it to be, cos i've been having intermittent-at-best internet access, so i haven't been able to look up a lot of the material that i was intending to use as inspiration for it. However, i'm almost certain to return, in greater detail and/or more particular focus, to all of these themes when i have more available net-time...

The intersexction (typo unintentional, but so good i decided to leave it in ;) ) of sexuality and disability is a really fraught subject, one which tends to bring up quite aggressive debate and one which it's often easier to avoid than to really dare to get right into... it's also one on which i have views that are both uncertain (and possibly in parts self-contradictory) and (to some) particularly controversial...

Mainstream society, in my experience, tends to portray disabled people as not really having sexualities, or to assume that sex, even if we wanted it, isn't something that we're capable of (this does, in fact, vary quite a lot according to the type and visibility of impairment, and to the gender and age of the person in question, but as a really sweeping generalization, IME it's true).

The response, quite naturally, by the disability movement, and disability arts in particular (see, for example, the photo exhibition Intimate Encounters) is to challenge these assumptions with assertions that we are capable of being just as sexy and as sexually active as anyone else. While, on one level, that's fucking brilliant (pun intended), it can lead to the assumption that all disabled people have sex lives that are as successful as anyone else's, and... well, that is, IMO and IME, not true.

(I actually really hate even talking about this, because it makers me feel like a traitor to the disability cause or something... but, if you're a crip who's not getting any sex, and even finds it close to impossible to see yourself as ever being accepted as a sexual being, then this kind of portrayal can leave you feeling like even the disability movement doesn't recognise or care about your problem - in fact, that effectively, you don't even exist...)

As i posted on an old thread on the BBC Ouch! message board (i think it was about a news story about a young man with a physical impairment choosing to pay for sex):

"I'm absolutely in favour of portrayals of disabled people as sexual beings and proof positive that disabled people can have successful and fulfilling sexual relationships (whether long-term and monogamous or casual one night stands, whether straight or gay and whether "vanilla" or "kinky")... in fact, preferably the whole spectrum of sexuality that non-disabled people are capable of, plus the variants that different impairments make possible!

However, the fact remains that in our society disabled people are very often NOT seen as sexual beings, and disability (in its social sense of disabling barriers) does prevent many of us from having the sex lives we would like to have. My one and only sexual relationship so far was with a wheelchair user (my impairment is "invisible"), and we got the sort of looks when together in the street that implied I was seen on the same level as some sort of paedophile. My ex met with both the assumption that she couldn't have and/or wasn't interested in sex and the assumption that physically disabled people only want relationships with other physically disabled people, and that a non-disabled (or not obviously disabled) person in a sexual relationship with a disabled person was necessarily some sort of exploitative pervert... I experience sexual frustration so severe that in itself it is often enough to make me feel suicidal."

so... while i massively admire bloggers like Zephyr who are putting out the message that disabled people can and do have sex - and totally encourage as many disabled people who do have sex lives to do so - i also have to confess to feelings of envy and even bitterness at reading them...

Another thing i have noticed (and that i have particularly conflicted views about) is that there seems to be a lot of suspicion and hostility from disabled people towards non-disabled people who are sexually attracted to disabled people - with "devotees" being portrayed as perverts, exploiters, and in general evil people. Now, i'm only too aware of how much sexual abuse and exploitation of disabled people by those in positions of relative power and privilege there is, so i can't dismiss those concerns as either prejudicial or fictitious. But, i also can't help feeling that there is often an inherent contradiction in the automatic disgust that many disabled people seem to have at someone finding them attractive because, rather than despite of, their impairments...

I think there is a parallel between many disabled people's views on "disability fetishism" and many feminists' views on pornography, BDSM, and fetishism more generally. Just as sex-positive feminism argues that such things are not in themselves objectifying or exploitative, but are made so by patriarchal and capitalist society, so i would, tentatively, argue that finding (for example) amputated limbs, short stature or a CP-affected voice attractive is not in itself objectifying or exploitative, but can be made so by a disablist society...

OK, so i'm speaking from a perspective of having a mental rather than a physical impairment, and one which is "invisible" (tho i think there are some problems with that term, a subject i'll probably return to) - but, if someone were to "fetishise" my impairment, i'd be incredibly happy - in fact, i'd go so far as to say that, for someone to have a successful relationship with me, they'd probably have to find my impairment, as part of me, attractive - rather than "finding me attractive despite my impairment" - as it is such a huge and indivisible part of me that, effectively, it is me (in the sense that i really can't conceptualise of "me" and "my impairment" as 2 separate things)…

I don't know. There seem to be a lot of disability activists who think that a crip/crip relationship is an ideal to be celebrated, but a crip/non-crip relationship is something to be suspicious of or to be frowned upon. I can see where they're coming from, but i'm not sure where that leaves me - because my one relationship, with an obviously and visibly disabled woman, was before my own diagnosis or self-definition as a disabled person - so was that a crip/crip or a crip/non-crip relationship?

By some definitions, i would qualify as a "devotee", in that visible disability is actually a plus in terms of attractiveness for me (something else i feel like i'm stepping into very unsafe and dodgy territory to talk about) - i.e., take two otherwise identical-looking women, one with a visible impairment and the other without, and i'll find the visibly impaired one more attractive. (It's worthy mentioning at this point that i also feel guilt at fancying women but not men, because of the identity as "straight man" that that gives me...) Somehow, that seems to be "OK" for a disabled person, but "not-OK" for a non-disabled (or apparently non-disabled) person...

OK, i think that at least part of that is due to feeling that, because disability is such an important thing in my life, someone who understands disability is more likely to understand me, and there are many levels on which a disabled partner would "get it" and a non-disabled partner wouldn't (in this i think there's a parallel with feminists who are "politically lesbian", in that they're capable of being attracted, on a purely physical level, to both sexes, but choose to have, or feel comfortable having, relationships only with women), and that thus disabled women are more "approachable" to me, and i find it easier to seriously consider that they might actually want a relationship with me...

However, on a pure attraction level, i was still attracted to visible disability even before i knew that i was disabled (not just on a sexual level, but also on a level of just wanting to know and be friends with disabled people - in my teens i volunteered on a "playscheme" type thing for (some physically, but mostly mentally) disabled kids of a similar age from a "special" school, and found myself identifying so much with the "client" kids that it scared me), so, i dunno... while some of that might just be the above stuff on a subconscious level (fuelled by an inarticulate awareness of being, like them, "Other" or "different"), i think i might well also simply have a non-rationalisable "fetish" for... odd-looking or "unconventional" bodies. I really, really don't know whether this is in any way inherently exploitative, objectifying or "wrong"... nor am i quite sure whether my diagnosis-as-revelation and consequent identity as a disabled person fully "explains" this (altho it certainly goes some way towards it)...

Hmmm. Don't know if i'll regret talking about all this, especially at such an early stage in my blog. It feels like it needs talking about, however...

There are times when i wish i didn't have a sexuality at all - when i feel that my - seemingly unsatisfiable libido is nothing but a curse, and i am even seriously tempted to look for a "medical-model" solution - i.e., accept that i have no chance of ever finding a partner, and go to a doctor and ask for something that will reduce or even wholly eliminate my sex drive (I know that there are drugs, such as some SSRIs and some anti-androgens, which are capable of having this effect, even if it's not usually their "intended" or primary effect). However, there's a small part of me (no, not that small part.. OK, well maybe ;) ) that just stops me doing this - by having that unconquerable, even if ridiculous, hope...

and, of course, i remember that these kind of medical model "solutions" have been used on, and are still being used on, all kinds of disabled people against their will - Ashley X being just the most recent and one of the more spectacular examples of this - and that that is one of the most truly horrific human rights abuses in the history that "they" don't want to tell you about our people... logic tells me that, if there are impairment-related barriers to disabled people getting the kind of sex life they want, then the social model solution is not to change those disabled people to make them no longer want it, but to change society to remove or at least minimize those barriers...

The thing is, i really don't know how such a social model solution to this particular problem could be achieved. I get uncomfortable when i hear people talking about a "right to sex", a phrase which fairly often comes up in disability/sexuality contexts (the recent-ish sex survey in Disability Now magazine, for example) - because sex is something that necessarily (well, if you don't count masturbation, which i don't, cos... well, that really doesn't do much for me) involves at least 2 people, and I'm not sure that an individual can have a "right" to something that someone else necessarily has to consent to... also, when you talk about "rights", you're getting into obligations, and i don't think something that involves people having totally subjective feelings for one another can be talked about in terms of obligations (outside really nasty patriarchal contexts that i wouldn't want to go anywhere near)...

(At one stage a couple of years ago the society for disabled students that i started at my old uni (it only lasted a year) and the Anti-Sexism Society were planning to jointly organize a panel debate on the question of "Is there a right to sex?"... for some reason i can't remember, it never happened, but that could have been an incredible debate...)

I have problems with a lot of the stuff that's been talked about a lot in disability circles about state-funded access to sex workers (I think this actually does exist in some European countries? maybe Sweden or Holland?) and about PAs as "sexual surrogates" (tho there are a couple of really good dissertations on these subjects online at Leeds University's Disability Studies Archive - note the first 2 links are to PDFs, for anyone whose software can’t handle that) - and, in any case, those kind of "solutions" just aren't really compatible with the particulars of my sexuality - i want a relationship with an uncoerced friend, not someone who is "only doing their job", and my sexuality is "odd" anyway - the thing that gives me real sexual pleasure is giving another person genuine pleasure, not "taking" it (whether that has something to do with my impairment, i'm not sure, but i think it might have something to do with the lack of identification with my own body which i think is part of my impairment - that's a somewhat unresearched area...)

Another area that a lot of people seem to think is somehow dodgy is online dating – there are a number of online dating sites aimed at disabled people, one of which I am a member of – but when I posted about that on the Ouch message board, people’s reactions ranged from approval to total dismissal of such sites as automatically “sleazy”, objectifying and exploitative… from a feminist point of view, I honestly don’t know what I “should” think of them, but it’s another thing I feel a vague unease in admitting to… liberatory or exploitative? Again, I don’t know… a lot of the people who put profiles on there seem to have the “I want someone to like me despite my disability” mentality. (To be fair, I haven’t really got any expectations of finding a partner thru that site – my motivation for joining it was as much just to “meet” disabled people with similar interests, and I have “met” 2 other people with interests in radical politics, queerness and disability thru it… admittedly, I haven’t actually got round to emailing them, but that’s just disorganized autistic me…)

So all in all, I don’t know if there is, or even can be, a “social model” solution to disability-related sexual frustration that doesn’t involve someone’s objectification, exploitation or just unwillingness… there is, it seems to me, an unresolvable problem when something is a genuine need, but cannot by its nature be made a “right”…

Still, there's a Utopia inside my head (one that i think of every time i hear the Au Pairs songs "Sex Without Stress" and "No More Secret Lives") in which everyone, no matter what their bodies can/can't do or look like, has their sexual needs appreciated and accepted, and is mutually fancied by someone (if, of course, they want to be - i haven't even mentioned the neurodiverse people who genuinely are asexual in this post), and it isn't "perverted" to fancy anyone or any body type... whether it's possible for any of us to actually get there, i truly don't know...

Bloody hell, this post is about 2600 words - that's longer than a lot of my uni essays... :o And i still haven't written about a lot of the stuff i was going to, like portrayals of disabled sexuality in film, photography, etc... oh well, i'm obviously going to have to return to this subject...