People with Disabilities and Sex Appeal

It's been a while since my last post, but alas here I am again, and I wanted to talk about sex - figured it's as good a topic as any to restart things. I've been thinking about a quote I read online a bit ago by the poet Eli Clare, who is a poet who is transgender and who has cerebral palsy. He put ideas online from a key note speech he was set to deliver at the 2002 Queer and Disability Conference (here's the link to the writing in full: http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:xga-vSuYjt0J:www.disabilityhistory.org/dwa/queer/paper_clare.html+eli+clare+-+porn&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us ). These comments in particular having been bouncing around inside my head: "I say it’s time for some queer disability erotica, time for an anthology of crip smut, queer style. Time for us to write, film, perform, read, talk porn. I’m serious. It’s time. I want to get hot and bothered: I want to read about wheelchairs and limps, hands that bend at odd angles and bodies that negotiate unchosen pain, about orgasms that aren’t necessarily about our genitals, about sex and pleasure stolen in nursing homes and back rooms where we’ve been abandoned, about bodily—and I mean to include the mind as part of the body—differences so plentiful they can’t be counted, about fucking that embraces all those differences. It’s time. I want to watch smut made by and for queer disabled people and our lovers, friends, allies, our experiences told from the inside out."

I'm heterosexual and tend to be more reserved on issues of sex, but, as mentioned, these words have stayed with me. I may not have put it so bluntly as Eli has - and good for him for being so blunt - but I agree with the message. I don't mean I think that making porn is the best way for people with disabilities to gain acceptance and feel more confidence. What I do mean to say is that Eli makes an excellent point that people with disabilities are rarely, if ever, thought of as sexual beings, people who have urges and lust and longings like all people do. Physical intimacy is the highest form of validation. We choose to be friends with all sorts of people, but we choose to be sexual (I'm talking consensual sex, not assault or prostitution) - whether long term relationships or one even night stands - only with those who we deem have appeal in some way. Very little of the time are people with disabilities portrayed as having legitimate sexual allure. This may be one reason that people with disabilities are often over-looked as romantic partners.

Being intimate and having companionship are among the most crucial elements of being human. People with chronic illness and disabilities have every right to expect these parts of life be a part of their experience. So, who knows? Perhaps Eli's approach is right, maybe when people can be hot and bothered by watching people with disabilities on film or in print, then all people, able-bodied and disabled alike will be more open and more drawn to all people, not just people whose bodies are working (for the moment.) If that's the result, I'm right there with Eli. My main hope and argument here is for people with disabilities and chronic illness to be taken seriously as seductive and sexual and worth a meaningful, long lasting intimate relationship.