Thanks for tuning back in to Real Talk with Rachele! This month, we’re discussing why disabled sexuality is such an important topic to address, and a couple of tips for starting your exploration.

Our focus in back in the fall was the pervasive myths about sexuality and disability, and many of those myths revolve around our ability and right to even be sexual. As I discussed in that post, unpacking myths and learning new truths are incredibly important for pushing back against the powers that would rather not see or hear from us at all.

It can be difficult and exhausting to constantly be doing the work of unpacking societal myths for something that can be so personal, and I know sometimes we can start to wonder if it’s even worth it. Especially in the dreary winter months where the snow makes our lives more difficult and we might not be feeling very sexy in the first place, it can start to feel like maybe there actually are other things we should be focused on.

But unpacking myths is just the first step, the best part (in my opinion) is the re-learning and exploration phase! Once we recognize we’ve been told a lot of lies about our bodies and sexualities, we can start to explore them on our own terms.

So, let’s start the new year off by examining why disabled sexuality might be important to us, and how we can use that to push ourselves towards our own personal exploration.

Five reasons disabled sexuality is important to me (and might be important to you too):

1. Connecting to our bodies

For a lot of people with disabilities, our connection to our own body can be complicated. Whether you’ve had a disability for all or most of your life, or if disability is newer to you, we’ve been told by most of society that our bodies are less than in some way. This message creeps its way into our psyche, whether we truly believe it or not, and it can cause us to shy away from being completely connected to our physical selves.

There are lots of ways to find meaningful connection to our bodies, but my favourite one will always be through my sexuality. For me, there is something really healing about exploring and establishing a connection to my body through the use of something pleasure-focused, like sex! For me, sexual exploration has always been about how I am showing up for myself, and then incorporating other people into the mix only when I decide it feels right.

2. Connecting to our partners

There are a multitude of ways to connect to our partners and be intimate, and we’ll be exploring that next month, but for a lot of people, sex is one of those ways. I’m a big fan of solo-sex (masturbation) and self-exploration, but I also like partnered sex! For me, it feels good to feel wanted, for someone to look at me and say “you’re sexy”, especially when society tells us that we’re not.

But partnered sex also demands some form of vulnerability; being intimate with someone requires some amount of trust and communication, shared knowledge of needs and boundaries, likes and dislikes, and maybe someone seeing us naked.

It can be difficult to be vulnerable when we’re taught to avoid it, so thinking of sex as this opportunity for vulnerability with a partner feels important, but also exciting to me! Similar to what I described in the previous point about connecting to ourselves; utilizing something pleasure-focused as an opportunity for this sort of exploration and growth can be fun!

And this isn’t to say this is the only way to explore vulnerability, or that it will be easy. We should be sure to utilize our other skills, like communication, along the way, and we should be open and aware of our partners’ needs, boundaries, limits, and desires. If we’re connecting with partners, we should remember that our partners are people too.

3. Creativity and problem solving

I always say that disabled people are the most creative people I know. For the most part, we have had to learn to adapt and be creative because we live in a society not built for us or considerate of our needs. This creativity and adaptive nature are incredibly useful tools for our sex lives!

A lot of people’s sexual practices fall into a set of prescribed activities and patterns because they’ve been told it works, so why bother changing it? However, a lot of research shows that many people who navigate their sex lives in this way are not getting what they want out of it. Terms like “the orgasm gap” exist to describe how in heterosexual couples, men tend to orgasm much more often than women, and this is usually because the kind of sex these folks are having only works for one half of the couple. But we’ve been told this is the way we’re supposed to do it, so we go on thinking there is just something wrong with us, or that one day we’ll feel how we’re supposed to, when in reality we could just be doing something different to get more out of our sex lives.

Disability-focused sex has the opportunity to skip over these prescribed ideas of what sex is supposed to look like, because for most of us, these prescribed ideas weren’t going to work in the first place. Once you’ve been told the “normal” way isn’t possible, you start to explore more creative options. As a queer person, I recognized that the standard definitions of sex weren’t going to apply to me and was lucky enough to get to explore my sexuality in really fun and safe ways. So, when I started to experience disability, I already had a head start in creating the kind of sex life that worked for my body and my interests, and the problem solving when things didn’t go well was a skill I picked up along the way.

4. Pain management and de-medicalization of the body

Not every disabled person experiences chronic pain, but for those who do it’s a difficult addition to whatever else is going on in our bodies and minds. It can be tricky to find moments of pleasure while experiencing pain, especially when it’s new.

Something that has been a game changer for my own experience of pain is the knowledge that pleasure and pain are not mutually exclusive, they can take place at the same time. Reminding our bodies and brains of that can be a huge part of pain management. It won’t make your pain go away, but it will impact how you cope with pain in the long run.

The other side of this is the over-medicalization of disabled bodies, which can be another barrier to experiencing pleasure. When you’re used to your body being attended to in a specific way, it can be hard for our brains to let our bodies experience touch through a lens of pleasure.

My favorite way to remind my body that touch can be pleasurable, is to purposefully engage that part of my brain before engaging my body. Essentially “setting the mood”. You get to decide what that looks like for you, but for me it might be reading erotic books without actually doing any touching. It lets my brain lead the way so that I can decide when I feel comfortable enough to involve my body.

Think about what “setting the mood” looks and feels like for you – it could be listening to music that makes you feel sexy, lighting a candle with a scent that feels erotic, or watching your favourite sexy scene in a movie.

And this slow move into pleasure without the pressure to do something physical can be helpful for the pain lens as well.

5. Prioritizing pleasure

So far, I’ve listed a bunch of reasons why your sexuality might be important, but I’ve kind of left out the most essential part. Sex can be fun! It should feel at least somewhat fun and enjoyable for anyone involved in the sexual experience, and that is reason enough.

In so much of disability care, and life in generally, we focus so much on the “why”; the greater benefits of doing an activity and what it can do for our health or productivity. What I love about sexuality is that while it may impact our health or our experience of our identity and lots of other lovely things, it can also just be because it feels good. We should be allowed to feel good.

Especially if you spend a lot of your life working really hard to exist in a world that wasn’t built for you, and even if you’re not working that hard, you deserve pleasure! We don’t have to work however many hours or do however many physiotherapy exercises to earn our right to pleasure, our right to pleasure is inherent.

And if prioritizing pleasure happens to set you up to tackle the rest of your day or week, or if it helps you keep the momentum for staying connected to the community, then that’s a nice added benefit.

These are my main reasons why disabled sexuality is important to me, do these reasons resonate with you?

Do you have other reasons why your sexuality is important? Let us know through the contact for click here

Next month, we’ll be chatting about relationships – communication, intimacy, and dating. Have you experienced any barriers to navigating relationships with a disability? Have you experienced any successes? Let us know

Connecting to our bodies

For a lot of people with disabilities, our connection to our own body can be complicated. Whether you’ve had a disability for all or most of your life, or if disability is newer to you, we’ve been told by most of society that our bodies are less than in some way. This message creeps its way into our psyche, whether we truly believe it or not, and it can cause us to shy away from being completely connected to our physical selves.

There are lots of ways to find meaningful connection to our bodies, but my favourite one will always be through my sexuality. For me, there is something really healing about exploring and establishing a connection to my body through the use of something pleasure-focused, like sex! For me, sexual exploration has always been about how I am showing up for myself, and then incorporating other people into the mix only when I decide it feels right.