Disability | Transcript
Find the episode shownotes here!
Lolo Spencer:
I want to normalise disabled people being an option for partnership. Disabled people being an option for dating and love and sex.
Hannah Witton:
Why do we imagine disabled people aren't desirable?
Jennie Williams:
I think one of the biggest barriers for disabled people not being able to access pleasure is probably… there's a lot of internalized ableism. I think we put a lot of barriers on ourselves.
Hannah Witton:
What internalized assumptions do we all hold about what it means to be disabled?
Cory Silverberg:
So what disability inclusive sex education doesn't look like is just adding pictures of wheelchairs or crutches. What it does look like is not making assumptions about how bodies work.
Hannah Witton:
And how can sex education truly be inclusive of disabled people?
I'm Hannah Witton and this is Doing It. Over the course of this series, we're going to be unapologetically nerdy about sex, diving into some of the biggest taboos that impact our relationship with sex, our bodies, and the other people in our lives.
Last time we explored sex therapy, and we made a start in asking whether sex, talking about it or doing it, is truly inclusive and accessible to everyone. So let's pull at that thread. Today, we're talking disability. Let me take you back to 2017.
Flashback Hannah:
Hello and welcome to episode 15 of the Hormone Diaries.
Hannah Witton:
I had been making educational sex and relationships content online for six years.
Flashback Hannah:
It is masturbation May.
Hannah Witton:
Covering so many different topics…
Flashback Hannah:
So I've actually made some videos about porn -
Hannah Witton:
…from masturbation to healthy relationships to consent and porn, and I thought I'd covered it all.
Flashback Hannah:
So I wanted to talk about sex toys… trying a menstrual cup for the first time…this is going to be a rant, I just have to get it off my chest…
Hannah Witton:
But then towards the end of the year my chronic illness, ulcerative colitis, flared up real bad. So much so that I was hospitalised and in early January 2018 I had to have emergency surgery to have my colon removed and now I live with a stoma and I poo into a bag. It was only then, when I was really faced with my chronic illness and became disabled myself, that I realised I had completely ignored disability in my sex education work. And that was a huge failing.
Why had I never thought to add this whole human experience into my work? And how does this kind of ableism impact disabled people's ability to express themselves sexually and have the relationships they want? Since 2018, I've been on both this personal and professional journey understanding disability and how it intersects with sex and relationships. And I wanted to take you on a bit of that journey too. Starting with someone who's been doing amazing advocacy and awareness work around disability much longer than I have.
Lolo Spencer:
I'm Lauren Lolo Spencer. I'm an actress, model, public speaker, disability advocate, author, and entrepreneur.
Hannah Witton:
Lolo was diagnosed with ALS when she was 14 years old. ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It's a condition that attacks the messages from your brain to your spinal cord that tell your muscles to move. So then your muscles don't move, they don't build muscle mass, and they deteriorate over time. Having been diagnosed in her teens, I wondered if Lolo ever thought about the impact it would have on things like sex, relationships, and dating.
Lolo Spencer:
It was more so from the perspective of living until the age where I can have sex and relationships and go to college, because I was told kind of what the statistics were for someone with this diagnosis, with the life expectancy of five to seven years. I made more of the decision of like, “No, I have to stay alive literally in order for me to have sex and have relationships and go to college and own a house one day and just live out my dreams in my life and live a life that everyone else gets to have. Just make it until adulthood.” So it was more so from the perspective of just genuinely wanting to stay alive so I can have those experiences.
Hannah Witton:
What was your experience like growing up in terms of disabled representation that you saw on screen? Specifically around, like, disabled characters who maybe got a chance at love and sex and all of that. Was there anything?
Lolo Spencer:
No, no, there was no form of disability representation, especially under like romance and love and relationships that I remember seeing growing up. But again, I think even further than that, I was never taught the language around disability culture, even having a disability as a teenager. So my brain wasn't thinking about, “I want to see myself” because I first saw myself as a Black girl, so it never crossed my mind to want to see disability representation until I became an adult.
That's when disability representation came to mind because. I was finally in a position as an adult to take control of my life and what I wanted to dress like or experience or be around or see examples of what I knew the dreams in my head were, and that I did not see even as an adult. So that's when the disability representation kicked in. Cause I'm like, “No, I want to see more of me.” Not to be like, egotistical about it, but like, just me. I wanted to see fun girls with disabilities living their best life. Why isn't that around? I know it's possible because that's what my life is like.
The interesting part about being at the intersection of being a Black woman and disabled is that regardless of my disability, I know the first thing that people recognize of me is the fact that I'm a Black woman. It's interesting because when it comes to sex and dating and relationships, it's a challenge because, you know, statistically dating apps say that Black women are the ones that are least responded to in messages. They are the least swiped on. They are the least to get married or form relationships. And then when you add a disability on top of it, it kind of feels like these constant societal walls that keep trying to get in my way of being great. And I know I'm fucking great. And I know I'm amazing. And it can be a very frustrating experience to have to work through those walls while also being unapologetic about what those things are.
Hannah Witton:
Lolo is completely right. It can be really hard to think of yourself one way and want that to be the version everyone else sees, when the systems of oppression that surround you are sending very different messages about what it means to live in your body and creating literal barriers. |
To better understand how disability, sex, and identity interact with each other, I spoke to disability and sex educator and author of sex education books like Sex is a Funny Word and The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability, Cory Silverberg.
So, where do they see these things intersecting?
Cory Silverberg:
They intersect around ableism, because what makes it difficult and challenging to kind of express your sexuality and explore your sexuality when you're disabled is ableism. Ableism is a form of a sort of oppression, so harm, right? And it can be someone expressing a stereotype or prejudice against someone who they perceive to be disabled. It's also structural. And ableism, importantly, is a kind of oppression that you can't separate from racism, from colonialism, from classism, from sexism. So ableism is, you know, obviously there's similarities - because it's a form of oppression to things - like racism or sexism, but it's different because it is, it is sort of grounded in perceptions of our body.
When I use that word “perceptions” of our body, right, it's very important because whether someone is disabled or not, if they're perceived to be disabled, they will experience ableism. So it really is about like whose bodies get to be thought of as worthy; whose bodies are left out.
And when I'm working with someone and they're like, “Well, I'm just not attracted to that kind of person.” Right? Well, the fact is that that is also about ableism. Who we are and are not attracted to is partly about something inside of us that none of us can really define, but it's absolutely also about all the messages from birth. Before we're, you know, we're being taught anything, who are the people we're seeing who's held up as sexy are mostly white people and mostly skinny people and mostly people who seem non disabled. But, ableism, in addition to capitalism, tells us, “No, these are the bodies that are valuable and sexy.”
The other interesting thing about being disabled as an identity, and this was my experience, is that if you live long enough you're going to be disabled. I used to identify myself as currently non disabled because I knew very well that it was coming and now it's come.
Hannah Witton:
The way that I have recently started thinking about disability in that way is kind of like that it isn't this binary of like you have disabled and non disabled people but it is just constantly in flux throughout your life. Like, I'm someone with a chronic illness and I've also had moments of flare ups and remission and pregnancy and previous surgeries and, you know, and I'm still relatively young. And so I've also got all of the aging stuff, hopefully, you know, to come.
Cory Silverberg:
Exactly. And but I love that you just said that because, you know, if people are like, “I don't quite get ableism” - imagine suggesting that there's some connection between pregnancy and disability. Ableism would tell us that's a terrible thing. Like, “pregnancy is a beautiful time when you're…”
Hannah Witton:
I felt so disabled during pregnancy.
Cory Silverberg:
Right, right, right. And so thinking about it on a spectrum and also having these intersections of what is debilitating, right? So being able to talk honestly about the ways that our bodies just don't work the way we want them to and we just don't do that. Like, there's so much fear and that's ableism. And ableism is telling us the worst thing in the world is to be disabled, you know, and that's a narrative. I mean, still to this day, you will get, like, TV documentaries about, like, someone who, you know, acquires a disability and they just wanted to die.
Hannah Witton:
The way these fears manifest in individuals is internalized ableism, which is something that Jennie Williams, CEO of disability charity Enhance the UK, told me is one of the biggest barriers to disabled people not being able to access pleasure.
Enhance the UK are a charity whose mission is to change society's views on disability, especially when it comes to sex. Jennie’s seen a lot of people dealing with internalised ableism and has her own personal experiences of navigating it too.
Jennie Williams:
I do lots of talks, I talk to people about... not being in pain for sex, for example. You know, sex should never be painful. However, I'm single again now and I'm starting to have sexual relationships with new people and it was only recently I started to have penetrative sex and actually it was… was it painful? Yes, it was. Did I say no straight away? No, I didn't. And that was me, that was my internalised ableism, just going, “I'm enjoying this, I don't want it to stop.” You know. “I want to be able to do this. I want to be able to prove it.” And actually I really got very upset with myself afterwards because I was in an awful lot of pain.
Having these conversations is still really taboo. “Hi, nice to meet you, I have a problem with my vagina.” You know, at what point do you start disclosing? And if you are in pain, really have that question why that's happening and having those conversations.
Lolo Spencer:
It is really, really tough.
Hannah Witton:
Here's Lolo again.
Lolo Spencer:
It's a daily practice to remind myself that I am worthy. I am worthy of love. I am worthy of the love that I desire. I am worthy of the experiences that I want to have, the relationships I want to have, the sex I want to have, the joy I want to have. I am worthy of all of these things despite what statistics are said about the generalization of my existence and my humanity, because I'm so much bigger than numbers.
Hannah Witton:
Is that something that you've always felt about yourself, or is it something that you've had to work towards?
Lolo Spencer:
Something that I've worked towards that I feel like I am finally embodying now at 36. I've kind of dimmed my light to not make other people feel uncomfortable or be unrelatable to other people. You know, I still get nervous sometimes having like sexual encounters with guys that I'm involved with. Because again, there's this part that still is in my brain is I want to please my partner just as much as they're pleasing me, but I know physically I don't have the capability to. So I don't want to feel like I'm not worthy of pleasing my partner. Like that really, sometimes still to this day bothers the hell out of me. Cause sex is such an important part of a relationship for many people. So it's like, if I can't please him and it's completely out of my control, then how good am I?
Hannah Witton:
When you have those thoughts, what has been the things that's kind of like helped you through that? Like, have the people that you've been with reassured you in those moments or is it a bit more of just self talk that's helped you through feeling that way?
Lolo Spencer:
I would say a majority time it is self talk that helps me get through those insecure moments. But luckily I've been involved with multiple people that I felt like I can share how I was feeling with them and they've been able to affirm me, reassure me And if there was anything that they're like, “Well, you know,” sexy problem solving, we would work on that together.
At the beginning. I'd like to try and preface what it might be like to have sex with me from their perspective, like saying, “Hey, you know, you gotta be mindful. My hips, my hips, it could be, it could get a little painful if in a certain position.” Or you know, all of the different things. Like we have a real conversation before even actually engaging, which I think is helpful.
Hannah Witton:
More people should do that, disabled or not.
Lolo Spencer:
Exactly. Right? Because there's just certain things people are like, “I can't do.” And I will also say having conversations with my homegirls about sexual experiences and then when I'm like, “Oh, I feel bad. Cause I don't know how to get on top.” And they'd be like, “Bitch, I don't know how to either. And nor do I care to.” Like, you know? So it's also realizing that my experiences as a woman are not that far off from a woman that doesn't have a disability.
Hannah Witton:
Who would you say your support network are in terms of having the people to fall back on when you are having those challenging times? Is it other Black women? Is it other disabled people? Other disabled Black women? How important is community in that sense for you?
Lolo Spencer:
I have a group of friends that also have disabilities as well, who I've been able to call and ask questions about what the experience is like, dating with a disability. I've learned that I thought was like a me thing, but was actually what all disabled women kind of feel and experience is this idea that if a man doesn't come in being all the way ready to take on you and your disability and all of your needs, then he's not for me. And that is not a narrative that is true.
All of my disabled home girls that are married, in long term relationships, have families, whatever the case is, they said with their person and other healthy relationships that they've had, every guy had to go through this process of being okay with them and their disability. And that is like a narrative we don't talk about enough. That would be something that I've learned specifically talking to my disabled homegirls about is just navigating, “Okay, how do you know when this person isn’t for me because of my disability? Or is for me because of my disability?”
Hannah Witton:
This idea of community, the importance of sharing experiences, also came up a lot in my chat with Cory.
Cory Silverberg:
I'll say, actually, maybe one of the big myths about disability is not actually specifically about disability, but it's just the idea that needing help is bad. There's this idea that we're supposed to be able to do things alone. That's the real sign of being fully human. So this idea, this myth, that needing help is somehow a weakness is a huge one and, you know, impacts disabled people all the time, myself included. Of course, everybody needs other people. And part of what's sort of insidious about this myth is that it's really just about what kind of help we value. We see value in interconnectedness and in how we all grow together, which is very much like this idea of disability justice. One of the core ideas is that we move together. Right? That we're only going to get to liberation if we're going moving together, which means we move at the pace of the person who's moving the slowest.
Hannah Witton:
Cory is so right. We all need support. And of course it's okay to ask for help. To need help is to be human. But one of the most tangible and practical ways we see people needing support is in care home settings.
This is something that Jenny has a lot of experience with. I wanted to understand more about her work and where sex comes into the lives of those requiring daily assistance.
Jennie Williams:
I worked in social care from a very young age of 16, and as I was getting older, I was really noticing, “Wait a minute, I don't sleep in a single bed anymore, yet all these people that I seem to be supporting are sleeping in a single bed.” Most people who are in care, have any kind of support, have something called a care plan, and that's, you know, their bowel movements, all the personal things you can imagine, yet nothing about people's sexual needs. At all. We now use the term sexual expression but actually, internally, people didn't have a voice. I struggled with that. And that is why I thought, “You know what, I want to do something about this.” Because the care homes that I was working for weren't really prepared to take that on. So that's, that's kind of really how Enhance was born and why I started to set it up in the first place.
Hannah Witton:
Why do you think sexual needs and sexual expression wasn't in these care plans for people in care homes? Was it just a complete oversight or was it considered but then like, “Oh no, we shouldn't put that in there?” Like, what is going on there that means that it's absent?
Jennie Williams:
There might be a handful of care homes that are putting that information in, but it's still, you know, really not the norm. It's still an acutely uncomfortable conversation for people. And why? Because people don't feel comfortable with it. People don't feel comfortable about talking about sex. They just don't.
And we bring our values to sex a lot. You know, people bring values, whether it be religious values, you know, or how you've been brought up, how you've been educated to talk about sex. And the other thing is people are scared about the law, you know, misinterpretation about what the law is, what the law says, you know, and so people go, “I don't want to get arrested, I don't want to get in trouble, you know, for doing something or supporting someone.”
Hannah Witton:
What is that fear about? Are there any laws that would prevent them from doing that? What actually are the laws that mean that somebody can have access to that kind of support for their sexual needs?
Jennie Williams:
You know, if somebody has capacity and they want to be able to settle it - we're talking about masturbating, right, for now - and they want to buy a sex toy, it is perfectly lawful that a member of care is in the room to give that person that sex toy, they place that sex toy, but they cannot insert it into somebody's vagina and then that person, that care staff has to leave the room when they masturbate.
If that happens, that is lawful. And that is part of the reason that we've created our sex toy range to make it a lot easier for people to be able to masturbate. on their own and somebody leave the room and then as horrible as it is, you have to go, “Finished.” You know and then somebody come back in and go, “Oh, do you have a lovely time? Do you want a cup of tea now?” That's lawful and actually as much as it is complicated in some ways, it's actually very simplified in other ways.
Hannah Witton:
So what's the kind of work that Enhance do to educate care home staff? Like what are the kinds of things that you help them with in terms of the care that they then provide to their clients in terms of helping clients with their sexual needs or sexual expression?
Jennie Williams:
We have to educate people. Giving people permission and space to talk about it, understanding what the law is, understanding how you start initiating those first conversations, understanding where you put that information in the care plan. It's really difficult to navigate for carers and the reason that it can be really difficult is because a lot of disabled people are massively infantilized. So you could be talking about somebody in their 30s, 40s even and they're like, “Oh no, no, no, she never thinks about sex, absolutely not.” Well I can assure you she does, but you've never had those conversations. So infantilisation is a massive thing. The lack of being able to actually access information in a care home, because most care homes have child locks on them, so you can't actually get information, let alone porn. God forbid, you know, you can get porn. But even actually understanding how you get that information is difficult.
Hannah Witton:
Can you give any examples of how this plays out? So somebody in a care home is interested in watching some porn and having a wank but that's not something that they're able to facilitate themselves: what would be something that would be in their care plan that support staff would be able to do?
Jennie Williams:
So somebody wants to have a cheeky little wank, right? Something that is going to be very private to us and they want to watch some porn. And for most of us that's really easy, because you just go on your phone, right? Again, if you're in a care home and you need that support, that isn't the case. You probably have to have a whole meeting with the care staff being like, “Oh right, so how does he get on porn?” Because they can't break through, you know, the child lock that's been put in. This is a conversation that happens very often. But then that's like shining a massive light going, “That person's gonna masturbate. [Jennie making siren noises] They want to watch porn. [Jennie making siren noises]” So people just don't do it. So the answer is, a lot of the time, people just often don't watch porn.
And to masturbate, for a lot of people, it's very hard because they don't have the dexterity to even be able to have the conversation about owning a sex toy, buying a sex toy. Again, that is incredibly difficult for a lot of people, so they often just don't do it. And if they do do it, a meeting has to happen, it has to be discussed, it has to often go up through the manager. It's the opposite of a cheeky little privacy wank, and that's why people don't do it. And we talk about, you know, protecting people. What we need to be doing is be putting in the least restrictive option of safeguarding. So everybody still has freedom but there are the protocols that are still followed and everybody's happy and safe.
Hannah Witton:
What does that look like to you? The least restrictive version of safeguarding?
Jennie Williams:
Let's take it from the top. It should be part of people's induction training, care staff induction training. You're looking after humans. You're looking after grown ups, they're going to talk about sex, obviously, and make it a really like, “Well, obviously they are. This is where it is in the care plan. If you have any of these conversations, it needs to be documented, and this is how we support people.” That's the attitude that we need to start changing. So it's normalizing it, so it becomes the least restricted option, so it doesn't have to be escalated all the way to the top, because it happens so, so infrequently, everybody freaks out, you know, when it does actually happen, it's like, “Oh my god! You know, again, these alarm bells. [Jennie making siren noises] We've got a masturbator.”
Hannah Witton:
“We've got a masturbator on our hands, what are we gonna do?”
Jennie Williams:
“What are we gonna do?”
Hannah Witton:
One thing that comes up a lot in debates when talking about people who need extra help and support in their sexual expression is access to sex workers. It's perhaps the one area of sex work, if any, that people who are usually anti say is okay. The next episode is going to be dedicated to sex and money, and we're really going to dive into sex work then, but I wanted to share what Lydia Caradonna, a disabled sex worker and activist, had to say about all this, because it really changed my perspective.
Lydia Caradonna:
I really love when people bring up the topic of sex work and disability because I'm a disabled sex worker and I would say that being chronically ill is the main thing that pushed me into sex work. It was that I couldn't work longer hours. But then whenever disability in sex work and the intersection hits the press, it turns into this whole weird discussion about the right of disabled men to be clients and to buy sex and it seems like such a strange way to frame the debate when you realize there's a vast over-representation of disabled people in sex work. Because I don't think that there's any right to buy sex, you know, it's a luxury, it's not a right, but there is a big right for disabled people to be able to make rent and to be able to work if we want to work and to be able to have accessible workplaces. And I would just really like to reframe the debate around sex work and disability into one of labour rights and one of sex workers being disabled.
Hannah Witton:
I love this reframing of what we should be focusing on when talking about sex and disability because you're right, when we do have, or when the mainstream media has these conversations. it's like, “Sex work bad, sex workers bad. Oh, unless it's a disabled man. Yeah. And then the sex worker is like doing him a service and is this angel.”
Lydia Caradonna:
Yeah. It's really, really strange. And I think it - maybe because I'm disabled, but the debate always strikes me as weird because it's not actually a case that like disabled people can't access sex. Clearly we can, cause I'm being paid for it. And if someone is capable of having sex when they pay someone for it, means they're capable of having sex without paying someone for it. And maybe we need to start considering the stigma and the weird attitudes we have towards disabled people and disabled bodies.
Because, you know, I don't necessarily think someone needs to see a sex worker in order to have sex. Like, what other things can be put in place? Why are they not having enough social interaction to meet with people? Like, the whole debate just seems really really strange to me because it's sort of, there's this weird trend of in order to make sex work respectful, we get painted as like a public service and we're actually a therapy service for men and actually we're doing sexual healing and body work. And then the disabled clients are sort of painted as like, “This poor virgin. He will die a virgin for no one wants to touch him.”
And the whole thing is like very, very strange as a disabled person, because I know that people with disabilities are desirable. And I know that there's someone out there for everyone and it just seems really like patronising to disabled people and unnecessarily weird to sex workers. I don't feel the need to paint myself as doing like some kind of public service in order to feel that, you know, I should be respected at work. Great respect to people who think they're solving their client's childhood problems with one sexual therapy service at a time, but like, I'm just sucking dick.
Hannah Witton:
What a line! I was completely fascinated by everything Lydia had to say, and I think she makes some really compelling points, and you'll hear more from her about labour rights in that episode on money.
But for now, I want to explore what she brought up about disabled people and disabled bodies being desirable because stigma and ableism would have us think the opposite. Here's Lolo.
Lolo Spencer:
Disabled people, traditionally, are never the examples of being desirable. There isn't the representation of the hot guy seeing the girl with a disability and being like, “Damn. I want to see what she's about.” And so for me, I want to normalize that in the sense of disabled people being an option for partnership. Disabled people being an option for dating and love and sex and a good time. There is this societal conditioning of people writing off people with disabilities as not even being an option. And so through my work that I do as an actress, as a, you know, icon on social media, is again, showing examples of what that looks like and what that could look like. So that way, again, you see my humanity first, and my humanity and who I am as a human is what makes me desirable on all levels.
Cory Silverberg:
I think it's pretty common to think that disabled people don't have access to sexual capacity, right? So disabled people can't have sex, and probably don't want sex, and no one would want to have sex with them. So we used to talk about this as the myth that disabled people are asexual.
Hannah Witton:
This is Cory again.
Cory Silverberg:
One of the big myths is that if you're disabled, there's going to be something wrong with you that is going to prohibit you from feeling sexual desire, from doing sexual things, right? So if you're in a wheelchair, if you can't use your hands, how could you ever have sex, right? Which is silly because there's lots of ways.
Another sort of big myth is about disabled people not being desirable. And I think the problem - there's so many problems obviously with that idea. One of them is that lots of people desire disabled people and then they think there's something wrong with it. Right? So it's like, “If I'm turned on by someone, if I'm attracted to someone who's disabled, is it kind of a fetish? Am I just fetishizing them?” I mean, it might be that, but also, if you know them and you're attracted to them, it's because you're attracted to all of them.
Hannah Witton:
Cory makes a really important point here.This othering of disabled people can lead to more fetishization, and it's something Lolo's experienced firsthand.
Lolo Spencer:
I've definitely experienced some fetishiszing before, but mainly from complete strangers, which is really not cool. I was at a club in college and one man comes up to me and he's like, “You know what my fantasy has always been?” And I'm like, “What?” And he was like, “To eat a girl out in her wheelchair.” And I said, “Okay, time to go. It's time for us to just push through the crowd and exit.” So it's like, you know, and I've had people say, “Oh, you're the woman of my dreams. I had a dream that my wife was a wheelchair user.” All this weird - I'm like, you don't even know me. I could be like the dopest like serial killer and you would have no idea because you're just seeing the wheelchair and just trying to either make me feel better or try to make me feel desired and it's like, “No, that's actually creepy energy.” You know, cause there's a lot of that where I feel like people almost like exaggerate their attraction to me in order to make me feel better? It's really weird. I don't know if I've even explained it in a way of what it feels like, but it just feels like a fetishizing because it's like, you're just doing too much. I mean, eat me out in my wheelchair. Cut it out. What is that? So weird. So weird. Did not like that at all.
Hannah Witton:
But in a different context with somebody that you know and have a rapport with, maybe.
Lolo Spencer:
Literally, it has happened. It has happened. I was getting to know somebody. It was a vibe. It was a situation. We were in a public setting and we just went off into a bathroom and this is what he felt like doing. It was a moment. It was an experience. Thoroughly enjoyed it. But again, it was with someone who knew that I was a human first. Who understood me. Someone I had conversations with. That I interacted with outside of sex. I'm with it. It's just, can I get to know you first, please?
Hannah Witton:
Context.
Lolo Spencer:
Absolutely.
Hannah Witton:
Also, if you didn't have a wheelchair, that scenario, you would have had to sit on a toilet seat. So...
Lolo Spencer:
These are the benefits that people don't think about when it comes to dating someone who's at least a wheelchair user. It's like, all of the fun in the world in the chair.
Hannah Witton:
I am obsessed with that story. She's got a sex surface ready to go.
So, Lolo's someone who's lived with her disability her whole adult life, since she was 14. But I was curious about what happens when someone acquires their disability later in life, once you've already had some sexual experiences or relationships as an able bodied person. Here's Cory:
Cory Silverberg:
I mean, it depends on what the disability is, but often the first thing is it requires you to slow right down. And then, when it comes to sex, we're told, “This is what you're supposed to have.” The gift of becoming disabled is often like, if that's not a thing you can do - whatever your version of normal sex is, for your body and for the other bodies you want to do it with - the gift is that if it's like, “Oh, that doesn't work for me, That doesn't feel good.” you have to then say, “Well, what does?”And to start asking yourself, “Well, what do I want?” Certainly a lot of people I know who acquired disabilities as late teenagers and adults, they talk about the fact that their sex life is absolutely better than it would have been if they were non disabled. Because if they were non disabled, they would have just kept going through the motions.
Hannah Witton:
How can people create space for themselves to almost have that grieving process, I guess, of how their body used to be, or how their body and mind used to work, without falling into this ableist, capitalist trap. How can we have space for those feelings, those really difficult feelings, but without oppressing ourselves?
Cory Silverberg:
I think the answer is we do it with our, we do it with our people, right? We do it with our close friends. But because the message when you're disabled, all you get is, is that it's not good to be disabled. So then there is this part that's like, “I'm not going to go in public and talk about jow I'm struggling because then I'm just gonna get pity.” Right? And it's the ableism that you're talking about. And so we have people who we can be honest with about the hard stuff, because we're not going to do it in the general public. Cause the general public is just waiting for it, right? All the general public wants is the stories of how sad and hard it is. And so, you know, it doesn't feel honest because what we're communicating is not being listened to.
And, you know, another part of like, you know, being disabled, how it's exhausting, is the way we have to be with non disabled people who don't get it and who don't see us. So I think that's so important for us is that do we all have at least one or two people, right? So people that would really, that we can just be with in that way. And we don't, right? We don't all have that. And that's something we need to figure out how to change.
Hannah Witton:
There is a lot we need to figure out how to change. Ableism, stigma, access to pleasure, desexualization and infantilization of disabled people. So what can sex education do about this? What would truly disability-inclusive sex ed look like?
Cory Silverberg:
So what disability inclusive sex education doesn't look like is just adding pictures of wheelchairs or crutches, right? Because then it's just these, it's still these flat pictures of kids. What it does look like is not making assumptions about how bodies work, right? So it's not making assumptions that, for example, you don't define masturbation as touching one's genitals. Because for some bodies, the genitals aren't the place that feels good. So in fact, masturbation can be touching any part of your body in a way that makes it feel good, or have sort of sexy feelings is the language that I use.
Not making assumptions about how we move and how we think. In our books when we show young adults like exploring crushes or relationships, we don't always show them holding hands or kissing. And in fact, in one of the books, there's this image of these two people who are on a date and they're both leaning against a tree and they're facing away from each other. Because for some of us, we don't like - you know, a lot of eye contact doesn't feel intimate, it feels like bad, right? That we like to be with people, but we like to be with people physically in a different way.
Those are two just like little examples. But it really is fundamentally, it's about understanding that all of our bodies are different. Sex educators say stuff that actually makes sense in terms of sort of disability inclusion, but then they don't follow through, right? So every sex educator will tell you everybody's different and everybody's great. But then all the education is about this is how we menstruate, right? So menstruation happens once a month, and this is how it works, and this is what the blood is like, etc. That's not how menstruation works for everyone.
When you say everybody's different, and then you say, puberty happens around, and then you give a range that's like two or three years, the everybody's different messages disappears. But what I know is that the things that connect us, and the things that we share are far more than the things that separate us. It's less about like, how do I write a book for disabled people, and more about how do I write a book that actually can work for almost any body. And when you fundamentally understand bodies as being really different, it's not that it's easy, but it's easier to do, right? It's not that hard for me anymore.
Hannah Witton:
And also understanding them as constantly changing.
Cory Silverberg:
Right.
Hannah Witton:
So somebody might not want to, or feel that they need to access your book that is specifically about sex and disability because they're non disabled at that time. And so they're like, “That's not relevant to me.”
Cory Silverberg:
Right, right.
Hannah Witton:
But then maybe they become disabled or maybe They start dating somebody who is disabled.
Cory Silverberg:
Exactly. Yes.
Hannah Witton:
And so, yeah, by kind of putting it all together with that fundamental understanding that all bodies are different, and that all bodies are constantly changing, then it means that it's more likely to apply to everyone, and also apply to people throughout their life.
Cory Silverberg:
So one of the lies we're told, which is absolutely an ableist lie, is that you are a kid, and then you go through puberty, and that's the big change. And then you're an adult. And then you become old, and then there's another big change. Our bodies are constantly changing, right? Our needs are constantly changing, how we move and think changes. If you want to be connected in the world, then, you know, care about other people, you need to find out what's going on with other people. I love that you pointed that out. That would be a really good place to start talking to young people because it really invites them to be curious about everything.
Hannah Witton:
Yes, absolutely. I think curiosity is one of the most important things when it comes to sex, relationships, our bodies. Curiosity is value-neutral, it's non judgmental. It just wants to learn, explore, and understand more.
And one thing I was curious about was the positive impacts of disability. on people's sex lives and relationships. Here's Lolo and Jenny.
Lolo Spencer:
I would say I get to be more choosy. Because I know my body is different, because I know that my body operates different than what maybe most men have experienced. I get to kind of have that energy of like, “Do I want you to experience this?” Because I know I can't just deal with any guy just because he's showing me attention. I have to really vet somebody. Their spirit, their energy, what they believe in, their morals, their standards. Like I have to vet all of these things in order for me to even feel comfortable enough engaging in a partnership or relationship or even sex with them.
Jennie Williams:
It's twofold, being a disabled person, because sometimes you can look on people's Instagrams, for example, and other disabled people, and they're like, “Oh my god, that person is living the best life, they're having all the sex. They're so sexy, they're so great.” and then they stop their cameras, and then they go back, and then their chronic pain continues, or whatever it is.
I think we do this very naturally, we compare ourselves to people, and actually, we need to stop doing that. You're gonna have bad days, you are. Let's not - let’s not beat around the bush, right? You're going to have bad days sometimes, but you're also going to have some great days. And if you can - I say flippantly, “Ooh, disabled people have the best sex.” I'm not saying that in a flippant way. The reason that I'm saying that is that you are able to have the best sex if you communicate to your partner what that looks like and what that is for you.
And it's not just about sex. It's about friends around you. It's about relationships with your parents. It's about relationships with your partner, whatever that might look like, or your children. If you start to kind of own that and ask for help if you need it. And especially with Enhance, you know, that's why we're here. The services that we provide are for free. Because it is important that people have a space. And sometimes people literally need a space to be seen and to be heard as sexual beings. And once they are recognised as that, then they can go away and start their journey on their own.
And sometimes that's all it takes. It is okay to have good days. It's okay to have bad days. And I think it's just about trying to be as comfortable with yourself as you possibly can be, which can be difficult at times. But you have got this.
Hannah Witton:
You have got this.
Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com/hannahwitton where you can also find ad free versions of the show and bonus behind the scenes episodes and extended cuts. And you can find transcripts and show notes over on our website, doingitpodcast.co.uk.
Are you disabled? How have you found navigating sex, dating and relationships? I'd love to continue the conversation with you over on Instagram, at @doingitpodcast.
Next time, we're talking about sex and money.
Franki Cookney:
There is enough love, enough sexual energy, enough desire, enough eroticism to go around. Like, it's not... It's not a finite resource that we need to compete over.
Lydia Caradonna:
Sex workers need the same things that everyone needs. We need to be safe from poverty, not from prostitution. We need affordable housing. We need access to food. We need accessible workplaces.
Hannah Witton:
This podcast was hosted and co produced by me, Hannah Witton, produced by Mia Zur-Szpiro, and edited and mixed by Anoushka Tate. Episode transcripts, show notes, and social media produced and created by Moog Florin.