March 21, 2016 • 53 mins
People with disabilities are frequently erased from conversations about sexuality because of deeply ingrained stereotypes and marginalizing assumptions. Cristen and Caroline look at where these desexualizing tropes came from and their very real consequences.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told You from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and Caroline, we gotta start this
episode with a shout out that's right to listener Katrina. Yeah.
We've got Katrina at our meet up in l A
(00:24):
a little while ago, back at the beginning of February,
and she had emailed us previously about issues surrounding people
with disabilities, all sorts of different issues, really great ideas
for some sminty episodes. And so after we met her,
she re emailed us that, which we're very grateful for,
and we have chosen from her list of topics. Yeah,
(00:46):
so today we're going to talk about the de sexualization
of people with disabilities and all of the history and
culture and political issues today surrounding that. Um. And again
Katrina to thank you for this fantastic idea, because really
we have not talked all that much at all about
(01:06):
people with disabilities on the podcast. It's high time that
we cover this. Yeah, absolutely, particularly because this is a
growing conversation and it has been a growing conversation and
I think more recently it entered this topic entered the
public conversation UH in ten when Rochelle Friedman Chapman, who
(01:28):
had been paralyzed from the chest down at twenty four
UH post and laundry to combat a bunch of assumptions
around the idea that people with disabilities can't be sexy.
But even before that, in Jess Soxy, who has Freeman's
Sheldon syndrome, posed in American apparel esque shots to counteract
(01:48):
the mother ing and de sexualization of people with disabilities.
And I remember sharing those photos of Saxy on the
stuff mob never told you social media because was I mean,
it was just very clever, because those American apparel poses
are so just kind of idiosyncratic to that brand and
(02:11):
so hyper sexual, and I mean it was it was
just such a smart way to do that and such
an important campaign for raising that visibility. And then Jess,
who prefers the pronoun, they posted this photo series depicting
themselves on naked on a crane or posing with a crane,
and they said that they wanted to sort of grapple
(02:34):
with this idea of people are always staring at me?
What are they staring at I'm finally going to really
really look at myself naked, and you are going to
look at me naked as well, just to again sort
of helped to fight that stigma of you don't look
like the general population at large, so you must be
(02:58):
different in every way. Well, and that it's also the
polite thing to do to look away from people with disabilities.
Don't draw attention to it, which is kind of politely
in quotes, ignore it. Um. And one bit of history
that I did not know going into this podcast was
that twenty five years ago a woman named Ellen Stole,
who had been paralyzed from the neck down, became the
(03:21):
first woman with a disability to pose in Playboy. And
she said, the reason why I chose Playboy magazine for
this endeavor is its sexuality is the hardest thing for
a disabled person to hold on to. Helf was really
adamant that I had their right to have the same
sexual voice as women without disabilities. And I took a
look at the photos and I mean, it does look
(03:42):
like a typical Playboy spread. I mean, Stole is naked
on a bed and you have the kind of glossy
filter across her, and um, yeah, I mean it looks
just like any other centerfold. Yeah, And there was an
interview with both Hef and Stole, and he said that
her disability had made her feel like a non person,
(04:04):
like a non sexual being, and she was very articulate
at expressing exactly that the pictorial could serve not only
her but other people with disabilities as a way of saying,
we're human beings too, and sex is a natural part
of being alive with a disability or without. And the
thing is, if we look back at the history of
how we as humans have treated people with disabilities, I mean,
(04:26):
this kind of stuff happening is downright revolutionary, you know,
because we're having to unearth centuries and centuries of this
kind of marginalization and de sexualization. Because, as Catherine Quarmby
wrote about over in a really in depth piece at Mosaic,
there are some deeply ingrained and dehumanizing tropes about people
(04:50):
with disabilities. Yeah. She cites author Tom Shakespeare, who wrote
The Sexual Politics of Disability, and he points to a
bunch of threads from mythology, from literature, which of course
reflect attitudes in the popular culture at large, stretching back
hundreds of years. And of course one of the biggest
(05:11):
tropes is that people with disabilities are just completely one
a sexual there's the idea that women and men are
viewed as impotent, sexless, and unattractive, and this makes them
vulnerable to mockery. It was Cicero who wrote in Deformity
and Bodily Disfigurement there is good material in making jokes.
(05:34):
So we are now in the twenty first century, I
feel like just still at the very beginning of unraveling
all of that other ing and all of the dismissal
of people with disabilities, and that other ring is very
much present to in ancient mythology. I mean, if we
look at the story of haffaced Us, the blacksmith god
with a shriveled foot who marries Aphrodite. Aphrodity ends up
(05:57):
carrying on all these affairs because his disability makes him unmanly.
There's that emasculating aspect as well. And then if we
fast forward to something I had not thought about while
reading this book, if we look at Lady Chatterley's lover Constance,
the main woman takes up with the gamekeeper after her
(06:18):
husband is paralyzed from the waist down during World War One,
and this develops into a concept known as Chatterly syndrome,
where a disabled man's loss of sexual power gives his
wife freedom to get her satisfaction elsewhere. Wasn't this side
note Caroline kind of a subplot a little while back
(06:39):
in Downton Abbey when Matthew is injured in the war. Uh,
do we have a little Chatterlee syndrome happening? I think?
Didn't he like encourage her to go They weren't married yet,
he encouraged her to go find another husband or man
or something because he's like, oh, I'm not a whole
real man anymore, and she's stuck with him. Yeah. Well,
(07:00):
and I from what I remember too from Lady Chatterley's
Lover Besides all of the titillating bits was how they
characterized her husband as an unlikable guy too, like the
disability not only made him impotent, but also seemed to
make him devoid of any kind of decency. Yeah well,
(07:23):
I mean, and then that ties into another one of
the tropes that Cornby and Shakespeare talk about, which is
that disabled people are perverse. This was especially a thing
during the seventeenth century. Wind Witch hunts everybody, from women
with mental health problems, older people with dementia. Two people
with cancerous growth faced the stigma that they were somehow twisted,
(07:46):
and this was tied in with the idea that disability
was sometimes considered a punishment for sins uh, and that
a person with a disability was an unsuitable partner, perhaps
because he or she supposedly evil powers of some kind. Yeah.
I mean, if we look at the literary example of
Shakespeare's Richard the Third, Uh, he's described as having twisted
(08:09):
body and mind. Yeah. But then but then, so, so
you've got the tropes of people with disabilities being completely
a sexual or their perverse in their sexuality, but then
you have the horrific hyper sexualization of people with disabilities. Yeah.
So this assumption has been used particularly against women with
(08:31):
learning disabilities, and it was largely used as a justification
to abuse women in mental institutions, and even in the
nineteenth century, whistleblowers were drawing attention to rape, abuse, and
even murder, all based on this concept of you know,
I guess hyper sexuality being a part of their mental disability, right,
(08:54):
And I'm sure that there's a power element in that too,
of like, um, using hyper sexuality to justify your thinking
that uh, this this woman is loose, you know, she
she will submit to my power because she's obviously weak.
And then finally we have the whole contamination fears around
people with disability, this worry that people with disabilities might
(09:18):
pass it along to their offspring. And this is something
too that ends up essentially being codified into American law
with a Supreme Court decision that we're going to talk
about in just a second, as part of the heyday
of the eugenics movement in the United States. Yeah. So,
in case you're wondering why these tropes about people with
(09:41):
disabilities are such a big deal, you all you have
to do is look at the very real consequences that
came out of them. And like Kristen said, I mean,
we get the eugenics movement in the late nineteenth century
in early twentieth century. Yeah, I mean, this was something
that we talked about in our two parter on the
(10:02):
legal history of abortion. It ties into that um, but
it also initiated starting in the eighteen eighties, these things
called ugly laws or unsightly beggar laws that literally made
it illegal in certain cities for people who were deemed
unsightly from being seen on the streets at all. And
this caroline reminds me of modern day anti panhandling laws,
(10:25):
which are also sort of a legal way to get
unsightly homeless people off of the sidewalks as well. Um,
And it wasn't just though, the discomfort around people with
disabilities begging and possibly upsetting people on the street and
maybe driving away potential business, but also fears around what
(10:46):
reaction it would cause in pregnant women. Yeah, it was
believed that a mother encountering these unsightly beggars would have
a quote equivalent impression made on the fetus, so somehow
her unborn child would catch a disability, but just by
(11:06):
virtue of the fact that she saw someone with a
disability on the street. And then finally, in the mid
twentieth century, those quote unquote ugly laws are largely replaced
on a state by state basis with state directed institutionalization
and treatments. But if we go to nineteen fourteen, it
was illegal for the classified quote feeble minded and insane
(11:30):
people to marry. I mean, if we if you think
of words like dumb, idiot, feeble minded, I mean those
were actual groups of people according to medical signs of
the day. Yeah, you could look back at old census
records and see people classified in that way. Um. And
so from nineteen o seven to ninety thousands of Americans
(11:52):
were sterilized as part of this growing eugenics movement, and
in Virginia, law, for instance, allow the forced sterilization of
quote feeble minded, insane, depressed, mentally, handicapped, epileptic, and other individuals.
And learning about this, Caroline, I'm really interested to read
a new book by Adam Cohen called Imbeciles, which is
(12:15):
all about the Supreme Court the eugenics movement in the
United States, and it centers around that Virginia case and
the for sterilization of a woman named Carrie Buck. And
what happened with Carrie Buck was that she was raped
and impregnated as a result of that, and after the
(12:36):
child was born, her family or just you know, completely
incensed by the whole situation, and so they had her
deemed feeble minded and sent away to a colony for
epileptics and the feeble minded. And they wanted the people
who were pro for sterilization, We're looking for some kind
(12:57):
of test case in order to legalized this whole thing.
So there's this guy who came in to the epileptic
and feeble minded colony where Carrie Buck was and saw
her and said, oh, this is perfect because her mother
had also been classified as feeble minded. She was classified
(13:17):
as feeble minded, and she now had this baby who
could possibly be shown as feeble minded too, in order
to prove that whole contagious aspect to it. So they
essentially had a sham case and it allowed for her
forced sterilization. So then in Carrie Buck brings this case
(13:39):
again to the Supreme Court to challenge that decision, and
famed Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes rights in his Supreme Court
decision upholding that for serialization law that quote, three generations
of imbeccles is enough, Oh lord. Yeah. And as a result,
(14:02):
as Cohen talks about two Terry Gross in this Fresh
Air interview that I was listening to, that now has
me wanting to read his new book, Imbeciles. As a
result of that Supreme Court decision seventy thousand for sterilizations
then happened across the United States. Yeah, because in the
wake of that decision, twenty seven other states began sterilization program. Yeah,
(14:25):
I mean and all of that too. We need to
come back, Caroline and do a whole episode just on
the for sterilization issue, because it was something directed not
only at the so called people minded, but also especially
women of color. I mean, they're all sorts of really
disgusting layers to the whole thing. Um. And it culminated
to in the murders of two hundred thousand people with disabilities.
(14:48):
If we had over to World War two, two or
thousand people with disabilities who were killed by the Nazis.
And so this is the base of where we are today.
I mean, this is the history that we're coming out of.
And so these days the fallout from all of those
stereotypes and tropes and fears is still evident. Uh. And
(15:11):
I know that, having just talked about eugenics and for sterilization,
dating seems almost like it seems almost flippant to talk
about dating. But this is a real consequence of our
history of marginalizing people with disabilities. So you've got the
dating issue right. People with disabilities are less likely to
(15:32):
marry or have long term partners, but of course that
varies depending on impairment type according to research, And there
was a Guardian poll UH that found forty four percent
of respondents had never had sex with someone with a
disability and said that they did not think they ever would.
(15:53):
So like, that's where we are. Those are the attitudes
that we are dealing with. And one thing that activists,
you gos Ling, who wrote Abnormal, How Britain became Body
dysmorphic and the Key to a Cure, discusses is the
issue of family and friends of people with disabilities over
protecting them out of a fear of exploitation, because you
(16:14):
have not only this sexualization, but also to this infantilization. Yeah, exactly,
of of protecting people with disabilities as if they are
permanent babies, permanent children. Yeah, I mean, and that's regardless
of whether we're talking about people with mental disabilities or
physical disabilities, right exactly. And Gosling points out, you know,
most women we know are looking for a relationship, and
(16:36):
disabled people are no different. Um, And she talks about
how those fears of exploitation could potentially explain this assumption
that it's better to shield people with disabilities from reaching
out for sexual relationships rather than have them risk rejection.
So we're trying to protect we I mean families are
(16:56):
trying to protect them on every front, like, oh, you're
you're too again, like feeble to handle rejection or trying
to date on your own, and we are also maybe
a little scared of your sexuality because you're so different. Yeah,
I mean, and you could say that for those those
family members. I mean, the the motive is benevolent, but
it's all, you know, symptoms of this much larger and
(17:19):
deep rooted issue. Um. But one of the brighter sides
of this growing conversation that has been helped along, I
think a lot by social media and you know, visibility projects, um,
is how those layers of discrimination are even further compounded
for people with disabilities who are also lgbt Q, right, Yeah,
(17:40):
because you've got the whole issue of conflict that can
potentially arise when you, as a person with a disability
who also is lgbt Q, have a personal assistant or
a caregiver who maybe doesn't approve of your sexuality and
or then tries to control it. Yeah. And they're also
since it's too of opposite sex partners being allowed to
(18:04):
stay overnight in supported housing whereas same sex or trans
partners aren't. So we have homophobia and transphobia at work
as well. Yeah, all of this stuff is very layered
and wrapped up with all of these fears, and another
huge consequence of that with its own further consequences. Because honestly,
(18:25):
this discussion is like knocking down dominoes of terrible UM
is lack of access to appropriate sex aid. And when
I say appropriate, I don't mean like, don't don't talk
about too much. You've got to keep it appropriate. I
mean like literally sex sex education that is appropriate for
the audience, because people with disabilities don't necessarily have the
(18:46):
same concerns or needs as their able body peers. Yeah,
healthcare providers typically aren't equipped to address sexual health and
function concerns. And then we have the complicating factor of
individual disabilities requiring different aids and information. But even though
that might be a complicating factor, of course, that shouldn't
(19:07):
be an argument to just dismiss it entirely. I mean,
which is essentially historically what has happened, I mean, sex
ed in schools, as poor as it generally is an
our country. Um, still when it happens is for the
most part directed toward able bodied students. Um. There was
(19:27):
a Canadian Council for Learning study talking to people with
disabilities that found one hundred percent of them said that
their education had been inadequate and that educators didn't have
sufficient resources to deal with the topic. And it's been
a problem despite the nineteen Education for All Handicapped Children Act,
(19:51):
which is PS now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,
that required school districts to provide students with disabilities access
to the same information and classes as their peers. Yeah,
and in a lot of the articles and sources we read,
many men and women with disabilities are quoted talking about
their horrific experiences with sex ed and Tim Rose is
(20:14):
no different. He's the founder of the Rose Center for Love,
Sex and Disability, and he was born with spastic quadriplegic
cerebral palsy. He said that his school growing up largely
denied him access to sex ed information at all, completely,
even asking him to leave the room when it was discussed,
(20:35):
and he brought up a point that you will see
in a lot of articles about this topic. He said,
sex ed for me was mostly trial and error, a
mix of getting what information I could from friends and
from TV. And this seems to be really key you
hear a lot of people disabilities talking about like well,
it just kind of came down to watching porn or
watching like movies where people were having sex, or just
(20:58):
talking with other people with disabilities. Because there's not a
base of information for a lot of these people, they
tend to be completely ignored. And that in and of itself,
of course has consequences too. If you're not educating people
about sexuality, sexual function, and safety, whether you have a
(21:20):
disability or not. UM children with disabilities, for instance, are
at a much higher risk of sexual abuse. UH and
doctors screen people with disabilities for S t I, S,
certain cancers, and other reproductive health issues at much lower rates.
And I'm really hoping that we hear from some special
(21:40):
teachers and experts listening to this podcast, because I am
curious to get the first and information of what is
happening in schools. Because Caroline, my mom was a special
ed teacher. I spent a number of summers working with
UM a special ed day camp and that was mostly
run by special ed teachers, and it seemed like a
(22:03):
there were so few resources for them. I mean, we're
talking about public schools here, so you have that whole
factor compounding things and also the focus of I think
one argument, depending on the level of disability that we
would be talking about, there's a lot more focus on
just daily skills that I have a feeling that it
(22:23):
might be an issue of prioritization, where it's like, well,
we have to make sure that this person can feed
and clean themselves versus you know, sex education. But that
doesn't answer the question of why in some schools when
sex said classes happen, the special kids are then taken
(22:47):
out of the room. Well yeah, and then you've got
the issue too of people who have become disabled later
in life due to injury, your illness um, and that
the fact that there's even an interesting gender division in that.
So we you suffer a spinal injury, for instance, and
have to go to rehab um, the counselors and therapists
(23:07):
are again like quick to educate about how you take
care of yourself. Let's let's focus on learning to walk
again and how you can get around your house and
deal with daily life. And sexual education and discussions about
sexual functioning are often left out or like maybe they'll
pop in a DVD to avoid any awkward conversations, Like
(23:31):
here's some sex said for you. Now, yeah, I mean,
and I do want to quickly go back and clarify
in terms of talking about uh special ed classes, that
I don't want to conflate physically disabled people from mentally
disabled people, but just to emphasize how like, yes, this
is a diverse group of people who are often just
like conflated into one monolithic disabled pool. But even if
(23:54):
we are talking about people with mental disabilities, because of
all those issues that you talked about, Caroline in turn
terms of consent and sexual abuse and the lack of
screening for STDs and s t i s and their
existence of sexuality, that they need to be educated too.
But going back to looking at physical disability and sex education,
(24:17):
there's also a gendered aspect to this as well. Um
Christine Sellinger, who works at sci Canada, which works to
empower and inform healthcare professionals to answer questions about the
sort of stuff, talks about how after spinal court injuries,
men tend to inquire about their ability to get an
erection almost immediately. Yeah, it's like top of mind, It's
(24:39):
one of the first things they asked about, Like, yes,
I need to I wanna, you know, try to increase
my strength. I want to learn how to get around
my house, but I need to know will I have
an direction? Yeah, totally understandable. Um. Whereas though women's questions
about sexuality and vaginal functioning and all of that come
later during the rehabilitation process and tend to focus or
(25:00):
around the relationship aspects like whether they can just date.
So Sellinger asks like, why can't we make this part
of the initial rehab process for everybody? Right? And because
Sellinger at nineteen suffered a spinal injury, and she said
too that, you know, when she was going to rehab
and going through therapy and talking with doctors, you know,
(25:23):
her first concern was, I'm I'm having to say goodbye
to my life as it was. I'm having to you know,
give up many activities. My life will never be the same.
You know, sex wasn't top of mind. She's like, maybe
dating was, you know, will anyone ever want to date me?
Or being a relationship with me? But now that she
(25:44):
works for U s c I Canada or I believe
s c I Ontario, maybe Um, she really advocates strongly
for these questions and concerns to be part of that
initial process. But it's part of batting, whether you have
a disability or not. It's part of combating that larger
(26:05):
social ick factor that we have around sex and sex said,
we're also uncomfortable talking about it regardless of our abilities. Yeah,
I mean, especially especially in the United States. But we
do have some good news to share because there has
been so much disability activism that has truly radically changed
(26:30):
the environment, both literally and figuratively around disability in the
United States. And we're going to talk about that when
we come right back from a quick break. Caroline. You
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Enter stuff, and now back to the show. So it's
interesting to watch the trajectory of the disability rights movement,
(27:54):
and we want to really focus on how sexual politics
became part of that movement and part of that discussion.
But to back up a little, to give you a
little perspective, the movement really gained steam in the wake
of the World Wars. In Vietnam. You have disabled veterans
returning home, needing services, needing to be seen and heard
(28:19):
and recognized, but also like needing to be able to
get into a building, and so needing to be able
to get employment right exactly. And so while you did
have people with disabilities returning from World War One and
World War Two, it really wasn't until post Vietnam or
or mid Vietnam um that it really became part of
(28:39):
the political climate, because you already had the fight for
civil rights and women's rights going on, and so the
fight for civil rights of people with disabilities fit naturally
into that political climate. Yeah, I mean, and this is
one of those movements two of the sixties and seventies,
I think, along with gay rights that were starting to
learn more out. But I feel like we still in
(29:02):
our popular understanding. I don't know that much about the
disability rights movement that was happening, um. But there was
a range of organizations that were developing during this time,
including the National Center for Law and the Handicapped, the
Disability Rights Center, the American Disabled for Public Transit Group,
and the National Center for Law and the Deaf. And
(29:24):
keep in mind too that during this time, some of
those so called ugly laws that we talked about earlier
in the podcast, we're still in the books in certain
major cities. I mean, if they weren't, if they already
had been removed, we were still left with the stigma
of that absolutely. Um. And so then you see sexual
(29:45):
politics very naturally becoming a part of this movement. Advocates
challenging those tropes we discussed at the top of the
podcast by pointing out, for one, hey, listen, not all
sex is about procreation. So if I can't actually procreate,
or if I have to have sex in a different
way than what you consider normal, that should be okay. Um.
(30:06):
You also have advocates trying to educate people still in
the sixties and seventies, trying to educate people that not
all impairments are inheritable, stop being so afraid and even
if they are. Though, a lot of communities, particularly the
Capital d Deaf community, have embraced their differences as being
part of a larger culture, and the University of California
(30:30):
responded around this time to student activists by founding a
Sexuality and Disabilities Center staffed with sex therapists who could
not only give advice, but also connects students with sex surrogates.
And sex surrogates actually gained a lot of attention a
few years ago thanks to two films, Breathing Lessons and
The Sessions, which were inspired by Marc O'Brien's encounters with
(30:52):
surrogate Cheryl Cohen green Um. And so a lot of
people are a little bit confused, and this is understandable
of out what a sex surrogate is versus a sex
worker in this country. And it's interesting because the legal
territory is a little murky in the US, for instance,
sex surrogates their services are neither legal nor illegal. And
(31:16):
as the Kinsey Institute explains, that surrogate sex partners are
trained by the International Surrogate Partner Association to address specific
sexual difficulties that a client might have, not necessarily emphasizing
genital based pleasures. So, for instance, a sex surrogate might
help expand a client's ideas of what sex is beyond
(31:37):
penis and vagina, which that's just like good to do
period exactly. And and they also help clients build self
awareness and skills around both physical and emotional intimacy. Really
just a small minority of the time is spent on
actual physical interaction, and surrogate partners often work with people
who don't have partners for whatever reason, in uh that
(32:01):
they could practice these sexual and emotional intimacy issues with.
And so it's not just that surrogate sex partners are
working with people with disabilities, They're working with a range
of clients who have really widely varying needs. Yeah, and
so this brings us to the sex worker question because
there have been some arguments more recently that sex work
(32:24):
should be decriminalized specifically for people who can't have sex independently,
and perhaps some have proposed those services should even be
funded by governments. Yeah. And for instance, a lot of
people cite a two thousand five Disability Now survey that
found that thirty seven point six percent of men with
(32:46):
disabilities and sixteen percent of women with disabilities would pay
for sex. And while that's not a majority by any stretch,
it still is a larger number than people in the
general population. And there have also been studies into motivations
for paying for sex, h for hiring sex workers that
(33:06):
have found, I mean not surprisingly that men with disabilities
pay for sex for reasons that go beyond just like
men needs sex. It's a thing that men need. Uh.
Sociologist Kirsty Lilliard from Sheffield University in the UK found
that men cited the reasons of, yes, gaining sexual skills
(33:27):
and experience, but also invigorating the body, having something to
talk with male friends about, and gaining a sense of independence.
And I think it's important to note, and we will
note this a little bit later, that this is mostly
focusing on men, like the sex work conversation is mostly
you know, mostly focused on men. And and maybe the
(33:48):
sex surrogate conversation is different. Um, I'm not you know,
I'm not aware of that, but it is worth noting that, like, okay, this,
this is a thing to bookmark that men are a
basis of this conversation. Well, and a lot of these
dynamics are reflective of how we perceive and assume things
about sexuality and gender in the able able bodied population
(34:14):
as well. Yeah, but there are a lot of people
working to make this happen. You've got Australian sex worker
Rachel Watton, who founded the group Touching Base to connect
people with disabilities to sex workers. And one's main argument
is that basically people with disabilities should have all of
the same rights that able bodied folks have and it
(34:36):
shouldn't be some kind of all or nothing thing. And
she said, quote, for some people with disabilities, they only
have one life and to wait around for society to
say I will date someone with cerebral palsy, Well, when
you see some of my clients, their prospects of getting
a partner are limited, if not nil. Yeah, And so
(34:57):
she basically says, yes, society should change, should all be
more accepting, We shouldn't ignore a marginalize, er and fantilize
people with disabilities. But until society has a radical shift,
I want to be here to provide these services. UM
related services also exist in Japan. For instance, there is
a masturbation service only for men, exclusively for men, called
(35:19):
White Hands, And in places like Holland and Denmark, where
there are more permissive laws around sex work, you've got
this sexual assistant model UM. Basically, social workers will ask
clients with disabilities whether they need help with their sexuality
or their sexual function, and they may fund visits to
(35:41):
sexual assistants or sex workers. And this was pioneered by
Dutch sex assistant Nina Duvries, whose clients started requesting erotic
massages in the nineties and the work basically grew from there.
You know, she doesn't have intercourse with them, but she
works with clients with dementia, people with earning difficulties. But critically,
(36:02):
and this is a major part of its discussion, she
will not work with people who can't give clear consent.
This is a huge concern for people in this community
that you know, whether you're a sex worker, a politician,
someone with a disability. This is a huge part of
the conversation the issue of consent. Yeah, and and also
not everybody is buying the argument to legalize sex work
(36:26):
specifically for people with disabilities, but it's not necessarily because
of concerns around sex work itself, right exactly. Um, A
lot of people are concerned about issues of commodifying sex
and commodifying women's bodies. Um Alex Guinness, for instance, who's
an American disability advocate and a former dating and relationship columnist,
(36:51):
said that it also helps us ignore bigger societal issues,
those things that Rachel Watton was addressing in her quote
that we talked about earlier. Um Alex writes, it makes
it so society can check this box that men are
getting laid, so we don't have to have broader social change.
We're giving them sex through a brothel, so we don't
have to change our social attitudes around socially excluded people
(37:13):
with disabilities. And she says it pities and coddles us,
as if we are being given things that will assuage us,
rather than having society change around us. And that was
something echoed by a musician and TV presenter, Mixed Scarlett,
who is not a fan of this idea either. Because quote,
apparently that's the only way I'm going to lose my virginity.
(37:36):
And he disagrees that it's a natural right to have
sex and argues instead that all of this just distorts
people with disabilities relationships with sex, because if you set
up this system where people can people with disabilities can
go and pay for sex and it's perfectly fine and legal,
(37:56):
but not for anybody else exactly, Scarlett says, then this
is gonna just create this whole idea that people with
disabilities if they have had sex and you've paid for it,
and it further marginalizes, Scarlett argues, people with disabilities because
on top of the layer of oh, well you're disabled
and therefore unattractive and probably not sexual anyway, but also
(38:19):
too you frequent sex workers, right, yeah. He takes major
issue with this idea that quote, some people are too
hideous and too disabled to have sex like the rest
of us, and so they have to pay for it.
And he says, on top of that, why is it
okay to oppress women and make their bodies a commodity?
Of course, that you know, it's a whole separate discussion about,
(38:40):
you know, choosing to be in sex work and having
that be an empowering thing that you choose to do.
But I mean, he has a point that there are
so many layers too. You can't just say, yeah, it's
just let's just legalized sex work, but just for this
group of people. And that's something that Jessin Nicole, writing
for Exo Jane points out. She's like, whoa, I'm totally
(39:00):
on board with the idea of normalizing, legalizing and making
safer sex work, But why are people with disabilities considered
like this special group who it should only be for
them if we're going to have sex work. Shouldn't people
with disabilities just be another normal client base for sex workers? Yeah?
(39:22):
I mean, because she argues that quote casting disabled clients
is somehow more legitimate than other clients, does it as
service to everybody, because by doing that, it holds up
the idea of disability granting some innate nobility, as she
puts it, while at the same time automatically casting quote
unquote other clients in a negative like so it's still
(39:45):
mothering in other words, Yeah, well yeah, it's yeah, it's mothering.
It seems to be mothering for everyone. Yeah. I mean,
I feel like there's like no no way around that
at this point in the conversation. But the thing is
sex work aside. These kinds discussions around sexuality and sex
said and how it relates to disability are beneficial for
(40:09):
all of us. Yeah. So, Penny Pepper is the author
of a two thousand three book, Desires Unborn Erotic Short
Stories featuring people with disabilities. Uh points out that this
is really working too open conversations and improve communication, and
as we've talked about on the podcast before, open communication
(40:30):
can only be positive when it comes to sex and
relationships in general at all. Um, And she says, I
do feel I can talk about sex in an open
and relaxed way that I don't see with many non
disabled people. I think it's because we've had to confront
these issues about body image, and that's a good place
to be, um. Because she goes on to further point
(40:50):
out that like, look, whether you have a physical or
mental disability or not, if you don't look like a supermodel,
it's hard for a lot of us out there when
it comes to body image and sexuality. Well, I mean,
in two if we just take a kind of bird
side view of all of the different layers of discrimination,
(41:12):
and marginalization, you know, as it applies to sexuality, whether
it's on the basis of gender or ethnicity, obviously ability
in this case, or even socioeconomic status. I mean, there's
so much discomfort and also just erasure on so many
different levels too. So I think that's another reason why
(41:33):
these kinds of conversations are important, because it opens up
the door to more of these important conversations. Um. And
that's something that the Disabled Students Union at UC Berkeley
is really doing. They push the boundaries with super open
and human panels discussing with students and academics alike issues
around sex, love, and disability, addressing sex as a natural
(41:55):
part of life and sexuality as a healthy thing to explore. Yeah,
and there were actually there was actually a documentary made
about these panels that you see Berkeley, and they talked
to one young woman who said that sex was anything
she could get off on, and the quote was this
brings us back into the human race because, like you said, sex, sexuality, desire,
(42:16):
these are all parts of normal human existence, and advocates
discussions around these things are really valid for a larger
audience and help us to remember that sex doesn't have
to revolve around these heteronormative notions of sex equals penetration. Yeah.
I mean this is something too that we've talked about,
(42:37):
especially in terms of sex within lgbt Q communities, and
how we have elevated penis and vagina intercourse to be
what sex equals and how a damaging and just straight
up limiting that is as well. Yeah, and so this
(42:57):
idea that sex is and can be more than just penetration.
It benefits older people, It benefits women who might not
enjoy it because of either vaginal pain or because of
sexual assault related trauma, and also benefits men, for instance,
whose penises have been amputated or damaged because of cancer
and injury. And the idea then that your orogenous zones
(43:19):
can be all over your body. It can be your
era loads, it could be your neck and give you
behind the knees. That benefits all of us, anyone who
wants to expand their own sexual pleasure or better understand
their own sexuality period. Yeah. And so as we close
out this episode, we want to leave you with some
thoughts from Kirstie Lidiard, who we've sided earlier from Sheffield University,
(43:43):
who said disability and impairment can invigorate sexuality and disrupt
our standard norms of gender and sexuality. Disabled bodies give
us a chance to think outside of the box, outside
the vision of penetration and the Hollywood view of sex,
and that, to me, Caroline, sounds like a mighty empowered vision. Yeah,
that's that's the that's the sexual world I want to
(44:05):
live in, exactly. And so I think all of these
photo projects, photo essays, like visibility efforts on the part
of activists and advocates are so important because people with
disabilities are just as normal as anyone else and just
as big a part of life as anyone else, And
so why would we not have these conversations They do
(44:28):
benefit everyone. And Caroline, one thing that we didn't address
in this episode that we could probably go back and
do another podcast on our representations of people with disability
and pop culture and specifically how their sexuality is portrayed,
if at all, If at all? Yeah, because going back
a little bit, the first two things that come to
(44:49):
mind are a The Other Sister starring Juliette Lewis, where
the whole thing kind of revolves around her wanting to
have a relationship with that when she has a mental disability,
and she wants to have a relationship with a guy,
Giovanni Rivisium, who also has a mental disability, and like
all the concerns around that, which echo a lot of
(45:10):
what we were talking about. And then two and listeners
might have to correct me on the details of this,
But I remember watching Life Goes On when I was
a kid, and Quirky who has down syndrome. In the show,
I want to say, at some point in later seasons,
he starts dating or he wants to date. So there
was that, I mean, where they were still like they
were kind of these precious representations. Yeah, exactly, if that
(45:34):
makes sense. Um, But it does seem like, at least
in the past few years, we have been getting some
better representations. UM. Already Ugly comes to mind. I mean,
he's a fully formed character, he dates, he has a
fabulous singing voice. UM. So that seems like a step
in the right direction. You've got the real life story
too of Stephen Hawking and Jane Hawking. UM. And then
(45:58):
more recently, I don't even know if it's out yet,
but you've got the film adaptation of the book Me
Before You, which is a romance between In the movie,
it's going to be Amelia Clark, also known as the
Queen of Dragons, nearest targarian from Game of Thrones who
falls in love with a recently paralyzed man who is
incredibly handsome and whose name is escaping me at the moment.
(46:20):
I think its character's name is Will Trainer. I don't
know the actor's name, but so slowly getting representations in
in popular culture, but I don't know what what movies
and TV shows and characters are we missing. Yeah, I mean,
because we are just talking off the top of our
heads right now, so you know, if this is an
(46:44):
episode that you would like to hear, and I think
that we should absolutely do it. Please send us all
of those, um all those pop cultural representations, and it
can even be beyond film and television um that come
to mind. And I have a feeling that what we've
talked about today resonates personally with a lot of our listeners,
(47:05):
not just Katrina. Shout out to Katrina again for this
fantastic episode. And we definitely want to hear from you
on this because this is something first of all, that
Caroline and I as able bodied people, we don't have
a firsthand experience with it, and we need your help
sort of filling in all of the all the nuances
(47:25):
and experiences that um that we missed in talking about
this very very important topics. So we want to hear
from you. Mom Stuff at how Stuff Works dot com
is our email address. You can also tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got
a couple of messages to share with you right now. Okay,
So I have a letter here from Brittany from our
(47:46):
guesting episode and it's real funny. Brittany, I enjoyed your email.
She says, here's a true story. I was using one
of the popular dating sites and set up a coffee
with a nice young dude. We met, talked, and instantly
knew there was no attraction, but we got along really well.
We talked for almost two hours. He was in the military,
very polite, and his friends had set up the stating
(48:08):
profile for him. He told me he was flying to
California the next day for an interview with the FBI.
We exchange phone numbers, give a buddy hug, and win
our separate ways. The next day I texted him, good
luck with your interview. He replied, thank you. I will
let you know how it goes well. A day passes,
so I jokingly sent in another text that said, Hope,
it went well. Did you already get sent on a
(48:29):
secret mission? Never heard from him again? Pretty sure my
name is in a file somewhere. True story. Thank you
for your excellent research and more importantly, your passion. Keep
rocking socks, and Brittany, you keep rocking socks as well.
I like to imagine that he did get sent, like
to some strange country and he's on some secret mission now,
(48:52):
although that sounds more CIA than FBI, but you know, yeah,
I like to imagine he was already in the FBI
and he was undercover, and it was like, I can't
text are back all of the all the ghosting narratives
and fill ins. I let's make that TV show. I've
got one here from Hope about her episode on mechanics,
and she writes, well, I don't know much about card
(49:13):
mechanics specifically. My first job out of college involved me
working as an industrial maintenance supervisor and engineer. I was
the only woman in the maintenance department of a multibillion
dollar company, and I was only on temporary assignment, I
had to win over a big group of older men
who frequently referred to women in the maintenance field being useless, weak,
and unwilling to do the dirty work to respect me
(49:35):
as a technical consultant and leader. After a few months
of getting under machines with the guys and providing them
technical training based on my larger engineering projects, we developed
some great friendships. Some of them even admitted being impressed
and learning something while I was there. I'm so happy
to hear about more women getting out there in this
industry because I definitely found it challenging and a little lonely.
(49:58):
I'd love to see more eighties fixing machines, will hope
all the gold stars to you for doing that, because hey,
that's a really cool line of work that you are
in that my brain cannot entirely process and be. I
mean just that you have the people skills in order
to to do that, to lead that group of dudes
is super impressive. So, folks, now I want to hear
(50:20):
from you. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com
is our email address and for links all of our
social media as well as all of our blogs, videos
and podcasts with our sources. So you can learn more
about people with disabilities and sexuality. Head on over to
stuff Mom Never told You dot com or yet for
(53:43):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told You from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and Caroline, we gotta start this
episode with a shout out that's right to listener Katrina. Yeah.
We've got Katrina at our meet up in l A
(00:24):
a little while ago, back at the beginning of February,
and she had emailed us previously about issues surrounding people
with disabilities, all sorts of different issues, really great ideas
for some sminty episodes. And so after we met her,
she re emailed us that, which we're very grateful for,
and we have chosen from her list of topics. Yeah,
(00:46):
so today we're going to talk about the de sexualization
of people with disabilities and all of the history and
culture and political issues today surrounding that. Um. And again
Katrina to thank you for this fantastic idea, because really
we have not talked all that much at all about
(01:06):
people with disabilities on the podcast. It's high time that
we cover this. Yeah, absolutely, particularly because this is a
growing conversation and it has been a growing conversation and
I think more recently it entered this topic entered the
public conversation UH in ten when Rochelle Friedman Chapman, who
(01:28):
had been paralyzed from the chest down at twenty four
UH post and laundry to combat a bunch of assumptions
around the idea that people with disabilities can't be sexy.
But even before that, in Jess Soxy, who has Freeman's
Sheldon syndrome, posed in American apparel esque shots to counteract
(01:48):
the mother ing and de sexualization of people with disabilities.
And I remember sharing those photos of Saxy on the
stuff mob never told you social media because was I mean,
it was just very clever, because those American apparel poses
are so just kind of idiosyncratic to that brand and
(02:11):
so hyper sexual, and I mean it was it was
just such a smart way to do that and such
an important campaign for raising that visibility. And then Jess,
who prefers the pronoun, they posted this photo series depicting
themselves on naked on a crane or posing with a crane,
and they said that they wanted to sort of grapple
(02:34):
with this idea of people are always staring at me?
What are they staring at I'm finally going to really
really look at myself naked, and you are going to
look at me naked as well, just to again sort
of helped to fight that stigma of you don't look
like the general population at large, so you must be
(02:58):
different in every way. Well, and that it's also the
polite thing to do to look away from people with disabilities.
Don't draw attention to it, which is kind of politely
in quotes, ignore it. Um. And one bit of history
that I did not know going into this podcast was
that twenty five years ago a woman named Ellen Stole,
who had been paralyzed from the neck down, became the
(03:21):
first woman with a disability to pose in Playboy. And
she said, the reason why I chose Playboy magazine for
this endeavor is its sexuality is the hardest thing for
a disabled person to hold on to. Helf was really
adamant that I had their right to have the same
sexual voice as women without disabilities. And I took a
look at the photos and I mean, it does look
(03:42):
like a typical Playboy spread. I mean, Stole is naked
on a bed and you have the kind of glossy
filter across her, and um, yeah, I mean it looks
just like any other centerfold. Yeah, And there was an
interview with both Hef and Stole, and he said that
her disability had made her feel like a non person,
(04:04):
like a non sexual being, and she was very articulate
at expressing exactly that the pictorial could serve not only
her but other people with disabilities as a way of saying,
we're human beings too, and sex is a natural part
of being alive with a disability or without. And the
thing is, if we look back at the history of
how we as humans have treated people with disabilities, I mean,
(04:26):
this kind of stuff happening is downright revolutionary, you know,
because we're having to unearth centuries and centuries of this
kind of marginalization and de sexualization. Because, as Catherine Quarmby
wrote about over in a really in depth piece at Mosaic,
there are some deeply ingrained and dehumanizing tropes about people
(04:50):
with disabilities. Yeah. She cites author Tom Shakespeare, who wrote
The Sexual Politics of Disability, and he points to a
bunch of threads from mythology, from literature, which of course
reflect attitudes in the popular culture at large, stretching back
hundreds of years. And of course one of the biggest
(05:11):
tropes is that people with disabilities are just completely one
a sexual there's the idea that women and men are
viewed as impotent, sexless, and unattractive, and this makes them
vulnerable to mockery. It was Cicero who wrote in Deformity
and Bodily Disfigurement there is good material in making jokes.
(05:34):
So we are now in the twenty first century, I
feel like just still at the very beginning of unraveling
all of that other ing and all of the dismissal
of people with disabilities, and that other ring is very
much present to in ancient mythology. I mean, if we
look at the story of haffaced Us, the blacksmith god
with a shriveled foot who marries Aphrodite. Aphrodity ends up
(05:57):
carrying on all these affairs because his disability makes him unmanly.
There's that emasculating aspect as well. And then if we
fast forward to something I had not thought about while
reading this book, if we look at Lady Chatterley's lover Constance,
the main woman takes up with the gamekeeper after her
(06:18):
husband is paralyzed from the waist down during World War One,
and this develops into a concept known as Chatterly syndrome,
where a disabled man's loss of sexual power gives his
wife freedom to get her satisfaction elsewhere. Wasn't this side
note Caroline kind of a subplot a little while back
(06:39):
in Downton Abbey when Matthew is injured in the war. Uh,
do we have a little Chatterlee syndrome happening? I think?
Didn't he like encourage her to go They weren't married yet,
he encouraged her to go find another husband or man
or something because he's like, oh, I'm not a whole
real man anymore, and she's stuck with him. Yeah. Well,
(07:00):
and I from what I remember too from Lady Chatterley's
Lover Besides all of the titillating bits was how they
characterized her husband as an unlikable guy too, like the
disability not only made him impotent, but also seemed to
make him devoid of any kind of decency. Yeah well,
(07:23):
I mean, and then that ties into another one of
the tropes that Cornby and Shakespeare talk about, which is
that disabled people are perverse. This was especially a thing
during the seventeenth century. Wind Witch hunts everybody, from women
with mental health problems, older people with dementia. Two people
with cancerous growth faced the stigma that they were somehow twisted,
(07:46):
and this was tied in with the idea that disability
was sometimes considered a punishment for sins uh, and that
a person with a disability was an unsuitable partner, perhaps
because he or she supposedly evil powers of some kind. Yeah.
I mean, if we look at the literary example of
Shakespeare's Richard the Third, Uh, he's described as having twisted
(08:09):
body and mind. Yeah. But then but then, so, so
you've got the tropes of people with disabilities being completely
a sexual or their perverse in their sexuality, but then
you have the horrific hyper sexualization of people with disabilities. Yeah.
So this assumption has been used particularly against women with
(08:31):
learning disabilities, and it was largely used as a justification
to abuse women in mental institutions, and even in the
nineteenth century, whistleblowers were drawing attention to rape, abuse, and
even murder, all based on this concept of you know,
I guess hyper sexuality being a part of their mental disability, right,
(08:54):
And I'm sure that there's a power element in that too,
of like, um, using hyper sexuality to justify your thinking
that uh, this this woman is loose, you know, she
she will submit to my power because she's obviously weak.
And then finally we have the whole contamination fears around
people with disability, this worry that people with disabilities might
(09:18):
pass it along to their offspring. And this is something
too that ends up essentially being codified into American law
with a Supreme Court decision that we're going to talk
about in just a second, as part of the heyday
of the eugenics movement in the United States. Yeah. So,
in case you're wondering why these tropes about people with
(09:41):
disabilities are such a big deal, you all you have
to do is look at the very real consequences that
came out of them. And like Kristen said, I mean,
we get the eugenics movement in the late nineteenth century
in early twentieth century. Yeah, I mean, this was something
that we talked about in our two parter on the
(10:02):
legal history of abortion. It ties into that um, but
it also initiated starting in the eighteen eighties, these things
called ugly laws or unsightly beggar laws that literally made
it illegal in certain cities for people who were deemed
unsightly from being seen on the streets at all. And
this caroline reminds me of modern day anti panhandling laws,
(10:25):
which are also sort of a legal way to get
unsightly homeless people off of the sidewalks as well. Um,
And it wasn't just though, the discomfort around people with
disabilities begging and possibly upsetting people on the street and
maybe driving away potential business, but also fears around what
(10:46):
reaction it would cause in pregnant women. Yeah, it was
believed that a mother encountering these unsightly beggars would have
a quote equivalent impression made on the fetus, so somehow
her unborn child would catch a disability, but just by
(11:06):
virtue of the fact that she saw someone with a
disability on the street. And then finally, in the mid
twentieth century, those quote unquote ugly laws are largely replaced
on a state by state basis with state directed institutionalization
and treatments. But if we go to nineteen fourteen, it
was illegal for the classified quote feeble minded and insane
(11:30):
people to marry. I mean, if we if you think
of words like dumb, idiot, feeble minded, I mean those
were actual groups of people according to medical signs of
the day. Yeah, you could look back at old census
records and see people classified in that way. Um. And
so from nineteen o seven to ninety thousands of Americans
(11:52):
were sterilized as part of this growing eugenics movement, and
in Virginia, law, for instance, allow the forced sterilization of
quote feeble minded, insane, depressed, mentally, handicapped, epileptic, and other individuals.
And learning about this, Caroline, I'm really interested to read
a new book by Adam Cohen called Imbeciles, which is
(12:15):
all about the Supreme Court the eugenics movement in the
United States, and it centers around that Virginia case and
the for sterilization of a woman named Carrie Buck. And
what happened with Carrie Buck was that she was raped
and impregnated as a result of that, and after the
(12:36):
child was born, her family or just you know, completely
incensed by the whole situation, and so they had her
deemed feeble minded and sent away to a colony for
epileptics and the feeble minded. And they wanted the people
who were pro for sterilization, We're looking for some kind
(12:57):
of test case in order to legalized this whole thing.
So there's this guy who came in to the epileptic
and feeble minded colony where Carrie Buck was and saw
her and said, oh, this is perfect because her mother
had also been classified as feeble minded. She was classified
(13:17):
as feeble minded, and she now had this baby who
could possibly be shown as feeble minded too, in order
to prove that whole contagious aspect to it. So they
essentially had a sham case and it allowed for her
forced sterilization. So then in Carrie Buck brings this case
(13:39):
again to the Supreme Court to challenge that decision, and
famed Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes rights in his Supreme Court
decision upholding that for serialization law that quote, three generations
of imbeccles is enough, Oh lord. Yeah. And as a result,
(14:02):
as Cohen talks about two Terry Gross in this Fresh
Air interview that I was listening to, that now has
me wanting to read his new book, Imbeciles. As a
result of that Supreme Court decision seventy thousand for sterilizations
then happened across the United States. Yeah, because in the
wake of that decision, twenty seven other states began sterilization program. Yeah,
(14:25):
I mean and all of that too. We need to
come back, Caroline and do a whole episode just on
the for sterilization issue, because it was something directed not
only at the so called people minded, but also especially
women of color. I mean, they're all sorts of really
disgusting layers to the whole thing. Um. And it culminated
to in the murders of two hundred thousand people with disabilities.
(14:48):
If we had over to World War two, two or
thousand people with disabilities who were killed by the Nazis.
And so this is the base of where we are today.
I mean, this is the history that we're coming out of.
And so these days the fallout from all of those
stereotypes and tropes and fears is still evident. Uh. And
(15:11):
I know that, having just talked about eugenics and for sterilization,
dating seems almost like it seems almost flippant to talk
about dating. But this is a real consequence of our
history of marginalizing people with disabilities. So you've got the
dating issue right. People with disabilities are less likely to
(15:32):
marry or have long term partners, but of course that
varies depending on impairment type according to research, And there
was a Guardian poll UH that found forty four percent
of respondents had never had sex with someone with a
disability and said that they did not think they ever would.
(15:53):
So like, that's where we are. Those are the attitudes
that we are dealing with. And one thing that activists,
you gos Ling, who wrote Abnormal, How Britain became Body
dysmorphic and the Key to a Cure, discusses is the
issue of family and friends of people with disabilities over
protecting them out of a fear of exploitation, because you
(16:14):
have not only this sexualization, but also to this infantilization. Yeah, exactly,
of of protecting people with disabilities as if they are
permanent babies, permanent children. Yeah, I mean, and that's regardless
of whether we're talking about people with mental disabilities or
physical disabilities, right exactly. And Gosling points out, you know,
most women we know are looking for a relationship, and
(16:36):
disabled people are no different. Um, And she talks about
how those fears of exploitation could potentially explain this assumption
that it's better to shield people with disabilities from reaching
out for sexual relationships rather than have them risk rejection.
So we're trying to protect we I mean families are
(16:56):
trying to protect them on every front, like, oh, you're
you're too again, like feeble to handle rejection or trying
to date on your own, and we are also maybe
a little scared of your sexuality because you're so different. Yeah,
I mean, and you could say that for those those
family members. I mean, the the motive is benevolent, but
it's all, you know, symptoms of this much larger and
(17:19):
deep rooted issue. Um. But one of the brighter sides
of this growing conversation that has been helped along, I
think a lot by social media and you know, visibility projects, um,
is how those layers of discrimination are even further compounded
for people with disabilities who are also lgbt Q, right, Yeah,
(17:40):
because you've got the whole issue of conflict that can
potentially arise when you, as a person with a disability
who also is lgbt Q, have a personal assistant or
a caregiver who maybe doesn't approve of your sexuality and
or then tries to control it. Yeah. And they're also
since it's too of opposite sex partners being allowed to
(18:04):
stay overnight in supported housing whereas same sex or trans
partners aren't. So we have homophobia and transphobia at work
as well. Yeah, all of this stuff is very layered
and wrapped up with all of these fears, and another
huge consequence of that with its own further consequences. Because honestly,
(18:25):
this discussion is like knocking down dominoes of terrible UM
is lack of access to appropriate sex aid. And when
I say appropriate, I don't mean like, don't don't talk
about too much. You've got to keep it appropriate. I
mean like literally sex sex education that is appropriate for
the audience, because people with disabilities don't necessarily have the
(18:46):
same concerns or needs as their able body peers. Yeah,
healthcare providers typically aren't equipped to address sexual health and
function concerns. And then we have the complicating factor of
individual disabilities requiring different aids and information. But even though
that might be a complicating factor, of course, that shouldn't
(19:07):
be an argument to just dismiss it entirely. I mean,
which is essentially historically what has happened, I mean, sex
ed in schools, as poor as it generally is an
our country. Um, still when it happens is for the
most part directed toward able bodied students. Um. There was
(19:27):
a Canadian Council for Learning study talking to people with
disabilities that found one hundred percent of them said that
their education had been inadequate and that educators didn't have
sufficient resources to deal with the topic. And it's been
a problem despite the nineteen Education for All Handicapped Children Act,
(19:51):
which is PS now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,
that required school districts to provide students with disabilities access
to the same information and classes as their peers. Yeah,
and in a lot of the articles and sources we read,
many men and women with disabilities are quoted talking about
their horrific experiences with sex ed and Tim Rose is
(20:14):
no different. He's the founder of the Rose Center for Love,
Sex and Disability, and he was born with spastic quadriplegic
cerebral palsy. He said that his school growing up largely
denied him access to sex ed information at all, completely,
even asking him to leave the room when it was discussed,
(20:35):
and he brought up a point that you will see
in a lot of articles about this topic. He said,
sex ed for me was mostly trial and error, a
mix of getting what information I could from friends and
from TV. And this seems to be really key you
hear a lot of people disabilities talking about like well,
it just kind of came down to watching porn or
watching like movies where people were having sex, or just
(20:58):
talking with other people with disabilities. Because there's not a
base of information for a lot of these people, they
tend to be completely ignored. And that in and of itself,
of course has consequences too. If you're not educating people
about sexuality, sexual function, and safety, whether you have a
(21:20):
disability or not. UM children with disabilities, for instance, are
at a much higher risk of sexual abuse. UH and
doctors screen people with disabilities for S t I, S,
certain cancers, and other reproductive health issues at much lower rates.
And I'm really hoping that we hear from some special
(21:40):
teachers and experts listening to this podcast, because I am
curious to get the first and information of what is
happening in schools. Because Caroline, my mom was a special
ed teacher. I spent a number of summers working with
UM a special ed day camp and that was mostly
run by special ed teachers, and it seemed like a
(22:03):
there were so few resources for them. I mean, we're
talking about public schools here, so you have that whole
factor compounding things and also the focus of I think
one argument, depending on the level of disability that we
would be talking about, there's a lot more focus on
just daily skills that I have a feeling that it
(22:23):
might be an issue of prioritization, where it's like, well,
we have to make sure that this person can feed
and clean themselves versus you know, sex education. But that
doesn't answer the question of why in some schools when
sex said classes happen, the special kids are then taken
(22:47):
out of the room. Well yeah, and then you've got
the issue too of people who have become disabled later
in life due to injury, your illness um, and that
the fact that there's even an interesting gender division in that.
So we you suffer a spinal injury, for instance, and
have to go to rehab um, the counselors and therapists
(23:07):
are again like quick to educate about how you take
care of yourself. Let's let's focus on learning to walk
again and how you can get around your house and
deal with daily life. And sexual education and discussions about
sexual functioning are often left out or like maybe they'll
pop in a DVD to avoid any awkward conversations, Like
(23:31):
here's some sex said for you. Now, yeah, I mean,
and I do want to quickly go back and clarify
in terms of talking about uh special ed classes, that
I don't want to conflate physically disabled people from mentally
disabled people, but just to emphasize how like, yes, this
is a diverse group of people who are often just
like conflated into one monolithic disabled pool. But even if
(23:54):
we are talking about people with mental disabilities, because of
all those issues that you talked about, Caroline in turn
terms of consent and sexual abuse and the lack of
screening for STDs and s t i s and their
existence of sexuality, that they need to be educated too.
But going back to looking at physical disability and sex education,
(24:17):
there's also a gendered aspect to this as well. Um
Christine Sellinger, who works at sci Canada, which works to
empower and inform healthcare professionals to answer questions about the
sort of stuff, talks about how after spinal court injuries,
men tend to inquire about their ability to get an
erection almost immediately. Yeah, it's like top of mind, It's
(24:39):
one of the first things they asked about, Like, yes,
I need to I wanna, you know, try to increase
my strength. I want to learn how to get around
my house, but I need to know will I have
an direction? Yeah, totally understandable. Um. Whereas though women's questions
about sexuality and vaginal functioning and all of that come
later during the rehabilitation process and tend to focus or
(25:00):
around the relationship aspects like whether they can just date.
So Sellinger asks like, why can't we make this part
of the initial rehab process for everybody? Right? And because
Sellinger at nineteen suffered a spinal injury, and she said
too that, you know, when she was going to rehab
and going through therapy and talking with doctors, you know,
(25:23):
her first concern was, I'm I'm having to say goodbye
to my life as it was. I'm having to you know,
give up many activities. My life will never be the same.
You know, sex wasn't top of mind. She's like, maybe
dating was, you know, will anyone ever want to date me?
Or being a relationship with me? But now that she
(25:44):
works for U s c I Canada or I believe
s c I Ontario, maybe Um, she really advocates strongly
for these questions and concerns to be part of that
initial process. But it's part of batting, whether you have
a disability or not. It's part of combating that larger
(26:05):
social ick factor that we have around sex and sex said,
we're also uncomfortable talking about it regardless of our abilities. Yeah,
I mean, especially especially in the United States. But we
do have some good news to share because there has
been so much disability activism that has truly radically changed
(26:30):
the environment, both literally and figuratively around disability in the
United States. And we're going to talk about that when
we come right back from a quick break. Caroline. You
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(27:33):
of the homepage and type in stuff that's stamps dot com.
Enter stuff, and now back to the show. So it's
interesting to watch the trajectory of the disability rights movement,
(27:54):
and we want to really focus on how sexual politics
became part of that movement and part of that discussion.
But to back up a little, to give you a
little perspective, the movement really gained steam in the wake
of the World Wars. In Vietnam. You have disabled veterans
returning home, needing services, needing to be seen and heard
(28:19):
and recognized, but also like needing to be able to
get into a building, and so needing to be able
to get employment right exactly. And so while you did
have people with disabilities returning from World War One and
World War Two, it really wasn't until post Vietnam or
or mid Vietnam um that it really became part of
(28:39):
the political climate, because you already had the fight for
civil rights and women's rights going on, and so the
fight for civil rights of people with disabilities fit naturally
into that political climate. Yeah, I mean, and this is
one of those movements two of the sixties and seventies,
I think, along with gay rights that were starting to
learn more out. But I feel like we still in
(29:02):
our popular understanding. I don't know that much about the
disability rights movement that was happening, um. But there was
a range of organizations that were developing during this time,
including the National Center for Law and the Handicapped, the
Disability Rights Center, the American Disabled for Public Transit Group,
and the National Center for Law and the Deaf. And
(29:24):
keep in mind too that during this time, some of
those so called ugly laws that we talked about earlier
in the podcast, we're still in the books in certain
major cities. I mean, if they weren't, if they already
had been removed, we were still left with the stigma
of that absolutely. Um. And so then you see sexual
(29:45):
politics very naturally becoming a part of this movement. Advocates
challenging those tropes we discussed at the top of the
podcast by pointing out, for one, hey, listen, not all
sex is about procreation. So if I can't actually procreate,
or if I have to have sex in a different
way than what you consider normal, that should be okay. Um.
(30:06):
You also have advocates trying to educate people still in
the sixties and seventies, trying to educate people that not
all impairments are inheritable, stop being so afraid and even
if they are. Though, a lot of communities, particularly the
Capital d Deaf community, have embraced their differences as being
part of a larger culture, and the University of California
(30:30):
responded around this time to student activists by founding a
Sexuality and Disabilities Center staffed with sex therapists who could
not only give advice, but also connects students with sex surrogates.
And sex surrogates actually gained a lot of attention a
few years ago thanks to two films, Breathing Lessons and
The Sessions, which were inspired by Marc O'Brien's encounters with
(30:52):
surrogate Cheryl Cohen green Um. And so a lot of
people are a little bit confused, and this is understandable
of out what a sex surrogate is versus a sex
worker in this country. And it's interesting because the legal
territory is a little murky in the US, for instance,
sex surrogates their services are neither legal nor illegal. And
(31:16):
as the Kinsey Institute explains, that surrogate sex partners are
trained by the International Surrogate Partner Association to address specific
sexual difficulties that a client might have, not necessarily emphasizing
genital based pleasures. So, for instance, a sex surrogate might
help expand a client's ideas of what sex is beyond
(31:37):
penis and vagina, which that's just like good to do
period exactly. And and they also help clients build self
awareness and skills around both physical and emotional intimacy. Really
just a small minority of the time is spent on
actual physical interaction, and surrogate partners often work with people
who don't have partners for whatever reason, in uh that
(32:01):
they could practice these sexual and emotional intimacy issues with.
And so it's not just that surrogate sex partners are
working with people with disabilities, They're working with a range
of clients who have really widely varying needs. Yeah, and
so this brings us to the sex worker question because
there have been some arguments more recently that sex work
(32:24):
should be decriminalized specifically for people who can't have sex independently,
and perhaps some have proposed those services should even be
funded by governments. Yeah. And for instance, a lot of
people cite a two thousand five Disability Now survey that
found that thirty seven point six percent of men with
(32:46):
disabilities and sixteen percent of women with disabilities would pay
for sex. And while that's not a majority by any stretch,
it still is a larger number than people in the
general population. And there have also been studies into motivations
for paying for sex, h for hiring sex workers that
(33:06):
have found, I mean not surprisingly that men with disabilities
pay for sex for reasons that go beyond just like
men needs sex. It's a thing that men need. Uh.
Sociologist Kirsty Lilliard from Sheffield University in the UK found
that men cited the reasons of, yes, gaining sexual skills
(33:27):
and experience, but also invigorating the body, having something to
talk with male friends about, and gaining a sense of independence.
And I think it's important to note, and we will
note this a little bit later, that this is mostly
focusing on men, like the sex work conversation is mostly
you know, mostly focused on men. And and maybe the
(33:48):
sex surrogate conversation is different. Um, I'm not you know,
I'm not aware of that, but it is worth noting that, like, okay, this,
this is a thing to bookmark that men are a
basis of this conversation. Well, and a lot of these
dynamics are reflective of how we perceive and assume things
about sexuality and gender in the able able bodied population
(34:14):
as well. Yeah, but there are a lot of people
working to make this happen. You've got Australian sex worker
Rachel Watton, who founded the group Touching Base to connect
people with disabilities to sex workers. And one's main argument
is that basically people with disabilities should have all of
the same rights that able bodied folks have and it
(34:36):
shouldn't be some kind of all or nothing thing. And
she said, quote, for some people with disabilities, they only
have one life and to wait around for society to
say I will date someone with cerebral palsy, Well, when
you see some of my clients, their prospects of getting
a partner are limited, if not nil. Yeah, And so
(34:57):
she basically says, yes, society should change, should all be
more accepting, We shouldn't ignore a marginalize, er and fantilize
people with disabilities. But until society has a radical shift,
I want to be here to provide these services. UM
related services also exist in Japan. For instance, there is
a masturbation service only for men, exclusively for men, called
(35:19):
White Hands, And in places like Holland and Denmark, where
there are more permissive laws around sex work, you've got
this sexual assistant model UM. Basically, social workers will ask
clients with disabilities whether they need help with their sexuality
or their sexual function, and they may fund visits to
(35:41):
sexual assistants or sex workers. And this was pioneered by
Dutch sex assistant Nina Duvries, whose clients started requesting erotic
massages in the nineties and the work basically grew from there.
You know, she doesn't have intercourse with them, but she
works with clients with dementia, people with earning difficulties. But critically,
(36:02):
and this is a major part of its discussion, she
will not work with people who can't give clear consent.
This is a huge concern for people in this community
that you know, whether you're a sex worker, a politician,
someone with a disability. This is a huge part of
the conversation the issue of consent. Yeah, and and also
not everybody is buying the argument to legalize sex work
(36:26):
specifically for people with disabilities, but it's not necessarily because
of concerns around sex work itself, right exactly. Um, A
lot of people are concerned about issues of commodifying sex
and commodifying women's bodies. Um Alex Guinness, for instance, who's
an American disability advocate and a former dating and relationship columnist,
(36:51):
said that it also helps us ignore bigger societal issues,
those things that Rachel Watton was addressing in her quote
that we talked about earlier. Um Alex writes, it makes
it so society can check this box that men are
getting laid, so we don't have to have broader social change.
We're giving them sex through a brothel, so we don't
have to change our social attitudes around socially excluded people
(37:13):
with disabilities. And she says it pities and coddles us,
as if we are being given things that will assuage us,
rather than having society change around us. And that was
something echoed by a musician and TV presenter, Mixed Scarlett,
who is not a fan of this idea either. Because quote,
apparently that's the only way I'm going to lose my virginity.
(37:36):
And he disagrees that it's a natural right to have
sex and argues instead that all of this just distorts
people with disabilities relationships with sex, because if you set
up this system where people can people with disabilities can
go and pay for sex and it's perfectly fine and legal,
(37:56):
but not for anybody else exactly, Scarlett says, then this
is gonna just create this whole idea that people with
disabilities if they have had sex and you've paid for it,
and it further marginalizes, Scarlett argues, people with disabilities because
on top of the layer of oh, well you're disabled
and therefore unattractive and probably not sexual anyway, but also
(38:19):
too you frequent sex workers, right, yeah. He takes major
issue with this idea that quote, some people are too
hideous and too disabled to have sex like the rest
of us, and so they have to pay for it.
And he says, on top of that, why is it
okay to oppress women and make their bodies a commodity?
Of course, that you know, it's a whole separate discussion about,
(38:40):
you know, choosing to be in sex work and having
that be an empowering thing that you choose to do.
But I mean, he has a point that there are
so many layers too. You can't just say, yeah, it's
just let's just legalized sex work, but just for this
group of people. And that's something that Jessin Nicole, writing
for Exo Jane points out. She's like, whoa, I'm totally
(39:00):
on board with the idea of normalizing, legalizing and making
safer sex work, But why are people with disabilities considered
like this special group who it should only be for
them if we're going to have sex work. Shouldn't people
with disabilities just be another normal client base for sex workers? Yeah?
(39:22):
I mean, because she argues that quote casting disabled clients
is somehow more legitimate than other clients, does it as
service to everybody, because by doing that, it holds up
the idea of disability granting some innate nobility, as she
puts it, while at the same time automatically casting quote
unquote other clients in a negative like so it's still
(39:45):
mothering in other words, Yeah, well yeah, it's yeah, it's mothering.
It seems to be mothering for everyone. Yeah. I mean,
I feel like there's like no no way around that
at this point in the conversation. But the thing is
sex work aside. These kinds discussions around sexuality and sex
said and how it relates to disability are beneficial for
(40:09):
all of us. Yeah. So, Penny Pepper is the author
of a two thousand three book, Desires Unborn Erotic Short
Stories featuring people with disabilities. Uh points out that this
is really working too open conversations and improve communication, and
as we've talked about on the podcast before, open communication
(40:30):
can only be positive when it comes to sex and
relationships in general at all. Um, And she says, I
do feel I can talk about sex in an open
and relaxed way that I don't see with many non
disabled people. I think it's because we've had to confront
these issues about body image, and that's a good place
to be, um. Because she goes on to further point
(40:50):
out that like, look, whether you have a physical or
mental disability or not, if you don't look like a supermodel,
it's hard for a lot of us out there when
it comes to body image and sexuality. Well, I mean,
in two if we just take a kind of bird
side view of all of the different layers of discrimination,
(41:12):
and marginalization, you know, as it applies to sexuality, whether
it's on the basis of gender or ethnicity, obviously ability
in this case, or even socioeconomic status. I mean, there's
so much discomfort and also just erasure on so many
different levels too. So I think that's another reason why
(41:33):
these kinds of conversations are important, because it opens up
the door to more of these important conversations. Um. And
that's something that the Disabled Students Union at UC Berkeley
is really doing. They push the boundaries with super open
and human panels discussing with students and academics alike issues
around sex, love, and disability, addressing sex as a natural
(41:55):
part of life and sexuality as a healthy thing to explore. Yeah,
and there were actually there was actually a documentary made
about these panels that you see Berkeley, and they talked
to one young woman who said that sex was anything
she could get off on, and the quote was this
brings us back into the human race because, like you said, sex, sexuality, desire,
(42:16):
these are all parts of normal human existence, and advocates
discussions around these things are really valid for a larger
audience and help us to remember that sex doesn't have
to revolve around these heteronormative notions of sex equals penetration. Yeah.
I mean this is something too that we've talked about,
(42:37):
especially in terms of sex within lgbt Q communities, and
how we have elevated penis and vagina intercourse to be
what sex equals and how a damaging and just straight
up limiting that is as well. Yeah, and so this
(42:57):
idea that sex is and can be more than just penetration.
It benefits older people, It benefits women who might not
enjoy it because of either vaginal pain or because of
sexual assault related trauma, and also benefits men, for instance,
whose penises have been amputated or damaged because of cancer
and injury. And the idea then that your orogenous zones
(43:19):
can be all over your body. It can be your
era loads, it could be your neck and give you
behind the knees. That benefits all of us, anyone who
wants to expand their own sexual pleasure or better understand
their own sexuality period. Yeah. And so as we close
out this episode, we want to leave you with some
thoughts from Kirstie Lidiard, who we've sided earlier from Sheffield University,
(43:43):
who said disability and impairment can invigorate sexuality and disrupt
our standard norms of gender and sexuality. Disabled bodies give
us a chance to think outside of the box, outside
the vision of penetration and the Hollywood view of sex,
and that, to me, Caroline, sounds like a mighty empowered vision. Yeah,
that's that's the that's the sexual world I want to
(44:05):
live in, exactly. And so I think all of these
photo projects, photo essays, like visibility efforts on the part
of activists and advocates are so important because people with
disabilities are just as normal as anyone else and just
as big a part of life as anyone else, And
so why would we not have these conversations They do
(44:28):
benefit everyone. And Caroline, one thing that we didn't address
in this episode that we could probably go back and
do another podcast on our representations of people with disability
and pop culture and specifically how their sexuality is portrayed,
if at all, If at all? Yeah, because going back
a little bit, the first two things that come to
(44:49):
mind are a The Other Sister starring Juliette Lewis, where
the whole thing kind of revolves around her wanting to
have a relationship with that when she has a mental disability,
and she wants to have a relationship with a guy,
Giovanni Rivisium, who also has a mental disability, and like
all the concerns around that, which echo a lot of
(45:10):
what we were talking about. And then two and listeners
might have to correct me on the details of this,
But I remember watching Life Goes On when I was
a kid, and Quirky who has down syndrome. In the show,
I want to say, at some point in later seasons,
he starts dating or he wants to date. So there
was that, I mean, where they were still like they
were kind of these precious representations. Yeah, exactly, if that
(45:34):
makes sense. Um, But it does seem like, at least
in the past few years, we have been getting some
better representations. UM. Already Ugly comes to mind. I mean,
he's a fully formed character, he dates, he has a
fabulous singing voice. UM. So that seems like a step
in the right direction. You've got the real life story
too of Stephen Hawking and Jane Hawking. UM. And then
(45:58):
more recently, I don't even know if it's out yet,
but you've got the film adaptation of the book Me
Before You, which is a romance between In the movie,
it's going to be Amelia Clark, also known as the
Queen of Dragons, nearest targarian from Game of Thrones who
falls in love with a recently paralyzed man who is
incredibly handsome and whose name is escaping me at the moment.
(46:20):
I think its character's name is Will Trainer. I don't
know the actor's name, but so slowly getting representations in
in popular culture, but I don't know what what movies
and TV shows and characters are we missing. Yeah, I mean,
because we are just talking off the top of our
heads right now, so you know, if this is an
(46:44):
episode that you would like to hear, and I think
that we should absolutely do it. Please send us all
of those, um all those pop cultural representations, and it
can even be beyond film and television um that come
to mind. And I have a feeling that what we've
talked about today resonates personally with a lot of our listeners,
(47:05):
not just Katrina. Shout out to Katrina again for this
fantastic episode. And we definitely want to hear from you
on this because this is something first of all, that
Caroline and I as able bodied people, we don't have
a firsthand experience with it, and we need your help
sort of filling in all of the all the nuances
(47:25):
and experiences that um that we missed in talking about
this very very important topics. So we want to hear
from you. Mom Stuff at how Stuff Works dot com
is our email address. You can also tweet us at
mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and we've got
a couple of messages to share with you right now. Okay,
So I have a letter here from Brittany from our
(47:46):
guesting episode and it's real funny. Brittany, I enjoyed your email.
She says, here's a true story. I was using one
of the popular dating sites and set up a coffee
with a nice young dude. We met, talked, and instantly
knew there was no attraction, but we got along really well.
We talked for almost two hours. He was in the military,
very polite, and his friends had set up the stating
(48:08):
profile for him. He told me he was flying to
California the next day for an interview with the FBI.
We exchange phone numbers, give a buddy hug, and win
our separate ways. The next day I texted him, good
luck with your interview. He replied, thank you. I will
let you know how it goes well. A day passes,
so I jokingly sent in another text that said, Hope,
it went well. Did you already get sent on a
(48:29):
secret mission? Never heard from him again? Pretty sure my
name is in a file somewhere. True story. Thank you
for your excellent research and more importantly, your passion. Keep
rocking socks, and Brittany, you keep rocking socks as well.
I like to imagine that he did get sent, like
to some strange country and he's on some secret mission now,
(48:52):
although that sounds more CIA than FBI, but you know, yeah,
I like to imagine he was already in the FBI
and he was undercover, and it was like, I can't
text are back all of the all the ghosting narratives
and fill ins. I let's make that TV show. I've
got one here from Hope about her episode on mechanics,
and she writes, well, I don't know much about card
(49:13):
mechanics specifically. My first job out of college involved me
working as an industrial maintenance supervisor and engineer. I was
the only woman in the maintenance department of a multibillion
dollar company, and I was only on temporary assignment, I
had to win over a big group of older men
who frequently referred to women in the maintenance field being useless, weak,
and unwilling to do the dirty work to respect me
(49:35):
as a technical consultant and leader. After a few months
of getting under machines with the guys and providing them
technical training based on my larger engineering projects, we developed
some great friendships. Some of them even admitted being impressed
and learning something while I was there. I'm so happy
to hear about more women getting out there in this
industry because I definitely found it challenging and a little lonely.
(49:58):
I'd love to see more eighties fixing machines, will hope
all the gold stars to you for doing that, because hey,
that's a really cool line of work that you are
in that my brain cannot entirely process and be. I
mean just that you have the people skills in order
to to do that, to lead that group of dudes
is super impressive. So, folks, now I want to hear
(50:20):
from you. Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com
is our email address and for links all of our
social media as well as all of our blogs, videos
and podcasts with our sources. So you can learn more
about people with disabilities and sexuality. Head on over to
stuff Mom Never told You dot com or yet for
(53:43):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff Works dot com
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