Sexuality in Disabilities

A touchy topic that some people don't want to touch is sexuality as it relates to disability. There is some "moral" prudishness that borders on (if not explicitly crosses into) eugenics for those who think sex is not a topic for diability. People with disabilities are people, and people have sexual motivations. We mostly dispell some myths people may have sex and disability as well as share some fun things you may not know.

Recommendations

• Abraham: Origin Story (board game; https://stonemaiergames.com/games/origin-story/)
• Shane: My band’s new records! GOD//MAN - DREAMSEEKER (https://godman.bandcamp.com/album/dreamseeker) and Cyberbully - Welcome to the Internet (2k25 Demo) (https://cyberbullyhc.bandcamp.com/album/welcome-to-the-internet-demo-2k25)

Holidays (12/3/2025):

• International Day of Persons with Disabilities
• International Spirit of the Game Day
• Let’s Hug Day
• Make a Gift Day
• National Apple Pie Day
• National Green Bean Casserole Day
• National Package Protection Day
• National Roof Over Your Head Day
• Women Wednesday
• Cookie Cutter Week

Links:

1.  https://www.independenceaustralia.com.au/health-articles/health-disabilities-and-sex/
2. https://shq.org.au/2022/09/common-myths-sexuality-disability/
3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20131952/
4. https://sexualityanddisability.org/having-sex/mythbusting/

 

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.

Support our podcast: www.patreon.com/wwdwwdpodcast

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome
to Why we do what we do. I am your
reality check host Abraham, and I'm your Hey Be Nice
of People host Shane. We are a psychology podcast. We

(00:26):
talk about the things that humans and non human animals do,
and if you're joining us for the very first time,
then welcome. We are currently in the middle of a
suite of episodes that are all meant to stand alone,
but they're also all on the same topic, and the
topic du jour or due month at this point is

(00:46):
accessibility and disability, and we're taught we're just tackling a
variety of specific aspects of that. There's a space in
which we work and have worked quite a bit, but
it's a group of people about which we feel strongly in.
As I said this episode, you don't need the other
episodes that we have done to be able to participate

(01:06):
in this one. But we decided that if we were
going to talk about this, we didn't want to try
and cram them all into one nine hour episode, but
we'd split them across multiple different episodes where we could
tackle one sort of issue at a time and just
have them come out altogether. This is actually the third
year in a row we've done something like this, and
that's where we find ourselves. If you're a returning listener,

(01:28):
you might already know that and welcome back. We're glad
that you keep finding your way to us. I think
that's what I have to say before we sort of
start getting into things.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah. No, I think it's lovely. That's great.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Perfect. Well, anyway, since you're all here, Happy International Day
of Persons with Disabilities? Wow? Is that real?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Is that of the day? That's really the day? Like,
what's synchronous?

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Oh my gosh, we did so good man. Usually we're
off by a little bit or by a lot. Well,
we're almost never right on the dot. But that's the day.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, that was pretty perfect. It's also International Spirit of
Game Day.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
I'm gonna interpret that the way that I would interpret that.
It is National let's Hug Day. Oh I love that.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
That's so sweet. It's also make a Gift Day.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
It is National apple pie Day. There's a joke in
there for people who were around in the nineties and
watching movies.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yes, yes, yes, Blinkway's who makes a cameo insaid movie. Yeah,
it is national green Bean Castle.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
All Day.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
You know, I used to not like green bean Castle,
but I kind of do now.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
I don't know, I you know, I think I think
it's an old person food and I think that tells
us exactly what we need to know about this show. Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Okay, So here we are is National package Protection Day,
So get your ring doorbell cameras ready, yeah, or get
your like, you know, protective cup.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
If you're playing sports, it's a national roof over your
head day.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Oh my, it is Women Wednesday, and it is cookie
Cutter Week.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Very nice.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
And of course we're kind of in the like fall
festive spirits. So if you're into the Christmasy things then
or Jewish the holiday things or other holiday things that
are going on, then happy holidays whatever those holidays might
be that you're celebrating. All right, So we are talking
in this episode about sexuality and disabilities. So if that's
something if it's difficult for you to listen to topics

(03:24):
about sex, this might be one that you would find
a little uncomfortable. But to be clear, we're going to
do very little talking about having sex. Like this is
not meant to be a super get into the weeds
of like intercourse type thing. And this is a lot
more about dispelling myths around the topics of people with

(03:44):
disabilities and sexuality, Right, does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (03:48):
That is exactly it. So this is not going to
be explicit, but it is going to be in the
topic and it is a sensitive topic for people. So
like just so as you kind of dive in, just
know that we're not going to be like, here's the act.
We're going to be really kind of talking about like
just like some general things that people think about, and
we are going to talk about topics that are going
to come from ablest and sexist and patriarchal spaces, So

(04:09):
like just we are going to unpack a lot of
cultural things inside of this. Yeah, but yeah, we're not
going to talk about the actual act itself.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, that's another good PSA that like on top of
the fact that we have sort of sex as sort
of the topic, I mean it is, but it's more
like about misconceptions about it. Is the fact that there's
then also the angle that there's like insensitive language and
topics around this because there's like a decent amount of
bigotry around people and what it has to do with

(04:36):
sexuality and other people and people feeling they need to
police that space for others. But yes, anyway, I hope
that you enjoy what you hear in this episode today.
I think it's going to be a good one. But
I wanted to get that out there in case you
weren't comfortable with the topic of sex and any capacity.
You know that that's what's happening. And also, if you
do like what you hear in this episode or any
episode of ours, and you would like to support us,

(04:57):
there are free ways you can do that. You can like,
subscribe of a rating and a review, tell a friend,
all those things. If you would like to support us financially,
you can pick up some merch or join us on Patreon.
I'll talk more about all of the ways that we
can and that you can help us at the end
of this discussion. But I think we're ready to dive
into our topic today.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. So we
are going to talk and unpack the intersection of sexuality
and disabilities, which is which is a complex topic in itself.
This topic could go in a variety directions, and we
could spend time on the high rate of gender variation
among autistic individuals, which we will talk about a little bit,
but we're not going to spend that could be an
episode itself. We could also spend time unpacking the infantilization

(05:36):
of people with IDDD diagnoses assuming that they don't have sex,
which is also not the case, or that they shouldn't
which or they shouldn't which is a myth that we
will unpack, but it's a the whole thing that comes up, right,
Or we could tackle the overarching issue of sexuality education
in America, we're over ninety percent of students with disabilities
never get an option to attend sex ed classes. We

(05:56):
could tackle all those things.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
And it's easy for and probably many other folks to
immediately assume that when we're talking about sexuality and disabilities
we specifically mean intellectual disabilities or developmental disabilities. While that
will be a large portion of the topic because that
is a place where there are a lot of opinions

(06:19):
about it, unfortunately, we are also going to talk about
other disabilities and how those are impacted by the world
of sexuality. And you maybe mentioned this in here, but
Mary Roach and her book Bonk actually addresses this. Yeah,
in some cool ways. We can bring that up a
little bit later.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So at the end of the day,
we could arguably do an entire suite on this topic alone.
We could spend so much time time with this, and
maybe we will one day. Yeah, But what we're going
to try to do in this episode is to provide
an opportunity for the audience to kind of dip your
toes into the world of sexuality and disability, so you
can see how pervasive the misconceptions are and how it
may have informed your own worldview and biases in this space.

(06:58):
And that's right. If you did know and you weren't aware,
Welcome to another WWD WWD myth busting episode. Baby.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Those are fun and they're some of my favorites to record, actually,
and some of my favorites to go back and listen to.
Maybe other people don't like them as much, and certainly
we've gotten some of our most critical feedback has been
about myth busting episodes, because invariably, when you start saying
like this is a thing that's wrong, somebody hears that
and says like you're telling you're making me wrong, like

(07:30):
you're saying that I'm a wrong person. And sometimes those
people are right that they are wrong people. But most
of the most of the time, we're just trying to
address the topic at hand and anyway point being that, like,
it's a place where people get sensitive when they're being
told that the thing that they believed was a myth.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
That's when we get the emails that say nahuh yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah, or or people who like leave reviews where it's
like that's not right.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah, we'll share.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, we cited our sources. So yeah, anyway point may
and we're here, let's talk about this. Are you ready, Yeah,
let's do it, all right. So we wanted to tackle
this topic because, just like other areas of sexuality, there's
so much misinformation related to the topic of sexuality among
folks with disabilities or impairments. It seems like it's important

(08:24):
then to just get out in front of this because
you probably fall into one of three camps. This is
stuff you already know. You are potentially someone who works
in this space, or you have relationships with people in
this space, or you're someone who did not really know
about this and maybe has some misconceptions ideas, or someone
who knows about this but you maybe were fed incorrect

(08:47):
information by like a church. I'm just gonna say, yeah,
that's that's.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Uh, we're gonna actually, you know what, We're gonna talk
about churches in a little bit too. So hold on
to your bibles, babies. That's gonna be a ride. I mean,
I think that that's it's important to bring up because
there's lots of systems in place that work against people
with disabilities here, like besides churches and systems of religion
and stuff that really have take that take more conservative approaches.
I want to provide a little bit more context. So,
like sex education in the US has always been a nightmare.

(09:15):
It's always been a problem in that even the most
liberal states tend to be pretty conservative because every single
state in the United States requires some level of abstinence
training as part of their sex side curriculums. Abstinence training
so basically, like how do you prevent babies? Don't do it?
And that's just not helpful. And I think that that's

(09:36):
something that people really just like when we talk about this,
it's not it's it's such a small slice of the
larger pie of sex education, and the US just misses
the mark on it for lots of reasons.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
I am adding abstinence only sex education as a topic
for the future, because I think, yes, even if we
just like run through the studies that have been done,
it'll be a full length episode. It'll t.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah. It's that quote from Mean Girls, right, like, don't
have sex because you'll get pregnant and die.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
That's what they say.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
That's that's what I hear at least.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah. Yeah, as far as far as I know, that's
absolutely true. Everyone who's ever had sex is dead now.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yep, they will eventually, so I guess there is mortality
rate with that eventually.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah. Yeah, that is kind of the joke. It's the
like they took Thailand all and they died. It was
ninety years later, but they did die.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
We will all eventually die. Sorry, we'll get the alert.
I guess if you didn't know that that was the case.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Unless you're that guy that's like transfusing his son's blood
into himself to make himself younger. That's a weird thing.
But he's also doing that to try to stay younger. Yeah,
he's gonna die probably sooner because of the trauma that
he's putting his body through.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, that's exactly right, it's like, don't put other people's
blood and he don't take people's blood less, Like, yeah,
I'm a medical professional. Professional needs to be guiding this
and also just generally don't do it, Like if you're
for cosmetic purposes, don't do it, but like if you're
doing it for like medical reasons. Anyway, we've gotten way
off track, so I guess it's at.

Speaker 4 (11:05):
Time perfect perfect, Okay, we've had a moment to reset,
We've found our center.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
We are talking about sex, which should have been a
really easy topic to stay on topic with, sure, But
point being that before the break, Shane, you were saying
that the education around sex in the United States has
already been weak sauce, And I think we would broadly
classify it as at the very least somewhat inadequate in

(11:41):
its job. And so as a result, our sex education
system has a lot of gaps, some glaring gaps in
the information just in general through through there. And then
you add to this, the majority of sexuality research is
very male dominated and oriented. It took nearly ten years
for researchers to start evaluating female arousal after looking at

(12:04):
male arousal whole decade before they were like, huh, I
wonder if we should talk about other people who might
also have sex besides the ones we've already been interested in.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Additionally, sexuality research often neglects to answer or support any
kind of impairment that somebody might have disabled people. It
might occur in tangential research like studying spinal injuries in general,
mainly to inquiries about bodily functions, but it was rarely
or or never for a while the question that they

(12:36):
were asking. They kind of landed on it at some point,
but it wasn't what they were they were starting with
their inquiry, right.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
And then culture plays a huge critical factor in this
when it comes to research and what people were willing
to approve and look at and have conversations about. So,
in the US we largely started as a Puritan country
when colonization began at least, and European settlers came here
and desperately wanted to have a free nation, which was
there way of saying that they wanted things. They were
basically saying things were too loosey goosey in Europe. So

(13:04):
we want to practice more strict religious rights, which is
exactly how the like what happened here, Like the pilgrims
that came to the United States were kicked out of
England because they were too conservative. It wasn't because they
were like, oh, we want like freedom of religion. They
wanted freedom to practice extremely conservative views. Versions of God
are pervasive in our culture. And so you're going to

(13:25):
find lots of influences from the Bible in sex education unfortunately,
which is where abstinence training comes in.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, it's like, we want we want to be free
to take away other people's freedoms. We want to be
the ones calling the shots about taking away freedoms.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Absolutely, absolutely one, that's what they were doing.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
They won't let us do that. Yeah, so we need
to go we can't do that. Yeah, anyway, and that
tradition does continue today.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yeah, it's baked in. It's baked into the legislation here, truly.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
And notably carried with a red red hat.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yes, moving on with our topic, d Joor, which is
actually the issue here that we're talking about the culture.
We're talking about research and understanding and I think you
could broadly say values around this topic, whatever those might be.
And so importantly here the disabilities population is overlooked, and

(14:21):
as we've said, like this is important, they are overlooked,
they're infantilized. They are neglected in any topic or space
related to sexuality, and likely as a result of the
previously mentioned factors that we just listed. But here's a
quick summary. So terrors and the general population aren't educated,

(14:41):
so they will hold antiquated and just misinformed views on things.
Laws are highly preventative oriented, resulting in unnecessary restrictions or
reliance on Again, the sort of history of misinformation and disinformation,
and the culture adds layers of guilt and coercion that

(15:01):
ultimately result in somewhat similar restrictions. And this idea of
like moral outrage around sexuality with people with disabilities.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, so hear it. Why we do what we do.
We like to solve problems, and that's what we're going
to do today. Obviously, we're going to solve every problem
that comes up in the space. So we want to
start by kind of I mean I say start, we're
gonna spend the rest of this episode talking about a
few myths that we want to break wide open. So
get your pen and paper, take notes, because this is
going to kind of challenge some of maybe your own
personal biases and viewpoints as it pertains the disabilities and sexuality.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
And in a way I kind of hope it does.
So I want to just quickly summarize all the things
that we said, because I think this is where we're
kind of already getting into the myths a little bit.
But I think I just want to summarize. I think
the view we've espoused so far, which is this idea
that people just pretend that once you're in a disability
space congenital acquired, what have you, cognitive, intellectual, physical, whatever,

(16:00):
the disability is, that you cannot and should not have sex,
or that there's at least misinformation about it. We sort
of think or we don't think about it. It's sort
of like the topics of sex don't apply to this group.
And that's just like what we're saying is these are
human beings and they are biological organisms, right, and biological

(16:23):
organisms that need to reproduce. That is how evolution has
driven them. That is what they're going to try to do,
regardless of what they look like or how they're sort
of moving most of the time, like there are conditions
under which they won't try to reproduce with or without
a disability. But the Venn diagram does not indicate a

(16:45):
correlational relationship necessarily, and that people, I think treat it
as if it cannot be talked about, it shouldn't be approached,
or it's like, I don't know, I think it's this
prudishness around. We can't have this conversation and we shouldn't
think about it. We shouldn't create ex diessibility for that
group of people. And with respect to that is the
value we as as a couple of professionals disagree with that. Yes,

(17:10):
all right, which I think leads nicely into our very
first myth, which is the idea that people with disabilities
don't have sexual feelings very inaccurate m again with their
human beings, like, there's still people, right. We are a
species that has evolved through sexual reproduction, like most mammals
and most other vertebrate species. Many folks assume that individuals

(17:31):
with intellectual disabilities or developmental disabilities are asexual. This is
not the case. And just in case you weren't sure
what a sexuality means, quick definition, being a sexual is
that is characterized by a lack of sexual attraction to
others whatsoever. Important to note that this does not mean
that they are always celibate or always abstinate, but they

(17:55):
have very low sexual attraction, like low to zero but
maybe not zero, but not very much well.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
And also it's on a spectrum, so there's folks that
are gray sexual or like sexually attracted to people emotionally
or sapio sexual, which they're attracted to people who have
intellectual like certain hot levels of intellectualism. So like, it's
not strictly they are not interested in sex and will
never have sex. It's that's not at all what it is.
So I think there is also that misconception on that

(18:23):
end too, which again we could probably do a whole
episode on a sexuality because that's its own topic to unpack,
and again lots of miss unpacked there.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, there's like types of asexuality too that I'm aware
of that when you get to that end of the spectrum,
they've sort of come up with other names for preferences
in that space.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this idea that individual's disabilities are
not sexual this likely comes from able a spaces where
either the person is infantilized to a degree that sexuality
is not necessary or important for them because the person
has never had the opportunity to learn about sex or sexuality,
or because caregivers are worried that the person may be
at risk for harmful sexual behavior, among other reasons. Can

(19:00):
speak this a little bit because I've worked with a
lot of guardians that have been like hyper protective of
their loved ones. And what ends up happening a lot
of times is you'll hear phrases like, oh, that just
doesn't come up, or they're not interested in this, or
you know, they don't really engage in this, and it's
not always the case. It's just really more so an opportunity,
Like if I never knew that some experience existed, then

(19:23):
I would I would probably never have an interest in
it because I just had no knowledge about it. So
that's the sex education piece. But the other part is
these naturally occurring motivations are occurring for this person and
they maybe don't have language for it, or like they
are are never given an opportunity to speak about it
or any of those things, and it's neglected by the
people who are in like who are caring for them.

(19:45):
I've worked with caregivers who are immediately interested in getting
their folks on birth control, and just because they're doing
it from a protective space, even though the person has
no say or no interest in getting birth control. I've
had caregivers as about getting their son's vasectomies and like
kind of doing that just to prevent them from having

(20:06):
children without that person. Say, like, we've had these conversations.
It's really dark, these some of these conversations. But these
are conversations that we have had with caregivers that are like, no,
you can't do that. That's actually like a really big problem.
And most of the time, I could say that it
almost never comes from a place of like harm or

(20:28):
like meanness. It always every time I've had a conversation
with a caregiver, it always comes from a place of
I just want to protect my child. Yeah, and that's
the infantilization part, where they're not having conversations with these folks,
they're not having conversations with their loved ones, and they're
making decisions for them that they think that isn't the
best interest of their child.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, it's like their heart's in the right place. Yeah,
you can sort of understand and resonate with their values,
and like they want to do the right thing. But yeah,
they're thinking of this this person as like someone who,
as you said, is like asexual or is like it
can't be a thing that can be accommodated for them
without involving them in that conversation or like you know,

(21:07):
thinking about the fact like that actually might be exactly
what they want. And so I don't know, I can
hear that. And for people who maybe hear us, we
keep saying infantilization essentially is like treating someone as if
they're like a baby, like they have the level of
decision making, autonomy and abilities as as an infant, and
that that's an appropriate way to think about it. And

(21:29):
like they're in most of the spaces where we're talking
about this, these are adults, Like these are people at
the very least to our teenagers, but most of them
were like well into the space of adults and acknowledging
that like this is going to be a drive that
they have, right, So absolutely, yeah, and actually it leads
us beautifully into our second myth. But myth one point

(21:50):
five is ads.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
And the myth is that they're effective these ads.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
All right, we're back, and you you ended that the
idea that the myth that as are effective. I actually
talked to someone recently who like knew someone who worked
in an advertisement, like they worked in advertising, and they
asked to like, does it like you guys think so
much money in this? I think some some businesses are
sinking millions of dollars into advertising, Like does this change behavior?

(22:25):
Like do you get increased revenue? Like the amount of
money you're spending on this, does it pay off? And
the person that like works in advertising was like, we
don't know, great, Like I don't. I don't think it does.
You guys, I think you're spending your wheels and ruining
everyone's lives for no reason.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
But yeah, I think there's probably some degree it does, right,
Like I think I feel like to me, the most
effective marketing is jingles, Like as a song get stuck
in my head and I'm like, okay, now I think
of double mint gum all the time.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
I do you think jingles? And then just general like
awareness of a thing. Yeah, Like, I think to that
point it works, whether it actually like those mobile ads
where you can't close them unless you hit the X
ten times and it just moves all over the screen.
You have to wait for thirty seconds or a minute
or something. Yeah, the ones where it's like they keep
they go out of the way to create is like

(23:18):
over the top ludicrous ads with like a list actors,
And I'm like, does that actually do more people buy
the product or engage with this because of this ad?
I'd be surprised if it does. Much Like, yeah, you
sunk in five million dollars and your turn on investment
was like five thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
You're right, right, right, right, And I guess it depends
on the product, right, probably works for movies. But anyway,
fair point, we're not talking about any of that, Like
what are we doing? Like this is we are from
an ad break and just talked about the empty ads.
What's happening right now? Okay, all right? So myth number two, No, no, no,
it's I think it's both of us and it just
you know, it speaks to our friendship and I love that.

(23:57):
So okay, myth number two. Sometimes people will say that
individuals with disabilities should not have children, and this is
just I think, just a weird, a weird belief, Like
I just think it's strange. Disabilities do not preclude somebody
from being a good parent. I have worked with adults
with disabilities who have children, who their children are very

(24:17):
involved in their lives as well, who have lived excellent,
wonderfully loved lives like their caregiver, their parents loved them
and helped care for them and took care of them
and showed them a level of love that you might
not see in other parenting spaces. So I think it's
a really strange experience or a belief to have where
you say, somebody with disabilities should not have children, because

(24:40):
that feels, first of all, that that like rings of
like pseudo eugenics a little bit, like it was like, oh,
they shouldn't be just orrange genics. Yeah, yeah, I mean
I was trying to be charitable, but like, also, really,
it's a really strange thing. And I've watched I've watched
parents with disabilities be better parents than their neurotypical peers.

(25:00):
I've watched them do things that their neurotypical peers wouldn't do.
I've watched them care in different ways. Like I've seen
this in a space where you just kind of go like, oh,
like there's no because at the end of the day,
there's no parenting handbook. So I just think this is
just a strange kind of take on, like, oh, if
you have a disability, you shouldn't have kids.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Funny you say that because people have said there's no
parenting handbook. I know a person who a couple of
like research professors who wrote the handbook on infants, yeah,
and toddlers. And it's really funny because they make it
look like a manual for like a car, on purpose,
because it's like kind of a joke, and so they
like they're like a diagram of a baby, and they're

(25:40):
like food goes here, poop comes out here.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
That's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
I love that sometimes your device will make loud noises.
It's very funny.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
There is no reset button.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
There's no reset button, so there kind of is a handbook.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Now. I love that.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
I don't know how accessible it is, but it exists.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, yeah for sure.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
All right. So yeah, the point here being that, like
parenting is learned behavior, people without disabilities do a terrible,
terrible job of this a lot. So I think that
they have not shown that they should or have any
kind of dominance in this space whatsoever. Right, And so
us feeling like we need to police that choice for
people feels kind of asinine and inappropriate, But it does

(26:20):
mean that because parenting is learned, and many parents don't
learn how to do it and then become parents anyway.
But people can learn the skill, and that means anyone
can learn how to be a parent with the right support, resources,
training and experience and to go the hardcore progressive in me,
that feels like something that should just be made available
for free as classes to all families. Is like, anybody

(26:46):
who is going to become a parent free classes for
how to do that thing, because like we've done the research,
we know how behavior works, we know how to help
people when they run into situations they don't know what
to do. And it drives me. I don't understand and
how in movies this happens all the time. I know
it's just you know, screenwriters and this is maybe not real,
but I think that people say this, which is like

(27:07):
they'll say I'm their father or I'm their mother, I
know what's best for my kid. I'm like, just knowing
how to have sex doesn't make you good at being
a parent, right, Like I think you can always learn things,
and like you don't. You aren't given some like God
gifted ability to make good decisions just because you figured
out how to.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Have sex, right like Mac's wife how bingo, Oh my
gosh's fire anyway, So that's I think people understanding that,
like you could actually learn some things, like people have
figured some things out, people do their people who do
a really good job of.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Being a parent, and they often had support for that
because yeah, or some kind of access to education. I
keep going on tangents. I'm sorry, we need to need
to move more efficient.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
I love it. No, I actually love it all right,
So myth number three. Sometimes people will say that autistic
people don't want to be in relationships, and that is
patently false. As a matter of fact, many autistic folks
are likely to have more relationships and actually richer relationships
and more fun relationships and more varied relationships. Some researcher
even suggest that they are likely to have more relationships,

(28:12):
but they will have sometimes shorter relationships than their neurotypical peers,
and a lot of times because they're just not wasting time,
they're going, h this isn't working, I'm done with this,
And they're more likely to be able to terminate a
relationship that they don't feel like is meeting their needs.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Sounds like a superpower, right, all right, good, that was efficient.
Smith four. Young people at disabilities don't need information about contraception. Okay,
so people at disabilities shouldn't have children, but they also
shouldn't have information about how to avoid becoming a parent.
If this isn't the Republican agenda of holding two opposing ideas,

(28:47):
I do not know what is this is. So it's absurd,
It's yeah, it's this is the criticism I often have.
And I'm like, I wish I could have these arguments
with someone who's on that end of the political spec
because I'm like, you say you want this thing and
then you do this thing that is the opposite of
those two. And I'm just trying to understand, like where

(29:11):
the disconnect is for you that you're like, your ideas
about policy are so counterproductive they like border on self
destructive some of the time, right, right, Like I just
don't understand how you get from A to B.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
It's so bizarre. It's so bizarre.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Anyway, the point here that we would make is that
all people should have information about safe, affordable and accessible
contraception options, whatever they may choose, whatever they think they need,
whatever is going to make the most sense for their lifestyle.
And because all people have a right to their reproductive health,
they should have options to actively and safely participate in
their reproductive health and reproductive activities if they so choose.

(29:50):
So access to contraception is something that will prevent unnecessary pregnancies,
prevent unnecessary STIs, prevent different harms that may come up
as a result of this. So yes, all people, not
just young people, old people, people disabilities, people without disabilities,
All people should have access to information about contraception because
it will be the safest route to protect them and

(30:11):
everybody else in the community at large.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Man, this feels like a whole nother like episode that
we could do again just digging into the research on this,
because there's so many people who are like providing contraception
or information about contraception just leads to people having a
whole bunch of ramp and sex. I'm like, no, first
of all, ninety percent sure that that's completely wrong, if
not the opposite. But also like in places where we

(30:34):
have done this, where we like provided education and contraception
and information and we gave people the choice to live
their lives the way that they want. But informed. Then
what they tended to have is people who deliberately chose
to have families when they were ready to have families,
and they did so safely and responsibly, and they had
a more robust system of care and support and intentionality

(30:57):
and if things just work better. So it's like we've
kind of done this expand more than once. Like this
has been policy that has been rolled right in other
countries where because they provided access to contraception, they provided
access to information, like everything in that country worked better
because of that. And when people choose to just instead
thrive in chaos thinking that they're thriving an order, right,

(31:19):
and I'm like, this is not order, this is chaos
because look around you chaos.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Chaos completely.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
All that is to say one to number five, yes,
all right. Remember this is a myth. So people might
sometimes say or believe that people of disabilities are confused
when they think that they are gay or buy or trans,
or that they're just copying somebody else. Incorrect. Yes, that

(31:46):
is a myth. It is is a myth because it
is wrong. That idea is incorrect. Of course, people with
disabilities can be on the spectrum of sexuality in terms
of their preferences.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, so where do we even start with this? It's
so exhausting, Like I am so sick of the they're
confused about their orientation argument in general, Like whoever it is,
it's a ridiculous argument. And so first of all, let's
unpack this.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
So what here? Here?

Speaker 2 (32:11):
What if they were confused?

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Agree?

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Like, gender, identity and orientation fall along a spectrum. It's
a lifetime of discovery. It's a lifetime of exploration. Let
people explore and learn more. It's not about being confused sometimes,
it's not about Sometimes it's actually about not having the
language to describe complex feelings. Like some people may feel confused,
or they may say that they belong to a certain group,
and they may not actually belong to that group because

(32:33):
they don't have the language you describe some more complex
or more specific group. We talked about a sexuality earlier,
and some people may feel like they are they're asexual,
but they may actually discover that they belong to part
of a spectrum that's a little bit more specific, or
like a subset of a sexuality that's a little bit different,
and they haven't learned the language you describe that yet.
And it's true for all people, not people with disabilities.
So this is a lifetime of discovery.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
I love this so much, and it's it's sort of
a position I've had on this for a while where
people the argument they'll have is like being gay is
not a choice or it is a choice. Where we
fall in that, I'm like, who cares? Right, Right, If
that is a choice, that's not your business.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
If it's not a choice, it's still not your business.
Like you don't need to have an opinion about someone
else's sexual orientation or preferences, right.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
And also just to be clear, so we're we're all
on the same page. We don't believe that it's a choice.
We believe that it is like an experience. Like I
just want everybody to like know that, Like it's not like, oh,
you choose to be gay, Like it's one of those
things where it's like it's more complicated than that.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
But if you didn't choose that, I would be in
supportive it because like, of course, you choose whatever whatever
path you want to be on. Yeah, and that's not
any of our reason to police there. Of course, I've
got to say this because I know the people will
who don't have any contexts will hear this and come
out of the woodworks when I say things like preferences
you cannot have, like that does not include partners who

(33:54):
cannot or do not consent, right, so like that's always
consent does everything, So does not include children, It does
not include animals. Those are not those are not places
where the consent can happen, So like those are not
viable partners. And we've talked about this a little bit
in our episode on paraphilias, so if you're getting interested,
go check that out. But yes, like it's like I said,

(34:14):
like whether or not it's a choice doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
It's relevant.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, yeah, it is totally irrelevant. So we can have
thoughts about whether or not it is and that's fine,
but like it kind of it doesn't ultimately matter. And
even still, the point is that like someone's just exploring,
they're figuring out what kind of life is comfortable and
works for them, and good on them for doing that,
Like this should not Again, nobody's nobody's business, but there

(34:38):
isn't the people that they choose to that they find
companionship with.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Absolutely, And the second thing that we have to unpack
here is that there is a high gender variation among
folks disabilities, specifically among autistic people. So anywhere between fifty
to sixty percent of autistic people report some level of
gender nonconformity or gender variation. So it's we're finding that,
like there is a broader spectrum of LBGTQ or LGBTQ

(35:03):
plus population folks, and that people identify in that space.
There is a higher percentage among autistic folks, So like
you're gonna see a little bit more expiration in this space.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
That was a fact that I did not know coming
into this.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
I did know that we were going to play ads. Okay,
we are back. We're onto myth number six of twelve.
We're halfway through after this.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah, we're so close, so myth number six. This is
what people believe. It is the responsibility of the parent
or the careers to make decisions for their child or
their clients when it comes to relationships or babies.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah. No, absolutely no. And this is a complicated discussion
because of a variety of reasons, especially when we may
have folks who are so really impacted they might be
at risk of exploitation. Where guardians are evolved these decisions.
That is legally approved abstinence and restrictions around sexuality. They

(36:11):
seem like their safe choices, like they're intended to be
safe choices, but they often neglect to include the person
who is directly impacted. So it's people making choices about
them without them. Yeah, right, and then they will sacrifice
autonomy and freedom for what they perceive to be safety.
And there is there is another way. We don't have

(36:31):
to give up those things. We can involve them in
those decisions, We can try and give them. There are
people sometimes who they struggle to communicate and like in
those spaces, what we just need to do is do
our best to give them choices so that they can
try and participate in a way that is as autonomous
as they can be.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah. Nearly eighty percent of people with disabilities report some
level of sexual exploitation or harm yikes from people that
in their life, and much of that has to do
with finding out after the fact because they didn't get
the sex education to give them any sort of safety
like body autonomy, safety consent information, stuff like that, So
you're gonna find it. That's that's part of why we're

(37:08):
having this discussion. You know, bad, Yeah, real bad. Now
number seven people believe that people living with a disability
are not attractive or desirable. I'm just gonna say, get
them out of here with this nonsense. This is patently untrue.
It's just absurd. And a lot of this comes with
you know, cultural views on beauty and stuff like that,
and that's also just probably another conversation that we have

(37:31):
to have at some point, but it's a lot of
that comes from that space, which is just unfortunate.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, and we're not going to use this episode to
unpack the unrealistic and toxic topic of beauty and standards
of beauty and culture. We don't have time for that.
But we'll say briefly, everyone is deserving of love, sex, relationships,
or whatever combination of those things works for them, whatever
they prefer. Everybody deserves to break free from sort of

(37:57):
normative beauty standards and find beauty and whatever it is
like that they are attracted to, like whatever works for you.
So like, we don't need to spend all this time
cultivating like what is and what isn't beautiful, and let
people just find what they like and like fall in
love with whoever they fall in love with, or you know,
find attractiveness, attraction to whatever they find attraction to. Yeah,

(38:19):
again always considering the issue of consent.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
But other than that, yes, of course, all right, mid
number eight. People believe that people living with disabilities can't
have real sex.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Okay, So most of the time they just never get
the opportunity because a they've never come into contact with
real sex education, so they're just uninformed about how and
what to proceed here, and be legal restrictions or service
protections prevent folks from accessing opportunities. I've probably shared this

(38:51):
on this podcast before, but my very first job working
inside of behavior analysis was working with adults who had
pretty significant impact with cognitive or developmental disabilities or intellectual disabilities,
and the topic of them engaging in sexual behavior at
home came up quite frequently because they're adults. Most of

(39:12):
them were like over thirty, many of them were over fifty. Yeah,
and they'd have these issues where they're like, you know,
they're they did go in the room and they would
just they would be doing things themselves and they would
come out naked and that would be distressing to the staff,
and they would try and do that sort of thing.
And like they'd be people who like in the middle
of the day at sort of the day habilitation place,

(39:34):
they'd be touching themselves and they'd get you know, prevented
from doing that instead of like given an opportunity in
an outlet and like taught like here's you know, wash
your hands before and after, and like here's how to
do it safely, and let's not grind on things that'll
give you splinters. Yeah, whatever the case might be. So
it's I've seen that like play out in real time
when I was very very new to all of this,
Like I didn't really understand, but I always thought it

(39:57):
was I I was quite amused by the fact that
like these people would like find a way and like
people would try and put them down and they're like, no,
I know what I want, and they go for it,
And I thought that was very funny.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Staff are just they they're
It's just always comes up in that space. So like, actually,
I'm glad that you brought that up because like that
was also my first experience working in this and and
what you'll learn is that there are sometimes state laws
that actually and actively prevent this type of thing from happening.
So as an example, in the state of Florida, which is,
you know, this lovely, sunshiny place. But there are some

(40:30):
things where I gotta say this, Florida does some things
right for disabilities, like they there are lots of services
available for folks with disabilities. There's lots of like resources
like comparative to some other states that I've I've had
the pleasure of consulting in, Florida does some things pretty
well in this space.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
However, first time anyone's ever said that.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
I know. It's like, we have beautiful beaches and sometimes
we take care of our people sometimes. But it is
written into the handbooks for group homes specifically and group
home services, the individuals cannot have sex in their group homes.
Not that they can't be provided opportunities, but they are
not allowed to have sex in their group homes. The
home that they are living in, the home that their

(41:11):
services pay for, the home that their benefits actively pay
for the staff to be there, for the home to
be open, for these services to be rendered. The homes
that they live in day in and day out, they
are not allowed to have sex in. That doesn't mean
they can't masturbate, but they can't have sex in those homes,
and when.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
We say group homes, we're talking about these are homes
for people with some type of impairment where to support
their I guess mobility around the world.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
They've been Yeah, it'shabilitation services.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah yeah, yeah, they have been placed in a home
where other people with similar sort of situations live and
then the hell home has staff. So that's why when
they say group home, that's what they're talking about with
respect to them having laws about them having sex right,
which again is also completely acidine.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yeah, agreed, all right.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Myth number nine people believe that people with spinal injuries
no longer experience sexual desire. This is incorrect. Regardless of injury,
the desire to experience sexual activity or intimacy may remain,
and maybe even often remains. There may be some unique
difficulties for them, especially if their experience is an acquired injury,

(42:21):
and it depending on where impacts the spine. However, intimacy
may still be a predominant desire to them. And I'll
actually bring up here the book Bonk by Mary Roach.
She gets into this because they have specifically experimented with
ways to I guess you would say maybe reprogram the
sort of neurological pathways that were stimulated, because it's true

(42:46):
that in some of these instances with acquired spinal injury
that the sexual organs no longer receive they no longer
produce like stimulation to the brain. And what they do
is they actually will train up another part of their
boyody that serves a similar function so that they can
receive sexual stimulation. It's just no longer through their sexual organs.
Kind of a really interesting thing to think about that

(43:09):
they can even do that. And I don't remember now
from the book whether that was something that the sort
of medical doctors did or the person did on their
own or figured out, or if it just sort of happened. Yeah,
but is a thing that can happen in that space.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
It was either the chapter around spinal injuries and neurological injuries,
or is the chapter about defining what an orgasm is,
because that was such a big part of that conversation,
was like what is an orgasm and where? Like why
does it have to be oriented in the in sexual organs?
Can it be in other parts of the body.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
I feel like it was that one.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, It's super super fascinating book. Everybody go
read Bunk. It's like one of my favorite books. It's
so good, it's incredible. So, going back to having no
desire for sexual experience, myth intimacy and desire are not
necessarily related to the act of sex. And I think
there's also this larger discussion about unpacking what any this means.
Things like massage, physical touch, personal conversations. All of these

(44:04):
are types of social engagements that could be intimate, and
you could have sexually explicit intimate relationships inside of these spaces.
That doesn't haves toarly have to be centered around an orgasm.
All of these fall within the realm of sexuality as
it pertains to healthy relationships. So sexual desire and feeling
desire doesn't necessarily have to result in the act of
sex or the or the resulting orgasm.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Okay, so is myth nine. We have myths ten, eleven,
and twelve post ad. Yes, all right, we are back
with myth ten.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
And a little post ad clarity.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
And a little post ad clarity. Love that great joke
in there.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
It's you know, it's the little things here and there.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
It is man and now I want to use that
more often post add clarity. Okay, So Myth ten, and
this is very related to myth nine, is the idea
that sex organs don't work after a spinal injury. This
is not necessarily true, although, as I said, there can
be some spinal injuries where they don't necessarily receive sensation.

(45:14):
It doesn't mean that they don't work. Yeah, spinal cord
injuries are very interesting and complicated. They're complex. Some nerves
may be severed, but not all of the nerves. Some
nerves actually self repair, but maybe only kind of. Sometimes
the nerves can be entirely severed, but the body does
weird things. So for more often than you'd probably think,

(45:35):
even with spinal injury, the sex organs actually will work
kind of as they've always worked. Yeah, the sensation or
experience for the person might be different, how they go
about a using that might be different post acquired injury,
or you know these congenital things. People I think sometimes
have these ideas. The point being that like a lot

(45:56):
of times, the body is going to do what it's
going to do even with a spine injury, and stuff
can just work. So yeah, that's that.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah. Also, what a weird question to ask someone with
a spinal injury, right, Like when you think about this,
you go like, hey, can I see you can't walk?
Does your vagina work? Yeah? Like, what is strange? Can
I see? Show me?

Speaker 1 (46:17):
What do you mean?

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Like, it's a really strange thing. But in many instances
and some instances, the person sexual organs can still work,
like you mentioned, they can still have orgasms, they can
experience them differently or in different parts of the body
like we mentioned earlier. Yeah, and their entire industry is
dedicated to developing adaptive sex toys and equipment to help
folks with physical disabilities engage in stimulating sexual activities with
their partners, which we kind of briefly touch on in

(46:39):
the mini that came out this week that goes along
with this, which is really cool.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
Yeah, go check out that many for more on the
adaptive sex toys. All right, myth number eleven women with
disabilities don't need sex? Oh my gosh. Okay, So this
is not the first time nor the last time that
patriarchical viewpoints real their ugly head within this realm. I mean,
in early conversations about this, there's this idea that women

(47:03):
don't want or don't need to have sex. I think
you look at the partner that they had and that
might have explained.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
It better, explains a lot.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Yeah, this comes from the idea that male ejaculation is
the goal of sex. Let's just be clear here it's not. Yeah,
and that women don't have similar functions. Let's be clear
here they do.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
So this is just it's asinin and this long, this
long held tradition of like feeling like women are second
consideration around sexual spaces. That's just it's so absurd and
so unnecessarily over the top bigoted. I'm like, there're half

(47:46):
our species as women, and this is how the system
gets designed. It's just wild.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
It's nuts. I mean, so the important point on this
one is that sex isn't always about the orgasm, and
certainly shouldn't focus on the male orgasm, and sexuality and
sex is about intimacy, all of those things, and whether
it's alone or with another person. It's really it's just
really unfortunate that women are still seen as kind of
like just I don't want to say undeserving, but that

(48:12):
feels like it. It feels like they just go like
this is not the focus, Like they're well being, their
care their pleasure is not the focus of these types
of interactions.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Yeah, and that's the myth. By the way, we're not
saying that that should be the case. It's the myth
is that they don't need that or want that, or
have should have that, or whatever.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Yeah. So that brings us to the last myth that
we want to unpack, which is myth twelve, and that
is women with disabilities are quote over sex. And basically
what this is saying is is that any expression of
sexuality in women, especially with disabilities, is seen that they
are hyper sexual. They're perverted, they are deviant, and expressing
sexual interest, preferences or fantasies does not mean that the

(48:49):
person is hyper sexual. It simply means the person is
advocating for what they like or they prefer. It's so unfortunate,
and I've seen this happen time and time again, especially
working with adults. Is that if there is like an
adult who is vocalizing their preferences, there is more attention
on the women who express this than the men, and
they are more likely to be criticized. It's more likely

(49:10):
to be a problem among staff, and it shouldn't be.
It's absolutely absurd.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Yeah, I'm going to speculate a little bit here because
I don't actually know this is the case, but I
would guess that one of the things that happens here
is that in these situations, a lot of times people
with disabilities, like they have some kind of staff around them,
like all waking hours, and so they engage in sort
of a normal sexual routine. But because they have sort

(49:36):
of eyes on them at all times, it looks like
there is a greater amount of attention paid to the
fact that it happens at all, right, and then is
seen as being like hyper sexual, And I'm like, actually,
I mean, for one thing, like if they're awake, you're there,
and most of the time when they're having any kind
of sexual experience, they're awake, right, So like you see

(49:59):
how they overlap. There is like basically one hundred percent,
like there's no point which they could have a sexual
experience where you wouldn't be there, and that kind of
sucks for them. But like they also like they've never
been taught anything, so they don't have a plan for
anything to do. I think that's one of the reasons
that this shows up in the space. And then I
think there is this continual underlying discomfort around sexuality with

(50:21):
women that comes from. I think there are women who
have that because this is a culture that has fostered
that kind of attitude, and I think men definitely have
that because of the culture that is very patriarchy oriented.
That's my guess at least for one of the reasons
that might appear to be hyper sexual. And then another one,
as I was saying earlier, is because they've not really

(50:42):
been given any support or instruction around like what might
be considered a safe Maybe I'm gonna do air quotes
here appropriate time to do it, I'm going to Granted,
I feel like there are times there are going to
be less appropriate in public spaces that we don't generally
favor people doing that in public spaces for variety of reasons. Sure,
but don't know any different, Like no one's given them
anything because as we've mentioned before, like this education has

(51:03):
been withheld from them, so like it looks hyper sexual
because it might show up in a place where you
like weren't expecting it to and again because you're with
them at all waking hours of the day, So those
might be I think the situations that arise that have
people say they're hyper sexual, and I'm like they're just
normal sexual that's just not convenient for.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
You, right, right, right. It makes you uncomfortable. It's your problem,
not theirs.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
Yes, exactly. But those are the myths that we have
about this. But we also have some interesting tidbits, which
we also sometimes called tid points.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Yes, so you know, these types of topics, I would
imagine that if you have never dipped your toes in
or you're uncomfortable with it, they can feel overwhelming in
their scope and then a problem. Right, you know, we're
talking about large cultural factors, we're talking about all these things. Personally,
I think you know, when I leave these topics, I
leave them going. Sometimes the problem is too big? What
can we do? So we wanted to give you a

(51:55):
few ideas to start helping this kind of solve some
of the problems of these myths that some of the
things that we talked about above. One of those things
is donating organizations like seekis which is spelled Siecus. Canada
has a version of this as well, and these organizations
you can donate to and they help provide information into
se many information about sexuality, and they help fight for
disability rights related to sexuality as well. So they help

(52:17):
kind of work to overturn laws that are too restrictive.
They help with body autonomy in those different types of
human rights that exist.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Another thing you can do is get involved in legislation.
There are some minority groups consist of very few people
who represent a very tiny fraction of opinions, but they're
organized and they're allowed. And so if you get involved
in you critique sex education laws, you fight against organizations
like the Nazis, I mean the Moms for Liberty that

(52:46):
are actively dismantling education around sex. Like these are a
group of people who feel like they need to police
other people's lives and behavior, and that they they're going
to throw every name that they can. They call it perverted,
they call it like exploitative. If they have all these
names and they are just wrong. They're just a group
of people who are committed to being wrong and policing

(53:07):
other people's lives, and they suck frankly as an organization
as people. Yeah, so if you're listening to this and
you're Moms of Liberty, I understand that, like we don't
know who our audience is, they might be someone listening
to it. I'm going to just just be very clear
here because I do prefer to be diplomatic. You suck,
start over, you're on the wrong path, Like, you're not irredeemable.

(53:28):
You could be a better person. But get out of
there because that group sucks.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
Yeah, they're awful, They're awful. Absolutely. But another thing too
is that I think it's really important to communicate with
sex education advocates and disability advocates. This also includes self
advocates to see if they have if they have any
specific concerns or avenues of engagement that they prefer they
like as well, where do they see value in interactions
because I think sometimes what will happen is like you'll
get people that come in with like a little bit

(53:52):
of a savior behavior savior complex that come in and
want to swoop it and want to do all these things.
I think it's so important to have conversations with the
folks that are doing this work. Now, if you're feeling overwhelmed,
get in with some of these organizations. Get in with
people who are doing this work and ask them what
they find value in and importance in, and then that
way you can give it a little you can get
a little bit of direction in that space too.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Yeah, well, I think, you know, just coming just listening
to this here, you've already sort of taken some steps
in doing something. And maybe you don't have much of
a choice because someone's forwarded this to you or you
are just subscribed to the feed and it just happened.
But like, I think, just getting more informed. Just listen
to more podcasts like this one. Yeah, you know, go
have conversations with this with people. Books, look into the law. Yeah,

(54:33):
read books about this topic, like go talk to Yeah.
I think it's just learn, learn what you can, share
what you know, and participate in the system, because like,
the people who don't know what they're doing are loud,
and they are good at getting legislation moved, and they
represent the worst of us as a species, and so

(54:53):
we need to just be louder than them. What should
be easy because there's not very many of them, Like
they're grossly outnumbered. Yeah, if we even put in a tiny,
tiny amount of effort, we'd easily overwhelm those numbers. The
other thing I guess maybe I could say is just
in general, being advocate for this this topic for these people,
even if it's just like holding that opinion and standing
up for it, like that still does more than you

(55:13):
might know. You can be more active or more passive,
but if you just have the opinion that, like we,
you choose to support people with disabilities and being in
support of their rights around their sexuality, you're on the
right side of things and you are helping absolutely. All Right, well,
I think that is what we have to say about this.
You have anything else you'd like to add before we
wrap this one up and move on.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Nothing on my end, Okay, perfect. If you're joining us
for the first time, something we do at the end
of our discussions is we recommend some things. So I'm
going to get through the credits. Then we want to
do our fun recommendations, and I think the recommendations are
like one of a very fun thing to look forward to.
Maybe people don't care. We do tend to recommend like movies,
music experiences, board games, that sort of thing. Then maybe

(55:55):
people are sick of hearing it, but we tend to
come up with new ones and they tend to be fun,
I think. But yeah, I agree, all right, perfect? Well,
then I was thinking maybe we'd do an ad break,
but we're so close to the end, maybe it doesn't
make sense. Maybe just wrap up here and then we'll
let the ads play out at the end.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Yeah, I think it sounds that sounds good.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
All right, let's just do everyone a favor. We're in
the Christmas spirit and we won't do the ads, so
let's do the credits first. Thank you so much everyone
for listening. We appreciate you being here. Thank you so
much to my team of people writing in fact checking
from Shane and myself. Thank you so much for putting
together the notes on this. Shane.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Oh yeah, no, this was a lot of fun to
work on, so thank you for letting me.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our audio engineer,
technician producer person is Justin who is very good at
his job.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yes, he's the best at his job.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
All right now, if you would like to support us,
you can do that a variety of ways. You can
leave us a rating and a review, so you can
do just a rating. You can also do just you
can do a review. On top of that, you can
like and subscribe in them. That way you will always
get new episodes. And of course you can go tell
a friend and that's very helpful because then more people
are checking us out and we love that too. If
you would like to support us financially, you can help

(57:02):
our Patreon. It's like a subscribers club there. You get
all kinds of benefits and cool things. There's ad free episodes,
bonus content, early releases, all kinds of stuff. There also
at the end of our full length discussions, of which
this is one because we're already at over an hour,
we thank the people. We go through the list of
people who have taken that leap to support us and

(57:24):
have helped us be a show, and we just really
appreciate all of you for what you've done. So a
giant thank you to Mike, m Megan, Mike t, Justin,
Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara, and Charlie. Thank you
so much.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
You're the best ever.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
We appreciate you all very very much. You can have
your name read on that list. If you go over
and support us, you can pick up some merch from
our merch store, which is still broken, but I will
I am intermittently trying to work on it. I think
those are most of the things I miss anything in
terms of supporting us.

Speaker 2 (57:53):
No, all those things are supportive.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
If you have things you'd like to tell us about
sexuality and in the disabilities specifically. You can email us
directly at infowwdwwdpodcast dot com. We're also happy to engage
in a constructive critical argument with you. Through that space.
You can go in and tell us that we're done
and you hate us, and I'll just ignore you. Please
don't do that, because I don't like getting those emails.
But you can also tell us very nice things that

(58:17):
are positive and glowing, and I'll just say big things,
and if you have something really meaningful to contribute, I
will read that on a future episode, which we do periodically.
We get a lot of really good emails, so I
appreciate our listeners who write in frequently.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Yeah, they're the best.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
You can also read us on the social media platforms.
But I think that is what I have to say
about this. So shall we get some recommendations.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Let's do it recommendations, all right? So I am so
excited about this because this last Friday at the time
is recording. This last Friday, two of my bands put
out releases. One was a surprise. I didn't know we
were putting out the release, and that was a surprise

(58:57):
for me, which is kind of fun. But the other
one I plan for some time. So the first one
I want to talk about it is a band called
cyber Bully that I'm in. It's a joke carcore band
that is expressively writing from the perspective of a keyboard warrior,
and so every song is about just like being on
the internet and being in chat rooms and like bullying
people and like how they're all terrible. It's a lot
of fun. It's seven minutes, it's seven songs, and it's

(59:21):
just real quick. One of them is a cover, which
is a lot of fun and I think it's a
really cool fun I did. It's a fun little demo.
It's a very low fi and I play based on
it and my buddy plays guitar and it's a really
good time. So also my favorite fun fact about this
is that one of the members of the band played
and Sublime for a little bit, so this band is
ex Sublime, which is very funny to me. Wow. And

(59:43):
then the other one is my solo music, which is
called god Man. It's stylized as good and backslash backslash
m an So if you search it there, but the
best place to find is on band camp. I'm gonna
we'll include both the band camp logos. So I put
out my EP, Dreamseeker. I play everything on this and
it's the first time I've ever written music by myself,
recorded music by myself, and released it by myself. So

(01:00:06):
I feel pretty great about it, and hopefully you guys
like it if you give it a listen. So that's
my recommendation is listen to my bands fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
I pulled up god Man and Money to actually listen
through it, so I will, I will get on that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
I genuinely want to know what you think about it,
because I think that you'll.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
Think it cool, very good. Yeah, awesome. All right. So
your band's god Man, god slash slash Man and Cyberbully,
and those are both on band camp.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Yes, Godmn is on Spotify as well's I think that's
released everywhere right now.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
So oh cool, hi, very goet. All right. I am
going to do the thing that I do, which is
recommend to board game. This is more card game than anything.
It's called Origin Story, and this is about becoming a superhero.
This is a trick ticking game. So if you're familiar
with Hearts or Spades, Uker, I guess yeah, basically play

(01:00:55):
out a suit and then people have to follow suit.
If they can, the highest card in that suit wins.
But there is also so like a suit that sort
of dominates. And then this one, the Suit of Love,
Love beats all. So if you cannot play the lead
suit and you play the love suit, then Love the
Love suit will win. But importantly in this one, what
makes this particularly interesting is that as your superhero, every

(01:01:17):
round you're acquiring new abilities that mostly allow you to
break the rules around the trick ticking game. Sure, there's
one that we encountered that said like once per round,
so for just one trick and there's eight tricks in around,
once par round you can just say I win and
you just get the trick no matter what happens, which
just kind of wild but pretty cool ability if you

(01:01:39):
can if you can land it and get it to work.
So anyway, you acquire all these abilities, and then you're
just acquiring points throughout the game, and whoever is the
most points in the end wins. It goes five rounds.
It's a really good game like and it's really not
very complicated. It's just you're just playing cards and acquiring
abilities for your superhero. You choose which of those abilities
you're going to use each round. Yeah, sometimes you can

(01:02:00):
use most of them. Sometimes you'll have to focus on
just a couple because you kind of a restriction in
terms of how much you can do. Yeah, that's it.
That's the game Origin Story. It's from publisher stone Meyer Games.
So you can order directly from their website. They have
a really good web store. It's like really easy to
use and really comprehensive and well set up. So yeah,
Origin story very cool.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
Cool. All right. So yeah, that's a god Man Dream Seeker.
Is this an EP or like a full album?

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
It's an EP. It's a five song EP.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Yeah, okay cool. God Man and Cyberbully, both of those
on band camp. God Man is on Spotify and other platforms.
And then the board game Origin Story and those are recommendations.
And then there's the all the stuff that we talked
about in this episode around sex and disability. And I
think that that is what we have to say about
this topic, unless there's anything you'd.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Like to add.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Nothing else, all right, As I said, thank you all
for listening. We appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
This Abraham and this is a Shane. We're out see.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Yeah, you've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD w w D podcast dot com. Thanks
for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.