Disability & Sexuality

I started being turned on by enemas, suppositories, manual evacuations and any doctor doing things like listening to my heart at around the age of 12. As a disabled child the doctors and nurses didn't expect me to have any kind of feelings about what they thought of as medical procedures. Don't know what they would have thought if they knew about the arousal! Disabled child - sexual feelings - they don't have them, do they?!?!?!

Also... met my husband in 1985 at a rehab college for disabled adults. One of the rules was "No male/female relationships allowed"! Women and men were housed separately, and the quarters of the opposite sex were strictly off limits. They never said anything about same-sex relationships though - probably never entered their heads that disabled people do that too!

I suppose you had to go "off-campus" to do the evil deed!

I can see a "no fraternizing" rule in a business office, but NOT in a college.

I work with adults with various disabilities and can see that mentality with families where their kids are married to others with disabilities. It's like they think that because they are disabled that they do not have any sexual feelings or pleasures. Really bothers me that people think that way.

Re #2

Actually, we got away with it without going off campus - we were just careful (and I was going home with him for weekends). Even went to his room once when he was ill. (Not as risky as it sounds - the medical room was in the same building and if caught I was going to claim that I had a headache, got lost and was asking for directions!)

A friend of mine was talking about this the other day. She works in a rehab hospital for people who have lost limbs, or had accidents paralyzing them and was talking about how until about 10 years ago no one talked about the disabled having sexual desires or needs. She mentioned that to this day people are shocked that some one who is wheelchair bound might desire sex with their partner.

I am disabled as well (amputee) and I have a healthy and active sex life, but it took some time. Getting over the body image problem was a big hurdle. Fortunately, my life has been graced with two wonderful men who couldn't give a fig about a missing leg. To this day, the only medical professional that has asked me about physical relationships is my GYN. The others have skillfully ignored it. When I told my former PCP that I was entering a relationship, he gave me the safe sex/condom lecture (I was 50 at the time). It was rather endearing, if a little misplaced.

Just because our bodies or minds are different doesn't mean we don't have the same urges and needs as an "able" person. And when we find caring partners, we should go for it, with gusto.

To me, the question of disability in either the context of one's sexuality, or in other aspects of living, ranks in terms of unimportance with colour, creed, size, sexual orientation - and all those other alleged 'differences'. For that is what they are - just differences!

There is absolutely no reason to hold a view that people with disabilities don't have sexual feelings and desires, nor to believe that those disabled folk who do have sexual feelings shouldn't have them!

Disability in the sexual realm or the medfet play scene might require adjustments, just as disability in other walks of life . Some activities for sure might not be possible but with a little imagination, a little laughter and amusement maybe, disabled people get on just fine.

Maybe its more important to concentrate more on Ability, rather than Disability!

You're so right BigK - I just wish everybody thought like that! (And that they had thought like that when I was growing up)

Thanks for starting this topic Amy. I was born with Spina Bifida in 1958 and can relate to many of the post here. Interestingly enough I have found as a got older there were more women who were willing to look past the disability and be interested in dating or a relationship. One of the upsides to aging I guess. Oddly, when I was younger I had tried to date women who also had disabilities thinking we would have these shared experiences but much to my surprise found out that many younger women with disabilities were not interested in dating men who were also disabled . . . . . Just the other day I was watching a new show on the Sundance channel called 'Push Girls'. Its a reality TV show based in LA with four women all in wheelchairs. During one of the segments the one women said she won't date men in wheelchairs! Go figure?

A girl I knew vaguely started talking with me one time on as ferry ride and we agreed to go to a movie.

We got to talking(after the movie and in between necking and petting) a she had the related problems from severe spina bifida, which left her with leg braces, two artificial hips and from having an ostomy and an iliostomy temporarily

Being her first, her friends, family and doctors were at first uneasy but came to except she had regular sexual needs like anyone else

When I was employed by a voluntary health organization, I became close friends with a number of the clients. They all were sexual animals, just like those of us who are able bodied.

Let me relate a few things. Many of the male patients were not functional and this was well before the days of products like Viagra, so they required understanding and really confident partners to have a relationship. That being said, most of the men were able to have satisfactory relationships with their wives. The tensions in their relationships came from other aspects of living with disabilities.

One of our guys wanted to see a porn flick. He was an incomplete quadriplegic and lived with his elderly mother. One of the other guys and I came and got him with one of our vans and we took him to a dirty movie theater which was run by a friend of mine. He had a great time.

We found out that he could get erections from visual stimulation. We also found out that he was a 47 year old virgin. Now his mother had to know what we were up to, but she pretended ignorance and went along with the plan.

I told a friend of my then wife's sister about my client and his desire to get laid. She gave me a not so shy smile and said she would do him if we could arrange it.

We told his mother that we would care for our client one night so she could spend the night with friends. She had to know we were up to something, but she went along with the plan. The other worker showed up early on and then I came by with the girl. She was young, pretty and really excited about the whole thing.

We left them alone in our client's room. She was quite efficient as she got the client naked and hard and slipped him inside her. They carried on for quite a while and it seemed that both were happy with the result.

When I was taking the girl home, she said, "Doing it with a quad is not bad if you don't mind doing all the work".

The other one that stands out is one of our younger female clients. She had a lusty sense of humor and was always pulling things on me. I was responsible for helping our clients with their catheters and she often had little surprises for me like not having on panties.

We went on field trips with many of our clients quite often. Before one of these, I told this girl that she should wear a mini-skirt (it was a long time ago) and no panties. When I picked her up and put her in the car, she lifted her skirt to show me that she indeed was bare down there. She had not only left her undies at home, but she had removed her pubes which was virtually unknown in those times.

Speed

I am a devotee so I am primarily attracted to men who have disabilities. The problem I have had with finding a likely life partner is not the disability but the socio-economic reality. Folks with disabilities have a 75% unemployment rate in this country so most are living at or below poverty level. I am not looking for a man to support me but I'm not looking to support him either!

I am disabled due to spinal cord disease. I require full time use of wheel chair's. I am older,and gave up on finding any one who could be my friend with benefits. I did find her, a technician in a urology clinic. I was in for a procedure, and after the poke and grope, we went to coffee.

We had coffee several time's and finally a date. She was great, I was blessed. I have ED but she breathed some life into me. We are good friend's, occasionally have sex, no penetration so far, but I have an orgasm at time's.

I am also able to satisfy her desire's with toy's, my touch, and other way's. What a change in my life. Two people are happier, and all it took was some coffee and conversation.

Congrats beans, being happy in life is important.

Mashie