Last month, the Disability and Sexuality Access Network (DASAN) held an online meeting to discuss growing the social justice organization. In total, 18 participants from around the world attended.

DASAN was formed in 2016 by Caz Killjoy and Amber DiPietra with the aim of breaking the taboo against the sexuality of disabled people. The community is comprised of disabled folks as well as allies “who believe that access to sexuality, pleasure, and intimacy is a fundamental human right.”

During the meeting, speakers explained why the collective project would benefit the disabled community. First of all, it would help to create a culture of care and support and a united voice in advocacy.

Secondly, it could create the opportunity to take online classes and webinars taught by the members of the collective, to help disabled people with their professional development.

Lastly, it would solve the problem of regional organizing within the community. 

Sharing sex ed resources

During the pandemic, many sex educators embraced digital ways of spreading their message. DASAN would like to distribute them further on its site and social media channels to promote knowledge about sex with a disability.

In addition, the association is working on the site’s dedicated resource section. The organization also says the DASAN blog will soon start offering a regular roundup of news related to disabled sexuality. 

Anyone in the disabled community working in an area related to sexuality issues is welcome to join the collective: bloggers, students, artists, and so on. There is no need for professional qualifications or degrees. 

Image credits: DASAN

You no longer need to watch VHS tapes or go to the corner store for a magazine. With an Internet connection, today you can view adult content almost instantly from a mobile phone or computer.

Your choices have also expanded greatly. As big adult studios lose their stranglehold on the industry, a larger spectrum of body types and eroticism are making their way on film.

Indie studios and online hubs like Himeros.tv, PinkLabel.tv, Crashpad Series, now feature queer and disabled performers having sex, even getting kinky at times.

Here’s a list of popular adult films featuring disabled performers. If you have any recommendations we didn’t share, please let us know in the comments section. We plan to keep updating the list as more resources become available.

Want – A film by Loree Erickson

Filmmaker Loree Erickson says her adult short film WANT “was the first of its kind in 2006.”

The 9-minute “queercrip porn” definitely made an impact, winning several awards including Sexiest Short at the 2008 Feminist Porn Awards.

WANT features Erickson alongside a trans male performer, who later became her lover in real life. Passionate and sexually explicit scenes are intertwined with “everyday moments and scenes of the ableist world.”

Last year, Erickson followed up her successful debut by airing Sexxxy Beasts & Wheelchairs at the 2019 Scottish Queer International Film Festival. The adult film is “made by and about Deaf and Disabled queer people.” It also costars Nommy, who describes himself as “bad ass, fat ass, Jew, dyke amputee.

Sexxxy Beasts & Wheelchairs is not yet available online. However, you can view the screenshots below in the meantime.

Erickson is also a postdoctoral fellow at Ryerson’s School of Disability Studies. Speaking to The Eyeopener, she points out common misconceptions about sex and disability:

For my students, porn is objectification: when I’m teaching, people will say [my video screenings] are not porn because I clearly have agency. They’ll also say there’s no sex but there’s definitely sex, just not heterosexual, cisgender penis in heterosexual, cisgender vagina. That’s why I think porn is such a useful medium—because it gets right at the heart of strongly held beliefs, stereotypes and misconceptions about who’s desirable and who’s a sexual agent.

Kenneth Cronin and Pierce Paris

Kenneth Cronin is a quadriplegic. At 18 he became paralyzed from the biceps down due to an injury.

But that hasn’t stopped him from pursuing his dream of being in adult film. Instead he got in touch with Davey Wavey, the founder of gay male site Himeros.tv.

In an email, Cronin shared his trouble finding a company that would film him. He also expressed his interest in taking a submissive role.

My perfect scene would just be something for an audience to understand that just because I live a little different life I am still a very sexual person, and that it is OK to be dominant over someone in my situation, as long as there is an understanding and respect before hand.

Cronin lucked out it seems! In January, Himeros.tv released an “aggressive” oral sex scene between him and popular adult performer Pierce Paris.

This list is just the beginning. We plan to add more sex and disability scenes soon, If you recommend any sex-positive content featuring disabled performers please share in the comments.

Image sources: Himeros.tv, PinkLabelTV,

Is sexual attraction to curving spines, scarred stumps, leg braces and prostheses any different to finding certain types of breasts, waists, and legs appealing? Devotees don’t think so.

If you don’t know, a (disability) devotee is someone who identifies as having a sexual attraction to disability—someone who finds the kinds of bodily difference that impairment can invoke sexually appealing, titillating and desirable.

In prevailing sexual cultures that reify sexual normalcy, this form of sexual attraction is pathologised as sexual perversion and paraphilia—a state in which a person’s sexual arousal and gratification includes fantasising about something deemed “atypical”, “abnormal” or “extreme.” Examples of this include abasiophilia—an attraction to disability aids such as leg braces, and acrotomophilia—an attraction to amputees.

A documentary on devoteeism, with a disabled presenter, the wonderful Emily Yates, aired on BBC Three in 2016.

As a proud disabled woman who researches the intersections of gender, sexuality and disability as a sociologist, it struck me as I sat watching—at 31 —how seldom I’d ever seen a disabled woman as a presenter or protagonist on television. We so rarely get to see disabled women as thinking, feeling, and acting subjects.

Yates’ confident and interventionist approach—which involved making her own devotee porn as part of her research for the documentary—served to counter common assumptions of disabled women as inherently vulnerable, undesirable and sexless.

Her self-made devotee porn film, in which she filmed herself transferring from her wheelchair to her car (it is not uncommon for devotees to want to see the pragmatics of living with disability), has since had more than 4,000 views, much to the excitement of the Daily Mail.

Such an approach embodied for the audience a woman—a disabled woman —provocatively playing with power, desire and pleasure in ways seldom avowed.

Hopelessly devoted to you

The debates that surround devoteeism as a practice are complicated, and take place both inside and outside of disabled people’s own communities and movements.

Devoteeism is a vehicle that opens up possibilities for rethinking the conventional erotic body at a time when narrowing aesthetic ideals—which very few people embody—are closing it down.

Devoteeism is often only viewed as a sexual fetish—a pleasure taken from the product of niche pornography—rather than a sexual preference, a form of intimacy, or part of a loving relationship. The latter are some of the ways disabled people in my own research have spoken about devoteeism, and of their own experiences with devotees.

Representations of devoteeism often reiterate well-rehearsed “preference or perversion” debates, when in reality devoteeism can be both, neither, and anything in between.

Proponents of devoteeism often argue that it serves to challenge conventional notions of beauty and attractiveness, as common understandings of the impaired body as “abject” and “grotesque” radically shift.

Power and pleasure

But for many, devoteeism is often far more about power than pleasure; a form of exploitation. Disabled people of all genders—but particularly women—can be abused and exploited by devoteeism.

In the documentary we see Yates become upset at the objectification of devoteeism—she questions whether the devotee with whom she is engaging is looking at her or her body, herself or, as she puts it, her “struggle”, the daily tasks she finds hard.

Devotees’ potential arousal at Yates’ “struggle”—marked as a point of shame for her—is degrading. A common thematic across much of mainstream pornography. Maybe, then, this raises broader questions about the limits of pornography, and disability within it?

Disabled people are routinely objectified, made a spectacle of and denied a lack of privacy in their lives; often reduced to object, other and burden. But the visual politics of pornography do not always have to render the subject an object. There are forms of pornography, such as self-directed porn and feminist porn (porn made by self-identifying feminists), which can give the subject much greater control over representation.

Sexual violence?

The documentary touched upon devotees secretly filming disabled people on the street, and stealing their images from social media—which of course, without consent, is sexual violence.

Disabled women already experience sexual violence in greater numbers than disabled men and non-disabled women. They also experience an overwhelming lack of access and support to leave situations of violence—partly because the majority of women’s services and refuges don’t cater to their needs.

But while abuse, exploitation and violence can be a reality for disabled people, these aren’t necessarily behaviours inherent to devoteeism as a practice—as long as full consent is present.

But we must also be mindful that disabled people can exploit and abuse devotees – vulnerability isn’t inherent to, nor the preserve of, disability.

So while devoteeism isn’t for everyone, sexual modes through which disabled people can erotically play with disability— in ways that do not reproduce them as an object—can be progressive.

It might be more helpful then, to consider the ways in which devoteeism, like kink, BDSM, and voyeurism can be safe, consensual, and reciprocal; and acknowledge that together pleasure, power and play are not innately deviant or dangerous, even in the context of disability.

Either way, Yates’ explorations embodied these complex debates in new and interesting ways. She has moved the conversation forward and done so from a perspective that is so often missing—that of disabled women themselves.

Kirsty Liddiard, Research Associate, School of Education, University of Sheffield

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image soures: BBC Three

How I see myself

My case is moderate. I walk and do so unassisted. I move with a motion, not unlike a limp, but not quite like one either: my pelvis is unstable, rotating freely like a gyroscope. 

I lurch forward; glide side-to-side. I go forth in a way few ever will. I am intrepid and brave—not because I exist with a disability, but because I dare to assert my humanity and sexuality under the crushing weight of your pity.

I am complex, and I revel in that complexity. The way my spine curves gently like a cobra, ready to strike; dignified.

This forces my shoulders back. When whimsy arrives and I raise my chin, it’s as if all of my components share a frequency—a voice that asserts, with the stoic calm of a unified whole: “You will see us.”

How I see you…seeing me

You will see my whole self. But until then, your gaze, like sandpaper, makes dust out of my mischievous spirit.

“You’re so… you’ll make someone so happy.”

“So smart”

“So funny”

“So kind”

So what?

“So sexy”

“So imaginative”

“So genuine”

“So exploratory”

That’s what your voice says. But your eyes; the lines I read between say…

“You’re Amazing! Oh, wait…you don’t drive? You don’t have your own place? You write? That’s cool, but do you have like…a real job?”

“You’re cute, but taking transit to a date? Ew.”

“You live at home? It’s nothing personal, but no thanks.”

“I just need something else. Like I said, nothing personal.”

It’s never personal, so why is it so exhausting?

“You’re so… if only you were normal, you would be so much easier to love.”

It’s difficult arithmetic, especially at first: What do you do when the positive messaging you receive is overshadowed or contradicted by the negative? How do you see yourself as whole, deserving, and strong when the world won’t? 

Living in sexual limbo

For me, being disabled means, in part, being acutely aware that my personhood is under constant scrutiny. As an articulate, witty, compassionate man who is vocal about his hopes, dreams, and desires, I don’t fit neatly into the negative stereotypes of a disabled person. 

But I am obviously disabled. Too disabled to be productive. Too disabled to be protective. Too disabled to take control. Too disabled to provide security Too disabled to be the man you need. None of it is true, but that’s the message

Not disabled enough to ignore, but too disabled to consider a romantic or sexual option.

That’s sexual limbo. That’s where I live. It’s torturous —a type of solitary confinement which slowly rusts the complex machinery that makes me the force for good that I am. In limbo, I’m sluggish. In limbo, my gears are grinding to a halt.

In limbo, I am not myself.

Sexuality is humanizing and healing

When my complexity and humanity are respected, I am myself. 

This is where sex positivity becomes extremely important.

As a disabled person, my disability is entwined with my other characteristics. I cannot compartmentalize. I cannot say “The way I walk is ugly to them, but my humor is attractive. I’m attractive.” 

I can’t feel sexy when a huge part of myself is seen as undesirable. It’s just not an option. So, it seems to me, you (when you view me) have a couple of options:

First, you can keep seeing disability as unattractive, undesirable; unrepresentative of your needs, wants and preferences

When you do this, it fractures me. I am not myself—I cannot be. The full breadth of my intellect, humor, kindness; everything that makes me great is inextricably linked to my disability.

Luckily, there’s a second option:

See disability as an integral part of the person and, by extension, their positive sexual (and other) characteristics

Guess what happens when you choose option two?

The disabled person feels whole, you’re acting ethically, and the sex is great. Why? Because no one is on guard.

My positive traits can work together to give us both a pleasant experience. Just consider:

• My intelligence can be put to work “figuring out” how to make sex fun.
• My humor can become an important aspect of foreplay, instead of a defense mechanism.
• My kindness can be translated into sexual generosity and understanding.
• My imagination, authenticity, and willingness to explore can make me extremely intrepid and adaptable.

But these positive outcomes can only happen when we feel whole.

I can’t please us when I’m lifting the weight of your scrutiny.

Let me be clear, I’m not arguing that you should find every disabled person you meet attractive.

What I am saying is this: If you meet a disabled person and you do find them attractive, there’s some real value in treating them as a full person who you’re fully attracted to, not a somewhat attractive person whose condition you’re “looking past.”

Who knows, you might just have the best sex of your life.

Image sources: Randall Oldenburg