Accessible Sex Education

gimpunk:

Call for submissions: Nonfiction anthology of essays dealing with disabled people’s romantic and sexual issues

This book’s target audience is disabled people interested in dating, sex, and alternative lifestyles. The intention is to have essays that can educate people that range from the young novice who might not believe that disabled people even can have romantic relationships to people who want applicable information on safer and more accessible sexual practices. What we need you to do is pick something you know about, even if you’re not an expert in it, and write an essay to people of visible and invisible disabilities who might rely on what you write to change their lives.

Suggested topics are:

• How to speak to someone you’re interested in
• How and when to discuss your disability with the would-be partner
• What to prepare for when meeting a partner’s friends and family
• Accessible dating options
• Online dating and inevitably how to mention you are disabled
• How to express your specific sexual needs or inabilities to your partner
• Tips on how to have sex with limited movement, sensation, etc. and how to avoid pain or injuries that would otherwise not be a problem
• Tips on Masturbation with limited movement, sensation, etc.
• Participating in the LGBTQ community and making sure your limitations are accounted for
• Introductions into the BDSM community and information on how dom–sub relationship can be beneficial and healing for disabled people
• Introductions into the devotee community
• Suggestions and advice on how to identify someone who may be dangerously fetishizing you
• Information on the high rates of abuse and molestation of disabled people with practical advice on how to protect yourself despite an array of limitations
• Risks in pregnancy and information on how to have the safest pregnancy and birth possible
• Advice for the social condemnation that comes with being a disabled parent
• And any other subject that falls within these themes.

Are you a disabled stripper? Are you a disabled matchmaker? Are you a disabled person that has a genuinely interesting and valuable personal story that can contribute to this collection? I want your submissions. Be as quaint or explicit as you like, be as poetic or textbook–esque as works best for you.

Not all submissions may be accepted due to the risk of having too much of one subject being rehashed, so my suggestion to you is to be as informative as possible as well as to put a real signature touch with personal examples in your piece. I will not reject anything that I find educational and empathetic; if this results in encyclopedia size book, so be it.

Submission guidelines
Genre: Nonfiction. All submissions must be an essay on either specific subject or your personal experience
Length: No limitations
Content rating: No limitations. If you are writing about sexual practices we encourage you to be specific as possible given that you must address people’s limitations and methods of accessibility
Number of submissions per person: one unless otherwise agreed upon with the editor (me)

Submissions are open and must be e-mailed to me at hgiel@live.com no later than December 31, 2012. Your submission must be in document format, in English, have a title, and have a short biography of the writer at the end. You need not use your real name; we will accept pennames.

There will be no monetary payment for submitting, as this book will be nonprofit but each person who gets accepted will receive a free paperback copy.

It was recently believed that I would be funding this project out of pocket but Good Mourning Publishing has decided to publish this book for us as a companion to the book Accessible Love Stories, an anthology of romance stories featuring disabled people that they published earlier this year. They’ve been gracious enough to understand the purpose of this new book and will set the price at cost as planned, which means they’ll make no profit from the sales so if you can, please buy a copy of Accessible Love Stories because the profits will go into funding this new book. The e-book version is only a few dollars on Amazon.

The book’s title and cover are still pending but I’m accepting submissions right away. If you have any questions or concerns send them into my blog Gimpunk or e-mail me personally at hgiel@live.com

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gimpunk:

ifyouveeverbeeninlove and I have been talking about the lack of information and education on things as simplistic as dating to having actual sexual relationships for disabled people, and since I know books I decided this might make a good idea for a book. I planned to do some background preparation first and maybe lineup a cover artist but since everyone is being so great about this already I like to start asking if anyone would like to submit an essay?

I will be publishing the book myself and it will be priced at cost meaning it will be cheap as possible (free e-book) and no profit will be made so no financial compensation can be offered although I will send a free paperback copy to all those published within the book.

We are looking for essays on everything from personal experiences, to applicable dating tips, sexual accessibility, alternative lifestyles, alternative communities, and anything else that falls within the theme. You need not be an expert on the subject you’re writing about or have to have any specific disability although the intention is to focus on physical disabilities both visible and invisible.

If you have any questions Feel free to ask them here as well as to suggest a topic for the book. If you have something you’d like to submit to the book you can send them to me personally at hgiel@live.com

Not everything can be accepted for the book because there is a risk of having too much of one subject but as long as something is well-written and informative or relatable I will make exceptions.

If you have the ability to write on a specific or unlikely subject for this book please submit!

I promise to have more information and a webpage set up for this book soon but allow me a little time because I’m doing this on my own; don’t let that make you hesitate I’m sending a submission anytime soon though, the more I have initially the easier it will be to plan for.

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Why I am crippled and not (dis)Abled, differently abled, or handicapable:

When you say that we are not disabled, when you say that we are “better than that”; that instead we are “handicapable”, simply “differently” abled, or when you haphazardly throw a parenthesis around an unsuspecting prefix, what you are really saying is that you are afraid. You are afraid of acknowledging the fact that someone can be disabled and still be human being, no more and no less than anyone else. You are afraid of our bodies; and try to lessen the blow by concealing them with normative labels.

When you say “See the Person, Not the Disability”; what you mean is: our bodies should be ignored and our experiences erased in order to make you more comfortable with our presence. What you mean is: Disabled bodies are offensive, macrabe, and they must be overlooked in order for the substance and the humanity of the person to be seen.

When you separate the person from the disability, you are erasing and denying a part of that person’s identity. People are not their disability, but their disability is a part of them, and you shouldn’t have to erase it, ignore, or see past it, in order to accept them.

For cripples who have difficulty identifying and conforming to socially constructed standards of the disabled population, the social media and atmosphere have conveniently provided us with a clear dichotomy between proper and improper crip behavior. As cripples we must recognize and adhere to the guidelines graciously laid out for us; anyone who does not adhere to such practices and behavior is at risk of disrupting oppression based stereotypes and coercing people to consider cripples on an equal individual basis rather than relying on sweeping generalizations.

1. Cripples are inherently tragic. Elaboration on this point is not necessary, and it’s entirely appropriate to insert a crip character into a story for the sole purpose of exemplifying cripples as broken lesser beings.
2. If a cripple is not working to overcome their disability or otherwise prove their worth, it is because they are bitter and irrationally angry at the world, not because they have self confidence or self respect.
3. Under no circumstance may a cripple be satisfied with their life. See 1.
4. Cripples will always be fixed or cured of their ailments through some miraculous or mystical intervention. Apparently they will also become some sort of white messiah and save a race of native blue people.
5. Cripples who are not fixed or cured will dissolve into rage and bitterness, become evil super-crips and go on a crusade to exact vengeance on the world.
6. If a crippled character is not being actively portrayed as tragic, angry, or inspiring they must acquire some super power to make up for their disability, because disability is not a state of being but rather a fundamental deficiency that one must transcend in order to be recognized as a human being.
7. Crippled characters are sexless. They should never be considered valid romantic or sexual partners and are either completely indifferent, resigned to their fate of being incapable and undesirable, or are explicitly sex-crazed. 
8. If a crippled character is in a relationship it is only because their partner is truly the most altruistic self sacrificing being on the planet, who is simultaneously resentful that they must care for a burdensome cripple. The relationship is of course tenuous at best, and will eventually end tragically (see 1).
9. Intersectionality or depth of character does not exist (see 1) in crippled characters. Disabled people of color, trans disabled people, or queer disabled people are like fucking unicorns.
10. Crippled characters need a charitable able bodied person to take pity on them and rehabilitate them; otherwise they will be utterly incapable of participating in life. A crippled character’s lack of participation has nothing to do with the problematic way society is organized; they are simply stubborn and bitter crips who refuse to contribute anything meaningful to the world. 
11. Cripple characters can also be employed as easy comic relief for films lacking in humorous flare; because cripples being crippled is hilarious. No one knows why, they just are.
12. If by some mishap a crippled character manages to accomplish anything on their own accord, you should forever document it as the most inspiring thing you have ever witnessed. You should also take a picture of it and caption it with something incredibly degrading like “the only disability in life is a bad attitude”
13. They should also probably institutionalized, euthanized, or otherwise segregated to protect the rest of the population. That shit could be contagious.  

Government subsidized sex services for people with disabilities is not a sex positive movement. Using this as an argument to defend the validity of sex work is degrading and harmful to people with disabilities. 

On several occasions I have also seen these services referred to as “community service”. If you cannot immediately grasp why this is harmful to people with disabilities, read it again. If the debasing implication of this statement still eludes you, interchange “community service” with “charity”.

This supports the already pervasive claim that people with disabilities are not whole enough to be considered sexually worthy, and no one would voluntarily have sex with someone who is disabled. People with disabilities are blatantly and consistently scrutinized for their body and appearance, they are reduced to a clinical specimen by the medical professionals who treat them, they are excluded from and denied access to able bodied activities. Rather than throwing around condescending policy solutions this money should be used to educate people about sex and disability and rid the world of the taboo surrounding this subject. This pseudo disability positive solution is not an attempt to gain understanding of the sexual desires of disabled people, but to further distance them from what has been deemed the normal population.

Disabled people are constantly made to feel that it is their own abnormal, undesirable body that is at fault for this segregation, when in reality the body shaming stigma implemented by society is to blame.

I’m tired of seeing sex positive blogs treat this as a positive solution. There are numerous  arguments that defend sex work  as a legitimate occupation, and sex workers by no means deserve the negative stigma surrounding their business. But please stop pretending that implementing this argument that so readily supports sex workers does not simultaneously take a giant shit on the disabled community. 

Putting aside money for these services misses the point; put money aside to educate both able bodied and disabled people about this subject, rather than furthering the taboo of disability and sex.

Fuck you, fuck your charity.

We are not less.