Claiming Intimacy as a Disabled Woman

Richard_Scope

Full article from New Mobility

I first contemplated sex as a disabled woman 35 years ago while sitting through the standard sex talk in inpatient rehab. A group of us, mostly men (as 78% of people with SCI identify as male), watched an uncomfortable video of paralysed people engaging in sexual activity and listened to health care professionals break down the mechanics of sexual activity. They talked about function, erection aids, fertility … but intimacy? Not a word. A woman’s point of view? Left for us to discover on our own.

You can hear a pin drop in the silence surrounding sexual intimacy and disability. Breaking that silence brings something else: Agency. Because claiming intimacy isn’t about what we’ve lost — it’s about what we own. It’s about demanding space in a conversation we’ve been excluded from, about exploring pleasure in a body the world assumes is incapable of it, about rejecting shame and choosing desire instead.

Society tends to portray women with physical disabilities as asexual or undesirable, and when that message is reinforced again and again, it’s easy to start believing it. To the contrary, women with paralysis are sexual beings who can and should engage in and claim intimacy on their own terms.

Learning Your Body Again

Claiming intimacy starts with exploration — learning, testing and discovering what works in this new version of your body. Physical rehabilitation is often about functionality — learning how to transfer, how to dress, how to navigate the world again. But no one prepares you for the deep personal work of learning how to feel again, how to connect pleasure with sensation, how to process a body that no longer moves or responds the way it once did.

Kelsey Peterson is probably best known for co-directing and starring in the documentary film Move Me. She also writes and blogs about sex and sexuality on Substack. But long before she started down those paths, she found herself facing all of these questions in the wake of a 2012 SCI.