#cripsex

[crippleprophet]

forcemasc? no i said forcemask. put the n95 on.

[campgender]

I am eight months pregnant. It’s a summer night and I’ve curled my girlfriend’s fingers around my own and led her to our bedroom. I have become an expert at making love to my girlfriend. A dozen years of perfecting the dance. I know exactly when to bite her skin, when to caress her, when to pound her, and when to hold her. I know how to move inside, and I know how to rub and pull and make her body rise.

It’s hard to find a position to reach her. Should I sit cross-legged or on my knees or lie on my side? What angle affords me the longest timeframe before my legs or arms get cramped and I lose steam? I twist into a spot and push all the blankets off the bed. I get to work. I feel my confidence return; I feel a little butch again. Even if I barely sense the warmth of my own body, I can take good care of my femme, and I am proud of that. But my fingers begin to go numb.

It’s been happening for the last couple of months. I lose feeling in my right hand. The nerve is squeezed somewhere in my arm, and the midwife and Google tell me it’s a common side-effect of pregnancy. Damn it. I depend on the delicate precision of my fingers. I hunger to touch and feel my girl. Damn. I don’t stop moving my fingers. I can tell by the rhythm of my lover’s breathing that they continue to do the job. I close my eyes and concentrate. I depend on the focus of my brain, even as my fingers lose all feeling.

Is a butch still a butch without her clothes, her body, her libido, her physical strength? Who was I in those moments? I felt far away from other butches and far away from myself. I felt calm, too. The pregnancy, despite its limitations, was peaceful. The hormones had kicked in. The urgency left my bones. I could feel the bliss of the new life in my body as my mind drifted into daydreams of the birth. I inhabited a spacey land, where I didn’t care about anything except the movement of the baby inside. But as much as I enjoyed the tranquility, I might have panicked if I thought it would go on forever. For my entire life, my knowledge of the world has been grounded in a sense of myself as a butch. When I couldn’t see myself any more, I became a body without any meaning attached to it. I felt vague, adrift.

Hilary takes portraits of me. She puts on a sun dress, lifts her heavy black Nikon, and stretches her arms. When she photographs you, she leads your body from one position to the next as she snaps the shots.

“Sit on the chair. Now stand, straddle it,” she directs. “Lift your head, turn, now look away, and turn back once more. Good.”

She searches a body, a face, the eyes for something she understands about its history, vulnerability, desire. You could stand right next to her and take a photo of the same person, but you wouldn’t be able to capture the intimacy of her images.

On the day before my due date, I gather all the butch garments that will still cover my body—a tie, leather suspenders, XXL T-shirts, stretchy blue jeans, an exercise bra—and head outside. It is a cool summer day, cloudy, the sunlight is diffused evenly across our backyard patio. Perfect photo weather, according to Hilary. It’s a last chance to catch the picture of my pregnant body.

I slip in and out of clothing quickly, avoiding the curiosity of the neighbours in the apartment building beside us. They are busy with their barbecue; the smells of charcoal and burgers float over us.

Hilary guides me methodically through the shots. I look past the reflection on the lens, into the tiny hole of the aperture, and wait for the instant when the shutter snaps open and shut. I can see Hilary there, following the lines of my body. I sit up. I raise my chin. I smile. I look at her shamelessly with lust. I reach behind my head and lie down. I curl up into a ball. I give her my fiercest face. I frown. I plead. I worry. I daydream.

I find myself on my girlfriend’s contact sheets. I find myself through her eyes: a femme’s vision of a butch. In some shots, I don’t look pregnant at all. I still look like the young boyish dyke she picked up a dozen years ago. In others, my belly is bigger than a basketball. My proportions are alarming. My skin looks soft. My face is tired but relaxed. My gaze is vulnerable. My dark eyes are wide open, inviting her to capture me, but carefully—please be careful. I don’t look like other pregnant women. I look like an entirely different creature. A queer creature. A beautiful creature.

from “A Beautiful Creature” by Karleen Pendleton Jiménez, published in Persistence: All Ways Butch & Femme, ed. Ivan E. Coyote & Zena Sharman (2011)

[lesenbyan]

[ID: two images of a mixed race person [they/it] with a pink side cut. They wear a white lacy bralette and a short plaid high waisted skirt with heart shaped sunglasses, surgical mask pulled down over their chin. It has a forearm crutch in both images, the first showing their knee compression sleeve.

In the first image they stand, using the crutch for support, looking up at the camera. In the second it sits on a bench, legs spread, one arm over the top of the crutch. /end ID]

Trying reaaaaaaally hard to make disability sexy, is it working yet?

[They/It]

[firespirited]

Just wanted to let folks know that big dick energy for most has nothing to do with actual size (or even having a bio penis), small dick energy for most has nothing to do with actual size even though the wording needs some reworking (IMHO it's terrible shorthand for bad in bed)

In fact, you could argue andrew tate's penis was so big he tripped all over it.

Yes There are a few size queens/kings who are usually judgmental about the rest of the body too. People whose ideas have been warped by pron and airbrushing.

But for the vast majority of people, normal people who get the spark from conversation or a shared eye roll at a social event (not the types who swipe for the perfect model) are NOT interested in a set series of criteria for your genitals, you can test the waters early on by saying you feel some anxiety, if they listen and react correctly that's a good sign and anything else is a sign they're not for you.

If you are trying to be a good person, there are people out there who are going to love you, all of you and treasure your genitals because you're an attentive lover and that makes you fantastic in bed.

It doesn't matter if your genitals are small, chunky, lumpy, thick, floppy, soft, wonky, wrinkly, cold, unusual, gendered, scarred...

They will call them by words that make you feel sexy and confident, they will touch you in ways that make you feel respected and wanted. So much so that when the world tries to insult your genitals, a small secret smile will cross your face.

We might not get rid of the catchy "big dick/small dick" energy in the next five years but that's really not what most people are thinking about when they imagine a good lover.

And most of all, it's not what most people value : intimacy is trust, it's being able to have fun and be honest and vulnerable, and it's about wanting to make your partner feel happy and comfortable with you. Your genitals will be loved and sexy because they're yours.

[crippleprophet]

to the discerning cripple kt tape too is a type of lingerie

[crippleprophet]

Hey Mac! Do you have any crip books or resource recs for crip sex/sexuality?

Feel free to delete if you're uncomfortable answering :]

do i ever! i actually did an essay for my master’s in disability studies on the topic of disabled people’s access to sex so a lot of these are sources from that (feel free to dm me for my paper!) & others are things i’ve collected for leisure (hah)

i’m bolding my favorites and italicizing ones i haven’t read but have been recommended / have on my list; as with everything, having read a piece + recommending it is not an uncritical endorsement, & i have various contentions with all of these pieces ranging from minor nitpicking to outright disagreement.

feel free to send an ask or dm if you want my thoughts on a particular work or need help obtaining a pdf!

books

Sex and Disability ed. Robert McRuer & Anna Mollow

The Sexual Politics of Disability: Untold Desires by Tom Shakespeare, Kath Gillespie-Sells and Dominic Davies

Unbreaking Our Hearts: Cultures of Un/Desirability and the Transformative Potential of Queercrip Porn by Loree Erickson. York University, dissertation submitted 2015.

McRuer, R. 2006. Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: New York University Press.

Kinked and Crippled: Disabled BDSM Practitioners’ Experiences and Embodiments of Pain. Emma Sheppard. Edge Hill University, dissertation submitted 2017.

Love, Sex, and Disability: The Pleasures of Care by Sarah Smith Rainey

intellectually disabled people / people with learning difficulties’ right to sex

Hamilton, C. A. 2009. ‘Now I’d like to sleep with Rachael’ – researching sexuality support in a service agency group home. Disability & Society. 24(3), pp.303-315.

Hollomotz, A. 2008. ‘May we please have sex tonight?’ – people with learning difficulties pursuing privacy in residential group settings. British Journal of Learning Disabilities. 37, pp.91–97.

Vehmas, S. 2019. Persons with profound intellectual disability and their right to sex. Disability & Society. 34(4), pp.519-539.

Significance of the attitudes of police and care staff toward sex and people who have a learning disability by A. Bailey & D. Sines. Journal of Learning Disabilities for Nursing Health and Social Care (1998), 2(3), pp.168-174.

sexual facilitation & making sex accessible

Bahner, J. 2016. Risky business? Organizing sexual facilitation in Swedish personal assistance services. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research. 18(2), pp.164-175.

Linda R. Mona (2003) Sexual Options for People with Disabilities, Women & Therapy, 26:3-4, pp.211-221.

No Pity Fucks Please: A critique of Scarlet Road’s campaign to improve disabled people’s access to paid sex services by Tova Rozengarten and Heather Brook. Outskirts vol. 34, 2016, pp.1-21.

Julia Bahner (2013) The power of discretion and the discretion of power: personal assistants and sexual facilitation in disability services, Vulnerable Groups & Inclusion, 4:1, 20673.

BDSM, paraphilias, & alternative sex

Goldberg, C. E. 2018. Fucking with Notions of Disability (In)Justice: Exploring BDSM, Sexuality, Consent, and Canadian Law

Hollomotz, A. 2013. Exploiting the Fifty Shades of Grey craze for the disability and sexual rights agenda. Disability & Society. 28(3), pp.418-422.

Reynolds, D. 2007. Disability and BDSM: Bob Flanagan and the case for sexual rights. Sexuality Research & Social Policy. 4(1), pp.40-52.

Tellier, S. 2017. Advancing the discourse: Disability and BDSM. Sex & Disability. 35, pp.485-493.

Sheppard, E. 2018. Using pain, living with pain. Feminist Review. 120, pp.54-69.

Tyburczy, J. 2014. Leather anatomy: Cripping homonormativity at International Mr. Leather. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 8(3), pp.275-293.

Sheppard, E 2019, 'Chronic Pain as Fluid, BDSM as Control' Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 2.

other articles

Finger, A. 1992. Forbidden Fruit

Fritsch, K., Heynen, R., Ross, A. N., and van der Meulen, E. 2016. Disability and sex work: developing affinities through decriminalization. Disability & Society. 31(1), pp.84-99.

McKenzie, J. 2012. Disabled people in rural South Africa talk about sexuality. Culture Health & Sexuality. pp.1-15.

Shakespeare, T. 2000. Disabled sexuality: Toward rights and recognition. Sexuality and Disability. 18(3), pp.159-166.

Shildrick, M. 2007. Contested pleasures: The sociopolitical economy of disability and sexuality. Sexuality Research & Social Policy. 4(1), pp.53-66.

Wentzell, E. 2006. Bad bedfellows: Disability sex rights and Viagra. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. 26(5), pp.370-377.

“‘Like, pissing yourself is not a particularly attractive quality, let’s be honest’: Learning to contain through youth, adulthood, disability and sexuality” by Kirsty Liddiard and Jenny Slater. Sexualities 2018, Vol. 21(3), pp.319–333.

non-academic texts

Andrew Gurza’s blog - andrewgurza dot com / blog

Disability After Dark podcast

A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disability by A. Andrews

Cripping Up Sex with Eva

my cripsex tag, which i’ll add to this post, has other relevant content, & i welcome any additions from folks! all the best to you 💓

[campgender]

I consider you something of a patron of kinky crip sex so felt like I should let you know: huge win for the girls- I've started having my partner help me with PT type stuff and i've been successfully converted to a huge fucking masochist about it

omg i’m honored??? 💓💓 & fuuuck yes i love this so much for you omg, being a huge fucking masochist about pt is often the only way i’m able to get through it

[campgender]

so like. there’s a prominent idea in a lot of (organized) kink communities, which then becomes a mandate in their literature, that the Good S/M Practitioner either doesn’t cause long-term changes to their own or another’s body at all or only does so in a highly ritualized, emotionally significant manner (such as a branding ceremony). the most “casual” situation i can remember reading as an example of when people might give/receive a “permanent mark” was to commemorate a meaningful/special scene, which still implies that doing so during an average (or below-average) scene would be inappropriate.

which of course has some pretty concerning implications wrt bodily autonomy for intentional casual-permanent marking. but it also really restricts how i imagine my own life after developing a new disability/symptom/experience as a result of, or at least in tandem with, casual kink practices —

the other person involved with/throughout these changes in my body isn’t someone i know super well or have a formalized relationship with

we weren’t planning on / trying to do this; there was no negotiation about it

the meanings we were applying before we knew how it would escalate (eg her physical impact on my body is a sign of control/possession of me) are entirely different from the ones i’m usually comfortable with now

this might have happened eventually without her involvement

that’s not how it did happen, though, & it means something that she was there

this definitionally couldn’t have been RACK, right, we literally weren’t aware of the risks. but i doubt a single person without personal connection could’ve seen this coming

…& so on, & there is just no space for any of that murkiness within a binary framework of “serious committed premeditated intentional good long-term marking” versus “irresponsible unaware accidental evil long-term disabling.” which got me thinking — other than the occasional absurdly ableist warning example, these texts haven’t discussed people injured/disabled by kink beyond the disabling event(s).

what are our sex practices like now? how did people who left kink as a result cope with that transition? how did people who continued to practice adapt, if at all — whether physical accessibility or no longer playing the kind of scene where they were injured or post-traumatic experiences or playing those scenes more or different negotiation?

what would kink injury education look like that went beyond the 911 call?