"[dramatic music]" "[music continues]" "I have arthrogryposis." "[Sins invalid Intern, Performance Artist] which is a specific form of hemiplegia." "It's a congenital orthopedic condition that mostly affects" "muscle growth and also joint flexibility and atrophy." "My disability is mild cerebral palsy and the secondary is chronic pain." "I was born with lumbar cyclogenesis" "[Filmmaker, wheelchair dancer] which means that I was born without 5 vertebrae." "So from my hips to my ribs there are no bones." "So I can do this." "(laughing)" "Without my ass leaving the seat." "That's right." "My disability is called arthrogryposis." "[Special education teacher]" "It affects about one in 3000 people." "And you're born with it." "Basically it's a joint condition." "All my joints and ligaments are really tight, and my muscles are weak and underdeveloped." "My bones are... slightly weak." "So what you get it's a lot of contractions." "So for instance, my jaw is actually contracted," "So I can't open my mouth very wide." "My hips are both dislocated." "All of my joints are kind of messed up." "I talk about people with disability as experts." "I'm really good at dealing with my disability." "I know exactly what it is, I know exactly what it means, and I know exactly how I adapt to it for what I do in the world." "So that makes me an expert." "I'm not unable." "I'm actually very able in the context of being somebody who happens to not be able to walk, because of the injury that I had 37 years ago." "My first word was 'squirrell'," "I think my next word was 'mum' and my word after that was 'disability'." "It was a word that I needed to be able to articulate something that was going on with my body." "It just means limited ability." "My physical ability is limited in specific ways." "I think that's the reason why" "I personally don't like the word 'disability' to describe what's going on with me, because it's not specific enough." "Because it just sounds like... my ability is dissed." "When someone asks you "What's your definition of 'disability'?"" "My thought is..." "Your body or your mind... works in a different way than... society's standards." "You just go about things a little bit differently." "The problem with the word 'disability' is that it has a negative connotation from the get-go." "It automatically implies that there is something that somebody can't, or something that somebody isn't." "And that becomes defining." "A foundational defintion of the way somebody thinks of somebody." "And then it builds over into everything, including sexuality." "I think one of the things that defines beauty in general to people..." "[Able-bodied ex-partner / Law student] tends to be a little normative." "People will look at something and think it's beautiful if it falls under certain guidelines, and they really strictly define that." "And I think that is definitely what puts so much stigma on the idea of someone with a disability being a sexual person." "Because people can't quite connect the dots between the idea that someone has a non-normative body or presentation and the fact that they might be sexual." "And I think the same runs true for people who are really overweight, or who look in some way different from that idealized, commercialized view of what attractive people are." "I walked up until I was 17, the only two things I couldn't do was ice-skating or riding a bike." "At 17 a bunch of surgery was done... to make me normal?" "I don't really know." "They straightened my legs, so that I would walk better." "All that stuff." "And then literally they cut everything from the hips down, with like bone cutters." "It wasn't pretty." "And at 17, because I was almost 18 when this happenned." "That's a really crucial time, I would think." "Meanwhile, I had no clue about how my body worked." "Someone just took off my legs and put someone else's on." "And I had no idea I..." "anything really..." "It really screwed my sense of sexuality and beauty, like you said earlier." " And identity, yeah?" " And identity, because I lost everything." "Everything I thought I was, I really got shattered, not knowing, and being so broke." "When I would bring that to the doctor, who was male, always a male." "What about sex, what about babies?" ""Why are you thinking about that?" "That's never gonna happen for you."" "That was not even on his radar, why am I clinging on?" "At some point I thought I wanted a family..." "A lot of that is not addressed medically at all." "That kind of screwed me up for a while, mentally as far as beauty, because I kind of got twisted in my head, it's just flesh, it means nothing." "It's just flesh, so why to treat it nice." "One of my first opinions of myself as a person with a disability who was sexual or hoped to be sexual one day... was that none was going to find me sexually attractive." "That was a really big thing." "I was like holding myself to this really specific almost scary standard." "Like needing to be... as groomed and as femmy and as presentable as possible because for me it was less forgivable to not look good." "Because my disability and whatever else I thought it was weird about my body, like being one of the only black kids in my school and other stuff, it was like I had to make up for it always in some ways." "And I think that what I didn't realize is that is not all about people finding you sexually attractive." "I was like "oh!" when I realized that people did find me attractive." "I thought that my world would open up, and everything would be awesome, once people thought I was hot." "And then I realized that people can think you are hot and still objectify you and not think of you as a person, and not really want to be in a relationship with you, and not take you home to mum and dad," "and not see you as a real relationship potential at all." "So once I realized I could fuck people," "I started this mantra of "but I'm not a girlfriend potential"." "Beauty for me is more like... something that catches my eye and makes me feel something, or makes me think differently." "Something that makes me think is beautiful, because I'm thinking outside the box or seeing something different of what it is." "I identify as pansexual, which most people don't know about it, have never heard about it." "Basically "pan" is a prefix that essentially means all-encompassing" "And so pansexual refers to someone who is attracted pretty much to anybody." "For me, I don't define myself as bisexual, because I'm not just attracted to a cisgendered female or a cisgendered male." "I'm attracted to people of all diferent genders, including transgendered individuals, androgynous individuals, gender queer, gender fluent." "Everybody." "For me, it doesn't really matter what's between the legs so much as what's between the ears." "So much of what people want to believe about boys is that we're strong." "In a really specific kind of way is that we can provide, is that we can take care of people, is that we can lift heavy boxes, and smooth the lawn." "I guess it's been interesting being able to think of myself as a boy who is abject from that, as a boy who is definitely not inside of this prescribed idea of what a boy should be." "Not only because I look like a girl in certain ways or I'm perceived as a girl." "But also because even if I take testosterone, even if I do all of these medical things that are going to change my appearence in really intense ways, even if I do those things, I'm still going to be disabled." "I'm still going to be a physically disabled boy," "I'm still not going to be able to always top someone in bed, or pick them up and throw them over my shoulder and carry them away to my cave." "Those are not things that I'm going to be able to do." "So me interacting with someone sexually as a certain kind of male person still needs to acknowledge my disability." "And I think that there are really interesting ways that people conceptualize disability as feminizing you and also infantalizing you." "[dramatic music]" "In 1973 I was 18 years old and I fell from a tree from 25 feet up, [music continues] and broke two vertebrae in my spine and it compressed my spinal cord." "With a spinal cord injury, the brain can't communicate below the level of that injury to the cord." "But my level of injury is pretty low, which is why I have full use of my arms and my upper-body and my hips." "That's the way my body works." "I'm not paralized from the waist down," "I'm paralized from the thighs dow." "It's different from each person." "After my injury, I had surgery to repair my spine." "I stayed in the hospital and then I did 7 weeks of rehabilitation." "It was a really important part of this whole experience because they taught me how to live with my paralysis." "They taught me wheelchair skills, they taught me to undress myself, they taught me how to take care of my body, and deal with changes in my body." "And they made me strong." "After 7 weeks in the rehab hospital, I went home, and that was my first experience of starting to be out in public, and of sensing how people were reacting to me, but also of how I was feeling about the way people were reacting to me." "That was the bigger part." "I wanted credit for having been a walking person." "At first, it was an adjustment process of integrating my own sense of myself as a person with a disability, because my point of reference was still as a walking person." ""I'm one of you, everybody!" "This isn't really who I really am."" "I think that people in general... it can't be said for everybody, but people in general associate disability with not only a physical involvement but a mental involvement very often." "For example, we have several friends with CP and when they talk" "I do see people in public who almost immediately get an expression on their face that to me reads" ""I think that your mental faculties are not what mine are."" "We're seen as having so many issues and we have to be pitied." "My legs don't work well, why would I think about sex?" "So for me it's so disconnected." "But for an able-bodied person who doesn't either experience disability or doesn't interact with people who experience disability," "it makes sense to them that if your body doesn't work the way theirs does, then, you must not be interested in sex?" "I don't get it, because I'm on the other side." "I do think there's pressure to not view people with disabilities as sexual." "I remember going to a concert with my little brother, and he was like..." "He is this gung-ho about disability rights and equality... as anyone I've ever met in a chair, even though he's able-bodied." "Because he grew up with me seeing how I got around and that's normal to him." "Other people wouldn't care about me doing stuff which is so important to him." "We went to that concert, he brought one of his friends along and I drove both of them" "And sitting in front of us was a girl I played basketball with, that I had not seen in ages." "Once I dropped my brother's friend off at home he says "It was nice to see Amanda there"." "He's like: "Yeah, man, she got hot!"" "(laughing)" "I was like "Oh!" "Really?"" "What would Mike say?" ""I wouldn't tell that to Mike"." "Very often, when you see disability represented sexually in a way is like fetishization." "There are people who are turned on by disability." "They are called devotees." "There are couples in the world, where one person is actually stimulated by the disability of the other person." "And they're completely honest and open completely understood and nobody is forced to do anything." "And it works for them." "But like in any sexuality, it's communication and honesty that counts." "And what happens with devotees is that it can be very unhealthy, it can be very dangerous." "Because some of those people actually want to cast the person with a disability into a certain role." "So you have to be careful." "They have got to be a little more discerning about the people that they're with and why that person may be choosing to be with them and to be able to say "Now, I'm out of here"," "if they sense that's what's going on." "It's another unfortunate social stereotype that" ""Oh!" "Somebody with a disability has somebody who wants to have sex with them, you better stick around and put up with anything because you might not find another partner, right?" "It is really an insulting way to think about people with disabilities, as it is for anybody." "I think that when it comes to sexuality to what your aid helps with and or doesn't help with, it really depends on the person and their disability." "I have friends with cerebral palsy and other disabilities who cannot help themselves... masturbate." "If that was something that was comfortable between the client and the aid, I would not judge it." "For me, the only times I've been sexually involved with one of my aids was when they were actually partners prior to becoming my aids." "That must be very distinct." "When you're here to aid, it's a job." "I reserve the right outside of our relationship to redirect" "or fire if need be." "To make a judgement to redo something, as I would do basically as your employer." "However, when those hours of aiding are over." "then those hours of aiding are over." "[music]" "[laughing]" "People are scared." "They don't know what they're dealing with and what people don't understand... it's an old old adage but it's true:" "What people don't know scares them." "They're not sure how it's gonna work." ""Do you have feeling there?"" ""What does your disability mean to how we can be involved sexually?"" ""Is it just gonna be horrifyingly awkward?"" ""Am I gonna feel guilty?"" "And all of these things." "Unfortunately a lot of people are not only scared but sometimes selfish in the sense that they think "I don't want to deal with it"." "They don't see people with disabilities as potentials for long-term partners." "And they certainly don't see people with disabilities as potentials for flings or... affairs or things like that because they think they should be easy, or if I'm gonna have a one-night stand with somebody," "I'm gonna walk away afterwards and not have to feel responsible or guilty." "I think the idea of adding disability to that makes people... feel guilty." "And that's one of things in society that just needs to change." "My first introduction to sexuality didn't really have a lot of room for dialogue, or a lot of room for consesuality or a lot of room for body positivity." "Any of that stuff." "It was a lot with..." ""Ok, you're cute enough for me to sleep with you, we'll do that thing"." "But I didn't feel the room to deal with things like:" ""My body can do this thing, but it can't do this thing."" "Or "That hurts"." "Or "This doesn't feel good, but this feels good"." "Which are all things that I definitely care about being able to communicate now." "[music]" "I met him when he was in middle school, and I was in high school." "He and a group of his friends stopped me walking down the street and surrounded me and asked me if I was a lesbian because I had a rainbow buttoned on my purse." "I told him I wasn't and they all surrounded me and started grabbing me and one of them jumped onto the back of my wheelchair and grabbed my chest and held on really tight" "And said: "Do you like that?" "Do you like that?"" ""You're a lesbian." "Do you like that?"" "I remember being like..." ""Ok, this is not gonna happen right now."" "And as much as I was scared at that moment," "I was like "This is not gonna happen"." "And I turned my mini-motorized wheelchair, and I said: "You're gonna need to get off now."" "And I turned my speed up all the way and I just started driving as fast as I could with this kid on my fucking back holding on to my fucking boobs like "(annoying sounds)"." ""Oh!" "You can't talk as good now that I'm driving, can't you?"" "And then we got to the end of the road, and there was a huge step probably this tall." "My chair totally took off and this kid fell off the back, and then I went back around, and he was still on the sidewalk and I went back up and came back and just ran over his feet and legs a few times... while he screamed." "And then I got a coffee." "The feeling that I wouldn't even be considered as a sexual partner was a top thing to face." "This sense that women were looking at me and not reacting to me in that way, as a possible partner." "And I was struggling with this anyway before my injury." "Once I met my friends in New York, my friend Ellie came along to." " Ellie is able-bodied." " Ok." "And my fellow Pete, who uses a chair and Wally, who's bling." "And everyone was talking to Ellie about how great she was for coming." "All right, that's..." "I'm the one who drove here." "(laughing)" " What the hell!" "Everyone was "That's so nice of you"." "And then they continued to hit on her." "As if she didn't come here with three guys." "And so these cisgendered boys who were often able-bodied who were often able to carry me up and down the stairs." "If I didn't want to be with them necessarily if I didn't want to be sexual with them, what would that mean for my future of partnerships." "Is it possible for me to try to take on a different sort of sexual role, as a disabled person?" "When so much of my relationships to people has had to do with dependence?" "So..." "This girl over here and I were together for 3.5 years" "And I'll tell the story of basically the form in which we decided we're no longer just friends and we'll be in a "relationship"." "In our relationship, when I first got involved with Lauren, we had actually not been talking for some time." "I was going through something very personal at that time involving my gender identity and my orientation." "And she had approached me about it, and offered a lot of support and openness, something that a lot of other people weren't willing to do at the time." "Then a mutual friend that was my roommate actually came to me and said:" ""Yes!" "So Erin is no longer Erin." "Erin is he." "Erin is now Shay." "I was like "That's a really difficult road to go along." "That's cool though."" "I sent Erin a message on Facebook, actually I sent Shay a message and I said "What's up?"" "Despite her past..." ""It sounds like you're going through some tough things," "I wanna let you know, if you need somebody to talk to or whatever, I'm here."" "Shay responded and basically we went out for a coffee or something like that, some cliché thing." "We started talking, then somehow Shay became my aid, and we were talking more" "We were working closely together and had to stay somewhere overnight, and there was one bed in the hotel room which was terrifyingly awkward..." "So, you know, we're laying down... going to bed..." "Shay turns to me and says:" "Have you ever been kissed?"" "I was like "No"." "Shay says "Oh!" and then he kisses me." "I had kind of wanted to approach the subject of potentially being involved in some way in a relationship with her anyway." "So I cheated and used the fact that there is only one bed to kind of... you know... be all snuggly and stuff." "I knew that the world didn't view me as a viable option for a real relationship and, you know, I had a crush on this guy." "And I was just hoping that something would happen" "I didn't have the confidence to try to make it happen and then it happened" "And it was and cute and cliché and wonderful, all at the same time, and it was perfect..." "Like the next week you moved in." "(laughing)" "And eventually somehow we got back round to Erin." "That was kind of our favourite story." "Certainly a defining story." "[music]" "Morgan:" "I first serious relationship was with Matthew and we met playing wheelchair basketball in a club in Philadelphia." "There're only two teams in the area:" "one in North and one in the South." "We just met playing basketball at 17." "The first time we actually had sex... lasted very quickly." "not for the usual reasons though." "(laughing) Morgan:" "Yeah, not..." "Yeah, yeah, we just did the usual." "We messed around on the floor..." "I was on my back... and then you hopped on, slid in and then you had hop." "You hopped for like 10 seconds." "Not longer than that." "A few minutes." " What?" "!" " Yeah." "(laughing)" "I was stuck, I was trying to get off." "Yeah." "(laughing)" "It was that, ok." "Yeah, so like two minutes." " He fell sleep afterwards." " Yeah?" "And I was like "Ok, that was it"." ""That was sex."" ""Everyone talks about it for ever, and that was it?" "Wow..."" "I was so misled." "But then we tried 3-4 more times..." ""Yeah!" "We're good!"" "It was crazy, it was like first time and then [unintelligible]." "I think that being able to have queer sex, or opening myself up to queer sex, and feeling good about it... a lot of about what has taught me how to have sex both with a different body and with different bodies." "Because you are already thinking about new ways that you do things, you are already thinking outside of this normative paradigm of "Missionary position, this is how people have sex"." "Mazique:" "Reine lived in the dorms, at my second year at Hampshire, she was a first year." "I remember the first time that... we ever spent the night together." "It was really really lovely and the whole night we didn't have like sex at all." "It was really just about breath and about skin and about finger nails and biting  and exploring differences between convexes and concaves, moving with each other." "And it was so cool." "Because the whole time she kept saying:" ""Is this ok?" "Is this ok?"" "And I was like "What are you doing?" "Where I come from, people don't talk during sex."" "(joyful laughing)" ""Why do you keep asking me if it's ok?" "Of course it's ok."" "I'm making good sounds." "But it was awesome, really good." "That was one of my first introductions to what consensual intimacy could be." "A lot of times you had to look at things and think very hard about whether is gonna work ahead of time or at least be willing to adjust once you were there to make it work by adjusting things a lot before you could really get going." "And specially if you're dealing with somebody who has chronic pain or a lot of pain." "I think a lot of people have this weird assumption... or maybe it's not weird, I just think it is because I'm used to it... that they're gonna break you" "If you have a disability and I'm rough with you," "I'm gonna hurt you really badly." "And so they're not willing to be a little bit rough, and specially if your partner likes those things, there's definitely some hesitancy, so you have to kind of learn where those person's boundries are," "what's painful to them specifically and what's not." "We did a lot of that as well." "I had to make adjustments for things that wouldn't hurt me at all" "But hurt her." "Every person's disability has a different kind of impact on their sexuality" "And spinal cord injury has a very specific effect on the nervous system... what is possible for somebody to feel or how their body functions." "So for me, I was injured in the part of the spinal cord which is exactly right in the area where sexual interaction takes place." "So for me, I lost sensation on the surface of my penis," "I have internal sensation but the on the surface I have very very little." "And it stops right at the base of my groin." "It's sort of a cruel design of gods." "So that part of the spinal cord and nerves happen to be built in a way where that's right where it stops." "And also my ability to ejaculate was affected by this." "But I had to find out for myself what all this meant." "The first thing I was concerned about was "What can I do?"" "And "Will I be able to enjoy the experience?"" "I already knew I was a great kisser, so I had that to go on." "Nothing was gonna affect that." "And I knew that my partners that I made out with enjoyed it." "But I was becoming an adult, so I needed to explore more and that was scary for me." "I didn't know how it'd happen." "And I couldn't do a great deal to satisfy myself, because of the way my body is wired now, all that rehearsing that I did for years preparing for intercourse, wasn't really the same kind of option," "it wasn't really a source of a lot of enjoyment, for me aymore." "I really needed somebody to explore my sexuality with me" "It took a couple of years until I connected with somebody who I had known, a girl that I had known in high school." "I hadn't seen her in a long time, we were never friends or really attracted, but we saw each other at a mutual friends' wedding, and something did connect and we started spending some time together." "And we kissed and the thing happened which is what has to happen:" "chemistry." "For me... being on... being on all fours works really well." "I really like that." "I very easily get it crawling." "I crawled for a really long time before I walked." "Being on my back and flipping my legs over someone's lower back, so that their legs are going this way." "If this is someone else, I'm putting my legs this way." "It works really well." "I really like laying on my back and having somebody lift the lower half of me up, whether for someone going down on me or feel like penetrative sex." "It's really cool." "Having sex in a wheelchair is rad." "That works in a lot of ways." "Sideways over the two wheels, over back, doing wheelies." "doing different things." "Great, love it." "In Lauren's case, both of us are a little larger, for an able-bodied person that may be not such a big deal because your hips move." "But because of her specific disability, her hips don't move and they don't flex quite as wide for example as mine do." "So when you're thinking about:" ""This is a vibrator!" "What am I gonna do with it?"" "An average able-bodied person doesn't have an issue with that, even if they're heavy," "But when your hips don't move and you have to figure out how you're gonna use it," "you have to adapt it a lot." "So what we learnt is, for example, the longer it is, the better it works." "We learnt that she can't do anything that requires her legs to be elevated for too long, because of her circulation." "So in casese that we are doing something that is a little kinky, and we're trying to tie her up, tie her down, you have to think hard about where am I gonna put the knot in the rope" "so that it's not causing swelling or other problems related to circulation." "There was one case where we actually ended up getting a different piece of furniture that was inflatable so that she could put it under her hips, so that she could lay on her stomach and it would work all right." "Stuff like that." "A relationship began to bloom that we enjoyed being with each other that we got to a place of... of acknowledging mutual attraction to each other." "And she was the first woman that I found that I could trust, who was really willing to go there with me to find out what my body was capable of and what would work and what I could do that could please her." "And once I got over that boundary (that was huge), it became more and more about me and my personal growth as an individual in a relatioship and less and less about my body and my disability." "She changed my mindset on disability and sexual orientation so drastically that..." "I'm not even sure if the word 'love' is appropriate." "I don't think there will ever be a time when I don't love her, when I don't feel she's part of my family and I don't want her around." "In the sense that... this is somebody who is part of my life and who has changed me, I hope for the better forever." "I think that... that the only way that I've been able to come to those conclusions and feel better about the way that I'm having sex and problem-solving is by having good partners." "That can take a really long time, when you're rushing to just find anyone to have sex with in order to either relieve an urge or feel better about yourself." "There many reasons by which you may jus want to rush up and have sex, I understand it." "You're also resolving yourself to not having as good experiences because for me so much of sex has to do with communication and being able to say what you want and what you don't want, and being able to take the time to say:" ""My body does this, it doesn't do this well."" ""I wanna try that, I'd love to have sex upside-down, but that means that you'll have to hold my legs while I hang there."" "And I've done lots of cool stuff." "But it's because I was with one person for a while and we experimented and communicated." "I thought I couldn't do lots of things that I can do with help." "To me it's good the relationship we have." "We're a good match and all." "As I got older I thought:" ""You know, Matthew, that's what sex should be for everybody"." "(laughing)" "That shouldn't just be a disability thing." "Listening to each other laying, try new things, figure each other out and go along the way." "I think... prior to becoming sexually active," "I had a lot more issues of self-cofidence that I do now" "I still have lots of them." "My issues are a big not, like a string." "You pull one and the rest of the issues get tighter, including the one that you just loosened." "I still have lots of self-confidence issues." "However, the fact that I was able to have this loving relationship and sort of a family with someone." "During the time I felt like I was worthy of experiencing that." "Since we split I have had many more relapses in terms of going back to feeling low." "None is wanna want me." "To me disability is frequently a self-identified thing, and I would want it to be a self-identified thing, but I don't think that people tend to..." "I don't think that non-disabled folks tend to think of it as something you would ever want to identify yourself as, which is really interesting." "Whereas sexual orientation, gender, race, are all considered things that you would want to assert, and be proud of and have it be a part of your daily life, and daily existence and interaction." "A disability is something you want to minimize as much as possible, because it's a problem, it's not hot, it's not sexy, you can't dress it up, you can't look cute with it," "you can't dance with it, but you can:" "you can do all of those things." "Erin:" "To me the whole relationship was always defined  by the fact that I thought that it was really unfair and uncool that she had all this sort of neurosis about the fact that nobody would want to be with her which to me was just ridiculous" "because I didn't associate the disability with the relationship and it was because who she was as a person trumped... appearance or disability or any other thing." "[music]" "English subtitles thanks to Amaranta Heredia Jaén." "Do you know what would your mouth be good for?" "He's got a big mouth." "It's not about the size." "It's, you know..." " Oh!" "Is the head?" " Yeah." "So how does that work?" "(laughing)" "You're saying because his head... because of his cerabral palsy..." "Yes, aha." "All you have to do is wait until he goes down on you and then you say:" ""Hey, Alex!"" "He'll go and it'll work out!" "Thanks to Outcast productions for lending us the documentary!" "[English subtitles thanks to Amaranta Heredia Jaén]"