It is twenty years this year since I was first approached by the School of Occupational Therapy to speak on the topic of transition to adulthood, disability, and sexuality. Since that time I have expanded to deliver disability education across Australia and yet disability and sexuality is still the most common topic I get asked to speak on.
With this in mind I am going to shock you all by saying I wish I had never had to speak on the topic. Sexuality is such a fundamental part of life that from the teenage years till death it should be assumed that anyone engaged in helping a human being with the occupation of life should automatically include the topic of sexuality.
Society has conflicting views when it comes to talking about and expressing sexuality. Add the word disability into the mix and people tend to run away or shut their eyes.
I started my sexual life like all young people by going through puberty. In the mid-nineties the environmental factors and conditions around sexuality and disability were extremely restrictive. When talking about sex and sexuality with my friends and family, I was treated the same as my non-disabled brother. Outside of the family environment, society and allied health professionals made it seem like I was doing something wrong every time I brought up the topic of sexuality. Fast forward to 2001 just short of my twentieth birthday, I was getting desperate to lose my virginity and deal with my sexual frustration and while the professionals were by this time more open to helping me there was very limited information available about accessible sex aids and sex therapists who focus on disability. This lack of information caused a lot of personal anxiety around my ability to express my sexuality especially in a physical manner.
The physical realities of my sexual expression would often bump up against services' policies and procedures around clients and sexuality. For example if a worker took me shopping they were not allowed to help nineteen year old me to buy an erotic magazine.
Jump forward again to 2004 and the best thing to ever happen to me occurred. I met and fell in love with the woman that would become my wife. So when that happened my sexuality went from theoretical to personal and all the things I imagined would be issues weren't as bigger issues as I thought and things I thought would be easy turned out to be harder. For example I cannot hug my wife unless I ask her to hug me and I cannot hold her hand. We have to plan our romantic interludes because we need things like hoists, slings, and an appropriate bed.
To me sexuality is so personal it cannot be ticked off on a checklist. Sexuality for me is the highest human priority. It encompasses intimacy, sex, spirituality, love, and faith. It is life.
It Is Life
The fact that people with disabilities do it is hidden in the disability file;
How do I learn about sexuality and intimacy when all I get is denial?
From 13 to 43 I could cut the frustration with a knife;
To every human being it is life.
My sexuality is not dead;
To figure out the answer I do an intimate inventory in my head.
Am I human? Tick.
Are you capable of expressing desire? Tick.
Do I want to be close with the woman of my dreams? Tick.
Why does the world see my disability and attempt to block my personal glory?
I count the memories and fantasies in my private intimacy store;
To live every part of life is all I am asking for.
When I was single I craved it and I think about it even more now I have my wife.
To put it simply, disability or not, it is life.
Chris Van Ingen | 16/09/2024
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