By Daniele Lul (he/him), Community Engagement Director, ParaPride.
Mainstream media loves talking about dating, bodies, desire, relationships, kink and sexual identity. But somehow disability is often left outside the room. And when disabled people do enter the conversation, we are often presented as either completely desexualised or fetishised.
There doesn’t seem to be much space in between for us simply to be people.
I have spent a lot of time talking about disability, sex and sexuality. Probably more than I ever imagined I would.
Through ParaPride, we held panel discussions asking questions that can make people uncomfortable: Why does society still consider sex so incompatible with disability? Why are disabled people often missing from conversations about desire, dating, intimacy and pleasure?
Mainstream media loves talking about dating, bodies, desire, relationships, kink and sexual identity. But somehow disability is often left outside the room. And when disabled people do enter the conversation, we are often presented as either completely desexualised or fetishised. There doesn’t seem to be much space in between for us simply to be people.
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