El tabú de la sexualidad y la discapacidad

EL EROTICÓN

El tabú de la sexualidad y la discapacidad

María Victoria Ramírez* - 27/11/2007

La sexualidad en personas con discapacidades está siendo objeto de mucho interés en la actualidad. Y esto es muy importante porque, históricamente, ha estado cargada de mitos y prejuicios. Existen muchos tipos de discapacidad, como también muchas personas diferentes con algún tipo de discapacidad. Todas ellas, además, son distintas y únicas en su sexualidad.

En nuestra cultura las personas con discapacidad frecuentemente son percibidas de forma negativa, y nuestras ideas sobre estas personas están llenas de mitos y prejuicios. Parte de esta concepción tan negativa proviene de la idealización de unos determinados modelos de belleza y éxito social (y sexual) que se realiza en los medios de comunicación, donde se ensalza la idea de que solamente personas con un determinado físico, habilidades, capacidades y características pueden resultar atractivas y conseguir ser felices a nivel personal, afectivo y erótico.

De hecho, incluso la imagen que socialmente se ha tenido de las personas con discapacidad (y que afortunadamente está cambiando actualmente) es que en cierta manera son personas que no necesitan o tienen sexualidad, ni tienen posibilidad de disfrutar de su erótica. Algunas de las ideas negativas y erróneas con respecto a la discapacidad es que convierte irremediablemente a las personas en sujetos torpes, dependientes, caprichosos, inútiles, molestos, inflexibles, incapaces de aprender nada nuevo, físicamente poco atractivos, lentos… y, por supuesto, asexuados.

En muchas ocasiones, el obstáculo no es tanto la discapacidad concreta de la persona, sino más bien las barreras sociales que le impiden o dificultan desarrollarse y desenvolverse con el máximo grado de autonomía que su discapacidad concreta les permita.

El sexo es un valor

Hace un par de meses Adimeco, la asociación nacional de discapacidad y medios de comunicación, organizó unas jornadas sobre sexualidad. Las intervenciones están disponibles aquí. Me gustaría recomendar muy especialmente la ponencia del director del Instituto de Sexología, Efigenio Amezúa, por la sencillez con que aborda en El sexo es un valor eso que suena tan chocante la primera vez que se oye. Se habla de que el sexo es reproducción, un placer, fuente de enfermedades… ¿Pero un valor? No perderé el tiempo parafraseándole; os animo a leerlo directamente. Y por supuesto, a los demás ponentes.

Cuerpos insumisos

Cuerpos insumisos 

Por Beatriz Preciado, profesora en la Universidad París VIII -Saint-Denis, y autora del Manifiesto contra-sexual (LA VANGUARDIA, 20/05/07):

He aquí tres momentos de la historia política del cuerpo: la ascesis mística, el suplicio del condenado, Cambio radical. La modernidad podría ser entendida como un proceso de secularización del cuerpo. Si el cuerpo premoderno era un organismo cerrado habitado por la divinidad cuyo destino y significación estaba regido por los las leyes teológicas, el cuerpo moderno se caracterizará por expulsar progresivamente a Dios, aceptando al Estado y sus instituciones disciplinarias como nuevos inquilinos de la corporalidad. En los últimos dos siglos, el cuerpo progresivamente desalojado por lo sagrado, lo metafísico y lo estatal, cuerpo libre al riesgo de verse desencantado, se deja okupar por las fuerzas del capitalismo global.
Para complicar las cosas, este cuerpo no tiene sus límites en la envoltura carnal que la piel bordea, ni puede entenderse como un sustrato biológico fuera de los entramados de producción y cultivo propios de la tecnociencia. Dicho con Donna Haraway, el cuerpo contemporáneo es una entidad tecnoviva multiconectada que incorpora tecnología. Ni organismo, ni máquina, ni naturaleza, ni cultura: tecnocuerpo. La nuevas técnicas quirúrgicas y farmacológicas ponen en marcha procesos de construcción tectónica que combinan modos de representación figurativos que provienen del cine y de la arquitectura, como el montaje, el modeling en 3D o el diseño de personalidad, según los cuales los órganos, tejidos, fluidos y moléculas se transforman en materias primas a partir de las que se fabrica nuestra corporalidad.

Derecho al placer

The Right to Pleasure

Russell Shuttleworth, guest editor of SRSP, examines sexual facilitation

By Bonnie Zylbergold

There’s nothing wrong with me. I want to do this, I’m choosing to do this, and I don’t mind doing this exchange, money for sex. I prefer to do that than have my situation therapized.

That was all Dr. Russell Shuttleworth needed to hear before taking his long-time friend and employer—a thirty-three-year old man living with Cerebral Palsy (CP), confined to a wheel chair and resigned to communicate via head pointer and alphabet board—to the strip club.

Out of the plethora of issues facing the physically and developmentally disabled, how a virile man with CP has sex doesn’t usually make the top ten. For the most part, discussions around disability and sexuality have remained off limits. Conversations regarding actual physical, sexual experiences and sexual expression are not typical of the genre; only recently has effort been made to acknowledge and investigate the complex nature of the subject.

Sexualidad, mujer y discapacidad

Publicados los resultados del Proyecto SWOD

El proyecto SWOD (Sexual Education in women with disabilities) financiado por la Commission (D.G. Empleo, Asuntos Sociales e Igualdad de Oportunidades) tiene como objetivo fundamental promover la inclusión a todos los niveles de las personas con discapacidad, a través de la promoción de la perspectiva de la discapacidad en todas las acciones en este área. El proyecto SWOD se enmarca dentro del tema prioritario: “Investigación sobre la situación de las mujeres con discapacidad y promoción de redes de mujeres con discapacidad”.

Las entidades que han participado en el proyecto SWOD y en la elaboración de la Guía para profesionales son Fundación INTRAS (España), AEPS (ESPAÑA) SUSTENTO (Letonia), Women Training Centre (Estonia), Consorzio Sociale Coin (Italia), C.P.H. Female (Dinamarca) y C.J.D. Dortmund (Alemania).

SWOD. SWOD. Sexuality and women with disabilities: Contributions, guidelines and good practices plantea recomendaciones a los profesionales y agentes sociales que son el resultado de las acciones de trabajo de los socios del proyecto SWOD a partir de:

Sexualidad y discapacidad como política social

Sexuality and disability as social policy 

April 14, 2007
Helen Henderson

Is it time for people with disabilities to invite government into their bedrooms? Is this the year we should – whoa, Nelly – get public policy legislators working on sex?

I think so.

Time to shine light on the fact that one of the keys to well-being, namely sexual fulfilment, is not and never will be a private thing for many people who move and/or process information differently from the so-called norm.

In a world that routinely stigmatizes people with disabilities as asexual, how does someone with cerebral palsy summon the courage to ask for what is delicately known as “facilitation?” How can a woman who uses a wheelchair feel comfortable expressing her sexual preferences? When is a man with an intellectual disability competent to make decisions relating to sex?

How do personal assistants fit into the picture? Should government funding cover sexual services?

Jillian Weise

‘The Amputee’s Guide to Sex’ by Jillian Weise

A poet examines intimacy, disability and taboos.
By Leslie Schwartz
Leslie Schwartz, the current president of PEN USA, is the author of the novels “Jumping the Green” and “Angels Crest.”

April 15, 2007

READERS who can handle the hair-raising experience of Jillian Weise’s gutsy poetry debut, “The Amputee’s Guide to Sex,” will be rewarded with an elegant examination of intimacy and disability and a fearless dissection of the taboo and the hidden.

Weise fuses the sterile language of medical science with the fragile territory of the heart and dares to ask whether the body is the temple of the soul or its prison. In the poem “The Local Human Being,” she writes: “You say I’m obsessed / with bodies; they are nothing, they are everything.” Then she dips into the ineffable region of the soul and its relationship with the physical form, teetering between the desire for connection and the vulgarity of ill-mannered seduction.

This seesawing between body and spirit is reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People,” in which a seemingly dimwitted Bible salesman asks a woman to prove her love by removing her false leg. At first she’s horrified. “She was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock to its tail. No one ever touched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private and almost with her own eyes turned away.”

Beverly Whipple

Sex researcher focuses on new hot spots
Posted 3/2/2007 8:29 PM ET

By Linda A. Johnson, Associated Press
VOORHEES, N.J. — Sexuality researcher Beverly Whipple made her name a quarter century ago popularizing the “G spot,” the elusive female erogenous zone, but she has a different message these days: Move on.

“There’s so many ways that women can have sexual pleasure,” Whipple said. “We can’t deny the experiences of women. We have to validate them.”

Lesson number one: The biggest sexual organ really is the brain.

The longtime Rutgers University nursing school professor officially retired about five years ago, but still keeps a hectic schedule, doing research, writing, giving interviews and jetting off to speak at sexuality and women’s health conferences around the globe.

Her most recent book, The Science of Orgasm, co-written with Rutgers neuroscientist Barry Komisaruk and Mexican endocrinologist Carlos Beyer-Flores, explores how the brain produces orgasms and the complex biological processes involved.

It documents groundbreaking work showing that, contrary to what doctors tell them, some women with spinal cord injuries can still climax. Whipple said women with such injuries who were still experiencing orgasm came to her for support, so she began a study of others with the same injury.

BDSM para discapacitados

BDSM For Those Who Are Disabled

Author: Raven Shadowborne © 1998

Disabilities can affect everyone no matter the age, race, creed, sex, or religion. They vary from only a slight impact upon one’s life, to a lifestyle altering state. There are many different kinds of disabilities, from dyslexia to paralyzation, to learning disabilities and each one affects a person and their relationships differently. For me, I have a physical disability with my lower back. I present the following information to show that even those with disabilities can enjoy the lifestyle with a little creativity, communication and some effort.

My physical disability is rather complicated. It is a combination of three different things wrong, in one rather small area of the lower lumbar portion of my back. These three conditions are as follows. Permanent nerve damage to the sciatic nerve root at L4-5. A degenerated disk at L4-5, and sacroiliac joint dysfuntion on both sides of my sacrum. The joint had undergone a fusion in 1997, which as of the date I am writing this, the fusion is broken and may need to be redone.

These problems combined, create some rather difficult phsyical situations that must be dealt with carefully. My back can give me pain without warning, my legs can give out beneath me without warning, and some activities can not be done without some excess risk to my health.

When this problem first started becoming a major factor in my life, I thought i would have to forgo my BDSM activities. This saddened me to no end because I enjoy BDSM and did not want to give up such a piece of myself. So I started thinking, looking at the things I enjoy doing, the ways I was taught to do them, and tried to find ways to improve these activities so they would be safer for me and I could still enjoy them.

La ciencia del orgasmo

The science of sex

Brain scans of women reaching orgasm have cast new light on how the mind and nervous system work. Julia Stuart on the discoveries that kept on coming

17 January 2007

Had Meg Ryan not been faking it when she so memorably howled with pleasure while sitting in a café in When Harry Met Sally, various parts of her brain would have lit up, including the one which responds to psychoactive drugs such as cocaine. By scanning women’s brains during sexual stimulation for the first time, scientists have found which parts of the mind and body are involved in orgasm. The discoveries may well lead to a breakthrough for women suffering from a number of sexual disorders, and lead to other medical breakthroughs, such as pain control for patients with spinal-cord injuries.

Scientists Barry R Komisaruk, Carlos Beyer-Flores and Beverly Whipple (co-author of the international bestseller The G Spot) embarked on the research after reports that women who had suffered complete spinal-cord injuries still felt sensations during intercourse or other sexual stimulus. Some even said they could achieve orgasms.

“This was very puzzling because the conventional view is that their spinal-cord injuries should have abolished all those sensations,” says Professor Komisaruk of New Jersey’s Rutgers University. “There was also a report of at least one such woman saying that she could feel her baby kicking when she was pregnant.”

With support from the National Institute of Health, an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services, they carried out a study on women with complete spinal injuries. The women were monitored and given tests relating to their pain thresholds during vaginal or cervical self-stimulation.

Discapacidad y prostitución

My lifelong desire

Nick Wallis is 22 and has a life-limiting condition. With no girlfriend on the horizon, he feared he would never enjoy a full relationship. Here, he tells why he decided that the only way to experience sex was to pay for it …

Nick Wallis
Monday January 15, 2007

Guardian

I have Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a progressive and life-limiting condition for which there is currently no treatment. Having been diagnosed when I was only a year old, this knowledge has always been part of my life and inevitably it has affected every aspect of my life. Since I was a small boy I have always been fascinated by nature and spent many hours in the garden trying to tempt butterflies from the buddleia into my poised fishing net so that I could examine them in detail and then let them fly free. Increasingly my disability meant that I relied on other small boys. One day when I spotted the perfect shiny prize-winning conker I had to ask one of them to collect it for me. He promptly pocketed it! Young children are not known for their selfless actions and perhaps this explains why they would never tell me where their den was or help me to get to it in my wheelchair; they seemed to be protecting it as if it was Bletchley Park.

Being excluded from normal things that my peers took for granted began to be part of my life - a pattern that got stronger as I got older. For a time, older siblings of my contemporaries filled the gap and helped me to enjoy activities such as fishing. I have always had a particular interest in fishy things, and an uncanny ability to spot an aquarium signpost in whichever town or country we were visiting on holiday. People have often been willing to talk to me and help and I feel that the kindness of strangers is often underestimated. A blond, blue-eyed boy in a wheelchair with a passionate interest in the world around him was lent a fishing fly by a stranger, given a lengthy talk on the lives of otters and allowed to touch an octopus. I have never been afraid to talk to people and ask questions, although on occasion I have felt that there was surprise that a child in a wheelchair could ask intelligent questions. Perhaps there are still too many preconceptions about wheelchair users.

Sexualidad y mujer con discapacidad

CARLOS DE LA CRUZ SEXÓLOGO

 

«Hay que eliminar el silencio en torno a la sexualidad»

 

Aboga por «dar el protagonismo» a la persona con discapacidad al abordar su educación

RICARDO ORTEGA/VALLADOLID

Los estereotipos en torno a la mujer con discapacidad reducen el papel de su sexualidad hasta hacerlo invisible. Derribar ese muro de prejuicios es uno de los objetivos del libro ‘Educación sexual en mujeres con discapacidad’, elaborado a partir de las aportaciones de numerosos especialistas. La obra se presentó ayer por uno de sus responsables, Carlos de la Cruz, durante las jornadas ‘Sexualidad y mujer con discapacidad’, que se clausuran hoy en Valladolid.

-¿Con qué objetivo nace la guía que ha presentado?

-Es una herramienta para los profesionales que trabajan con personas con discapacidad. Contiene pequeñas pautas para que contribuyan a su educación sexual.

-¿Hablamos de psicólogos, de educadores…?

-Se trata de que el libro sirva a todo tipo de profesionales, ya que quienes lo hemos elaborado partimos de la idea de que todas las personas contribuimos, en mayor o menor medida, a la educación sexual. No se trata de hacer que los psicólogos o el personal sanitario lleven todo el peso de la educación sexual, sino de que cada cual asuma la parte que le corresponde.

-Por lo tanto hablamos de los cuidadores y de la familia.

-Es indiscutible el papel de la familia y de los cuidadores. Participamos de la idea de que cuanta más gente contribuya a la educación sexual, mejor. Cada uno debe pensar qué parte del pastel le corresponde y jugar su parcelita lo mejor que pueda.

Frank Cordelle

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

By confronting society’s greatest taboos, Oakland photographer Frank Cordelle has created something truly extraordinary.

By Lauren Gard

Article Published Dec 6, 2006

It is close to midnight on a crisp Northern California evening, the kind that renders East Coast transplants nostalgic for the musty smell of dry leaves and the kick of hot apple cider. Beneath a full moon, not far from a lawn dotted with a half-dozen languid deer and a fat, skulking skunk, Frank Cordelle sits naked in a hot tub.

It isn’t his first time at Lupin Lodge, a naturist resort nestled in the redwoods of Los Gatos along Highway 17. The 63-year-old photographer exhibited his work here once before, seven years earlier, and stayed for a few days then. Cordelle wouldn’t call himself a nudist, but as someone who has spent the last twenty-some years focusing on naked girls and women through his camera viewfinder, it’s a state he’s become comfortable with. For the past month, a collection of his photos has been on display in the homey wooden lodge down the hill, and an hour ago he wrapped up a lecture with a small but dedicated crowd and signed a few copies of his new book.

¿Cómo ve un ciego la belleza?

The Beauty Myth
How do the blind see beauty? For this writer, the more interesting question is how you do.

By Stephen Kuusisto
Sunday, November 12, 2006; W22

Because I am blind and cannot see faces , I must imagine them. I am helped in this daily round by the fact that I can see colors. Many blind people can see something of the world; my own small portion is essentially a kind of abstract expressionism: I live inside a Jackson Pollock painting, and I live there while walking the ordinary streets. This brand of walking and seeing is both maddening and lovely. I see faces like the shining leaves of jade trees — wind-tossed and set against black boughs — and I wonder what you look like. “You” are all friends and strangers alike. Occasionally, I allow myself to imagine that I see the inestimable and charged faces that we all suspect lie just below the surface. But in any event, I know you differently than do your hand mirrors or photographs. One thing I won’t know is whether you are, in the ocular sense of the word, beautiful.

Exposición fotográfica de discapacidad y sexualidad

LA GALERÍA ZERO DE BARCELONA ACOGE LAS IMÁGENES

UNA EXPOSICIÓN DE FOTOGRAFÍAS MUESTRA LA CONEXIÓN ENTRE DISCAPACIDAD Y SEXUALIDAD

 

La exposición de fotografías ‘Encuentros Íntimos’ explora las conexiones entre la discapacidad y la sexualidad y sus “mitos ocultos” con imágenes tomadas por la fotógrafa Belinda Mason-Lovering.

El trabajo de Mason-Lovering, que podrá verse hasta el próximo 3 de noviembre en la Galeria Zero de Barcelona, pretende “levantar la voz para hacer visible la sexualidad entre las personas discapacitadas”, “negando el mito de que sólo las personas bellas y ‘glamourosas’ tienen una vida sexualmente activa”.

Las 40 imágenes de la exposición, realizadas durante el viaje de la fotógrafa de dos años a Australia, crean nuevos mensajes visuales sobre la discapacidad, basados en las realidades vividas por discapacitados. Personas con discapacidades físicas, intelectuales, de aprendizaje, psiquiátricas y neurológicas han compartido algunos de sus pensamientos y sentimientos más íntimos al ser fotografiados de una forma erótica.

Porno y discapacidad

Un madrileño en silla de ruedas, primer actor porno discapacitado

Teresa Ródenas

‘Querer es poder’ es el título de la primera película porno protagonizada por un actor discapacitado. ‘Josito’ ha participado en la cinta con el fin de hacer un poco de ‘ruido’ y demostrar a las mujeres que no han de temer acercarse a un hombre en silla de ruedas.

Este madrileño de 23 años, que desde los 17 vive con una lesión medular debido a un accidente, afirma tener aún “muchas dudas por lo que pueda pensar la gente o por lo que esto me pueda traer en el futuro”. Pero lo cierto es que es el primer actor en silla de ruedas que se ha atrevido a ponerse ante la cámara para rodar un largometraje de este tipo.