After he gets in the chair, it's implied, he's going to fuck. It's not just a chair, of course. It's the , a piece of sex furniture designed with spinal cord injuries SCIs and other forms of mobility-limiting disability in mind. The instructional video is part of SCI Ontario's expanding set of online resources for people with spinal cord injuries to learn about sex and sexuality on their own terms. Listed among more familiar sex accessories like feathers and floggers are a waterproof, stainproof blanket for incontinence and high-powered vibrators for areas of decreased sensation. Read More: Being born with or acquiring a disability involves a lot of adapting—requiring one to relearn everyday activities, or learn them differently. For the who have some kind of disability, moving through the world becomes an individualized process, one that involves the constant renegotiation of strategies. Despite strides made in recent decades to enable all people equal access to public spaces, sex and sex education remains an accessibility blind spot. I was mortified to be talking about sex. I was more worried about, like, Will anyone even want to have sex with me? Asking questions about sex can be uncomfortable for anyone. Read More: Christine Sellinger was 19 when a rappelling accident left her paralyzed from the waist down. In the four hours it took the rescue team to move her from the mountain to a hospital, she recalls bidding farewell to activities she presumed she'd no longer be able to do. Sellinger had back surgery a few days after the accident, followed by three-and-a-half months of intense rehabilitation. While rehabilitation involved relearning all aspects of her life, Sellinger said sex and dating rarely came up. It's an activity of daily living. We all do it. Why are we so skittish about talking about it? Image via SCI Ontario. Sellinger struggled to ask social workers and nurses about sex because she was unsure whom to speak to, and she was initially more focused on the other side effects of her injury. Eventually a social worker on her rehab team popped in a DVD about sex after spinal cord injuries. I was too busy worrying about my legs and my life—I didn't so much care about the mechanics of sex as I did about body image, dating, that kind of thing. I was more worried about, like, Will anyone even want to have sex with me? Sellinger designs for people with spinal cord injuries and is passionate about improving sexual education and sexual health resources for people with disabilities. The key, she said, is to go to the source. In some cases, they answered queries they've had themselves. They are not meant to be rules, or to tell you the way you must do it. While Sellinger was telling me about a recent panel discussion she'd participated in educating nurses about sexual health and function after spinal cord injuries, her live-in partner returned from a run. Sellinger said healthcare professionals often aren't adequately equipped to address concerns about sexual health and function. She said that men with spinal cord injuries inquire about their ability to get an erection almost immediately. Women's questions tend to come later into the rehabilitative process and are more about romance and dating. Sellinger and SCI Ontario provide workshops and seminars, as well as online learning tools like the slideshow, to help answer these questions. Things are arguably even worse in schools. In a 2010 on the state of sex education for youth with physical disabilities, 100 percent of participants felt their education had been inadequate and educators were given insufficient resources to properly deal with the topic. Read More: Access to education in general has long been a struggle for people with disabilities. The United States only guaranteed disabled children access to a public school education in 1975, with the passing of the Education For All Handicapped Children Act now called the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. The law required school districts to provide students with disabilities access to the same information and classes as their peers, while also requiring schools to provide extra equipment, personnel, or learning aids as required by individual students' disabilities. Even if students did manage to get sex ed, it wasn't for bodies that look like ours. But a law is not a guarantee. Tim Rose, who was born with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, said his high school largely denied him access to sexual health resources. When sexual health came up in other classes, teachers sometimes asked him to leave the room. Sex ed for me was mostly trial and error, a mix of getting what information I could from friends and from TV. Recently, he launched , a business allowing him to speak at companies and schools. It's a lot of stroking and soft touch stuff. Also, I'm blessed with incredibly sensitive nipples and earlobes, so touching them works too. Photo via Tim Rose. People with disabilities face a number of barriers to sexual health information, much of it imposed via social stigma or outdated stereotypes about what it means to be disabled. Rose, Sellinger, and doctors often complain about the persistent cultural infantilization of people with disabilities. A lot of 'good for you's and pats on the head. Alternatively, people with disabilities can be presented as oversexed, fetishized as insatiably sexual beings with peculiar appetites. Both Sellinger and Rose have experienced the neutralizing of their sexual sides as well as being viewed as an interesting tick on someone's sexual bucket list. If you're constantly considering your body or someone else's body as broken, it's hard to see yourself as a sexy person, to feel comfortable being sexual in your body. What complicates sex ed for people with disabilities is the fact that the additional information or aid required varies depending on the specifics of an individual disability. Although schools are clearly making attempts to include students with disabilities in sex ed dialogue, Rose thinks it's hard to make disabled kids feel included when the lessons are geared towards their able-bodied classmates. Aside from people with disabilities needing and deserving intimacy and a positive relationship to their own sexuality like everyone else, disabled children are at a much higher risk of sexual abuse than their able-bodied peers. Doctors also typically screen disabled people for STIs, cervical and breast cancer, and other reproductive health issues at a than able-bodied people. Ultimately, acknowledging that disabled people need different information to help them learn about and experience sexual intimacy is the first step to a more inclusive education system. There's more to experiencing someone else's body, or your own body, or intimacy, and you can do that in different ways. Sellinger and her partner, who met at university, have been together for four years. The two were friends for over a year before dating, which meant they'd already discussed Sellinger's disability and some of the more practical hurdles she'd experienced in relationships. Positioning challenges them since Sellinger doesn't have the use of her legs, but figuring out new positions has been fun. Sex is messy anyway, but that never stops being embarrassing, even if you're used to it. It's kind of like the first time you had sex: you had to figure out how to do it, what felt good. You're basically learning how to do it all over again, but it can be an adventure, not an ordeal.
