Category: relationships


Crip on Crip Action: Scholar-Activist Love

Filed Under: Uncategorized, ableism, disability, interable, relationships, sexuality
Mar.05, 2010

This is a repost of an interview of me done by the delicious Philosopher Crip (aka Joe). He’s a great disability scholar-activist comrade who was open to me sharing this on my blog.  Please use this as your catalyst to check out his thoughts.  He’s brilliant!

Joe: I like the ring of your blog name, tell me more. What and why are you “confessing” and who is your confessor?

Bethany: I may as well start this sexy interview with a confession: I’m a nerd and proud of it. I LOVE alliterations and have embraced the label ‘crip.’ It signals disability pride and serves as a fun verbal slap on the face of the ableist world. Thus I needed a hot word to that started with ‘c’ in my title to satiate my need for mental masturbation.

Additionally, the overall purpose of my blog is to provide a platform for me to confess (i.e. share ideas that are traditionally not voiced) thoughts that I feel like disabled people just aren’t talking about publically, such as internalized ableism, the meanings of dating a nondisabled person, etc. I want to confess my truth because I think it can be a healthy catalyst for a communicative revolution. It is time we at least talk about these things with each other. I feel like here is a political impetus to be silent about some of the frustrating and painful aspects of disability, as we are all supposed to be pushing a disability positive narrative. Frankly, I feel that approach is not emotionally honest and actually can do us more harm than good.

Joe: What moved you to start a blog? What do you hope to accomplish with it?

Bethany: A noticed a disability blog carnival coming up on relationships and wanted to write something about my thoughts on my relationship. Being in a relationship with a nondisabled person has caused me to really think a lot of the desirability of my body and my ability to care. I wanted to share these thoughts with other disabled people in hopes of getting a conversation started on the topic. That’s one of my favorite things about social media – I can connect to a larger community of crips than those in my area. I feel connected to my people and thrive on that.

Also, I have been reading and thinking about the role of social media in translating research findings into mainstream culture. As a scholar-activist, I need to be intellectually rigorous but I also need to transmit these ideas to larger culture in order to try to create substantive social change. I see blogging, tweeting and Facebooking as wonderful outlets to help realize this desire. I have also decided I want to get into film making – because I realized if I disdain most representations of disabled people, why shouldn’t I create the media I want to see?

As I have said, I would like my blog to be a communicative catalyst to get people talking about things that we shy away from. I feel like confessing my truth – and thereby rendering myself really vulnerable publicly – can provide space for others to do the same. Through telling my truth, it may make it easier for others to be emotionally naked because we would all know we are not alone.

Joe: Talking about accomplishments, what kind of work do you do when you aren’t blogging? How do you see CripConfessions.com fitting in with the rest of your work in the disability community?

Bethany: I’m a trained lawyer and a sexologist. At the moment, I am clinical professor and policy analyst in the Center for Leadership in Disability at Georgia State University. I teach some classes, capacity build with our community partners, host events, and advise a disability student group on campus. I diligently strive to infuse everything I do with radical crip politics so that I remain true to my life purpose – the social amelioration of people with disabilities. When I was 20 I decided to devote my life to disability and I am sticking with that.

CripConfeesions fits into my overall work because I am devoted to raising awareness and creating social change for disabled people. Through blog posting, I hope to add to my other work by providing a personal glimpse into my nuanced reality. I want more people to understand that disability is not a personal tragedy, but is an artful way of being. Of course, as a sexologist, I also want people to see disabled people as desirable and viable sexual/love partners so I hope some of my posts make some people realize how deliciously sexy disabled people are. CripConfessions then is just one part of the overall revolution of consciousness I seek to be a part of.

And it’s really exciting that we are building a community of young scholar-activists. We are the upcoming leaders of our movement and I think it’s really beautiful that we support each other and our work. We need each other!

Joe and I making a crip sandwich out of my partner, Sara, at the Atlanta ADAPT Action

Joe: Like myself, I have always thought of you as someone that fancies herself to be both a scholar and an activist. Do these roles ever come into conflict for you? Do you ever experience any dissonance when trying to work in two arenas with such different cultures and sets of values?

Bethany: You’re right; I’m a scholar-activist. The roles do conflict at times because my radical politics do not always feel satisfied in the work place. People do not want to hear about privilege and power at work; they want to do their jobs to get paid so they can live. But as an activist I can’t and won’t silence myself, sometimes to the determent of my mental health. A colleague recently told me that it must be exhausting to constantly view the world as animus filled against certain people and he is right – but that will not stop me. More people need to be critically conscious about their realities and I think it could be even more emotionally exhausting if I were silent about the issues I care most about.

Also, though the complaint has been levied by many people – it’s worth repeating: the academic world is not accessible to most people and some of the revolutionary ideas that are created in the ivory tower never reach the masses. I want to marry these two things. I want what I write and think about academically to become reality. This is why I have tried to work toward making my work more accessible; blogging has really helped me in this shift. I want to change the world not just publish or perish.

Joe: Why have you chosen to do both? Couldn’t such tension and conflicts be avoided by doing just one or the other? Is this a matter of personal life satisfaction or is it that you think your work is better served?

Bethany: Sure tension could be avoided if I would just shut-up and consent to being a cog in the interlocking systems of oppression that screw over countless people. I could have been a lawyer – slaving away at a job that means nothing to me for good pay but I would have hated myself and my life. I cannot live my life in a way that is not true to my crip ethos. It took years to be able to look in the mirror without cringing at my disabled body and I want to do everything I can to change social views of disability so people do not have to go through the self-loathing that I and so many of my comrades go through.

And honestly, the grappling of tension in my roles is good fodder for debates and adding nuance to my arguments – which is intellectually orgasmic! Being a person with multiple locations/identities and passions is the kind of human I want to be. It’s really the only way I know how to live.

Joe: A lot of folks that work in the disability community seem to have their niche passions and while I have met a few people really interested in the intersections of disability and sexuality, none have really made it into their life’s work, like you are. What’s the deal here? Why is crip sex so important to you personally and professionally?

Bethany: On a very base, primal level, I confess, I am a hedonist; I love pleasure.

But on a deeper level, I experienced a confluence of a few really pivotal things that shifted my life focus to sexuality. In 2005, I was in law school and with every passing day there, I lost faith in the law to create social change (the reason I went to law school in the first place). That spring I hosted a conference about sexuality and disability. It was the crowning achievement of the many events I hosted at the University of Florida because it ROCKED the campus! I brought together some really amazing people including artist/activist Sunny Taylor, motivational speaker Greg Smith, crip sexologist (and my mentor) Dr. Mitchell Tepper, and former adult film-star Bridget the Midget Powerz. I was right in thinking a former porn star would attract a crowd, even for a disability focused event. We had a great turn-out for the event despite the downpour of rain and we addressed some serious issues of internalized shame, feeling undesirable and discovering sexual pleasure. In the process, I learned how comfortable I am with talking about sexuality and that it is a real professional asset. The whole experience was really profound and the after-party was one of the best parties I have EVER been to :-)

Less than a month later, I lost the first man I ever loved to suicide. Karl was a beautiful Norwegian that I met at a Rehabilitation International conference in Oslo. We shared views on disability pride, using the media as a tool for social change, among other similarities. I adored the man and spoke to him via phone and email as often as I could. We spoke of me moving to Norway after completing law school – and despite my serious weather bigotry (I’m a Florida girl), I was ready to move just to love him.

One morning he called me around 5 am to confess to me something he had struggled with telling me since we meet a year earlier. He explained he could not achieve and maintain an erection, stemming from his spinal cord injury he incurred 16 years before his confession to me. I explained to him that his penis was not what attracted me to him, that sex was bigger than a penis and that he could give and receive a lot of sexual pleasure. But my words did not meet him. That was the last we talked. I learned from his sister about a month later that he had hanged himself. It was one of the most devastating periods in my life and I credit my friends for keeping me alive. I struggled to eat during that period as I just did not want to take care of myself. I cried and felt purposeless for months.

I realized in the grieving process that I was not just mourning Karl’s death – but I was mourning all the other disabled people who suffer in silence over the issues of sexuality. I vowed then to devote my life to changing the conception of crip sexuality so that other people would not hurt the way Karl did.

This gets to the point of the importance of confessing; if Karl had confessed his pain sooner perhaps he could have processed it instead of ending his life.

Karl, a lost comrade

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Paying for Pleasure: Interrogating Sex Work for Crips

Filed Under: disability, relationships, sexuality
Feb.14, 2010

I recently came across this video clip from the National Geographic television show Taboo.

In it a seemingly cool guy with one of my favorite disabilities (arthogryposis) talks about using government subsidized services of a sex worker to satiate his sexual desires.  The clip raises critical sexual justice issues – specifically that society tends to view disabled people as asexual or otherwise not sexually worthy and that parents often reify those sentiments by sheltering their disabled children.

Though I consider myself to be a pro-sex feminist, I find this sort of public policy and media representation problematic for disabled people for reasons I will explore in a moment.  My pro-sex values include the belief that sexual expression and sexuality education are human rights.  I also firmly believe in the value of pornography and sex work. In fact, before I moved to San Francisco to procure a masters degree in Sexuality Studies, I anticipated focusing my thesis on a theory I labeled “pro-sex disabled feminism.”  The theory adds disability to pro-sex feminist arguments – which assert that pornography can be socially ameliorative because we all can benefit from learning from and masturbating to pornography and that sex work should be embraced and legalized to protect the rights of sex workers, as well as clients.  Pro-sex disabled feminism then argues that disabled people can benefit from watching pornography and utilizing sex work services.  I believed that this theory could be a catalyst for a real revolution between the legs and ears of the masses.

I moved away from the topic because I found something more interesting to focus on and I started to problematize policy promulgating sex work for disabled people.  Learning about the government subsidized sex work program in the Netherlands and the fight for one in Denmark makes me increasingly irked by the concept of government funded sex work.

While many disabled people are economically ghettoized, the framing of policy like this reinforces the charitable model of disability by implicating that disabled people are sexually-deprived.  It supports the already pervasive claim that disabled people are not sexually worthy and thereby must seek out the services of a professional, because few, if any, would voluntarily have sex with us.

I internalized and believed this cripsex myth for a number of years and hated myself because of it.  As a sexually frustrated teen, I felt undesirable and believed I might die a virgin.  I assumed everyone in my peer group was having sex and that I was subhuman because I was not.  This primal cry for sexual satisfaction lingers in me and fuels my work in sexuality today.  Many disabled people are sexually excluded and this is something everyone needs to confront. As one of my cripsex colleagues Russell Shuttleworth explained that “When you are growing up in a cultural context that is highly sexualised and you don’t see any models for yourself in terms of being seen as sexy, it can build barriers inside yourself.”  If this was the topic of shows like Taboo – rather than policy solutions such as condescendingly throwing sex workers at us – the disability community would be better served.

While these state funded programs are problematic, they are worth the risk to embrace to assert the human rights of both disabled people and sex workers.  When polices are in place that prevent sexual expression of disabled people, we fall into the pervasive trap of the façade of benevolence in over-protection. This is like the truly oppressive and offensive proposed piece of legislation in Massachusetts which would make the possession of erotic imagery of elders and disabled people a crime – analogous to the possession of child pornography.  Underpinning this proposed law is that disabled people have no agency or ability to consent to being represented as erotic and somehow need government intervention to mediate our pathetic lives.

Anti-agency arguments are also used to “protect” sex workers; such as the one deployed by a woman interviewed in the Taboo clip.  She explains sex work is inherently abusive and non-egalitarian. The problem with her statement, those made by many anti-pornography scholars, and in laws like the one proposed in Massachusetts is the assumption that people cannot consent to sexual activity because of unequal social constructs.  In this line of thought, sex workers cannot consent in a patriarchal society in which women are not paid or treated equal to men and disabled people cannot consent to sexual behavior because we are vulnerable.  Plenty of sex workers are vocal and mobilized to express the contrary – i.e. they have the right to work in their chosen field.  Similarly, disabled people are increasingly telling their stories of the need for sexuality.

While I do not completely embrace subsidies for sex work for disabled people or the media representation thereof, I do think they assert the truth that all people need and deserve mutually satisfying sexual pleasure. If policy-makers are to engage in this topic in a just way – I encourage following the Australian model, in which brothels are made accessible and sex workers collaborate with disabled people to meet their needs.  360 Documentaries did a good piece on this subject.

Beyond simply the need for sexual pleasure, what is lost in these tired paternalistic debates about pornography and sex work – is disabled people finding agency to have intimacy in addition to sexual pleasure.  Sexual agency then does not just concern sexual activity; it includes the right to intimacy, relationships and love.  These are human rights.  And despite what countless sources argue, disabled people are human enough for human rights.

In sum, please a crip, don’t tease a crip!  Happy Valentine’s Day.

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Thoughts on Interable Love at a Breaking Point

Filed Under: ableism, disability, relationships, sexuality
Feb.03, 2010

I began writing this post about a month into the healing process from a fractured femur; now my leg is nearly healed. This healing process has been a really interesting journey, largely because it is the first time I have done so while in a relationship. Being with my love during this injury has provoked a flood of intense emotions and thoughts about the meaning and value of my body. Many of these have thus far been unexplored, or at least not owned up to, despite this being a relatively decent fracture out of the 60 or so I have had thus far (stemming from my disability, osteogenesis imperfecta, otherwise known as brittle bones).

Though I have worked for nearly a decade on forging a radical disability identity through engaging with disability activism, culture and studies, I continue to grapple emotionally and psychologically with the disconnect between disability positive tenets and my view of my body. This disconnect has become all the more apparent during this injury.

Injuries take away much of my independence and render many tasks the responsibility of those around me. During this injury, my love has taken on nearly all of the cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc. This should be a welcomed break from the drudgery of domestic life but it is not. I hate it. It makes me question how valuable I am as a person because I cannot give to her the way I feel I should. I know to critique this idea of “should” – but even with the social criticism of the implicit value of this statement, I still feel frustrated and saddened by my inability to perform even the most menial tasks.

Even though it goes against crip political values to admit this, I sometimes struggle to maintain a disability positive attitude. In an injured state I feel I appear vulnerable or unable and I hate this. I hate showing this side of me, even to the one who I want to share all of myself with, regardless of how real it is or how much disability is a part of me. It is at these moments that I internalize a lot of disdain and sadness; reminiscent of my adolescence.

I find myself frustrated when it takes me longer to put my pants on. I burst into tears when I spill things and cannot pick them up. I hate not being able to clean the house the way I want to be done. I hate not feeling sexual and sexy. I hate struggling to get undressed and by the time I do, I feel so unattractive and unworthy that I cry instead of feel hungry for sex – something, of course I pride myself on. I hate it all. It makes me think I hate my body. It makes me wonder how the hell she continues to love me through all of this. My love told me during the harder part of this injury process that I rolled my eyes at her more than I usually do when she tells me that I’m beautiful and that she loves me. It is awful but at those moments I just do not believe her. How can she possibly think I am beautiful when I feel so pathetic?

All of these negative thoughts create significant cognitive dissonance in me, as I fancy myself to be an uppity crip. I believe I am beyond the negative understandings of disability and I thought I believed what I espouse, particularly in viewing disability as a beautiful and natural. Yet when it comes down to me dealing with a more disabled body than I am used to, all of my crip body politics fly out of the window. This realization exacerbates the negative feelings I experience concerning my body, as I feel guilty that I am not a good disability scholar-activist because I am allowing myself to concede to dominant narratives of disability.

A sage in my life reminded me that everything happens for a reason and that this may be a healthy catalyst for me to deal with the demons in my disabled closet. She told me love forces us all to open up the internal closet where we hide away things we do not want to deal with. The sage believes that in this way love is transformative because if we open ourselves up enough to allow our partner to see the good along with the bad, that some of these issues can be absolved through the healing properties of love. During this process, I finally articulated my struggle with feeling good enough for love as my leg heals and my partner held me and repeated to me how much she loved and how worthy I am of her love. As tears rolled down my cheeks, I took deep breaths trying to breathe her words into me. I tried to engage in that hug as though it were a meditation and allow myself to take the words and run them through my body.

I want to release myself of the social baggage of disability. I want to look at the mirror and always see the beauty that is me. I want to do this all with her by my side. For now, I am just trying to be more patient with myself and to take her words as her truth.

Thinking about this experience has made me really conscious of dynamics of interable love – love between a crip and a nondisabled person. It has made me realize I want to research this topic because it is ripe for scholastic masturbation. I have started to analyze and reconceptualize my understanding of care and explore ways that even during periods of physical incapacitation I can and do give. I want to explore why it has taken experiencing an injury with a partner to make myself own up to these internal truths and why somehow listening to her say I am worthy of love makes me think I should believe her. I want to hear the thoughts of people who have experienced interable love – and how this has impacted their self-concepts.

Please share your thoughts on this.

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