Disabilities, sex and self-love

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AliahMaharaj
scarleteen staff/volunteer
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Jun 10, 2024 11:09 am
Age: 20
Awesomeness Quotient: My wit and sense of humour
Primary language: English
Pronouns: she/her, he/him or they/them
Sexual identity: Bisexual, aromantic, demigirl
Location: Trinidad and Tobago

Disabilities, sex and self-love

Unread post by AliahMaharaj »

Hey everyone! This post is an opportunity to have an open, honest conversation about how the disabilities many of us have affect our sexual experiences, our day-to-day lives, our relationships with ourselves and each other, and anything in between!

Regardless of what disabilities you have, if you feel comfortable sharing any of your experiences, you can do so here with absolutely no judgement. I want this to be a way we can validate and support each other, as well as a reminder that the feelings and experiences that come with being disabled aren’t something we need to hide or be ashamed of.

I’ll start:

As someone with cerebral palsy, I have to depend on other people for help moving from place to place, and I practice moving around with a cane as well. This can lead to me feeling out of control when it comes to my body, like it doesn’t fully belong to me. This was especially difficult for me when I was a high school student, and needed to have an aid on the campus at all times to help me go anywhere.

I only realized recently that, after I finished high school and started figuring out my relationship to sex, that feeling of not having control of my body became much less overwhelming. For me, sex (specifically masturbation) helped me learn to love being in my body. Being able to make myself feel pleasure was a reminder that my body is mine and mine alone, and it doesn’t have to be a reminder of my physical limitations, it can be something that makes me happy and that I’m proud of.

I’d love to hear from anyone who wants to join the conversation!
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pinkplatypus
not a newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Feb 10, 2025 3:55 pm
Age: 13
Awesomeness Quotient: I am kind
Primary language: English
Pronouns: She/they
Sexual identity: Lesbian
Location: California

Re: Disabilities, sex and self-love

Unread post by pinkplatypus »

I am autistic and I enjoy when other people are kind to me :-). I got diagnosed when I was 12, so a little bit late. I struggled significantly socially because I didn’t really understand boundaries/relationships(not romantic) or when people were bullying me. They were kind to my face, but how was I supposed to know that someone saying you have a nice figure means you’re fat? And why is being fat a bad thing? I got bullied a lot though for my special interests. For me, I get really obsessive short-term special interests. I have never been able to have a longer lasting one? And usually each phase will last a couple of months. I get very very excited and can’t talk about anything else, and CNN used to be one of my special interests. Well, some kids bullied me for it, but it’s okay, because who is getting better grades? ;-) <— smirk
Yeah, it’s just mostly I feel like I’m missing something because I just genuinely don’t understand some things. I used to get in trouble for talking back a lot - my team first thought it was ODD, but really it was that I just could not grasp onto the idea that adults are more supposed to be more respectable than children even if they are wrong. Haha!
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