Disabled sex and sexuality is vastly misunderstood.
As a physically disabled wheelchair-using person, I’ve experienced the best and worst when it comes to sex, dating, and relationships. This after a quarter-century of dating.
Early in my activism career I was a hugely outspoken advocate of talking about sex and sexuality when it comes to disability. As I have become more public and people have felt more threatened by my work, as a trans person, I’ve effectively felt like my sex and sexuality has been erased.
That doesn’t mean I don’t still have expertise in many of the areas that I spend a lot of time studying and working. This includes disability and alternative lifestyles including BDSM. I have been in and out of alternative lifestyle circles since I was 18 years old, and I have been abused in multiple ways by many different people across the years – people who have been predators towards disabled people.
Early in my writing career, I wrote a scathing essay about devotees and pretenders.
Devotees are people that are only attracted to people’s disabilities and/or mobility devices.
Pretenders are people that pretend to have a disability for a variety of reasons. It’s a complex thing, and I’m not gonna get into pretenders here. It’s too long to get into, and it’s also not a topic I feel comfortable talking about for many reasons.
I know you’re probably wondering why some people would pretend to be disabled. It’s complex, and it harms those of us that are disabled. I will leave it at that.
Devotees though are a problem even outside of alternative lifestyle communities, but in the BDSM community in particular, they seem to thrive. For years, they have attempted to hide under the guise of, “you can’t kink shame me!” a common credo in the BDSM community.
But the thing is, even in the community, there are things that are just wrong. You don’t mess with children. You don’t mess with animals. And you shouldn’t mess with marginalized people – at least not in this way.
As a trans person, I see this similar to the people that only will date you because of your trans body. These people are not actively interested in trans people, or disabled people in the original example, but rather fetishize the trans (or disabled) part of us. Imagine not being respected or loved as an entire whole human being but being reduced and fetishized to a part of your whole. Just one part of you.
Devotees threaten disabled spaces. I have been engaged in many many many discussions about this in disabled circles. I’ve been involved in many discussions that also include devotees. The devotees always insist we are being discriminatory by not allowing them in disabled-only spaces. They implore us to treat them with kindness, without recognizing the non-consensual harm they cause us.
They use tactics that marginalized communities use to insist that they are the ones that are actually marginalized and oppressed. This is a very dangerous game to play.
I continuously see the overwhelming number of disabled people insisting that devotees are not safe. I also notice an interesting pattern, which I’ve pointed out in other writings on devotees, and other wheelchair users have agreed with this assessment. They believe it’s a fair assessment.
It’s an ironic thing, actually.
The people in the disabled community that are most likely to support and want to keep devotees around are cisgender disabled men. Most of them are usually heterosexual.
That’s interesting because I would estimate that at least 90% of devotees are cisgender heterosexual men who are interested specifically in disabled women.
That doesn’t mean that gay men cannot be devotees. I’ve been accosted by gay male devotees before when I joined an LGBTQ-friendly community.
The group of men were at first very into me. They told me they found me attractive and wanted to give me sexy sponge baths. They told me they wanted to rub my disabled limbs and “make them feel better.” I told them that I was not interested and then they started talking about my “penis.”
I’m trans. I was assigned female at birth. I made that clear very quickly and that’s when they started becoming misogynist. Since they couldn’t “wash my penis” like they wanted to, I was a disgusting freak bitch. I supposedly “led them on” just by existing and making them assume I was a cis gay male and had a penis.
That being said though, the vast majority of the experiences I have had with devotees have been with cisgender heterosexual men, and when they find out that I don’t have a penis let’s just say they have shown me how misogynistic they can be.
So, you will always find groups with devotees where cisgender disabled men will seek out cisgender heterosexual able-bodied women. They want them to give them sex. They want them to be their caregivers.
While there is a level of ableism that faces all disabled people when it comes to dating, there are many cisgender heterosexual wheelchair-using men who, like non-disabled cis men, believe they are entitled to able-bodied women and their bodies. I see this all the time in the neuromuscular disability community.
Cisgender heterosexual wheelchair-using men believe that women are oppressing them. They believe that they are entitled to women. A lot of times they will get bitter and many of them are incels. If, by chance, they happen to convince a woman to have sex with them, they almost always become cocky, arrogant, misogynistic, and think they are entitled to more women. It’s a vicious cycle.
It’s also not all men with neuromuscular disabilities so don’t come at me with that, but it is enough of a pattern that others including cisgender men with neuromuscular disabilities have agreed with me that this is an issue in our community.
So, it’s really kind of complicated because some of it is fueled by ableism. Some of it is fueled by some wheelchair-using men who are just assholes and able-bodied women who don’t want to deal with that. Some of it is they feel they are entitled to women’s bodies – but particularly able-bodied women. The women these men want can be disabled in other ways as long as they are able-bodied.
By the same token, these men are often disgusted by non-male wheelchair-using bodies.
When I was growing up, going to MDA camp, the amount of cis males in wheelchairs who were disgustingly misogynist to me – the only consistent girl camper at the time – was so high that some of the counselors had to protect me from these boys. There was a level of violence they would extend toward me especially as I developed boobs and made them realize I had my own sexuality.
I was actively dating a boy who went to camp with me and he felt such pressure from the other boys not to like a wheelchair-using girl that he would lie and say we were not together. At the time, this hurt but I also understood why he did it. We, privately, had our own thing, but he was shamed into lying about our connection.
So, here we have wheelchair-using cis males, who are okay with devotees because they want female devotees to give them all the sex they feel they are owed and deserve.
But devotees don’t want them. Yes, there are some female devotees but most devotees seem to be interested in either wheelchair-using females or female amputees. – They fetishize the wheelchairs, the disabled limbs, the lack of disabled limbs, and even the prosthetics of these women. They don’t see the women – they just see their body parts and mobility devices.
That’s not love.
That’s fetishization. That’s objectification.
This is why many of us disabled folks, especially those of us who are not cisgender males, are uncomfortable with devotees in our spaces.
Devotees are not about us. It’s about them. It’s about them getting off on being attracted to us, and to our mobility devices. The entire concept is ableist by default, as a result.
Sure, some disabled people have their own individual kinks. Some even like being treated like crap. They like being degraded. They like being objectified. So, devotees are perfect for their kink. This is the exception not the rule, and these people can do whatever they want.
They don’t deserve to be shamed for their kink in wanting to be objectified since it hurts no one, but they shouldn’t be bringing devotees into spaces specifically for disabled people when the vast majority of us are uncomfortable with devotees. That is when it becomes harmful and non-consensual.
That is the other issue with devotees. Much of what they do towards disabled people is non-consensual. This is why it’s different from other kinks and why when people say well you shouldn’t shame devotees for their “kink” it’s different than saying you shouldn’t shame people for other kinks.
It makes sense to not shame the disabled person for choosing to be with a devotee unless they choose to also bring that devotee into disabled spaces and/or argue with disabled people who are uncomfortable with devotees. Them being with a devotee in their own private time hurts no one.
As long as it does not encourage devotees to pursue other disabled people, that person is fine being with a devotee if they want to. It’s not anything I would want, but that’s on them.
Devotees try to integrate themselves into disabled spaces, particularly in spaces that are for alternative sexuality. Many disabled people have professed how uncomfortable this makes them, and devotees always play the victim as a result. We are being unfair by not wanting them to be in our communities, according to them. But if they are allowed in our spaces do disabled people have any safe space?
At the end of the day, devotees are not attracted to disabled people as a whole. In my personal experience, I’ve yet to meet a devotee that does not wish to objectify or fetishize a disabled person or their mobility devices.
With cisgender heterosexual wheelchair using men often desperate to get laid, they are willing to allow devotees into our community in hopes that a rare female devotee will cross their path and want to serve them, fuck them, and be with them.
With cisgender heterosexual wheelchair-using women among the groups that are mistreated by nearly everyone when it comes to dating and sexuality, some may feel a sense of desperation from devotees offering them false promises of care and love.
I have seen too many disabled women get stuck in financial situations where they become dependent on their partner, and their partner abuses them. This is a real threat when it comes to devotees.
Ultimately, disabled people deserve spaces free of devotees. We deserve to be treated like entire human beings. I’m tired of having this discussion.
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