Sex & Sexuality

Despite the initial shame, guilt, name-calling, jokes, and fear related to disclosure, my STI presented me with a chance to love myself more deeply. It gave me a chance to sit with myself, who I thought myself to be, who I thought I was going to become, and who I really was.

Cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injuries, among other disabilities, can involve spasticity. People often have day-to-day coping mechanisms to help manage their spasticity, but what do you do when you have spasticity and want to have sex?

Fantasy is an important part of our relationships with ourselves and our sexual desires. But it can also be a source of shame. How can we find ways to reconnect with our sexual fantasies and create a healthy relationship with desire.

The news is full of the wrong ways to try to have sex. Forever we’ve seen high profile men – almost always men – chasing people for sex, abusively. For the last few years, some high-profile men have been held at least a little accountable for it, which means it is not always swept under the rug anymore. But now that the abuse is more visible, if you stare into that abyss long enough, it might start to stare back at you. You could end up lying on your bed wondering if being a guy while being horny is somehow inherently tainted and gross. Most of us want to find someone or a few someones, for relationships or hookups, but right now, looking at some of that foulness, it might feel like trying to find a partner is a minefield of red flags because men’s sexuality is inextricably abusive. It isn't.

This sounds like a frustrating situation, and I'm sorry this side effect of your testosterone has made things so much trickier in this one respect, but in case it helps to have a reminder: your lack of interest in masturbation or sex doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, and I'm sorry to...

A short, fast, sex ed summary about the basics of sexual consent.

The super-basics on what lubricant is and why people use it.

A short, fast, sex ed summary about masturbation.

A short, fast, sex ed summary about pleasure and fulfillment.

Disabled people get a lot of practice telling people about our bodies: doctors, therapists, care workers, or people in our support networks like family and friends. It's so important to be able to tell our partners how to support and pleasure us in the ways that work for us, but even though we’ve got all that practice, this conversation can still be really hard to start. Here's some help.