Navigating Intimacy: A Booklist to Sex, Sexuality, and Disability

Posted On: October 11, 2023

Exploring the intersection of sex, sexuality, and disability can be both informative and empowering. As a Relationship Counselor and Clinical Sexologist, I am deeply passionate about shedding light on the often overlooked and misunderstood realm of sex, sexuality, and disability. It is my firm belief that everyone, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities, deserves to experience fulfilling and pleasurable intimate connections. Through my years of experience and research, I have come across a plethora of insightful books that not only provide valuable knowledge but also challenge societal norms and empower individuals to embrace their unique sexual identities. In this blog, I am excited to share a curated list of these transformative books, inviting readers to embark on a journey of understanding, acceptance, and celebration of the diverse experiences within the intersection of sex, sexuality, and disability.

1. A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disabilityby A. Andrews (2020)

All different kinds of bods want to connect with other bods, but lots of them get left out of the conversation when it comes to S-E-X. As explained by disabled cartoonist A. Andrews, this easy-to-read guide covers the basics of disability sexuality, common myths about disabled bodies, communication tips, and practical suggestions for having the best sexual experience possible. Whether you yourself are disabled, you love someone who is, or you just want to know more, consider this your handy starter kit to understanding disability sexuality, and your path to achieving accessible (and fulfilling) sex.

A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disability
2. Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability: For All of Us Who Live with Disabilities, Chronic Pain, and Illness by Miriam Kaufman, Cory Silverberg and Fran Odette (2017)

The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability is the first complete sex guide for people who live with disabilities, pain, illness, or chronic conditions. Useful for absolutely everyone, regardless of age, gender, or sexual orientation, the book addresses a wide range of disabilities — from chronic fatigue, back pain, and asthma to spinal cord injury, hearing and visual impairment, multiple sclerosis, and more. Expertly written by a medical doctor, a sex educator, and a disability activist, The Ultimate Guide provides readers with encouragement, support, and all the information they need to create a sex life that works for them. The authors cover all aspects of sex and disability, including building a positive sexual self-image; positions to minimize stress and maximize pleasure; dealing with fatigue or pain during sex; finding partners and talking with partners about sex and disability; adapting sex toys; and more.

Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability
3. Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation by Eli Clare (2015)

First published in 1999, the groundbreaking Exile and Pride is essential to the history and future of disability politics. Eli Clare’s revelatory writing about his experiences as a white disabled genderqueer activist/writer established him as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability and permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation. With a poet’s devotion to truth and an activist’s demand for justice, Clare deftly unspools the multiple histories from which our ever-evolving sense of self unfolds. His essays weave together memoir, history, and political thinking to explore meanings and experiences of home: home as place, community, bodies, identity, and activism.

Exile and Pride
4. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018)

In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all.

Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of color are doing to find each other and to build power and community, and a tool kit for everyone who wants to build radically resilient, sustainable communities of liberation where no one is left behind. Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.

Care Work
5. Sexuality and Disability: A Guide for Everyday Practice by Tuppy Owens and Claire de Than (1989)

Sexuality is an integral part of every person, but it is often difficult for people with a physical and/or learning disability to express their sexuality as they wish. This book provides a clear explanation of the issues concerning sexuality and disability for all professionals working in these sensitive areas.

Sexuality and Disability
6. Sex and Disability by Robert McRuer and Anna Mollow (2012)

The title of this collection of essays, Sex and Disability, unites two terms that the popular imagination often regards as incongruous. The major texts in sexuality studies, including queer theory, rarely mention disability, and foundational texts in disability studies do not discuss sex in much detail. What if “sex” and “disability” were understood as intimately related concepts? And what if disabled people were seen as both subjects and objects of a range of erotic desires and practices?

Sex and Disability
7. Disability and the Media: Prescriptions for Change by Charles A. Riley (2005)

In the past decade, the mass media discovered disability. Spurred by the box-office appeal of superstars such as the late Christopher Reeve, Michael J. Fox, Stephen Hawking, and others, and given momentum by the success of Oscar-winning movies, popular television shows, best-selling books, and profitable websites, major media corporations have reversed their earlier course of hiding disability, bringing it instead to center stage. Yet depictions of disability have remained largely unchanged since the 1920s. Focusing almost exclusively on the medical aspect of injury or illness, the disability profile in fact and fiction leads inevitably to an inspiring moment of”overcoming.”

Disability and the Media
8. Queering Sexual Violence – Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement by Jennifer Patterson

Often pushed to the margins, queer, transgender and gender non-conforming survivors have been organizing in anti-violence work since the birth of the movement. Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement locates them at the center of the anti-violence movement and creates a space for their voices to be heard. Moving beyond dominant narratives and the traditional “violence against women” framework, the book is multi-gendered, multi-racial and multi-layered. This thirty-seven piece collection disrupts the mainstream conversations about sexual violence and connects them to disability justice, sex worker rights, healing justice, racial justice, gender self-determination, queer & trans liberation and prison industrial complex abolition through reflections, personal narrative, and strategies for resistance and healing.

Queering Sexual Violence

Other Resources:

  1. The work of Sins Invalid, including many of their videos on their YouTube channel
  2. The Disability After Dark Podcast by Andrew Gurza
  3. The Disability Visibility Project, including the upcoming Disability Intimacy Anthology
  4. No End in Sight Podcast (focused on chronic health issues specifically) and the #NEISVoid on Twitter
  5. My booklist for Parents & Educators Working with Individuals with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)
  6. My booklist on Sex Ed Resource List for Parents

About Dr. Martha Tara Lee

Dr. Martha Tara Lee has been a passionate advocate for positive sexuality since 2007. With a Doctorate in Human Sexuality and a Masters in Counseling, she launched Eros Coaching in 2009 to help individuals and couples lead self-actualised and pleasurable lives. Her expertise includes working with couples who have unconsummated marriage, individuals with sexual inhibitions and discrepancies in sexual desire, men with erection and ejaculation concerns, and members of the LGBTQIA+ and kink communities. Dr. Lee welcomes all sexual orientations and is available for online and face-to-face consultations. Martha speaks English and Mandarin.

She is the only certified sexuality educator by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) in the region (as of 2011) and is also an AASECT certified sexuality educator supervisor (as of 2018). She strives to provide fun, educational, and sex-positive events and is often cited in the media including Huffington PostNewsweek, South China Morning Post, and more. She is the appointed Resident Sexologist for Singapore Cancer Society, Of Noah.sgOfZoey.sg, and Virtus Fertility Centre. She is the host of radio show Eros Evolution for OMTimes Radio. In recognition of her work, she was named one of ‘Top 50 Inspiring Women under 40’ by Her World in July 2010, and one of ‘Top 100 Inspiring Women’ by CozyCot in March 2011. She is the author of Love, Sex and Everything In-Between (2013),  Orgasmic Yoga: Masturbation, Meditation and Everything In-Between (2015), From Princess to Queen: Heartbreaks, Heartgasms and Everything In-Between (2017), and {Un}Inhihibited (2019).

You can read the testimonials she’s received over years here. For her full profile, click here. Email her here.

         
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