Own It: Our Bodies Aren’t Broken … Just Unique


People said a lot of things to me after I was paralyzed in a car accident 19 years ago. But amid how sad and God has a plan for you, the comment that left the biggest impression came from one of my closest college girlfriends: “I’m so sorry you’ll never get to orgasm with a guy.” Her immediate layperson assumption was that paralysis would negatively impact my physical stimulation and therefore obliterate any future chance for the genital response we call “orgasm.”

At the time, it felt like a gut punch. In just a few unplanned words, my friend, however unintentionally, had effectively planted a seed in my mind that my future sexual experience would be diminished. Less than. Never as fulfilling as it would have been if I hadn’t been injured. And looking back, it pisses me off that just a few uninformed words had so much power over determining how I would proceed through the next several years to view myself as a sexual being.

Now mind you, sexuality had never been my greatest priority as a young person. Sure, it was on my mind, but for several reasons my teenage self wasn’t particularly drawn to sowing oats. I felt uncomfortable with sexual objectification by teenage boys, instead asserting my value of intellect, humor, and, well, everything else. The Eastern philosophies to which I was drawn regarded physical desires as rather ephemeral and superfluous. I was very protective of my body, and the concern about STDs or sexual assaults outweighed my desire to satisfy curiosities. And with a busy schedule of soccer, theater, choir … let’s just say it was not Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

But since I was surrounded by hormone-charged adolescent culture, my lack of interest in sexual experimentation often made me feel rather alien. Deep down I knew that what I was seeking just wasn’t what was being offered in a high school context. But social messages made me feel like I was the problem … I must be broken.

So it was icing on the shitcake when, at age 20, I found myself feeling even more broken, perhaps irreparably. Like so many in my position, I was bombarded with disempowering narratives that implied that bodies like mine — with atrophy, scars, catheters, ventilators and wheels — aren’t desirable, and therefore we and our partners can never have a truly fulfilling sex life post-injury … it will always have a handicap. There will always be some supreme version of sex that is now unavailable to us.

The problem is, the external sources dictating what is possible come from a nondisabled perspective — people like my friend, who have no idea what it actually is to be paralyzed, disabled, etc., and can only imagine it and fear it. They are themselves being fed a “standard” version of what sexuality and intimacy look like, which, let’s be honest, is predominantly crafted around the profit that can be derived from people feeling inadequate. Alternative narratives get drowned out.

We’re told that our “way in” to sex, orgasm, arousal, and sexuality has been cut off — that we can no longer be sexual beings, because our bodies don’t fit what sexuality looks like. And sadly, we often accept this assessment. We judge ourselves, thinking we are broken and inadequate if we don’t get wet like we’re “supposed to,” aroused like we’re “supposed to,” or can’t move the same way, respond the same way. Adding a partner to the mix makes it even more complicated, as partners can get overwhelmed and discouraged by what they don’t understand. The unknown territory can make us all feel like failures. It can be tiring, and we just want a “simple” and familiar response.

But our sexuality is not broken. We just don’t have the right popular models to illustrate what it can look like when we have to adapt or when things change. And our popular understanding of sexuality, pleasure, intimacy, arousal and the like has been consistently bastardized over time, leaving us with a substandard and incomplete understanding of the full complexities of what is possible for our bodies.

As Emily Nagoski lays out in Come As You Are — a book every person should read, disability or not — we have all been duped in how we think about our bodies and their sexual capacities. Too many of us believe we are broken simply because our pathway to pleasure doesn’t look conventional. Through a scientific lens, she reminds us of something we often forget: The ultimate goal is pleasure, and pleasure manifests differently for everyone. Despite what various social narratives will tell you, different doesn’t mean “less than.” It just means different.

Post-Traumatic Possibility

Unfortunately, aside from books like Come As You Are, there aren’t many roadmaps for us. Nondisabled people who have no firsthand, lived experience of how our bodies feel, react, or behave aren’t going to be able to tell us what we need. There is a woeful lack of models or examples of empowered, bold, fulfilled, expansive, nontraditional sexuality.

But we have the power to explore for ourselves. Our different version of sexuality could, in fact, be enhanced. After all, we are not relying on the same ho hum, surface, simplistic physiological responses that are the default for other humans. If we could get past barriers of judgment and comparison, we might inhabit our sexuality in a way that is elevated, expanded and advanced beyond what folks with conventional bodies will ever know or could ever imagine. We can throw out genital orgasm as the gold standard and discover the many ways that we can achieve — as Nagoski terms it — the “sudden involuntary release of sexual tension.”

Over a number of years, I ultimately discovered the ways in which my paralyzed body was uniquely liberated from the expectations imposed on nondisabled bodies. As a paraplegic, I felt more free than I’d ever been before my injury — free to discover my sexual identity in all of its uniqueness, to chart my own road map, to discover forms of arousal and pleasure that were my body’s alone.

I sometimes wonder, what if my friend’s first reaction had been one of affirmation and curiosity instead of negative judgment? What if she said, “Omigosh, you are going to have such an amazing opportunity to explore your sexuality in ways that so many people don’t get to. Your body is going to be like no other. I wonder what you will discover. I’m so jealous!” Perhaps it would have saved me several years of fighting against something that didn’t need to be fought.

Our trauma, in the end, could be the thing that opens us up the most. Researchers talk of post traumatic growth. Why can’t this concept extend to sexuality? Perhaps our disabilities actually force us to leave behind the carcasses of our previous lives and discover new possibilities, simultaneously shedding expectations we had carried with us. We get a unique opportunity that so many people will never experience in their lives. If only we could spend less time fighting against it and more time loving within it, and realizing we aren’t broken … just unique.


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Lois west
Lois west
2 years ago

Thank you. Just ordered two pads from Etsy. Certain medical tests or circumstances make my bowel program unpredictable. These will be nicer than disposable pads.

Terry Day
Terry Day
2 years ago

Love this. I am post polio. I am on a mission. I realized people whose legs who were paralyzed could not use a commode at the hospital and nursing care. I needed a simple accommodation, drop arm commodes. My upper body is strong. The bed pan was bad. The nurses left you on it way too long. My husband and I pressures OT to find a commode that would work and he went to a medical supply to buy it and ask questions about accessible vans. I can not get in my van. Lucky I had a scooter and it was same height as my bed. Because of this I did not have to stay in nursing home. Because I could use the commode, shower chair I could stay in our home. I am starting a yiutube channel on accessible walks of Minneapolis and towns I travel to. I have storytelling videos of my life as a person with disability. I need tech help but I love my creative endeavors. Hope to connect with your site and solve problems.
Terry Day