For Valentine’s Day, we asked three people with spinal cord injuries to talk about how they experience sex and intimacy. Their backgrounds are different. Their levels of function are different. But they’ve all dealt with the confusion and discovery that comes with defining their own concepts of sexuality to fit their bodies and desires. These are frank and open discussions, and we hope they resonate with your own experiences.

How Rediscovering My Sexuality Taught Me to Accept My Post-Disability Self

By Kelsey Peterson

We’re all born with an essence that we carry into the world, pieces of our spirit that are innately us. For me, I came with a passionate, look-harder, reach-higher, take-the-little-blue-pill-and-see-what-happens kind of spirit — a curious and daring nature.

Fortunately, my exploratory spirit was grounded in a strong foundation of love in a household that I trusted. There wasn’t that common glaze of shame that many of us have endured and absorbed throughout our lives, especially as sexual beings. Somehow, thankfully, I grew up largely unscathed by any trauma which could have dampened parts of my curious nature. I was lucky, and more so, privileged. Only since my injury have I realized that something as vital as my sense of self, personal power and sexual prowess could be quickly squashed, not only by the loss of my body and my independence but also by feeling unseen.

I suppose I was an early bloomer. I started exploring when I was probably in second grade. Well, let’s be honest, I was playing “doctor” with friends before that and got busted with my friend Nikki once — her mom caught us giggling and diddling in the closet. But what I remember most was my mom talking about it with me on the way home and how kind she was about the whole thing. She made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want me to feel bad about anything. There was no shame, fear or manipulation. I remember her reassuring me that it was OK, that there was nothing wrong with it. I felt so loved in that moment.

As I got older and more curious, I had a great time exploring. This form of self-exploration was fun and exciting. I was the master of my pleasure. It was eye-opening, healthy and built my confidence and identity as an independent, empowered young woman. By the time I was 27, I’d relished a liberating and fun sex life for over 10 years. I’d been clocking orgasms and connection through physical intimacy for even longer. I loved my sex life. And as a dancer and yoga teacher, sensuality, movement and my body itself were a huge part of who I was and how I interacted with my world. My body was a sacred and sovereign place to return to when I needed to retreat from my mind and translate my thoughts or things that the outside world delivered, good or bad.

Then on July 4, 2012, I was injured. My sacred and sovereign flesh felt as if it was torn from me. I immediately felt detached from it after I dove into the water that night. As a C6 quadriplegic, I was forced to let go of my former reality and explore a new body, a new world, a new home within myself — one in which I can’t move, let alone feel, in the same way. All the while, I was learning to fight against a culture that puts me, as a person with a disability, at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to definitions of sexiness.

Beyond the trauma of my accident, I was suddenly met with an onslaught of disability microaggressions. These stressors of feeling unseen — from inaccessibility to invisibility to inequality and beyond — collectively brought forth their own traumas. And I felt my curiosity, my trust in life and my sexuality not just slipping away but disappearing into a deafening, silent abyss. I still felt that fire of my sex drive exactly the same as before — but pleasure, orgasm and sexiness seemed out of reach.

Suddenly, I wanted to be shamelessly checked out again. Objectification became something I missed. I yearned to feel lusted after and be obnoxiously gawked at again. How shallow was I that, ironically, after years of pushing back against annoying and insulting objectification, I now somehow missed it? Now, this separation of body from self became hurtful and insulting in a totally different way. Instead of being uncomfortably stared at out of lust or admiration, I was stared at out of sheer human curiosity — or worse yet, pity — or I was skimmed over in the crowd and casually disregarded. After my injury, I felt assaulted by ableism regularly. And it all made me question my sense of identity.

There was so much to understand and unwrap when it came to ableism, including my own internalized attitudes and the culture that had shaped my ideas of self-worth, sexiness and sexuality. Because now I was the one in a wheelchair, and my preconceived notions and misconceptions of what it meant to be sexual in a disabled body were their own form of self-inflicted daily assaults. I could no longer live and thrive, sexually or otherwise, within the constraints of an able-bodied existence. I needed to change the narrative, own my disability, and get curious again with my still-sacred form. There was a level of self-acceptance that needed to happen, and it was a bigger leap than I had ever taken on any dance floor.

For the longest time, I just didn’t know how to get there. For five long years, I didn’t have sex. I was too afraid and wounded. And I felt more vulnerable to judgement — or any other form of harm for that matter — than ever before. It was as if I was there for the taking, emotionally and physically, if I were to put myself in that position. And even though I so badly wanted to, there were too many questions and even more fears caging me from my beloved curiosity.

And then it finally happened. I lost my quadginity. I felt cared for and safe, desired and sexy. It was wonderfully strange — I immediately felt this renewed sense of empowerment.

And then, on a weekend to go visit an old friend, it finally happened. I lost my quadginity. I felt cared for and safe, desired and sexy. It was wonderfully strange — I immediately felt this renewed sense of empowerment. So many questions were answered. I didn’t get some of the answers I wanted, but I didn’t expect those answers anyway. I knew I wouldn’t feel him inside me the same way, and I knew I wouldn’t climax. But it was more than I expected. Sex was still fun and pleasurable. It felt good in a completely sensual and exciting new way, and we all know how erotic new can be. Did I suddenly have a leg up on all the able-bodied normies?

This was revolutionary. This was an awakening.

Post-injury/disabled sex brought me back to life in many ways — I wouldn’t dare tell him that, but it was true. The whole experience gave me back some of that much-needed sense of prowess and empowerment … and possibility! It reignited something in me that I had lost and so gravely missed. Something that was traumatized and hiding away, protecting itself in a place that felt safe. This was one of the first steps toward owning my sexuality again — not just thinking I’m sexy and merely accepting my body but knowing I’m sexy and loving my body.

I’ve been slowly but steadily relearning to see my body without the harmful narrative, without shame or judgment, and without confining ties to the able-bodied sex I’d been having. I’m discovering what feels good in this body, finding new pathways to pleasure, without feeling like it should be something else, like I should be someone else. I’m trading in comparison for discovery, which sometimes feels impossible, but nonetheless, vital. It’s all wild and scary and weird, but it’s also completely liberating, this return to trust, to play, to myself.

This piece was originally published as Return to the Home Within on Unite 2 Fight Paralysis’ blog on December 7th, 2021. It ran as a personal companion piece to U2FP’s podcast, episode 56: ‘The Science of Orgasm’.

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Pleasure is Pleasure

By Thabiso Rowan

One undying truth of my existence is that I love sex. Even having a T9-11 spinal cord injury, sex is sacred. Intimacy is probably the most sensual act of human gratification. I still feel that fire of my sex drive. I can still easily distract myself with the glow of sensual, feminine curves.

Growing up in a big Irish Catholic family with South African roots has instilled a certain ideal to the story of my life. I am a family man. I am a black and white, caramel-colored man. I have had numerous sexual encounters, but only a few partners. I can count the number of people that I have had sexual relations with on one hand, a couple of fingers. My favorite position was, and will always be, doggy style. These days, I cannot enjoy the pleasure of sexual dominance unless I have first been dominated. In times past, I have been able to express, “Let me lift your leg here” or “I will bang away at this gesture for nothing less than 30 minutes.” Now it’s a matter of me, in heat, asking, “How hard can you squeeze my nipple?” or “Is it OK if my suprapubic catheter is poking you?”

My life has been awkward in most of my recent sexual experiences. Half of my body is paralyzed, but my mind is still fully connected to passion and desires that I have experienced while growing up with a nondisabled body. Can I still experience and enjoy sexual pleasure? I certainly hope so. Is sexual intercourse the same as I envisioned it when I was a teenager? I would be lying if I did not admit that sex and sexual pleasure are different now. I have not asked for these sexual changes, but I know that the best pleasures in life sometimes come down to the newest experiences.

I had a handful of romantic relationships before my injury, and a handful after I was awarded this new body. From what I can tell, pleasure is pleasure.

The thought that helps me the most is: Just be yourself. Don’t hold back. Understand that no one is perfect. Enjoy your life because it is worth it. Sometimes I have to remind myself of these words too.

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A Deeper Kind of Intimacy

By Gabe Rodreick

If I didn’t have a spinal cord injury today, I’d be 6-foot, a lean 160 pounds with broad shoulders, soft musical hands and long, agile legs. My body would fit the standard attractive body like a glove. I would bike, run, hike, play ultimate frisbee, climb trees, swim, go streaking through the wilderness. I would play piano and pick up other instruments with ease. I would go dancing and move my hips better than any white boy in the club because the ocean that stole my body away at least told me some secrets about the hips.

And I would fuck. I would make love day and night.

It would be dirty.

It would be sloppy.

It would be hot and sweaty.

It would be weird.

It would make us laugh.

It would stink of love.

It would be soft like the breeze cools the sun.

It would be

our drool on each other’s skin

creating rivers that flood our body’s creases and folds

wetlands manifested by our mouths

feeding each other the flowers we pick from our chests

drawing maps with our tongues so their seeds know where to grow

we would go low

we’d flood each other with moaning storms

I’d never wanna be dry again

only a sponge soaking you in

But here I sit, sedentary. Stuck writing love poems for my body, and for yours. Dreaming of our sensation engines igniting again.

This injury comes with countless corporeal puzzles, and none harder to piece together than that of sexuality and intimacy. How do I experience physical intimacy when I can’t move or feel 90% of my body? Especially when, before my injury, my body was a well for my expression.

Even though I never had sex before my injury, the physical side of intimacy had already made itself known. I felt it in the way I played outside. Always barefoot, dirt under my fingernails, usually in a tree somewhere. There was an electricity that coursed through my body, a curiosity, a laughter that lived inside of me. It lived in my fingers when I played piano. It was in my muscles when I pushed my body to its limits. It was in the way I found intimacy with myself.

Although I’ve had sex and been physically intimate with lovers post-injury, I’ve found it difficult to experience romantic intimacy with them. The lovers I’ve been with have been very good friends of mine. We’ve shared a vital closeness that I’ve never had with anyone else, a closeness that a lot of folks with disabilities have never experienced. But as time has gone on, I’ve begun to realize that I long for passionate intimacy. The kind of love they tell us only exists in movies, poems, and music. The kind of love that’s hard to find even with a body that fits the societal standard of attractiveness.

Over the years, I’ve sought this love from people who haven’t reciprocated the same feelings. People who I’ve wondered if they would reciprocate those feelings if I never had a spinal cord injury, if I was “hotter” and “stronger.” Or was it because I’ve been stuck inside my own internalized ableism for so long, feeling like I could never have the kind of intimacy I long for because “no one I love will ever love me as long as I live in this broken body.” Maybe others don’t see my body as sexy and erotic because I don’t let myself, or I don’t know how to experience my body in those ways.

As I get older and more settled into this strange body, the more it becomes clear that the puzzle of sex and intimacy is about finding intimacy within myself. The fire that lives within me. Lovers are waiting, nature is always present, but it’s up to me to open myself up to the poetry and magic of life. Once I give myself over to poetry and magic, curiosity and playfulness will take over.

I can breathe orgasms.

I can climb trees with my mind.

I can hold you deeply with my eyes.

I can hear every part of my body you touch.

I can feel the patterns of life with every beat of my heart.

Don’t get me wrong; I will forever starve for touch, full body hugs, a full-blown erection followed by an electric ejaculation, feeling so tangled up in someone else’s body that you can’t tell whether or not they’re trying to steal your soul. It is an evolutionary crime that my spinal cord will not heal on its own, and I will forever grieve my old body.

But there are deeper kinds of intimacy out there. So what kind of intimacy can be conjured with poetry, magic, curiosity and play? I believe it to be a magnetic love so deep that God and Nature itself could never have imagined a place so warm and so full of home.

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