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Do you think sexiness can coexist with SMA?
Given how pervasive the infantilization and desexualization of people with disabilities are, not to mention traditionalist views about modesty and all, I wrote a column to ask: Can disabled people be sexy? What does “sexy” even mean to us, individually and collectively? How would we achieve that vibe, with the different shapes our bodies take and our medical needs?
Everyone’s answers would be, of course, different. Mine are in the column, and I can elaborate further. But really, I want to hear from the community. What do you all think?
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7 Replies
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So, my experience is that there are people attracted specifically to individuals with disabilities, but it tends to fall under being considered a ‘fetsh’, and many shy away from their disability being viewed in this way. It is much harder to get those in more regular dating circles to look past the wheelchair and be viewed as sexy. Unfortunately, those with disability fetishes tend to fall for the idea of dating someone in a wheelchair before getting to know the person first and this can definitely give a creepy vibe. If can look past that, you might find in certain circles are considered more sexy due to your disability.
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Hey, great column! I can definitely relate to what you said. I’ve been through the phases of feeling self-conscious about my body, not wanting to be judged by others. I’ve also tried covering up my skin and hiding parts of my body that I felt didn’t fit society’s “standards” of beauty. But now that I’m older, I realize that it’s all so silly.
To me, sexiness is confidence. If wearing a strapless dress or shirt with skinny straps makes you feel confident, go for it. If covering yourself up makes you feel more beautiful, then that’s okay, too. Not everyone will see your confidence as sexiness, but the same goes for a nondisabled person as well. At the end of the day, sexiness is subjective. What matters is that you know what makes you feel sexy and beautiful in your own skin. In time, other people will feel it too.
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If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then sexiness is found in the mind’s perception. I think that people consider many qualities sexy, different parts of the body, different attributes, different aspects of personality… So perhaps SMA may make the 1st category more unusual, but not the others. Confidence and intelligence are widely known to be sexually attractive aspects. And are 2 things I think many people with SMA possess in abundance. Discover what you find most appealing about yourself, lean into those attributes and then other people will start positively being drawn to them as well.
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💯
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I can’t speak on disability being a fetish, but it is hard for people to get past infantilizing people with disabilities. That can be a difficult stereotype to navigate when so many stories cast the disabled as either the villain (outer flaw reflecting an inner flaw) or completely helpless. It doesn’t help that many of those characters are also elderly and become more easily dismissed in our youth obsessed culture. Don’t even get me started on beauty standards that physically healthy people have difficulty living up to, much less us.
That being said… we are not our bodies. The things we can do are limited by physical capacity and that’s a hard fact. But who you are cannot be primarily defined by the condition of the body you live in.
How others perceive us begins with how we perceive ourselves. Are we judging ourselves against impossible beauty standards? Look in the mirror. What do you see? Use the body you have to express who you are. And that goes for style too. I prefer Boho chic and that tends to be loose, but if you feel confident in strapless dresses go for it. You do you.
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Great responses from everyone! Objectification, fetishisation, and infantilisation really are such tough challenges to navigate. It’s worse when you think about how all those issues work hand-in-hand.
Oddly enough, after trying to get involved in local kink communities since writing this post, I’ve found people who genuinely find me attractive for my playfulness, intelligence, and confidence. It’s the last place I expected to find that kind of acceptance, I’m ashamed to say. But the people around me now remind me that being human can be sexy in itself and should be.
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I’m not surprised by this. The foundation of kink communities is radical consent. That looks like a lot of communication about what is OK, what isn’t, and what is negotiable.
When you get down to it, I think a lot of discomfort is based in not knowing if we can do X, Y and Z. Having an up front conversation eliminates all of that doubt.
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