Sex & Disability

What if a partner is nonverbal due to disability? Here are some tips on how to seek and obtain consent and how to generally communicate during sex with a nonverbal partner, so sex can be safe, satisfying and fun for everyone involved.

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?

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.

Depending on your disability, everything involving sex may require help – and if your parent is your primary caregiver, bringing up these topics (let alone asking for assistance with them) is not an easy task. It is possible to have a healthy and fulfilling relationship and sex life as a disabled person with a parent caregiver (or any other kind of caregiver). Here's a guide to help you out in this department.

When your disabled body decides to literally crap out on you, how do you bring sexy back?

Disabled people are often nervous when they set out into the world of partnered sex. Because it's such a taboo subject, they may not know where to start, since they've rarely heard people affirming the right to sexual autonomy for disabled people, or providing information about how to have safe, fun, loving, saucy, steamy, great sex while disabled.

We all know that consent can be sexy — and also that navigating sexual consent can be tricky. Sometimes, disability makes it more complicated, so it's important to take some time out to talk about that as you explore the world of dating and sexuality through the disability lens.

If you want to explore various aspects of kink — or whatever you want to call it — there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and it can be fun and one way to build rich, fulfilling relationships.

Before getting sexy with other people, it may help to get to know your own body — although it's not required— and a lot of the disabled youth I talk to haven't had the opportunity! They're not sure which sensations they like, how their bodies feel when they're excited, what they definitely don't like, and how to handle the physical mechanics of pleasure. Nondisabled people sometimes assume masturbation is a snap, but for some of us, it can be more challenging. That doesn't mean it's impossible.

Being disabled doesn't mean you can't have a rewarding and awesome sex life.