Inter able relationships—Sex and Disability

Too often people with disabilities and institutions are seen as unworthy of relationships or sex. After extensive advocacy by the Empowerment Council, the CAMH bill of Patient Rights includes the right to have relationships. However, very few professionals at CAMH talk about relationships in group contexts even though these can be so important for us.

Getting the relationships and sex you want is part of disability justice:According to the World Health Organization, “Sexuality is an integral part of the personality of everyone: man, woman and child; it is a basic need and aspect of being human that cannot be separated from other aspects life.”

Ben Mattlin: In Sickness and In Health: Love, Disability, and a Quest to Understand the Perils and Pleasures of Inter-abled Romance (Beacon Press: 2018)

Bulletin: We will collect a few websites and try to include some in future issues.

Sexualityanddisability.org is constructed as a bunch of questions a [cis] woman with a disability might have – about her body, about the mechanics and dynamics of having sex, about the complexities of being in an intimate relationship or having children, about unvoiced fears or experiences of encountering abuse in some form. Based in Mumbai, Delhi and New York,

Can you u have relationships? //wearyourvoicemag.com/identities/mentally-ill-people-relationships –

Sam Dylan Finch has lots of ideas

Have you ever been asked how you could date (or be dated) someone like that? Is it different for “mental / psychosocial” disabilities?

Ben Mattlin