The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability (24 page)

One partner can lie on their back with pillows for support. Their partner sits on top of them with legs on either side. If you have a good deal of upper body strength, you can do a lot being on top over your partner. If you spread your legs and your knees apart you can give room for the person on the bottom to move around underneath you. The partner on top can also work even if they can't move much below the waist. They can use their upper body to press against either the bed or their partner to create pelvic movement.

Or one partner can try lying on their back with their knees against their chest, or knees on their partner's shoulders. The other partner kneels facing the first partner. This position gives the person who is on their knees easy access for penetration, but the person on their back gets less movement. The person on their back can use their hands and arms for thrusting. If you can, you might also try squeezing your buttocks together.

Using Your Wheelchair

Sex in your wheelchair has the benefit of speed (if you don't have time for more than a quickie). You don't even need to get fully undressed! A wheelchair with removable armrests can offer quite a few possibilities. Your partner can sit on your lap facing you with their legs on either side of you. In this position not only do you both have access to the whole top halves of your bodies to touch and feel and use for support, you can also touch and feel each other's bellies and upper thighs. If the person in the chair wants to penetrate their partner (with a penis or dildo), the partner can sit on the lap of the person in the chair,

PENETRATION AND POSITIONING

181

facing away for a rear entry position. They can use their arms to support themselves, leaning on your knees. They can also sit facing you with legs hanging down or wrapped around you, although this isn't comfortable for as long a period of time.

If your wheelchair doesn't have removable arms the position with your partner sitting on your lap facing away from you will likely be more comfortable. They then have the opportunity to use the armrests for support.

If the person in the wheelchair wants to be penetrated, they can use the same positions, with a partner sitting on top. For penetration or cun-nilingus, they can scoot their butt (with or without help) forward in the chair and have the partner kneel or sit in front of the chair.

Lying on Your Side

Lying side-to-side is an effective position for a person wearing a catheter attached to a leg bag. This gives you both room to move around and touch each other with many parts of your bodies.

People with hip problems who want to be penetrated can lie on their side with a pillow between their knees. In this position, they are penetrated from behind.

Side positions can also be used with partners facing each other. This position allows for either partner to provide the thusting movement (as opposed to one person on top of another, where the person on top needs to provide most of the movement).

With tight leg or hip tendons or muscles, one partner lies on their side. The other lies perpendicular to their partner with their knees bent

Illustration 9. Position: Side-by-Side

PENETRATION AND POSITIONING • 183

over their partner's waist. This position is very comfortable and can allow for longer, slower penetration sessions.

Using Furniture

Most people use furniture when having sex—most often, a bed. But here are other possibilities. One partner can kneel, with their upper body being supported by something (a bed, a comfy chair, plus some pillows). Their knees are on the ground (again with a pillow underneath them). The other partner can kneel behind them. This gives the partner from behind access to their partner's whole back, head, neck, and butt. But the partner being supported by the furniture has less access to their partner's body.

Or, one can partner sit on a couch or comfy chair. The other partner can sit between their legs, facing away from them.

PRODUCTS THAT HELP WITH POSITIONING

Some very old products, and one very new, have been designed to make sex positioning easier. They aren't designed specifically for penetration, and can be used for oral sex, masturbation, anal/vaginal penetration, or anything else.

The classic toy that is a boon for folks with all sorts of mobility and fatigue issues is the sling. There are about a dozen variations on the sling (some are made from leather, some from nylon; one of the newer ones is made of bungee cord material) but they all work on the same premise. They come with hardware and instructions to affix the sling to a ceiling, and they offer support that allows someone to sit or lie in the sling. This takes all the weight off the joints and limbs and allows for much more movement with a partner. A sling can be installed over a bed, so that even if neither partner is able to stand for long periods of time, one of them can be in the sling and the other can kneel or lie with pillows on the bed.

Over the years people have also manufactured pillows to assist in positioning. Regular pillows will do fine. But a new company has created a series of pillows in geometric shapes that are both versatile and firm, and ideal for sexual positioning. The only drawback to these products is that they are expensive and therefore out of reach for many of us. Some sex toy manufacturers make inflatable pillows that vibrate and are supposed to aid easier positioning. In our experience these plastic pillows are poor quality and are usually very uncomfortable to use (also they are not designed for larger folks and can break if too much weight is put on them). If you are thinking about buying one of these we recommend seeing it in person before putting your money down.

For information on where to find these products see Sexuality: Products (Toys, Books, Videos/DVDs) in chapter 14.

aoE

Who Uses Sex Toys?

Toys and tools are important, but they have their place with different people and it is important to never force your partner into something that they are not ready for. But if they are, take your time and enjoy the feeling, using care and adaptive devices needed to enable both to enjoy

No one specific type of person uses sex toys. Bankers, cops, mothers, grandfathers, religious people, and atheists all use them. Anyone you can imagine may be the sort of person who uses sex toys. It's not that everyone is interested in sex toys, but that anyone might be. There just isn't a sex-toy sort of person.

At the same time, sex toys are not for everyone. If you're not interested in sex toys it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, that you aren't cool, or open enough, or that you're missing out on the best sex of your life. Far from it: Sex toys are only good when their use is something that feels right for you. All we want to suggest is that everyone has the right to experimentation and choice in their sex lives. And this includes the right to play with sex toys, as much as it includes the right to have no interest at all in them.

Why Use Sex Toys?

People use sex toys for a huge variety of reasons. Sex toys can be fun. They provide pleasure. Some people need strong and consistent stimulation to get off, and some sex toys will provide this. Sex toys can change the nature or content of fantasy during solo sex as well as with other people. They can be tools of self-assertion. Sex toys can do things humans can't. Sex toys are goofy and can make you laugh.

Sex Toys as Tools of Empowerment

Sexual independence is an extremely powerful form of empowerment that permeates all aspects of our lives. One of us has been selling sex toys

SEX TOYS, BOOKS, AND VIDEOS • 187

for the past fifteen years. It feels political and slightly revolutionary, and it's unbelievably gratifying to be playing a small part in individual revolutions that are taking place all over the world.

How is all this possible from a small vibrating object (to give just one example of a sex toy)? The most revolutionary aspect of sex toys is that they let us do things for ourselves. When we please ourselves, controlling what happens on our own terms, we are engaging in truly radical sex. Consider the fact that we have often been told that giving someone pleasure is more important than giving it to ourselves. A great lover, the myth has it, is always defined by the heights of passion they can take someone else to, never by the ingenious ways they can pleasure themselves. The flip side of this is that we are only supposed to feel pleasure when it's given to us as a gift from someone else (one of the reasons why masturbation is seen as second-class sex). At the risk of sounding selfish, we think this is nonsense. A great lover, in our view, is someone who knows how to please himself or herself, someone who is comfortable with himself or herself, and is willing to take the risk of sharing that experience with someone else.

Sex toys are also tools of self-assertion, in that they will never ask you to do something you don't want to do. No dildo or vibrator is ever going to coerce you into a sexual encounter. This is one of the reasons so many therapists recommend sex toys to people who have experienced sexual abuse and are trying to come back to trusting sex with other people.

Sex toys allow us to empower ourselves through three processes that often occur before we have a toy we can play with:

• Asserting one's right to feel pleasure

• Facilitating improved communication

• Furthering our self-understanding.

First, we have to acknowledge a desire. If you buy yourself a sex toy, you do so to please yourself. You are making a statement that you are interested in feeling pleasure, and you are worthy of that pleasure. This is no small achievement, and it's one of the reasons so many of us feel unsure about talking about sex toys. It can be hard to say (with our actions), "I am worthy of pleasure. This does not make me needy or selfish."

The next step involves getting information about sex toys. Where do you turn if you want to know something about vibrators, for example? Finding out can be quite a bit of work for people who don't have private access to the Internet. Often people start by asking a friend, partner, doctor, coworker. This first question is another bold move. Most of us want the opportunity to talk about sex: to ask our questions, to share our fears, to laugh about how silly it is sometimes. By taking that risk and starting the conversation, we are opening ourselves up to new possibilities for communication. In our experience most people want the chance to talk about sex and are thankful when someone else makes the first move.

*•

nifi jn

BECOMING ADDICTED TO SEX TOYS

A common question about sex toys is whether you can become addicted to them. The short answer is no. Wanting to do something often does not mean that you are addicted. We don't talk about people being addicted to breathing or sleeping. There is nothing harmful about safely using sex toys, even if you use them often. You can get very different things from a sex toy and a person. You can't have a conversation with a sex toy. On the other hand, it will never say, "I have a headache." Discovering vibrators and the sensations they produce can be somewhat intoxicating. At first, we may use the vibrator a lot, perhaps masturbating much more than before. If this makes you worried or anxious, you could set a time limit to just go nuts with it (a couple of weeks or a month perhaps) and then reexamine your use, see if it is interfering with other things you would like to or should be doing, and if so, just back down a bit. It is true that you can become used to the feel of sex toys and find that other things don't turn you on as they used to. People can get into a "sexual rut" where we do the same thing over and over again and stop trying new things. This doesn't happen just with sex toys. If you are worried about relying on sex toys, go back to a kind of sex you were having before, or try something brand new. With a little bit of time and patience you'll rediscover a love for other ways of turning yourself on. No negative effects have been documented of playing safely with sex toys.