Hey! I Have Personally Really Enjoyed All The Guides You Have Written About Cruising, Grindr And Your

Hey! I have personally really enjoyed all the guides you have written about cruising, Grindr and your other sex guides. Would you be interested (or maybe I have completely missed this) about writing a guide to sex as a disabled person? I am personally very interested in sex but scared to join the party and cruising culture because of my disability, chronic pain and discomfort (and my questioning to how I can keep covid safe in hook up culture).

Hi there!

This was a complicated ask for me to receive, I think, because it made me very happy to be asked and that someone is asking and feels empowered to ask, but also I just don't feel I'm equipped to answer it - I think that in the past year or two I've been unpacking a lot of feelings about disability and particularly the ways in which I mask or just don't openly discuss disability with ableds and randoms, there's a lot of old anxiety and pain there for me that I'm just not done working with.

Basically, I'm not equipped, I don't think, to write more extensively about cruising and casual sex with disability in mind as I'm exploring it, especially as I've become a lot more disabled in recent years.

I will say that like... For me, what's been most positive in my sex life, and indeed my life as a whole, is being in community with other disabled people, and sex with other disabled people, particularly those who either have similar disabilities to my own and/or who have a lot of experience with others who are similarly disabled, means that they're going to be more aware of my potential limitations.

For me, being autistic and also having various issues - arthritis, some old injuries probably as a result of hypermobility or whatever, my asthma - means that I'm often not very cognizant of my limitations until I reach those limitations exactly, and then I'm immediately like, okay, I have to stop RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW.

With other disabled people, autistic or otherwise, I don't have an issue tapping out like that - and with partners who aren't physically disabled or chronically ill, but are still autistic or otherwise neurodivergent, that's grand. But with like, normie hookups on Grindr? That's a lot more complex.

Like, I frequently don't use words like "arthritis" or similar, I might mention that I have an injury, but normally just that I prefer certain positions, until after we've had sex because of the ways in which people treat and desexualise disabled bodies - a while back I had a hook up, mentioned my arthritis after fucking, and he was immediately like, "Oh, there's this crystal healer on YouTube" etc lmao.

So yeah, I would recommend seeking community with other disabled people if you can - a lot of BDSM spaces and broader BDSM communities tend to have a lot of disabled people in them. Obviously a lot of the older veterans in these communities will become more disabled as they grow older, and so elder members (as in actually old and elderly, not Tumblr's definition of "elder" that's like 30+ lmao) of kink and queer communities, but also disabled people for various reasons are often drawn to kink and power play and different forms of sex work, and subsequently our expertise shows up a lot in these communities. You can always enter these spaces for the social benefits even if you're not interested in or able for harder play, etc.

One benefit about these is that there'll frequently be more online spaces or smaller, more limited munches - I obviously can't promise that people in your area will definitely be covid safe or even super covid aware, but you should at the very least be able to check these boundaries online before you approach them in person, or if you approach them at all, you know?

I did an interview with Transpired Media a few weeks ago, and part of mine and Anonsee Maytrix's discussion was about our respective experiences being desexualised as disabled trans people in queer communities, and while I don't have any more extended guides or similar, this video might scratch a bit of an itch?

But yeah, I just don't feel like I have more valuable advice or useful input, I'm afraid, as I'm still exploring my own feelings and limitations myself other than just... going stealth about being disabled.

I'd definitely encourage people to put their own resources in the replies and reblogs if they do desire!