Inside the Little Plastic Castle

I’m seeing more progress pride flags flying in my neighborhood. In the poll, I’m using “queer” in the broadest possible sense: any (sexual or gender) (orientation or preference). The poll is anonymous—even I can’t see who voted how.

( Progress Pride Flag )

From "An Unquiet Mind," s.e. smith's excellent monthly column at Catapult.co which explores disability identity and its interaction with the world at large.

What If Accessibility Was Also Inclusive?

“This was fine for someone else,” someone frustrated at being asked to accommodate me says, as though I am not an expert on my own self, as though all disabled people have the same needs. Why isn’t this thing that someone who isn’t you found perfectly acceptable enough? We spent all this money on it. As though being disabled does not in itself confer a literal body of knowledge, an expertise, a skill, an awareness of precisely what I need—because I have spent a lifetime fighting for it. I have a mastery of myself, a master’s degree in myself, yet I am followed, everywhere, by reminders that myself is too much. https://catapult.co/stories/what-if-accessibility-was-also-inclusive-column-unquiet-mind-s-e-smith

I adore s.e. smith’s viewpoint and way with words! Two other essays introduced me to myself.

The small beauty of funeral sex

OMG! It’s not just me who finds death sex so highly charged.

There is a thing that happens with those adjacent to death that many people seem to be afraid to speak of, perhaps because it feels startling and shameful when it happens to them for the first time. Perhaps because no one speaks of it, they assume they are alone in this, perverse, broken. But those of us in the know are well aware that funerals—memorials, celebrations of life, transition ceremonies, Passages (always with a capital P)—are absolutely the best places for hooking up.

https://catapult.co/stories/the-small-beauty-of-funeral-sex-essay-s-e-smith

When disability is a toxic legacy

s.e. smith nails the concept of "debility," something I struggled to understand last year at the SDS conference. When impairment is the result of trauma — whether that’s state or personal violence, especially due to marginalized status — the social model of disability isn’t enough.

Talking about how environmental disparities can contribute to disability becomes complicated as a disabled person who is proud and confident in my identity.

https://catapult.co/stories/when-disability-is-a-toxic-legacy-se-smith

I met s.e. smith through FWD: Feminists With Disabilities, an excellent group blog that’s further proof that longevity is not equal to value. Later I had the good fortune to meet s.e. in person. I’ve always admired smith’s ways with words, and I was delighted but not surprised to learn that three of smith’s monthly columns at Catapult won a 2020 US National Magazine Award.

Explore s.e. smith’s stuff at https://www.realsesmith.com/

Faking It: The Lies Women Tell About Sex and the Truths They Reveal

Lux Alptraum, 2018
ebook, print, audio (Overdrive)

five out of five stars

I enjoyed this educational screed about Western patriarchy. Alptraum examines misogyny through the lens of lies women tell to cope, including:

• faking orgasm
• the (fake) concept of virginity
• faking 'natural' appearance through makeup
• claiming a fake boyfriend to minimize harassment
• 'fake' rape claims

Alptraum’s accessible prose is bolstered by footnotes to science as well as the popular press. She strategically deploys current media images, and she’s writing directly to the reader. I think it would be an excellent gift for any person on the threshold of sexual maturity. (Opinions from actual parents most welcome!)

( quotes and excerpts )

content notes: no explicit discussions of violence or assault

browneyedgirl65

begin quote Disability Dharma: What Including & Learning From Disability Can Teach (Everyone) About Sex
by Heather Corinna

Sometimes we also need to accept what our body does totally out of our control, whether we like it or not. That might be ejaculating before we'd like, farting during sex, making certain noises or things like muscle spasms, urinating during some kinds of sex or having certain body parts just stop working when we're not done using them yet. Some people with some kinds of disabilities need to accept that it might take them longer to connect with their own bodies sexually or with someone else's in some ways, or take longer to learn to be sexual with others: this is a flexibility a lot of people, especially young people, could benefit from nurturing with sex and sexuality.

Know what else inclusion helps with? Acceptance of everyone's sexual variation, including your own. Like understanding that we or anyone else can't "make" ourselves like things or people we don't like sexually, can't willfully change our sexual orientation or gender identity, or that something one person finds to be very sensitive on their bodies is not on our own or on a partners' body. Sometimes a given variation can be far outside of our experience or awareness, but rather than viewing that as cause to freak out or run away, we can view it as an adventure, as a whole new avenue for us to learn and experience things about ourselves or others we might not have had the opportunity to otherwise.
 quote ends