sexgenderbody

I’m looking for 4 or 5 disabled people who identify as gay, lesbian, bi, queer or trans to participate in individual interviews about their experience of sexual and/or erotic pleasure, particularly in relation to how their identity as, and lived experience of being, a disabled person affects their experiences. The interviews will be the research for my MSc dissertation in Gender and Sexuality.

If you think this is something you’d like to do, please read on – please pass this on to your friends and acquaintances as well.

If you would like to participate – or would like to ask me any questions, please email me at eshepp01 [at ] mail.bbk.ac.uk or leave a comment in my ask box.

About You:

• You must be 18 or over at the time of interview.
• You must identify as disabled, with part/all of your impairment(s) affecting your mobility and/or range of movement or motor control; you can have multiple conditions (I include chronic illnesses and pain within disability).
• You must be sexually active – either currently or in the past. It’s up to you how you define sexually active, but if your disability/impairment is acquired, you must have been sexually active since that point. I include solo sexual activity – i.e. masturbation – as sexually active, but if you don’t, that’s ok too.
• You must identify as Queer, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Trans.
• You’re happy to talk about having sex, sexual and erotic pleasure, and your disability.
• You live in the UK.

The Interviews:

Face to face interviews will be conducted in a location of the your choosing, if both you and my own access requirements can be met (including the services of a BSL interpreter if necessary; I do not speak BSL to anywhere near an appropriate level). Unfortunately, I’m not able to travel far outside of London, but I will make every attempt to do so if possible. . Otherwise, interviews will be conducted via Skype, or through e-mail, depending on your preference.

The interviews will be recorded, and you will have the opportunity to review and revise the transcripts. I think the interviews will take an hour or thereabouts if done by Skype or in person, and email interviews would involve maybe five or six emails being exchanged. I am also happy to do the interview through instant messenger if you’d prefer.

I am happy for you to have your assistant present if you wish, or a translator if you prefer to speak BSL or a language other than English. While I’m not able to pay you to participate, I am happy to cover the costs of a translator.

The Questions:

The basic questions will be the same for all participants, however, the direction of our conversation will be guided by your answers and what you want to talk about; I might have other questions, depending on what you say. You do not have to answer any question you are uncomfortable with, and I will stop or pause the interview should you wish.

The interview data and transcripts will be made anonymous in the final dissertation, and any other publication resulting from this work.

The following questions will be the initial “starter” questions, although some may not be relevant to you.

• Does your disability affect your current sexual/intimate relationship(s) or activities? How?
• Does your disability affect forming new sexual relationships? How?
• Do you think your impairment has changed how you approach or go about sexual activity? If you have always been disabled, or were disabled from childhood, do you think your disability affects your sexual activity?
• Does your disability play a role in your sexuality or how you see yourself as a sexual person?
• Has their impairment changed how you view and/or express your sexuality?

The following biographical information will be collected as well:

• Age, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Ethnicity
• Impairment/disability
• Age of impairment occurring/developing
• Do they have/need a carer or personal assistant, if yes, is that person(s) a relative/friend, or an employee?

Getting In Touch:

If you would like to participate – or would like to ask me any questions, please email me at eshepp01 [at ] mail.bbk.ac.uk or leave a comment in my ask box. I can also be reached on twitter, if that’s your thing.

I blog about the project here.

so y’all may or may not remember the construction project that was a big part of why i’ve been useless for months. in case you don’t, or i didn’t explain it very well — it’s a geodesic dome greenhouse, the purpose of which is to house the pool for my aquatherapy. aquatherapy because if i have weight on my joints when i exercise i make it worse, so i gotta do it in zero-g.

well, the dome is structurally complete, and the pool is up, and filled, and the water is still really cold but getting warmer. i managed to do a bit of paddling around these past couple of days while it was filling, and it feels like it helped a little already. at least, i slept 12 hours a night two nights in a row, which was awesome. although i just got 6 last night, but it wasn’t pain that woke me up, just my bladder, so who knows, the sleeping problem may be over!

electrical and plumbing stuff is still happening off and on, and the floor inside the dome is dirt and gravel which needs to be flattened and then a deck built, and actually the floor of the pool is uneven and lumpy, and seebs is talking about draining the pool in a few weeks and flattening the ground better before putting it up again, which would mean a gap in my therapy, but possibly worth it for the long-term niceness of things. oh yeah, and the yard is a huge churned-up mess full of weeds, and there’s a huge pile of tree branches, and also a pile of gravel in the driveway that needs dealing with. and then once that’s all taken care of i need to somehow cause pleasant greenery to occur in the spaces that are not occupied by the pool itself.

so yeah, the aspie-crushing chaos is nowhere near finished.

but! the long climb uphill has begun. the pool exists. i can therapy! my willpower now has something to push against! THERE IS SOMETHING I CAN DO BESIDES WAIT. those of you who have never been injured or disabled may not understand what i’m talking about. or maybe you do; the feeling of helplessness and futility sucks no matter what the cause is. anyway, i’m not helpless anymore. it’s going to be a slow, hard push, but it’s a push now, and pushing is something i can do.

TL;DR: i’m still intermittently braindead and nonverbal, i’m still very tired, and i still have a lot of pain. but i’m sleeping better and my morale is much improved. big smiles! ^___________^

(ps also it’s a saltwater pool and the saltwater is so good for my skin i mean WOW. between that and catching up on my sleep, i look ten years younger than i did last week. no, twenty years. i look like i’m wearing this sad little mustache because i think it makes me look grown up, rather than because i’m the corrupt kung fu master with the bad fu manchu who gets beaten up in the third act.)