Not Sexy! Says Who?

Mon, 21 Mar 2005 23:07:04 +0000

Writing sex tips recently for a women’s magazine, I was forced to stop and think.

There I was, talking about sex, yet ever since I hit puberty I myself had been convinced that I would never get a partner. The worry only intensified when I went into my wheelchair and found that not only could I not walk, but Mr Wobbly now stayed wobbly no matter how much encouragement he was given to do otherwise. What girl would want to get physical with me?

That fear has been with me ever since, and has led to me making some very bad relationship choices, mainly in the “better stay put because you might not get another chance” category. But if I’m truthful, I’ve never had any problems getting a date. I have spent no more than three weeks single since I was 19, and I’m 40 later this year. I have never had an able-bodied girl freak out about my disability, and have never had a complaint when I get jiggy with it. In fact, I have never had any experience of anyone able-bodied being put off by my disability at all.

Before you all start puking and thinking this is an advert for Planet Mik, it seems I’m not the only one. If I think about it, every disabled person I know nowadays is in a relationship, most of them with able-bodied partners. I even have a good mate who’s a wheelchair user, a star in the worldwide swinging scene, and regularly makes porn. So why do we still seem so sure that the able-bodied world think of us as sexless?

I have recorded TV and radio shows about the difficulties of being disabled and finding love, written manuals on disability and sexuality, and even attended whole conferences on the subject. But they have all been from the same angle: disabled people talking about what able-bodied people think about sexuality and disability.

I am sure that, a while back in history, we were thought of as unsexy. After all, it was only 60 years ago that the Nazis tested gas chambers on us, and even more recently that we were still being sterilized in the USA. But society’s views on disability have changed massively since then.

Once, you never saw cool cripples; now there are loads. Hey, I know – I made my career on being “that punky crippled bloke”, but now there are so many attractive crips in the media that I don’t get a look in! Same goes for the disabled ladies. We’ve even had disabled models like Shannon Murry advertising make-up in the states. If these people are regarded as cool and attractive by the media, then the general public are likely to be thinking the same thing about them. OK, it’s not exactly a fashion statement yet to have a crip on your arm, but I hope we’ve got past the hang-up we used to have that if someone was interested in us they were probably a devotee. Yeah, there are some pervs out there who only want to have sex with a crip, but they are a small minority. Most people in the world look upon us in the same way as they do any other minority group: we are an unknown quantity, but we are not beyond love.

Yet perhaps, in some cases, our fears have become a self-fulfilling prophecy; if we still believe no one will fancy us, then no one will. If we are so sure it will be difficult for us to find love, we won’t do all the things the able-bodied do to get out there and look. All of my able-bodied friends, of both sexes, spend hours bemoaning the lack of “nice” people out there, and I know all of them wouldn’t think twice about going out with someone disabled. I reckon there are armies of people out there who are all alone, wishing for true love, and not caring whether that love can walk, see, hear or whatever. All they want to is to love and be loved back.

So, when my article about sex tips was greeted with much admiration from the able-bodied editors, I realised that, whether or not it used to be hard for a disabled person to find a partner, it is soon going to be a push-over. My advice? Get your pulling gear on…

A Call to Arms?

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 19:48:52 +0000

Just before Christmas, I was asked to appear on Radio 4’s You and Yours programme to give my opinions on the effects of the Disability Discrimination Act. (See my last column to get an idea of my feelings about it – then just add a ton more disenchantment and a sprinkle of anger.)

Now, I get asked on these programmes to be a “fun, funny and lively” guest. However, I was feeling none of these things on this particular occasion, mainly due to a series of bad experiences I had suffered the week before. Firstly, I had dyed my hair brown for an acting role, which led me to witness just how rude and ignorant the general public can be to a wheelchair user who doesn’t look like a reject from Mad Max. Then, after peroxiding my hair back to blonde, I was physically manhandled on a visit to a nightclub, and forced to sit in a corner because that was “where disabled people sit”; the management blamed this on the conflict between the fire regulations and the DDA!

But back to You and Yours. After a while, good old Peter White turned to me, and as soon as I opened my mouth I found myself spouting a very angry rant on the uselessness of the DDA. I explained my conspiracy theory that it is all a government plot to stop our disability benefits while not giving us equal rights, and I also mentioned my recent nightmare in the nightclub. I could see in the eyes of everyone in the studio that this hoped for from their “fun, funny and lively” contributor. My exact words (as taken from the show’s transcript) were:

“I am so angry about it that I am actually considering starting up a revolutionary army and blowing these [inaccessible] buildings up.”

How wide of the mark was my comedy genius?! The stunned look of horror that now filled the faces of all before me showed me that in these post 9/11 days, even a joke about terrorism is not well received. The show continued, but I could sense Peter’s fear every time he came to me … what would I say next?

After the show the production team came out, and we all laughed nervously. “That’ll teach you to ask me not to swear,” I told them. I had been so busy trying to avoid bad language that I forgot to keep it cheerful.

Ever since that day, I have had one thought eating away at me: is the idea of disabled people being pushed to violent action such a comic idea?

Think about it. In America, the Black population rose up during the 1960’s, and while most credit Martin Luther King with being the main driving force, historians now agree that Malcolm X and the Black Panthers where equally important. Mr King’s peaceful message needed the more aggressive tone employed by Mr X as something to work against.

The disability movement used to be VERY militant. When I first came into contact with the political side of disability, I soon began to share in the many grievances about continued inequality, and to appreciate why the activists were so angry.

The problem is that this no longer seems to be the attitude of the majority of disabled people. Those I meet seem resigned to their lot, and have adopted a stance on equality that is a mixture of “slowly, slowly, catchy monkey” and “as long as I’m doing all right, who cares?” Even those who were once politically active now seem to be too busy paying the mortgage to rock the boat, while others seem to have travelled on an opposite journey to me and are prepared to do almost anything to earn a crust.

I fully understand that we live in a society that rewards conformists, and which can reward disabled conformists so that they can be held up to us as examples of what we could do if only we tried. I know too that our priorities change with age. Hey, I’ll even admit that it must have got demoralising to spend so much time protesting while things changed so slowly.

The sad thing is that as one generation of paint-throwing, handcuff-owning protestors slipped away into conformity, the next generation by-passed the paint and bondage gear and went straight to being a “valid member of society”. They feel they have more rights now than they did ten or fifteen years ago, but I’m not so sure. I personally don’t feel more equal to my able-bodied friends now than I did then.

The inclusive attitude towards gaining equality will only truly work if there is something for it to work against, something much more pro-active. Why should disabled people be taken as a serious political force if we are always so nice and passive? It only works to have bubbly, media-friendly disabled personalities if they have rebellious, outspoken and politically aware equals who get the same amount of airtime. If nothing else, this would demonstrate that us disabled types are just as different from each other as we are from the able-bodied.

So, in closing, I ask you:

Have you been waiting so long for equality that you worry that you might actually die before getting it?

Does society offer you so little that you don’t feel part of it?

Does the anger you feel at your inequality choke you when you think about it?

Do you think that no one listens to you and your grievances?

Now think … if the answer is “yes” to these questions, then you feel the same as many terrorists. Scary, huh?

Mik Scarlet | ukwatch.net

Not Sexy! Says Who?

A Call to Arms?