Cheerful Megalomaniac

This first one is long, but well worth the read:
BODY SHAME, BODY PRIDE: LESSONS FROM THE DISABILITY RIGHTS MOVEMENT by Eli Clare

Late at night
as I trace the long curve of your body,
tremors touch skin, reach inside,
and I expect to be taunted, only to have you
rise beneath my hands, ask for more.

Let’s lean towards a place where we can name bodily difference, even through our ambivalence, grief, longing, in ways that don’t fan the flames of shame, a place where none of us expect to be taunted and we know ourselves to be sexy and desirable.

and

I want to nurture the most complex conversation possible about how we disclose our bodies and identities to strangers, friends, co-workers, lovers, tricks, doctors, family. I want to honor all the losses and gains contained in each decision to be out or not. At the same time, I want to challenge the argument I hear sometimes that being trans is simply a private bodily and medical matter, no one’s business beyond our closest intimates.

The ability to keep bodily matters private is a privilege that some of us will never have. Just ask a poor person on welfare, a fat person, a visibly disabled person, a pregnant woman. Ask a person of color whose ethnic heritage isn’t seemingly apparent. Just ask a seriously ill person, a gender ambiguous person, a non-passing transman or transwoman. All these people experience public scrutiny, in one way or another, of their bodies.

Gender Variance in Autism: How much is just Sensory? by Lindsay

I don’t think there are very many articles on this — research on gender and autism tends to concentrate more on differences between male and female autistics and on the incidence of co-occurring autism and gender identity disorder than on simply describing what gender expression in autistic people looks like — so I will stick to anecdote, and restrict this post to more of a “Please be aware that unusual gender presentation by an autistic person might actually reflect that person’s sensory preoccupations, with the gendered aspects of dress or accessories being entirely incidental” public-service announcement, rather than make any attempt at definitive statements.

Transgender Vs Asperger by Punkfairy

A psychologist I saw when I was coming out to myself told me that many of her patients had asperger’s, and that many of their asperger “symptoms” disappeared when they altered their body with HRT or by surgery (they were all gender variant/genderqueer in some way) and became happier with themselves.

Gender Identity by Shiva

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all autistic people are non-normatively gendered, but i do believe that there is probably some sort of link between autism and atypical gender identity. My suspicion is that “group identities” in general (such as ethnicity, class identity, national identity, etc) are less logical and less necessary to autistic people than they are to neurotypical people, and (the social component of) gender identity would be included in that – so, if 2 people both lacked innate gender identity, and one was autistic but the other NT, the autistic person would probably be the more likely to identify as androgynous/agendered/genderqueer, whereas the NT might well still think ze had an innate gender identity due to hir gendered socialisation. (Autistic children are also much more likely to resist gendered socialisation… or, indeed, any kind of socialisation at all )

Sex: not just about penetration (no, not even for heterosexuals) by Shiva
(Have I mentioned how much I love Shiva? Blog crushy!)

There also desperately needs to be something (tho i’m at a loss as to precisely what) done to change the prevailing ideology among young people in the Uk that penis-centred sex is the only valid kind of sex. Young men see fellatio as desirable, and describe it in terms which are, if not explicitly then very heavily implicitly, about making women submit to them, but see cunnilingus as disgusting, even “immoral”. Dancehall and hip-hop artists call men who go down on women “bowcats” and call for their beating, shooting and burning alongside homosexuals. I would really, really love to see a youth culture in which penetration is disparaged as “uncool” and going down on a woman (which i see as probably the greatest privilege a man can be given), or, better yet, making a woman come is the thing young men brag about. In this patriarchal culture i don’t have much hope for that to happen, tho…

Disability Blog Carnival: Sex and Disability Hosted by Zephyr

Oftentimes, people with disabilities are perceived as asexual creatures who have no sexual needs or desires. Other people assume that no one could ever desire us sexually, or that we could ever have satisfying sex lives. Many of us can and do.

Yet, there are specific issues and problems related to sex that we face as disabled people. There are also unique and wonderful experiences we get to have because of the disability. And of course, we do sex differently because of our disabilities. I wanted this carnival to give us a chance to share our sexual experiences and knowledge as disabled people.