Recent reflections on SEX LIBERATION & DISABILITY JUSTICE: ..

Recent reflections on SEX LIBERATION & DISABILITY JUSTICE:

Last night, I spoke on a panel at the Leslie Lohman Museum for being involved in my friend Chella Man's film “The Device That Turned Me Into A Cyborg Was Born The Same Year I Was.” Chella is a transgender, Deaf, queer mixed-heritage artist and his film follow his complex relationship with his cochlear implant and navigating identity and intimacy between the Deaf and hearing worlds. I spoke about the intersections of sex work and disability justice being the baseline of care work.

Our essential human need is to be cared for, whether by ourselves or others, and so we need to learn what it means to care deeply, intently, and thoroughly. What does it mean to access your autonomy in an inaccessible world, whether as a Deaf person or a sexual healer ? The best way to do that is find where you feel most safe, and assess what your needs are and how to best receive them. Chella shares that as a Deaf person that has had a cochlear implant from a very early age in order to hear, it was quite liberating when he decide to try living without it for this first time at 24 years old and navigate the hearing world as a fully Deaf person. The world made Chella feel like he had to conform as a hearing person by putting a machine in his ear, but there was newfound freedom and beauty choosing instead a non-hearing world. He was no longer limited by his fear of getting his implant wet by rain or sweat, fear of it falling out by strong winds or sudden impact, or it getting broken during passionate throws of intimacy and sex.

I acted with Chella in a brief sex scene in the short film, showing an example of the implant falling off during sex and that not being a moment to stop, but rather an opportunity to continue exploring each other's idiosyncratic pleasure, not based on hearing but on touch, feeling, heat, pressure, and expression. Sex should be a place of this liberation without self-censoring yourself from pleasure.

Intimacy should be the safest place for you to ask for what you want. There’s a lot of fear around that–fear of messing up the “organic flow” of vibes–but when it’s about making you feel good, shouldn’t your pleasure come from being accepted for who you fully are ? Not from conformed tropes of performed desirability, or conditional transactions of power… Shouldn’t you feel so safe that you can access whoever you please to be in that moment of vulnerability ?

In pursuing my own sexual liberation, I only want to share myself with people I trust to honor my body and how it feels in the moment. Someone who is curious to uncover the peculiarities of my pleasure, and takes time to draw a map of how to get there together. A map explored not for destination, but to see my joy along every step of the way and sync with my body’s vibrations.

I don’t just want to feel good in bed. I want to feel good in my body.

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Watch the short film “The Device That Turned Me Into A Cyborg Was Born The Same Year I Was” on NOWNESS.com now ! <3