Saturdays News - Sexuality after Stroke

Sexuality after Stroke

So you have come home from the hospital or rehabilitation and the one thing no one ever talked about was sex and intimacy.  How do you approach sex with one hand and a wheelchair or quad cane? Even getting into position to hug someone is a challenge.  In addition, in our society many people don’t think that people with disabilities can have a significant social and intimate relationship with someone.  Older people and people with disabilities are often portrayed as asexual. This idea is, of course, not true. Ideally, you would like to consult with a sex therapist, but that is expensive.  So what are your other options?  You could ask your physio or occupational therapist.  You can also check out the disability websites and now there are a couple of good books.

Check out the Disability information Websites (These are reputable websites):

• Disaboom - is a social networking website, founded by Dr. Glen House as a premier interactive online community dedicated to improving the way individuals with disabilities or functional limitations live their lives.
• This is a British Registered Charity — an online guide to life for 16 to 25 year-olds. They provide non-judgemental support and information on everything from sex and exam stress to debt and drugs. 
• About Sex and Stroke. 

Read about Disability and Sexuality

• The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability: For All of Us Who Live with Disabilities, Chronic Pain, and Illness* by Miriam Kaufman, Cory Silverberg and Fran Odette.  This is first complete sex guide for people who live with disabilities, pain, illness, or chronic conditions. Useful for absolutely everyone, the book addresses a wide range of disabilities — from chronic fatigue, back pain, and asthma to spinal cord injury, hearing and visual impairment, multiple sclerosis, and more. Expertly written by a medical doctor, a sex educator, and a disability activist, The Ultimate Guide provides readers with encouragement, support, and all the information they need to create a sex life that works for them.
• Enabling Romance: A Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships for People with Disabilities (and the People who Care About Them).   Considered by many to be "The Joy of Sex for people with disabilities," Enabling Romance candidly covers: shattering sexual stereotypes; building self-esteem; creative sexual variations; reproduction and contraception for people with disabilities; specific information on several different physical and sensory disabilities, including spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, postpolio syndrome, muscular dystropy, cerebral palsy, amputation, blindness and deafness.  Note: Includes explicit illustrations.
• Sex and Disability - This is an academic book that considers how sex and disability come together and how disabled people negotiate sex and sexual identities in ableist and heteronormative culture. 

Sex and Disability

Society’s misconceptions of those living with disabilities. 

Sex on Wheels

Documentary on the issues of sexuality and disability.

Sexuality & Disability 

- from Spanish - Sexualidad & Discapacidad.

- very beautiful images you will have to see it.  

This video shows a series of images of people with different types of functional diversity, showing reflecting their sexuality through affection, love, sensuality, motherhood, seduction, etc ... (Translated from Spanish by Google).

Disability and Sexuality with Gary Karp

The challenges presented by disability and it's relationship with sexuality are seldom explored and just as rarely known to those who have not had to confront them.  Gary Karp will come to Sonoma State to share the obstacles to intimacy that he has encountered while living with disability and the story of the methods he has discovered enabling him to overcome them.  Having been a wheelchair user since 1973, he draws from his personal experiences through which he has learned to cope with the obstacles and used them to discover new connections to intimacy that everyone can enjoy.  Karp puts disability into a historical context and delves into the sensitive questions surrounding sexuality and intimacy faced with such daunting obstacles.  (As well a nice book by Gary Karp - Disability & the Art of Kissing).