People with disabilities still have sex lives

A few years ago, during a televised tribute to the Superman actor Christopher Reeve, his wife, Dana, took the stage to sing a song. Before singing, she spoke eloquently of her love for Reeve, paralysed by a spinal cord injury received when falling from a horse. She turned toward her husband, who was sitting in the audience, and smiled secretively at him. "Chris? You still do it for me, baby," she said.

In that ‘public-private’ moment, Dana and Christopher Reeve told the world what scientists and sex therapists already know: sexuality does not end when a person suffers a disability. There are quite literally hundreds of ways to experience sexuality and sexual pleasure. Even when someone apparently loses all the physical sensation in their genital regions, couples can still achieve sexual closeness, pleasure and even orgasm.

Dr Mitchell Tepper, president of the US Sexual Health Network, regularly speaks about sexuality to conferences and groups of people with disabilities. Tepper, whose spinal cord was injured in a diving accident when he was working as a lifeguard over 20 years ago, tells listeners that television and films often promote myths about sexuality and disability.

"For example, people with spinal cord injury are often portrayed in movies as sexually frustrated men and women who either have to rely on buying sex from a prostitute or have to go without," he says.

Nothing could be further from the truth, says Dr Beverly Whipple, a professor and noted researcher on sexual health. "Sexuality encompasses the totality of our being," she says.

Try "outercourse"

Whipple advises people with disabilities -- particularly those with limited sensation in the ‘traditionally’ sexual parts of the body -- to speak with partners about many of the ways to have erotic pleasure that do not involve the genital area. "Sensuality and sexuality are much more than the genitals."

From giving and receiving touch in areas of the body like the cheek, the neck or the back of the hand to using scent -- candles and aromatherapy -- and music, Whipple suggests using all the senses for erotic pleasure.

"Different sounds, scents and sights can bring us pleasure. For example, maybe you like peeling grapes and feeding them to your partner." She calls these alternative options -- paths to sexual pleasure that do not involve the exchange of bodily fluids -- "outercourse".

Outercourse is not the only option. Many people who have, through spinal cord injury or other neurological disorders, lost all feeling or sensation in their genital areas can still experience orgasm as a result of genital stimulation, Whipple says. She has done a wide range of laboratory studies involving women with spinal cord injuries, and they report having orgasm from genital stimulation, feeling it above the level of their injury. "They report that it feels just like the orgasm they had before their injury, except they feel it only in part of their body," Whipple says.