“A disabled person is capable of making love”: like everyone else, people who live with a disability have the right to a love and sex life.
“Couples in which no one has a disability learn to experience their sexuality in the same way that I learned with my partners,” explains Alexandre Vallerand, who suffers from cerebral palsy.
And on this World Day of Persons with Disabilities, the young man is clear: “It is not because I am disabled that I do not have a sex life.”
His handicap still requires some adaptations. Due to reduced motor skills and the fact that he only uses one arm, he has difficulty holding small objects. It is therefore impossible for him, for example, to put on a condom by himself.
“I cannot move my pelvis, so I have to find other solutions to please my partner,” he continues, while specifying that it takes time to find comfort.
“I learned over time that you shouldn’t be afraid to go to a sex shop», He mentions. This is how he learned to live his sexuality. According to him, we should not be afraid to go “get a crutch”.
Same story with Mélody Courtois: if people with disabilities have sexual needs and desires like everyone else, sometimes they have to be adapted.
“I’m in a wheelchair, I can’t do this anywhere,” says one who suffers from Friedreich’s ataxia, a disease that atrophies muscles, in addition to impairing coordination, dexterity and elocution.
Even if the activity loses in spontaneity, her sex life is fully developed, she assures.
Confidence is the key
Richard Guilmette suffers from type 2 spinal muscular atrophy. Due to this degenerative disease, he can only move his head. Even if he recognizes that his illness can represent an obstacle in bed, according to him, everything is “a question of self-confidence”.
“People with disabilities can be as perverse as other people,” says Richard, who is president and founder of the Handicap-Quebec citizen movement.
As he cannot move his body, he particularly opts for words to charm his partner. “Sexuality, it is in the head that it happens above all,” he says. And he is not afraid to say it: “All my wives were happy!”
Persistent prejudices
But all is not rosy for all that. If Alexandre fully assumes his sexuality, he recognizes that it is sometimes difficult for him to date.
“When I’m on Facebook Dating, people still have an awkwardness,” he says. Once he was asked if he was able to have sex. Alexandre thinks that there is “a certain fear of having sex with a person who has a disability”.
“It’s difficult to be a disabled person in a society like ours. We are always infantilizing ourselves, ”regrets Richard Guilmette. He notices that many people feel that being in a relationship with a disabled person means having to constantly take care of them.
“I always had to educate parents [de mes partenaires]”, He maintains.
But even if “many people do not want to engage with a disabled person”, many are able to see beyond that, insists Mélody Courtois.
“When a person falls in love, whether with a disabled person or not, he falls in love”, concludes Richard Guilmette for his part. Because love, he says, is maybe the one thing that prejudice cannot break.