2014 Charity Calendar Exposes Naked Truth of Disability and Sex

This is a guest post by Emily Buchanan.

 In a bid to discuss disability and sexuality in the same sentence, a UK disability awareness charity has released a 2014 calendar featuring disabled models. Undressing Disability features a variety of body-confident disabled people and delivers a simple but important message: disabled people have sex too.

In mainstream media, disability isn’t considered a sexy quality. Take a look at any heteronormative romance material and you’ll find two able-bodied people engaged in the act – never someone with a disability. It’s a highly taboo subject and one that many people would rather overlook than address. However, just like everyone else, disabled people have sexual needs and it’s this, Jennie Williams told the Huffington Post, that encouraged her to start the campaign.

“I started the ‘Undressing Disability campaign’ because all too often disabled people get ignored and desexualised, even ‘babied’. They are frequently seen as people who just need looking after and not wanting or capable of having an active healthy sex life and loving relationship.” This, of course, isn’t true, and Jennie is hoping to promote a healthy, celebratory conversation around the subject of disabled sex in a bid to challenge the stigma.

However, the calendar’s message goes deeper still. Whilst society’s sexual revolution liberated generations of people, both hetero and homosexual, disabled people are still not granted the same sexual freedoms or resources as everyone else. This means that for the most part, people with disabilities do not have sufficient access to tailored sexual health advice.

As the Enhance the UK website states, “Through a lack of understanding and education, and a general lack of services, disabled people frequently cannot access the support that would make it possible for them to make the sorts of choices about their lifestyles that most of us take for granted.”

As such, although the calendar is free, Jennie is confident that people will donate to their JustGiving page and help Enhance the UK raise funds for disabled sex education “The donations received from the calendar will go towards the inclusive sex education and relationships education (SRE) project we are running in collaboration with the leading youth sexual health educators, Brook.”

The models used in the calendar are trainers from Enhance the UK and include Moulin Rouge actress Kiruna Stamell and GB water skier, Andy Trollope.

Order your copy here, before they sell out!