This is a sample new chapter from the just released second edition of
Disability & the Art of Kissing, by Gary Karp.
Q: I don’t have orgasms anymore. How can I make peace with this or compensate?
A: Perhaps what you really mean is that you don’t have orgasms the way you used to.
For men or for women, peak orgasm is typically defined as an intense, overriding experience marked by a quality of deep release and ecstatic sensations. Ejaculation often occurs at the same time (yes, even for some women), but physiologically they are separate responses. It is the intense, the-earth-moved kind of experience that most people equate with orgasm. Anything less doesn’t qualify.
Impact of some kind on the brain and spinal cord is the most likely to effect a change in sexual response, depending on what specific areas are impacted physiologically. The question is, what responses are still taking place in your body (and your psyche) during sensual contact and stimulation?
Orgasm should not be thought of as just the final peak. It’s a staged process of responses in your body and your mind. The heart rate increases, sweating occurs (which is sometimes affected with quadriplegia), your attention becomes more focused in the moment, absorbed in sensual experience. (If you’re thinking about paying the bills or what you’re going to wear to your cousin’s wedding, you’re not going to have much of an orgasm in any case!)
These are all aspects of arousal, and they are rarely entirely closed off due to disability.
If you think of orgasm in this more holistic sense, you could find yourself discovering a more rich, complex, and varied relationship to your body and its responses. Sex with a disability is an invitation to readjust your radar, if you will, and tune into a wider array of sensations, to be open to whatever you’re feeling as your sensual experience moves in and out of and through what you can feel and how your body can respond.
Having been in the habit of expecting (in fact, requiring) powerful sensations—usually focused mainly on genital stimulation—most people never bring their attention to gentle touch, on other parts of the body than the genitals. This is a core component of the style of sexuality that disability fosters, and can actually lead to new qualities of orgasmic response.
Some people find that stimulation of their nipples, their ear lobes, or (one of my personal favorites) the nook inside the elbow, can produce a different variety of peak experience; an experience that can just as well be called an orgasm.
Some people have reported that parts of their body which remain sensate actually gain increased sensitivity and become highly erogenous in ways that were not the case prior to the onset of their disability. It’s as if the body has the capacity to transfer its responses and compensate for the lost sensation.
Find out what orgasm is for you. Be willing to redefine it.
Many people find that they become more motivated to bring their partner to orgasm, to have a vicarious experience through their partner—a sort of “contact orgasm,” if you will. Being the source of your partner’s orgasm is itself deeply satisfying, but for those who can’t get to quite the same place on their own, sharing the “space” of that orgasm makes for a heightened experience itself.
By the way, please make note: this is not to play into the unfortunate stereotype that people with disabilities cannot experience pleasure and therefore put all of their attention on their partners. Vicarious experience of a partner’s more intense level of orgasm is just another thing on the list of pleasures in the context of disability. It’s not a compromise. It’s an option that many people put high on their list of pleasure. The rule is still equal satisfaction!
The whole point here is to open ourselves to all possible sensations, to suspend judgment, to allow our bodies to have whatever peak experience they are capable of, and enjoy ourselves every which way we can.
Science has demonstrated that the body and mind are very much connected and interactive, which means that your beliefs and expectations can have a lot of impact on what you experience during and as a result of sexual activity. If you believe that orgasm has to be the same as it was prior to your disability, then you’re likely to be setting yourself up for disappointment if your body isn’t wired for that anymore.
Try to get past the feeling that you’ve lost something, and choose to embrace what you can feel and experience. After all, having lost whatever you have, wouldn’t you want to embrace all you can that remains? This is the journey of redefined orgasm.
