Episode 152: Sexual Pleasure and Disability

I'm very excited to welcome our new sponsor, Higher Nature, who have created Rekindle, which I'm currently trying out and is working a treat. A 100% natural libido-enhancing supplement for women which contains clinically backed ingredients to give your sex life a a boost. And who doesn't want that? This week's episode has been sponsored by OhMyBod, shifting the evolution of pleasure. Hi, this is Suzanne Noble, and you're listening to Sex Advice for Seniors. And I want to start out by first thanking our wonderful sponsor, OhMyBod, who is a sex tech company Founded by a woman called Suki Dunham, who's just awesome, and she's been supporting this podcast for quite a while now, and I'm really, really grateful for her support and for the amazing products that she creates, some of which have really got people in mind, for example, with some degree of disability, which so few sex tech companies ever think of, and which is highly relevant for the conversation. That I'm just about to have with Maria Cindy, who came on maybe about a year or so ago when you were just getting started with your Instagram talking about a woman with a disability and sex. So welcome back, welcome back.

Thank you very much, it's lovely to be here.

It's lovely to have you back. And For the, for the benefit of the listeners, let's just have a very quick catch up about what happened because when we first met, you had literally, I think, just gotten a few posts up about being a sexual woman with a disability. And you were just talking about that in a very frank way. And you were super excited about that. I was super excited to support you because I thought that it was a conversation that really needed to happen.

Yeah.

Wasn't happening, frankly. And I thought you were incredibly brave to put yourself out there and be that person that was waving the flag for, you know, the right for people that have mobility issues or other health conditions to be able to experience sexual pleasure. But what's happened since then?

Well, it started with this whole— well, I It started with a documentary that I watched about sex and female experience, experience of sexual pleasure. And it had women from all over society except disabled women. That's where it began. And it rattled me that we'd been left out of the conversation yet again, as ever. Now, at the start of this, I want to say clearly that I'm not naturally a public speaker, you know, campaigning and advocating. And being out there in the world, it's not my jam, you know, it's not something that comes naturally to me. So this is a big deal to, to, to have something that has pushed me into the forefront, you know, it is a big deal. And it, you know, it was serious enough to give me that, that catalyst, you know, that momentum to want to, to say something. So I've just been posting, like you say, I was posting regularly and I hit a problem in— I was posting on Instagram and on a blog. I was writing a blog and I had— it was great really, it was thriving. I had guest speakers coming on and telling me about what they were doing and people writing for me and interviewing people. And then on Instagram, the Instagram side, I had over 600 followers and, you know, it was building and building and I was really enjoying it. But then as the follower numbers grew, I started being followed by a number of men who saw disability and sex as something hilarious. Um, and especially as I'm a woman, they thought, you know, here we go, this is like, you know, meal ticket to, you know, a bit of fun online. They sent me disgusting messages, dirty messages, wanting to know my bra size, wanting to know what colored underwear I was wearing. Some of them— one guy sent me a picture of his erect penis.

Yeah, I've had a few of those.

Somebody wanted me to talk to them while they were masturbating, and it was just, this is just not right at all. It's not what I signed up for. I ain't got a minute. Steady on. So it just became unworkable. And to be fair, over the space of 8 months, I had to block 117 people and only one of them was a woman who seemed to be preoccupied with my husband. Strangely enough, wanted to know all sorts of details about my relationship with my husband. But everybody else were male. All of the other people were male, and they were all hitting on me, all sending me dirty messages. And, and so I've just burnt it to the ground, started again. It took a break for a while, and I had— when I, when I did shut it all down, I didn't really have any intention of starting it up again, to be honest. I'd had enough. I really had had enough. But then I was approached by Ruth Ramsey.

I love her. I love her.

Isn't she amazing? She's just lovely. And I told her all about what had happened. She said, "Oh my God, that's awful." She said, "I don't blame you for wanting to shut it all down. And if you want to do that, you know, by all means do that. But just let me ask you this. I have a blog called Something for the Weekend." And at this point, it was last year, last July, this was. It was coming towards the end of July. And she said, as you know, because you're disabled, July is Disability Pride Month. And she said, I would really like for the last blog post in July to be about disability and sex. And she said, I could write it, but I'm not disabled. Would you be willing to write it for me? So it really took me by surprise because, you know, she is amazing and I didn't think at all that she would consider putting anything that I'd written beside her name. So I was really chuffed. Yeah, okay, I'll do that. I'll write something about sex. So I did that, which was great. And then a little bit later, it was a couple of weeks later, I was messaged by Anna Sansom. Um, and now she— do you know Anna Sansom?

No, no.

She's amazing. She's an LGBTQ erotica writer, and she's an editor. She's amazing. And she was putting together an anthology of stories, which I'll show you, an anthology of, um, essays written by people from all over the world about their experience of how over time, how through life, our sex life, our pleasure experience ebbs and flows with the challenges of, you know, life and aging, or, you know, whatever. And she said to me, would you— she said, I've read the— what you wrote for Ruth. She said, I think it was great. And she picked out— I thought it was so nice of her— she picked out bits that she particularly liked and said, you know, I really liked this, and I really like the way you said that. And so that, that's a real human touch there, you know. She's really paid attention to detail, took the time to read it. And she said, would you be willing to write one of the essays for me, for the book? Would you, would you like to contribute? I was like, wow, a real book. This is awesome. This is so cool. I said, yeah, okay. So she sent me an email with the brief and she said, I want a 5,000-word essay on how your sex life has ebbed and flowed over time. So I broke it down into 5 1,000-word chunks, took one a day for Monday to Friday, um, and I did an introduction, then I did my 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Wow. That's how I managed when I was saying. So this is, this is the book.

Amazing. Amazing.

My words are in this book. Amazing.

That's so great, Maria. That's so great.

So my words are still on my laptop. It really freaks me out that they're still on my laptop and they're also in a book that's beside the table with my laptop's on. Anyway, dizzy heights of being me. So from there, at the beginning of this year, I decided, um, in my infinite wisdom, to become a full-time writer, to just give it a shot.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, what's the worst that can happen? It doesn't go anywhere, you know. The things I write get deleted, or paper gets put in the bin. Nobody needs to know. I write for myself. And so I was doing that for a long while, and I fully committed to it. My husband and I, we got up, we had breakfast, he went to work, I set to writing at the table. He came home for lunch. I had a break. He went back to work. I set to writing at the table. He came home for dinner, and that was when we stopped. And I did that every single day for 6 months.

Amazing.

Right. I stopped at the beginning of June because at the beginning of June I submitted 4 pieces of written work, either fictional erotica or nonfiction, what you would call it, like autobiographical.

Yeah, yeah. Like memoir.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, to various different bodies of people for competitions or entries into possible publications for anthologies. So I thought, well, I've done my bit now, I've done all I can for a little while, I'm going to take a break. I've submitted some work, I've done more than I anticipated I would do, I'm going to take a break. So now I'm just chilling, I'm painting and I'm making things out of pottery and doing other, other bits and pieces which I'll show you. Um, and I've got— I'm, I'm waiting to hear back from all of these people. I should hear back from some of them in July and then some others in August as to whether or not I've been successful with my writing. But I'm at the beginning of it, you know, so I'm not expecting a miracle at the beginning. It's really just— it's a bit like throwing balls at coconuts at the moment, you know, just seeing how it goes.

And what I would say that I've heard, and I think it, you know, look, I am on multiple platforms like you were with your Instagram and your blog and stuff, and I'm on, you know, Substack, and I'm on TikTok, and I'm on Facebook, and I'm on this one, that one, and the other one. And often I repost the same stuff, right, the same videos talking about blowjobs or talking about this or talking about that, right. All sorts of stuff, right?

Yeah.

And what I notice is that each platform has its particular kinds of people that go on these sorts of pages, right? So on Facebook, for example, I get people that want to do rude things to me and just write me endless comments like, I want to lick your asshole out or whatever. And I want to do this kind of thing, right? And I get lots of that on Facebook and I've been trolled. It's a horrible, horrible experience. So I completely empathize with it. When, and especially with platforms like that, when you get trolled, it's really nasty because they just pile in and it's, yes, and it's quite invasive, you know, it's horrible. But I just learned to kind of water off a duck's back because I've been doing it for so long. I know it comes with the territory. TikTok is just full of guys who mainly live in Africa and say, I'm looking for a single woman that lives in America, whatever, that I can marry. I get occasionally, I get the comments that are kind of Yeah, I get what you're saying and I agree with you. Instagram I don't pay any attention to because I just don't get much traction at all. But Substack, which is where I read the piece that you wrote for Ruth, for example, and where I am, is a place that I feel is our natural community, right? It's a place where you get articulate people mainly. I mean, I'm not saying today somebody told me to fuck off for no reason whatsoever. I mean, I was like, but they immediately got blocked. Immediately, like, yeah, I didn't even have to do that. Like, somebody else immediately blocked. I was like in a chat room that belonged to somebody else asking a question that was just particular around ways to do this thing that I want to do on Substack. It was just a technical question. And I mentioned how I wanted to categorize things. This is, you know, completely off the point. But the point is that I do think that part of learning and being a creator and a writer or whatever you want to call yourself is where are your peeps, right? Where are they? Because if you're gonna just get people posting rude shit on Instagram, it's like, well, they're not here, right?

Yeah.

And if they're— and if you get people trolling you on Facebook, you go, well, they're not here. And then you come on to Substack and you might go Well, actually, I've had commissions from, from writings that I've done on Substack from national newspapers who just read my stuff on Substack and go, I loved what you wrote on Substack. Can I commission you to do something? So I think part of learning as a writer, like, where are, where are the people that are going to support you? Where are the people that are going to read your stuff, agree with you, be interested, be curious? And they're not on— I know my peeps are not where they are and where they're not, but I just ignore them where they're not. Cause some, there are enough, the good ones, like, you know, you told me before you had 600 followers, then you have 100 and some odd you have to ban. So that's 1/6 of your followers are just people that are nonsense. And that means that 5/6 of them are actually decent people.

Yeah. Yeah.

So it's not like they're all crap.

Well, certainly this time round I've had, I have had a lot of people.

All I'm saying is you need a thick skin. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you're, if you're not a person that's ever encountered this before, it can be very horrifying. But if once you've done it a few times, you're just like, you're a fucking idiot. What do you even like? Why are you wasting your time here asking me the color of my underwear? Go on OnlyFans. You know, that's what, that's what those girls are there for. Like, you're, you're in the wrong place. But anyway, you have, you know, have described yourself as reclaiming your right to pleasure as one of your great achievements, and clearly it is. But you also mentioned being excluded from sex education in school. So how did that impact on your reclaiming of your pleasure? Because you didn't get any education. So, So, so how did you manage this? Not that any of us did.

No, well, this— yeah, I know, sex education generally is rubbish. Yes. Yeah, it's just— and it doesn't even— it's also very clinical and very, you know, this bit goes into this bit and it makes a baby. But, you know, if you don't want to make a baby, you don't need to know that really. You just want to have fun, you want to have pleasure, then you need to know about those, those things. So I am— basically what happened was, as I was a child, I was, I was abused, sexually abused as a child. So I had my pleasure experience taken from me before I knew what pleasure was. You know, such a young age. I was 6 when I was groomed, and it went from there. So I didn't I didn't know, obviously you don't know what sexual pleasure is then, but by the time I was in my puberty teenage years, around the time where I should have been perhaps exploring, certainly exploring my own body by myself on my own, um, and perhaps, you know, exploring a little bit with a boyfriend or girlfriend, you know, I didn't really very much do that. I had boyfriend, and as a teenager I thought he was the bee's knees, and I was madly in love with him. But, you know, because of the way I was, because of my early experiences with being violated, you know, being intimate and having that sort of adolescent fumbling, it scared me. It scared me, and it put him off. So I ultimately lost that. And so what I did was, when I, I remember when I was about 18, I was, um, a part of a youth group And the group was, the rest of the group was slightly younger than me and they were all talking about going off to university and what they, what they were going to do. And we had this, we had this evening where we, we talked about what we wanted to have achieved within the next 10 years. And everybody was talking about being a solicitor and a doctor and a teacher and a, and it got to my turn and I wanted to be a wife and mum, you know, that's what I wanted. I wanted that, that family experience, you know, that love. And but I also was very acutely aware that given my experiences with intimacy, I needed to unlearn a lot of things from my past. Yeah. In order to have a healthy sex life with somebody who mattered, somebody— I didn't want to fall in love with somebody and not be able to be intimate with them because it scared the Jesus out of me. So in the process of reclaiming my body, I went through— I, in my infinite wisdom at the age of 20, decided to have sex with two men that I didn't know very well because I didn't want to be emotionally connected to them. I just wanted the experience of having sex on my terms that didn't matter, you know, just, just mindless sex. It didn't matter, but it wasn't abusive, that was pleasurable, or hoped— I hope it would be pleasurable. So I did—

time, are we talking at the same time or separately?

No, no, separately, separately, within the space of a year. No, God, it wasn't, it wasn't like a threesome or anything. That was a bit bold for a 20-year-old who'd been a girl too. No, no, it was one at a time. The first guy, he was 26, uh, so he was a little bit older than me. I was 20, and the second guy was 22. So yeah, I had sex with them and That was the beginning of reclaiming my body, reclaiming my identity, reclaiming my sexual experience and my pleasure. And then 18 months later, I met my husband at a party. And then from there, we just took our time and grew together. And I was able to— because I actually met my husband through the, the boyfriend I lost as a teenager. Weirdly, we we both, we were all at this party. So my first relationship led me to my everlasting relationship.

Unbelievable.

I know, it was really strange. It all came full circle. And so yeah, my husband and I, we've, uh, we've obviously grown together. I was 21, he was 22 when we met, and I'm about to turn 54. That was a while ago in the past. So yeah, so we've, we've grown together, we've learned um, a lot together, and he's helped me to continue with that unlearning of all of the crap and replace all of that negative stuff with very positive stuff. And I've taken back— because, you know, sex and sex acts and things that you do, you know, whatever it is, touching and kissing and oral sex or penetration or All of these different things, they're, they're all pleasurable in the right circumstance with the right person. And they were only scary and wrong and a nightmare for me because I'd experienced them in the wrong way. So I've been able with my husband to take time over the years to reclaim all of those things back as mine so that I can have a positive experience of pleasure and experience my body in a, in a healthy way, and which is, is also difficult as a disabled person, I think. And I think a lot of disabled people will identify with this. Over my, my life, and even still now, I've spent a lot of time in and out of hospital having a lot of invasive procedures and treatments and things that are obviously necessary and helpful medically and to sustain me keep me alive and healthy, invasive. And there's been a lot of times where I've, you know, naked or semi-naked and poked and prodded and invaded in, in that way. So that's hard for me as a disabled person. I have to keep— when I go to hospital, I've been to hospital quite a lot recently with various different things, and each time I go, I feel like I've lost a little bit of myself momentarily. And then I come home and then, you know, my husband and I will, will slowly claim all that back again together, you know. It's just a process, it's an ongoing process. I don't think anybody who's had the kind of experiences I had as a child ever gets rid of it completely. It's an ongoing process of renewing each day, you know, and I'm very lucky, very blessed to have a husband who's patient and kind and loving and passionate and loves me unconditionally and is willing to take that journey with me.

You know, yeah, and it sounds like as well, you know, one of the things that comes up so often in all the conversations I've had over the years with people is the importance of good communication, right, in being able to express what you want, how you experience pleasure, what turns you on, all those sorts of things. And when things are not so good, you know, and what I'm hearing is that there's obviously that deep connection that you've both got in your relationship that gives you the ability to be clear with him about some of those, the challenges that you've had and the things that you've experienced and, you know, the way you might feel after coming back from the doctors or whatever, and for him to understand and to comfort you in those times. And I think that's so important.

Yeah, absolutely. I think because I have a dis— clearly have a disability, I need a lot of help and support, and there's a lot of things to navigate, really. Part of my disability means that I have a very weak bladder. So, you know, it gets real, you know, it does get real. It's very, you know, I think it's in a roundabout way, it's easier for us to be open and honest with each other because we have so many different, very real human things to contend with. Yeah, we're doing day to day anyway. So talking about blowjobs and orgasms and what turns us on, and it's nothing really, because We're all ready. We already have an open dialogue about very, very intimate things anyway. So, you know, talking about, um, I don't know, fellatio, it's easy. You know, it's just, it's easy. You know, the whole left a bit, down a bit, up a bit, right a bit, oh, deeper, slower. It's just, it's just part and parcel of our dialogue. And I think that's come, um, from having to be so honest and so open and relaxed and matter-of-fact about the real, you know, human part of being together.

Yeah, there's a lot of humor in some of those situations as well, just— yeah, you know, like the body will do what it does, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's what Splash Blanket's a floor, isn't it? Really, somebody's thought that through. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

One of the things that I was going to ask you about is, is about, you know, that you've shared your experience with toys and the importance of consent. And do you have any advice for disabled individuals that are looking to explore their sexuality safely and confidently?

Yeah, I have actually. I've wrote— I've written down the, um, contacts, but I think the biggest mistake I made— didn't buy my first sex toy until I was in my 40s. Um, and when I did, I didn't know what I was doing at all. No idea, Suzanne Noble Noble. I really didn't. And looking back, I really should have realized that nothing that shade of blue goes down there because the vibrator I bought was like Smurf blue. It was probably— it was like a gel. It was made of jelly. And that's a no-no.

They're disgusting. Yeah, they're gross.

They really are. See, I didn't know these things. I didn't have anybody to talk to.

We didn't get told about like, you know, we're talking like over 10 years ago. I didn't know that those toys could like shred in your vagina and do all sorts sorts of nasty, horrible things until, until like much later, right? All of those terrible, like, ugh, toys, you know. It wasn't until I met some guys, actually, they started Rocks Off, that started telling me about, oh no, no, it's all got to be out of silicone, medical silicone, and, you know, all this. Yeah, they didn't— well, I didn't know fuck all back then, you know. I just— what did I know? Nothing, right?

But yeah, so You've got nobody to talk to. Where do you get the information? But I know nowadays we've got the internet, we can Google things. But if you don't— you see, the thing is about Googling is you don't know what you don't know. If you don't know something, you don't know you need to Google it, you know what I mean? And so I had this vibrator that was blue, and it did absolutely nothing for me sexually anyway. It was just a non-starter. It was rubbish, really rubbish. It was blooming expensive as well, but it was rubbish. So that went in the bin. And, uh, in the end, I didn't, I didn't buy one for a very long time. I didn't, I didn't try again for quite a while. Um, but then in my 50s, I started going through perimenopause when I was, uh, 47. And it took 6 years to get the right treatment because I think a few people I spoke to, a few medical people I spoke to, and I did speak to quite a few at various places. Um, I think this is another place where, you know, another example of where the intersection between sex and disability collides. And doctors didn't really appreciate what I was saying when I was telling them that my libido was like wet cardboard. Yeah, I was literally switched off. And my poor husband went 10 years without sex because the first half of my 40s I had surgeries, 3 surgeries in 4 years, and then there was the, the time of recovery from those surgeries. And then the latter half of my 40s was perimenopausal starting and, and all of that. So we didn't have sex for 10 years, and that's a very long time to not have— we, we were intimate in other ways, but we didn't have complete— yeah, intercourse.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

By the time I got HRT, um, and it completely revamped me. It really woke me up. It really, it's like, it was like, um, the fuel. It was great. I really needed, I really needed, not just wanted, I needed a vibrator. I needed something. So I thought the sort of, I don't know what you would call it, but long story short, in the end I realized I needed remote control app operated vibrators, because I find that when I'm doing things manually, my brain overrides everything. I need something that's a little bit less me doing it. Does that make sense? Yeah, like it's somebody else, like it's somebody else doing it, you know? And I think an app that has a sort of random, um, setting, you know, and it's sort of the element of surprise, you don't know what's coming until you do. Until you are. And, you know, I needed, I needed something like that. So I have 3 vibrators now, and they're all app controlled, and they're brilliant. Um, but yeah, I think that's the main— one of the, the main things I struggled with was I didn't know what I was doing. I, I, you know, I, I didn't know where to start, where to look.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, yeah, but I think Rocks Off and Love Honey. They're good. I think they're really great.

I mean, Oh My Board, who sponsor this podcast, they do loads of remote stuff, but they're based in America. But she has got one, doesn't have a remote on it, but it's for people with arthritis, so you can grip it. And it's really small and you can just put your fingers through it and grip it. It's quite nice. But they do, they do quite a lot of remote vibrators. And of course, Lelo do as well.

Yeah, yeah, there's, there's Hot Octopus.

Hot Octopus is gorgeous.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Undressing Disability, they're, they're a really great place to go. Um, so they, they have, um, an Instagram account and a website. And so if anybody is on Instagram, that would be a good place to begin for all kinds of information and guidance. They'd be able to, you know, signpost people to all sorts of different things pleasure-wise and relationship-wise.

Oh, amazing.

So yeah, Undressing Disability, I'd recommend them.

Yeah, amazing. And we're, we're kind of reaching the conclusion and I haven't gone through like 90% of my questions, so let's leave.

So, uh, we should do this once a week.

I know, right? Well, you can start your own and then we can just have a conversation, you know, for tuning in, what's the one thing you'd like them to take away from this conversation about sexual well-being and disability?

I think the biggest thing is to understand that sex— that disabled people have sex. We're all having sex. Well, not— maybe not all of us, you know. Disabled people have sex, non-disabled people have sex. Some non-disabled people don't have sex, some non-disabled people are asexual. You know, it's being disabled doesn't mean that you are asexual. It doesn't mean you don't want sex. It doesn't mean you're not desirable. You know, there's, there's a ton of people having sex with— and, and I know disabled people who are in relationships, who are married, who have been married for years. I know disabled people who have children. And, you know, and whilst children are magical, they don't happen by magic. You know, you don't buy them off the internet.

I remember our last conversation where you went to the doctor's for a cervical smear and they said that they thought they'd found the spot but they weren't sure and that you didn't need to worry because you weren't going to be at risk anyway. They assumed a non-sexual person and you said, I'll let my husband and children know that, shall I? I'll never forget that conversation because that conversation said so much to me about what I later learned was not just the ignorance amongst healthcare professionals when it comes to women and sex and disability, or probably men and sex and disability as well, but, but also just older people in general. I just, you know, that conversation kind of then spiraled into lots of other similar conversations about other stupid things healthcare professionals have said to women going through the menopause, to women, you know, in their 60s, whatever. Yeah, but that's exactly the worst.

Yeah, I know, it's ridiculous. It really is, you know. I mean, there's disabled people who, um, I know a disabled person, a woman who uses a wheelchair, and she's, she's into swinging, you know. She loves it. She's into swinging. I know somebody who I know, actually know a lot of disabled people who are sex workers.

Yeah.

You know, they, they, they get, they get paid to get laid. You know, that's their job. And if people are willing to pay a disabled person for sex and it's not— I don't believe at all that it's to fetishize them. I think it's genuine pleasure that they are seeking, those people, they disabled people. Are genuinely providing that pleasure in a very respectful way.

Yeah.

If disabled people weren't desirable, people wouldn't pay for it, you know.

That's right.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

Yeah, for sure. Oh, for sure. I mean, and, and, you know, like you, I'm very aware of disabled people who are sexual, so I think we all need to get over ourselves that because a person has a disability, that doesn't mean that they don't have sexual urges, feelings, and desires, you know, be they vanilla, kinky, or somewhere in between, just like everybody else, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I think if we could— Joe, one of the questions you were, you were going to ask me, I appreciate we're out of time, but I just want to say this. I could come back to this every time. If the media could help portray disabled people in a positive way. Now Russell T. Davies is putting disabled people in Doctor Who and it's brilliant, it's absolutely brilliant, but I don't think they're going to have sex on Doctor Who. And we need to see disabled people from, you know, different disabilities, not just wheelchair users. I talk about wheelchair users because I'm a wheelchair user and it's relevant to me, Yeah, yeah. But I don't want to come across as excluding anybody else.

Yeah, yeah.

But I would personally like to see a disabled person in a wheelchair having passionate sex.

Yeah, yeah.

I've watched a couple of things recently. I've watched Scandal. I don't know if you've seen Scandal. And I've seen The Good Wife. And both of those things had quite steamy scenes in, raunchy sex scenes in, and passion. Not like overt nudity. It wasn't porn. But, you know, passionate scenes. And I would really, really like to see a disabled person being pleasured and devoured in a passionate way, you know.

Yeah, I agree with you. Look, I went to the Cap d'Agde a couple of years ago and was in a club where there was a very hot man in a wheelchair and a very hot woman having sex with him in front of me, and it was very hot, I can tell you. And the fact of the matter was that Part of the hotness of it was because he was like a really good looking guy sitting there being pleasured by this woman. And it was horny, you know, it really, really was horny.

But because we're just people.

Yeah, yeah. But in those— it's funny, like you talked about somebody who was a swinger, like in, in back in the days, and it still goes on. I mean, I was at the Sexual Freedom Awards a few weeks ago. And yeah, that's all In Aid of Outsiders, which is a charity that Tapion's created, which is all around making sure that disabled people can have access to sex workers, to be sexual. The whole— that's all it is, is that's the whole ethos of the Outsiders Trust. So at the awards, there's quite a lot of people wearing kinky wear, fetish wear, and stuff in wheelchairs, right? I, I'm quite— because I used to be a judge on that years ago. Once you've— once you get— once that's part of what you are seeing in the environments you go to, it stops becoming unusual because it just becomes a part of the places where you go. So swinging clubs, fetish clubs, and everything, it's not actually that uncommon to see people in wheelchairs, disabled people, all sorts of people, because those environments tend to be places where people feel welcomed who are in some way outside of, you know, what traditional society sees as, you know, as being what should be going on. Everybody's welcome. That's the thing. Everybody's welcome. So you just get— it just feels like a very inclusive environment. Yeah, of course, when you go to normal clubs, it's not.

Yeah, yeah.

All of these places make sure that they've got disabled access and, you know, everything. So, so I've been brought up in the alternative lifestyles, being very familiar with seeing that, but it's a very London thing. I think it's a very— it tends to go on with swinging and fetish and stuff because we're all a bit of freaky kind of people.

So, so with that comes inclusion, doesn't it?

Yeah, but yeah, I agree. Like, the more we see these role models in the media, the more we talk about it, the more it's represented on films and television, the more acceptable it becomes, and then it stops becoming unusual.

Yeah, and it needs to be commonplace. You know, because we're, we're part of society, and if films and, if, if films and TV shows are supposed to be representative of society, you know, where are the disabled people in these films? Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah. So I'd like to see more of that, really. I really would. Yeah, it would, it would, it would thrill me to see something like Sex Life or Scandal or any, well, anything. Yeah. No, it's just, and the narrative isn't about disability. It's just that there's a disabled person in the story.

Well, that's the thing. I mean, you know, it's, it's sort of outside the realm of sex advice, but it is just about the fact that when we look at these things, at these movies and TV shows, we should really just see all types of people, not just the young, hot, attractive ones. Anyway, Maria, it's been so lovely to see you again. And I'm so excited about your writing, and I really, really, really hope that we'll be reading more of your sexy, steamy stories. I'm certainly looking forward to that, and I'll be sharing where people could find you. And who knows, maybe I'll be seeing you on Substack soon.

Maybe I'll give it another go, Suzanne. Maybe I will. Maybe so.

I don't know, maybe Substack is your home. Maybe that's the place that's your home. Who knows?

Maybe so.

See ya. Bye.

See you soon. Bye now.