A 19-year-old woman in a see-through top smiles for the camera, stating in the caption she’s “waiting for Daddy.” A bespectacled, bearded hunk who’s “feeling pretty good tonight” posts a full-body nude, his left arm seductively resting behind his head. A pixie girl with teal highlights positions a sex toy close to her widening mouth.
Scroll through any number of “18+” Reddit pages and you’re bound to uncover sexually charged user-generated content like this. But there’s a twist on the forum r/disablednudes. According to the page’s About Community section, as the handle advertises, it’s “a place for disabled redditors to post nudes.”
When Daddy arrives, he’ll be treated to a spastic quadrapolegic. The hunk’s got spina bifida, and the pixie girl lives with both Ehlers-Dandros syndrome and a functional neurological disorder. In her followers’ fantasies she’s pleasuring them from her wheelchair, and as someone who produces exclusive content for “devotees” — people who fetishize disabilities — she’s loving every second of it.
For those who post in r/disablednudes, the page provides a rare opportunity to express their sexuality. With disabled people woefully underrepresented and misrepresented in media, these Redditors and other advocates are quick to point out they are almost never seen in the public eye as the sexual beings they most certainly are.
“Society largely assumes disabled people either can’t have sex or have no interest in it,” says Reddit user u/abigboynow, a 33-year-old male with cerebral palsy — and an eight-inch dick. Because of this prejudice, he tells InsideHook via Reddit message, “Severely disabled people often go decades without sex, if not their entire lives.” Oftentimes they’re also unable to afford sex-worker services, he writes, because “they’re on fixed incomes/welfare.”
The media representation of disabled people leans into “tokenism,” he adds, typically with able-bodied actors portraying them. But he, for one, has been able to overcome social stereotypes.
“In my case I’ve always been confident, flirty and unafraid to put myself out there — which is what you have to do as a disabled person if you want to get noticed,” he says. A freelance writer who also performs in the buff on webcam, u/abigboynow describes himself as “extremely lucky.” At birth, doctors only gave him a 20-percent chance to live, but his cerebral palsy has thus far only affected his ability to walk.
“Many people with CP have jerky movement and trouble talking or swallowing, so I got off very lightly!” he says. “I use crutches at home and a walker outside. I try not to use a wheelchair unless I absolutely have to, because I like to stay as fit and active as I can.”
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Despite living with lupus, advanced degenerative disc disease and severe stenosis, the 29-year-old female Redditor AlistairMay also expresses an optimistic outlook. “I’m lucky for what I’ve got!” she says in a message. A well-endowed, tatted-up brunette with almond-shaped eyes, AlistairMay posts what she calls “implied nudes” on Reddit, saving the more explicit stuff for her OnlyFans.
The debilitating effects of AlistairMay’s various conditions began five years ago. Because of her physical issues, she says, “Using a walker or wheelchair means getting hassled by people at the bar, or grocery store, or mall that wanna know why this beautiful woman has to live her life crippled.” She calls this new reality “very annoying” because she doesn’t leave home to go out and discuss her disability. “I go out to have fun and hang with my friends and husband.”
AlistairMay used to be looked at for being the “hot girl,” she says. These days, she more often gets stares because of her handicap, something she’s “getting adjusted” to. “It gives me some pretty bad anxiety at times, I’m not gonna lie,” she says. “So usually, no matter the walker, when I go out now, I dress all the fuck up, and hold my head high as the confident woman I’ve worked so hard to become.”
Part of AlistairMay’s confidence comes from posting sexual content online. She says it gives her “an enhanced sense of self,” and when she goes “viral” on Reddit, she adds, “I feel almost some sort of power rush.”
She’s “on a mission to show how sexy disabled people can really be,” because they are “massively overlooked as sexual beings in the media.” After all, there are no lingerie ads or sensual perfume commercials with disabled people in them, AlistairMay observes.
Even porn doesn’t appropriately respect people with disabilities, says another female producer of explicit online content, GoAskAlex. She was diagnosed as a kid with the rare bowel disease ulcerative colitis. Later, she had her colon removed and must now wear a permanent medical device as a functioning replacement. Alex says when disabled people appear in pornographic films they’re almost always fetishized, which is fine if that’s something they’re comfortable with.
“But it shouldn’t be the only option,” she says. “The problem is when it becomes the only option.”
It frustrates Alex that, across media in general, disabled folk “can’t just be existing as a human.” Their disability is always at the fore.
While she admits that she is granted “opportunities” because of her disability and has “no problem benefitting” from it, she only takes that stance because there are so many ways she does not benefit from being disabled. She cites the $1,000 monthly costs for medical supplies she has to pay out of pocket — in Canada, no less, where she lives — as one example.
Alex does not hide her disability in her self-produced clips. (She openly advocates for the representation of disabled bodies in porn, and has produced two calendars featuring only disabled sex workers to help raise awareness about the issue.) However, she does not lean into the fetishization of her disability.
“I have encountered people who ask me to cross certain boundaries and I respectfully decline,” she says.
The cammer and model u/abigboynow has also steered away from branding himself as a disabled content creator since devotees started turning up in his inbox. “[T]hey called me a ‘sexy cripple,’” he writes. “And they’d say things like ‘I want to suck that disabled cock’ etc. Just very fetishistic comments. Some of them gave me their numbers, unsolicited. I didn’t respond, I just ignored them.”
AlistairMay falls on the other side of this fence, saying that fetishists who find her “unfortunate situation to be hot” helps to “put a sort of silver lining on it.”
“They dote over wanting to take care of me and fuck me in my wheelchair,” she writes in a message. “People sometimes ask for some custom content, and my fetishists seem to love doing this. I have a guy, for example, that just likes seeing me get dressed and undressed with the help of my walker.”
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Our culture is showing signs of a disability representation trend picking up steam. Thirty-five years ago, deaf performer Marlee Matlin won a Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in the film Children of a Lesser God. While she remains the only deaf actor to have won an Oscar, Paul Raci, a child of deaf parents, was nominated for his supporting role as a sign language teacher in the 2019 feature Sound of Metal, which also included deaf actors in the cast. In 2008, RJ Mitte, an actor with cerebral palsy, was cast in Breaking Bad, which emerged as one of the most celebrated TV dramas of all time. Mitte, too, became an advocate for people with disabilities, particularly those working in entertainment. Another deaf actor, Millicent Simmonds, recently appeared in both A Quiet Place films, and Zack Gottsagen, an actor with Down syndrome, starred in 2019’s The Peanut Butter Falcon, later presenting an Academy Award with the film’s lead, Shia LaBeouf.
While there are other front-of-the-camera mainstream media performers with disabilities gaining fame today, few if any have been sexualized in their roles at the level of Steve Way. An actor who lives with muscular dystrophy, Way stars in the Hulu series Ramy as the titular character’s pal “Steve.” In a Season 1 episode, Steve, who’s roughly in his mid-20s, tries to have sex with a 16-year-old girl, which — assuming it were consensual — would technically be legal in New Jersey, the state where the show takes place. In Season 2, there’s an episode that revolves heavily around Steve experiencing acute blue balls. With his arms no longer functioning in ways that allow him to masturbate — in the series and in real life — and with the female caretaker who used to get him off replaced by a middle-aged bald man, Steve’s on the prowl for sex workers during Ramy’s bachelor party. But when a brutal storm snows them into their hotel room, Ramy, proving to be the best friend a guy can arguably ask for, jerks Steve off to completion, finally relieving him of his scrotal pain.
“It’s hard enough for someone like me to get on TV, let alone to express themselves in a sexual way,” says Way, who also does advocacy work on behalf of disabled people. “Sex in America is already taboo, so when you combine that with someone who is very disabled, that’s unheard of [in media].”
A lack of representation of disabled people in culture, particularly as sexual beings, helps to limit discourse about sexual issues they face, says Way, who adds, “It’s not fair to us.” Citing the Ramy blue balls episode as an example, the actor says there are times where disabled people “need help” in achieving deserved sexual satisfaction.
“Why can’t we just talk about it without fear of being shamed for it?” he says. “It’s a part of everyone’s life, so why are we left out? Why is it made weird for us?”
As far as porn content creator GoAskAlex is concerned, the “most revolutionary thing is going to be when I’m commissioned to do a video and [my disability is] not mentioned; I’m just existing and having sex. When I get to do that, that’ll be progress.”
Abigboynow, the Reddit performer, echoes Alex’s wish for a more inclusive future. He hopes to one day see disabled characters in film and on TV “who are hot, charismatic and desirable to able-bodied members of the opposite sex,” he writes. “Bonus points if they’re portrayed by disabled actors.”
Moreover, “I’d love to see these characters have steamy, agile sex on screen and NOT be treated like China dolls who may get hurt if the sex gets too rough,” he continues. “All this would go such a long way toward seeing disabled people as sexual — and sexy! FYI, I’m available if anyone’s casting!”
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