Are you a disability devotee? (59)

As regards inter-personal attraction, I guess we all tend to be initially attracted by some specifics, but t's a lot nicer to try to get to know and appreciate the whole person with all their less obvious and perhaps surprising characteristics, as well as those we perceived from the start. This can also help sustain attraction if or when a person changes; e.g. if breasts become less firm or hair becomes grey or lost or six packs soften with passing decades.

To answer the question, I tend to be more attracted to people for what they can do rather than what they can't, but I'm even more interested in their be-ing than their do-ing.

"Wisdom begins in wonder” (Socrates)
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" (Albert Einstein)
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. http://www.informedconsent.co.uk/posts/226772/

I disagree. The issue is that being disabled hampers people's lives - often greatly. I'm all in favour of disabled people having the same sexuality rights as everyone else, including being found attractive, but finding disability itself attractive is like being attracted to someone who is still mentally traumatised over a bereavement BECAUSE they are mentally traumatised. You're getting your rocks off on someone else's misfortune.

The problem with that is that is to what some extent sadism is all about. I suppose there's three levels to sadism (and there are some types of topping that wouldn't even count as sadism) - those who enjoy inflicting pain only if the other person enjoys the experience, those who enjoy inflicting pain regardless, and those sadists who are only happy with an unwilling victim (Rosemary West would head that list).

Clothes - high heels, corsets, gloves - can be changed easily. Hair colour with a little more difficulty, eye colour with even more difficulty, and skin colour not easily at all. But, particularly now, hair and skin colour have relatively small effects on your life in this country. They're not handicaps.

S.x.

Edited 2 Jan 12, 9:55 PM by Sorceror

Not really, Simply finding something physically attractive can be just that, it your assumption that the attraction is to weakness.

I have worked with people with mobility difficulties and mental difficulties and I know a huge number of them who would happily rip your head off for using that word.

Again it is you assuming that all people with these different abilities see them as a problem or a weakness or making them less, a HELL of a lot do not, indeed some people I have met would argue it makes them better.

Edited 2 Jan 12, 10:03 PM by Souci_X

You are assuming that all disabled people think the same way.

You only have to read my example of the model with the heart condition to know that some people can actually revel in others finding their disabilities sexy.

It's either right or wrong to fetishise something physical about a person. You can't start putting clauses on what people are allowed to fetishise. That's sort of what we're all here for, because some people don't like our behaviour.

I find this word as offensive as the word handicap. I don't see my disability as a misfortune and I don't know other disabled people who see theirs as that either. Mine's just the hand life dealt me. You learn to live with it and, as someone else said, it often makes you a better person for you get to see life from a very different perspective. I know I have.

Aut disce aut discede. Manet sors tertia caedi

It also isn't necessarily the case that the only thing about you which someone finds attractive is your disability.

I don't know the answer. By analogy, when I was huge I would not have responded well to someone who fancied me simply because they were a "chubby chaser" as I didn't like my fat at all. But if they could have convinced me there were other things about me which they thought cool too, (and God knows, there are many) maybe I could have dealt. I don't honestly know. The only time I was chatted up by someone who was clearly attracted by the fat I found it pretty creepy, if I'm honest.

"Rip my head off for calling them handicapped" ? Unless I was half way up a flight of stairs perhaps.

A disability is a disability because it disables you. It makes your physical life more difficult. If it didn't it wouldn't be a disability.

I'm sorry but the majority of not disabled people would not wish to be disabled like the majority of young and healthy people would not want to be old and sick.

If you're trying to sell me that a disabled person can be desirable I'd buy. If you're trying to sell me that BEING disabled is desirable - forget it.

S.x.

The implication of this is that people choose to fetishise disability.

I very much doubt that they do, any more than any of us chose to be into BDSM, or attracted to women (or men) or people of a particular shape or age, or whatever else it is that turns us on. I would assume that there are some people who, for reasons they don't know themselves, and have no control over, are attracted to people with disabilities.

(I certainly recall seeing a surprisingly large number of adverts in American BDSM magazines for sister publications specialising in amputees, so I assume it must be reasonably widespread.)

I don't think, therefore, that you can condemn anyone for having such a fetish. As ever it is not the sexual desire that is the issue, it is how you act on it.

Clearly if someone with such a fetish lets it be the be all and end all, and is interested in a person only because of their disability then the relationship is unlikely to be a fulfilling one, any more than someone who likes big breasts but is otherwise quiet, intelligent and shy is likely to end up in a fulfilling relationship with Jordan.

On the other hand if it is just one of the factors that you look for then why should there be a problem? We all have our preferences - even the person who most resolutely says that personality is all that matters is usually looking for a male or a female.

As SirG71 pointed out there is always a flip side, some people who will rule you out automatically because of your disability (or small breasts/penis, shortness, blonde hair or whatever). You'd be foolish to automatically rule out those who go the other way as well. Surely someone you like and get on with who also happens to have a particular sexual attraction to your physical body type, whatever it is, can only be a good thing?

If however the disability 'fetish' is the formost requirment then i could see undue pressure on the relationship.

Please excuse crap spelling cause i,m rubbish