Category: Disability and rants

family and kink you say? I can hear the cogs turning right now. Sorry to disappoint you but this will be entirely different from what you are expecting.

I am currently sitting in my parents’ house with my iPhone and typing this … with the screen curtain function turned on so they don’t see what I am writing. You see, there’s this huge taboo surrounding kink happening within one’s own family and the idea that someone close to you is kinky sends most people into paroxisms of disgust with comments of “eww gross” and “I didn’t want to know” and “TMI Love”. Just to be clear. I am not talking about incest, just knowledge of the kinks and sexual practices of family members.

But what happens when a family member has to care for another family member? Does this mean that because of all of these taboos, the sexual needs of the infirm or disabled person will not be taken into account? I found out by accident that someone in my immediate family had a sexual health issue. I asked the immediate family about it and was met with a stoney silence the likes of which you have never seen and that scared me. What happens if I have to care for either of my parents? Will they ever feel comfortable telling me about these issues or will they just suffer in silence because I am family? Will they be able to engage in a healthy sex life when of a certain age or will they have to stop because family is grossed out? Will our generation be kind to our liberal parents or will we treat them like the children they haven’t been for many years? I know which child I want to be, even if I have to break through all of the taboos necessary to make this happen.

Don’t infantilise family. Show them love by recognising their adult status. Old and/or related does not mean sexless. Talk to each other because it might mean a piece of knowledge that save someone’s life. z

Ever since I was a little person, I have been barraged with these images from Holywood and other countries where they make movies or books or anything similar where the blind person is always touching the sighted person’s face for some weird reason. Well, actually, I know the reason and it’s a purely sighted one. People who can see want to see someone’s face so it follows for them that a blind person wants to touch the same places, right? WRONG!!!!

Blind people do things completely differently. We go on your voice and what you smell like and the way you put your words. WE hold your arm when we go somewhere and can feel things from that, though it’s very discrete. I, for one, do not want to feel your face and my reasons are somewhat different to those of others.

When someone touches my face, it’s a sign of possession. They put their hands on either side of it when kissing me, hold it when pulling my hair, direct it when wanting me to look somewhere specific. It means they own me in a big way. I get off on being owned that way. It’s one of the very few physical ways to send me into subspace. Mostly, subspace is a mental or words thing but touch my face in that way and it takes me there.

If a person tries to get me to touch their face, it’s wrong on a visceral level for me. It’s too intimate. I even had a dom do that to me once and I pulled my hand away like I had touched something hot. When I explained it to him though, he got it streight away. That was extremely gratifying.

So what do you do when meeting a blind person? Just ask how we like to get to know you. We’ll tell you and nine times out of ten, it will not be touching your face.