News | National
10 Feb 2025 12:42
NZCity News
NZCity CalculatorReturn to NZCity

  • Start Page
  • Personalise
  • Sport
  • Weather
  • Finance
  • Shopping
  • Jobs
  • Horoscopes
  • Lotto Results
  • Photo Gallery
  • Site Gallery
  • TVNow
  • Dating
  • SearchNZ
  • NZSearch
  • Crime.co.nz
  • RugbyLeague
  • Make Home
  • About NZCity
  • Contact NZCity
  • Your Privacy
  • Advertising
  • Login
  • Join for Free

  •   Home > News > National

    Alice Wong recently won a MacArthur genius grant. Her latest book, Disability Intimacy, is about more than sex

    Alice Wong’s Disability Intimacy is anchored in authentic experiences of disabled people, rather than stereotypes.

    Amanda Tink, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of South Australia
    The Conversation


    “In the United States, we’re taught that nakedness is a very intimate and private thing. Yet, I have to show people my body every day to receive the assistance I need,” writes Ashley Volion, a wheelchair-using disability rights activist, in Disability Intimacy. “I have to be vulnerable in ways that other people wouldn’t even dream of. Intimacy means something deeper.”

    Her contribution is one of many delightful reminders that Alice Wong’s third (and boldest) anthology is anchored in authentic experiences of disabled people and intimacy, rather than stereotypes.

    Disabled editor Wong, who won a prestigious MacArthur Foundation genius grant, worth US$800,000, last year, has long been interested in this kind of representation. She has had muscular dystrophy “my entire life” and founded the Disability Visibility project just over a decade ago, in 2014.


    Review: Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care and Desire – edited by Alice Wong (Knopf)


    An oral history project designed to share the stories of disabled people through interviewing each other, it grew to encompass a podcast, a blog, social media, arts projects, and spaces for connection and community building – and three anthologies of disabled people’s experiences. Her work centres disabled people’s perspectives around topics such as opioid addiction, sexual abuse, mental health, economic insecurity, and education.

    In a publishing industry where uniformity is emphasised, Disability Intimacy is refreshing. It contains poems, photographic essays (properly described), letters, stories within stories, and many forms of memoir. They are grouped into four parts: Love and Care, Pleasure and Desire, Creativity and Power, and Everything and Everywhere. The 40, mostly American writers represent a range of impairments, races, sexualities and genders.

    Their ages are less varied. Though most do not mention how old they are, their experiences often span at least four decades. However, in the context of disability, this adds to the anthology’s distinctiveness: we are much less likely than non-disabled people to grow old.

    Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, a nonbinary femme disabled autistic writer, writes:

    You might know a younger crip who was a ball of fire partying it up in the club at twenty-six, but because of the Born to Die Young curse hanging over our heads, you don’t get many pictures of crips in their thirties, forties, fifties, heaven forbid beyond.

    Intimacy is more than sex

    The disability community’s definition of intimacy is not limited to sex. Sexual pleasure is featured – one section is devoted to it, with pieces on masturbation, orgasms, kink, and nude photography. Indeed, sexual pleasure is as important for disabled people as it is for non-disabled people.

    A smiling Black woman with a heart-shaped necklace and a headband.
    Robin Wilson Beattie credits BDSM with teaching her to embrace her disabled body.

    “Without BDSM teaching me to embrace my disabled body and feel sexually empowered, I would not be able to connect intimately with others today,” writes Robin Wilson-Beattie, a certified sexual health educator.

    However, our definition of intimacy also encompasses the non-sexual. Contributors write of their intimacy with their children, parents, friends and animals. And with assistants, photographers, other disabled people and other kin and creatives.

    Pelenakeke Brown, a Samoan, queer, disabled artist, writes of the intimacy she and other Indigenous women experienced through improvised synchronicity while developing her latest dance show:

    As practicing artists we can spend a lot of time theorizing about disability concepts like interdependence, cyborg, and disability aesthetics. But this moment felt like all those incredibly important concepts came alive in real time, without explanation.

    A number of the pieces explore the many reasons disabled people define intimacy more broadly than non-disabled people do. One is that non-disabled people often do not give disabled people the same basic respect they give each other.

    “Literally walking the line between able-bodied and not has given me an up-close look at how people think about disabilities,” writer Carrie Wade says, “and I will say this: if you’re not able-bodied, it’s really hard to get people to take you seriously.”

    For example, non-disabled people can assume they can do something like grab a couple of groceries without being objectified. But as short-statured writer and educator Claude Olson recounts, visibly disabled people can’t make the same assumption:

    “I happened to look up at the man beside me in the candy aisle. His eyes were locked on me. It was disturbing, how little fear I saw in them. "I’ve never seen a midget in real life before.” I blinked. “Only in porno.” My body might as well have been on the shelf, sandwiched between the bright yellow packets of Peanut M&M’s and the stacks of King Size Kit Kats. A fly among the sour worms. An animal just the same.

    A smiling woman in a triped shirt, standing near a stream.
    Claude Olson reflects on being objectified and insulted for their short stature while shopping. PEN/Faulkner

    This appalling incident is one of many similar examples in this anthology that represent common daily experiences for many disabled people. This was also noted in the evidence presented at Australia’s Disability Royal Commission.

    Relatedly, non-disabled people are much less likely to experience domestic violence, compared with disabled people. And when a non-disabled person is murdered, their murder will rightfully be declared a tragedy.

    However, when a disabled person is murdered by a family member, it is often framed as an act of “compassion” or even “love”, writes Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities.

    Gabrielle Peters, co-founder of Dignity Denied and a wheelchair user with chronic illness, adds:

    There should not be a need to state our lives are worth living, because that implies there is some question about which lives are worth living and that living is a right one has to earn.

    No wonder, then, that intimacy is significant to disabled people, and that we don’t confine intimacy to sex.

    Intimacy does not mean revealing all

    This anthology is also about how much is not said. There is a truly heartbreaking side to this. Many contributors describe having to hide their impairment for their own safety.

    Ashley Shew is a philosopher of technology and professor at Virginia Tech, who became an amputee after cancer treatment. She describes hearing a couple tell the story of a friend who they called “a vegetable” when he became a quadriplegic. They visited him after the accident, judged him “too sad”, and decided not to visit him again. Shew writes:

    So awkward to watch people tell a story with no self-reflection or shame, recognizing that they would just as soon turn away from you – judge you and your life “too sad” from a single visit.

    It’s not just the callousness of friends she fears, though. Partners of a disabled woman are statistically more likely to leave the relationship, and the woman’s children are “at much higher risk” of being taken away, she writes. In telling their casual anecdote, the couple “have opened up my mind to a series of horrors that would undo the life I know and remove the support I have”.

    The beautiful side of what is not said in this anthology, however, is the obvious intimacy between the editor and each writer. The details of each story are evidently managed with care. Individual, couple and community intimacies are respected. Some names are changed, and deep consideration is given to word choice and timing.

    There is a lovely story of the friendship between two disabled people who both know one of them will soon die. The one who dies is a famous advocate within disabled and Jewish communities, but their full name is never mentioned. This values the person’s public identity, while keeping the story focused on the intimacy of this friendship.

    Sometimes, though, not explaining everything is a method of creating intrigue. A number of contributions finish with loose ends, and are better for it. They prompt consideration of the huge amount of personal information disabled people are expected to provide, even to strangers.

    The importance of role models

    Another recurring theme is how vital it is for a disabled person to connect with disability community and culture, especially when young. New York Times bestselling author Marieke Nijkamp describes the experience of what is now unempathetically labelled “school refusal”:

    I attended classes when I could, but when I could was often complicated. I struggled physically. My body didn’t always act the way I wanted it to or even the way I thought it should. It was in pain, a lot. It was exhausted, often. I felt a disconnect between my body and the rest of me, and I didn’t yet have a disabled community around me to help me learn how to connect.

    Ada Hubrig, assistant professor of English, is autistic, queer and multiply disabled. She blossomed by living with a disabled cat, “sweet, sassy Rosasharon”. This connection, one of her life’s “most meaningful”, showed her “how necessary and important it is to be in community with others who experience disability, to share space with others who experience life in nonnormative ways”.

    These examples are just some of the many reminders throughout this anthology that intimacy’s influence is not limited to the original moment or context it’s experienced in. In turn, they illustrate the depth and variety of Disability Intimacy – and the range of creative possibilities available to both disabled people and our allies.

    The Conversation

    Amanda Tink does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
    © 2025 TheConversation, NZCity

     Other National News
     10 Feb: Two people are moderately injured after being hit by debris that fell from a building on Auckland's Queen Street, also splintering a glass roof
     10 Feb: ‘America First’ trade policy is pushing economic self-sufficiency – but history shows this is harder than it seems
     10 Feb: Environment Canterbury is expecting to hear soon, whether it will be allowed to reinstate bike racks on buses during the day
     10 Feb: Most retirees who rent live in poverty. Here’s how boosting rent assistance could help lift them out of it
     10 Feb: Preventing ‘revenge quitting:’ 5 things workplaces can do to help employees feel like they belong
     10 Feb: The Black librarian who rewrote the rules of power, gender and passing as white
     10 Feb: Lower Hutt Mayor Campbell Barry joined skate-boarders for the official opening of a new state-of-the-art skate park over the weekend
     Top Stories

    RUGBY RUGBY
    Three-time Super Bowl winner Riki Ellison believes Philadelphia's chances of toppling Kansas City in the Super Bowl will be determined by the output of their running back More...


    BUSINESS BUSINESS
    Banks have been working through a backlog of lending requests, that left customers facing weeks-long delays More...



     Today's News

    Auckland:
    Two people are moderately injured after being hit by debris that fell from a building on Auckland's Queen Street, also splintering a glass roof 12:27

    International:
    Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza Strip's Netzarim Corridor as part of ceasefire deal 12:17

    Entertainment:
    Demi Moore will always be part of a "family" with her ex Bruce Willis 12:12

    Golf:
    Celebrations for Josh Geary after a day of golfing mayhem on the coast south of Melbourne 11:57

    Entertainment:
    Angelina Jolie has revealed how her iconic 'Tomb Raider' role forced her to quit smoking and overhaul her physical routine 11:42

    National:
    ‘America First’ trade policy is pushing economic self-sufficiency – but history shows this is harder than it seems 11:17

    Education:
    Can schools enforce uniform policies like short hair for boys and skirts for girls? 11:17

    Entertainment:
    A new Britney Spears book promising to expose the full truth of her turbulent life story is being released 11:12

    Rugby League:
    Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni was convinced his team could reach the NFL Super Bowl for the second time in three years, despite a poor start to the season 11:07

    Business:
    Banks have been working through a backlog of lending requests, that left customers facing weeks-long delays 10:47


     News Search






    Power Search


    © 2025 New Zealand City Ltd