Being disabled and bisexual has caused me to need to explore what my one of assistants called, as a joke, “The Virgin, the Whore, and Martina”  Many a feminist theorist has the explored the what is called the “the virgin/whore complex”.  The misogynist idea that women either be good women adhering to a saintly standard of moral purity.  Those women who do not do so are “whores”.  There is in this dichotomy no in between.  Of course, the dichotomy is not at all like real life.  Real life has gray areas unlike this either or standard.

Being disabled and bi is, I will argue, a variation of the virgin/whore dichotomy raised to the next level.  Disabled people, according the larger society, aren’t supposed to have sex in general.  Bisexual people, on the other hand, are deemed to be the most sexually charged beings on Earth, accept for binobos, the sex obsessed primate (they settle their communal differences by having sex)  How could one person, namely me, occupy both roles?

At 19, and recently out, I didn’t know, and still don’t.  Luckily, I realized as is always the case, in my opinion, with all dichotomies that it was untrue and I didn’t need to try and mold myself to fit into them (like I could have done so even if I’d wanted to).

In truth, disabled people do have sex.  However much our teachers, parents and caregivers might wish that were different.  Often, for example, disabled young people are allowed to miss health and sexual education classes in order to receive the specialized supports or instruction that they need.  As an advocate for children with disabilities, I know that special instruction and therapies are invaluable to and for them.  However, as a health educator, I don’t think the solution is to always remove the child in question from health (or any other class) regularly. 

I purpose, instead that we remove the person in question from a different class each week.  Hopefully one they have every day.   I’ve created an example of 15-year-old Dan.  He is in a mainstream classroom.  He attends regular classes and has school based speech therapy 3 days a week.  Each day he goes to English, math, science and Spanish, and history.  As he wants to be a print journalist, he is in advanced journalism class.  He goes to health class twice a week and adapted PE twice a week.  He has one study hall a week.