This week in his syndicated column, Dan Savage answers questions about sex and disability.
One of the questions deals with devotees (people who have a specific sexual preference for people with disabilities). Dan's response was interesting to me:
"If you believe in equal treatment for people with disabilities, then that extends to sex. We all want to be objectified from time to time, and a disabled person has just as much right to healthy objectification as any able-bodied person. There's really not much difference between a leg man and a lack-of-leg man—well, except this: The more common a fetish is, the less likely we are to regard it as one."
That makes sense to me on the surface, but then there are all the accounts of unlawful and unethical behavior and just-plain-rudeness from people in this particular category. It reminded me of this post on Screw Bronze, where the blogger, Beth, and her commenters react to the linking of her blog on a devotee site and the way this particular fetish can represent something particularly disturbing:
"While all of us have “types” we are attracted to, we don’t let that dictate our lives. I myself love the look of red headed women with pale skin but I am married to a dirty blonde who was tanned when I met her. She was the right person; because she was a person, not a type, not a fetish. And when the fetish gets to the point that the person is no longer important except in terms of aesthetic value, then not only are you (often) reinforcing stereotype but in the case of women with disabilities, trying to lock them forever in a personal and societal cage."
What do you think? Is Dan Savage, always a proponent of live-and-let-live attitudes toward sex and sexuality, being too accomodating, or is his response spot-on? Are devotees harmless fetishists or, as Beth suggests, a particularly malicious type of disabilists?
If anyone feels moved to write to Dan in response to this column, whether with praise or a complaint, leave your letter as a comment here as well so we can see if a Disaboomer gets published in a future column.
To read the other letters Dan answered and his responses (with guest experts) and a list of resources, go here.
