How can mutual care be connected to desire? Mutual care and Kink are two sides of the same coin. A celebration of mutual care to confront the way disabled people are perceived as a burden. (A gay couple painted in magenta. One man sits on his partner's lap while trimming his beard.)

For My King

Ableist society would take disabled queer rights away and deny our personhood. Alone with each other, kink can reclaim that power by choosing who is worthy of it. Through kink the submissive choses who is deserving of their power and gives it as a gift to that person. By celebrating disabled sexuality and love, the work confronts the way disabled people are desexualized and infantilized. 
(A couple with intentionally ambiguous genders, painted on a green drip background. The shorter person is leaning on a cane while staring into the face of their partner. Their partner is much taller and broader and they look down at their adoring partner.)

Submissive for You

You hold me as my spirit breaks, my soul weeps, my body in agony, and my disability claim denied. Through all this you surround me with so much love and warmth. (An adult is curled in the fetal position with head resting on a curled hand and a sorrowful expression. They lay on the lap of another adult with short curly hair who is stroking their hair.)

Hold My Mind Broken Body

In this moment our breathing slows and we feel the glow. We made our chronically ill bodies so inescapably beautiful that I lost all sense of time and space and self. (A couple painted in blues with yellow highlights. One person in kneeling in front of the other with their head in their partner's lap. The kneeling person looks up at their smiling partner, whose long hair frames the scene.)

Aftermath

Celebrating unedited sexuality confronts the way disabled people are desexualized and infantilized. This work explores the way that kink can reveal unexpected avenues of pleasure tailored to unique bodies. Consensual power dynamics in kink allow people to reclaim the power that society would strip away by choosing who is worthy of it. Disabled queer people are beautiful and sensual as we are, in our unedited queer and disabled forms, accessibility needs and all.  (A non-binary femme is embracing their partner. Their partner is smiling and wearing an ankle brace while being spanked. Bruising is visible on their butt.)

Reclaiming My Body: Impact Play

This work celebrates mutual care and community to challenge the way disabled people are perceived as a burden. Disabled people, in community, are shown as each other's accessibility. Access Intimacy, coined by Mia Mingus, is a feeling of someone understanding & anticipating another’s access needs, enabling a disabled person more agency in their life. (Painted in purples with silver highlights, a bald femme using a cane is being kissed by a smiling femme using a wheelchair.)



Here for All of You

Instead of being infantilized for their accessibility needs, being fed becomes a naughty game of power play.  [A couple painted in yellows and browns. The figure on the left is feeding the figure on the right ravioli.]

This Vulnerable with You

Through kink the submissive choses who is deserving of their power and gives it as a gift to that person.  [A couple is about to kiss. The figure on the right sits in a wheel chair and is gently pulling the figure on the left close by their collar.]

My Power My Love

We are beautiful and sensual as we are, in our unedited queer and disabled forms, accessibility needs and all. [A fat queer couple are locked in loving embrace and smiling into each other's faces.]

As We Are

Access Intimacy, coined by disability justice advocate Mia Mingus, is a way of relating between a disabled person and someone else, where the other person genuinely understands and anticipates the disabled person’s access needs. [A couple is on a date at a restaurant. The figure on the left is cutting the food for the figure on the right.]

Access Intimacy

The polyamorous feeling of joy and fulfillment as I see my partners with each other. My found family has finally found me.

Compersion

Our bodies bend and fold, the spaces between you and I collapsing in on each other.

Milk & Honey

Who do we distract ourselves with or let harm us when our reality on our side of the hospital curtain is too much to bear?

The Other Side of the Curtain

When I enthusiastically surrender all of who I am to you, you hold all my power, all of my achievement and pain and growth in this moment are yours. You free me from my broken body and mind and all me just to be in this moment with nothing in the world but you.

Hunger

What makes you who you are? Why do you bend and fold for me? Why do you allow me to support you? For disabled and queer communities, these chosen and found families hold us and love us in our entirety. 

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Rachel Ungerer

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