Queercrip Porn Poster - Chun Sam K.
Description:
It is a poster of queer porn headlining by Lyric Seal—"a self-described dancer/author/actor for adults/advice columnist/singer/erotic embodied performer” (Murray, 2016). It is a queer centric porn with Lyric as the main porn model. They were born with arthrogryposis and are a wheelchair user.
Significance:
I chose this poster because it celebrates sexual agency and transforms the cultural assumptions and aesthetics surrounding sex and bodies. In pornography, representations of non-white, disabled, and queer people remain miniscule and marginal amidst the disability movement that calls to celebrate disabled sexuality (Ebrahim, 2018). In Portuguese society, the hetero-reproductive and patriarchal sexual regime determines that sexual activity is inaccessible for bodies that do not fulfil certain aesthetic or functional ideal (Santos & Santos, 2017). Moreover, I would argue that most western nations such as Australia have the same sexual regime albeit different nuances. Fox & Bale (2017) posited that mainstream pornography and sexual media often circumscribes a narrow conception of sex and sexuality and acts as a disciplinary regulatory mechanism for the dominant heterosexual gender norms. The notion of a sexual disabled women challenges the ableist and heterosexist construction of sex because their bodies are defined as the opposite to the norms of sexual life. Erickson (2020) defines this as “cultures of undesirability”—a concept that outlines how “undesirable others” are constructed through who culture determines as desirable and granted the status of personhood. Cultures of undesirability is the systemic and structural process that creates and marks certain bodies as worthless in opposition to bodies that are worthy. I see Lyric Seal’s poster and the porn video as engaging in the work of reformulating socio-cultural imagery of disability and normative ideals about bodily representation and sexual performance (Santos & Santos, 2017).
Positionality:
I am interested in Disability and Sex because these two concepts are woven in a complex socio-political matrix that impact the ways humans conduct their lives and these concepts are imbued with shame, pain and secrets, therefore, are taboo. I am no stranger to navigating the complex terrains of systems of racism, homophobia, femmephobia, transphobia and desirability politics that shape and exclude my existence. Santos & Santos (2017) define sexual citizenship as the construction of subjects and citizens that distributes sexual rights across populations through heteropatriarchal discourses of sexuality, sex and bodies. Having witnessed the ableism abound in the culture, I become attentive to the entanglements of ableism in the construction of my subjecthood.
I want to expand the conversation of disability studies through researching on studies of and by disabled people of colour. Disabled people of colour experience ableism in correspondence with environmental racism, medical abuse, police brutality and economic exclusion; systems of violent racial, economic, environmental and sexual exploitation have a direct correlation with personal and communal experiences of disability, illness and diseases for people of colour (Kim & Schalk, 2019). In summary, I want to study how race shapes and influences disabled people of colour in the terrain of sexuality imbued with notions of hypervisibility and invisibility. The discourse of normativity, possibility, and desirability shapes the access of resources and the process through which individuals are read as human (Erickson, 2020). These are topics that appeal to me in studying Sex and Disability.
Impact:
The gem I’m taking away is that the poster actively and consciously flaunts Lyric’s body and desire that has been designated as undesirable in economies of desirability. The poster challenges many presumptions about the sex disabled queers of colour would have; it features a queer disabled Black multi gendered (woman included) trans individual in a wheelchair surrounded by other female identified performers’ buttocks. Mainstream porn dictates how people are supposed to find sexual pleasure and who people should find desirable, which excludes disabled people in general (Erickson, 2020). The poster invokes and embodies “new knowledges, ways of living, being and feeling” that transform shame and pain into a site of resistance (Erickson, 2020, p. 284). The poster performs resexualisation—“celebrations of diverse desires and relationship structures”—that addresses “foundational conceptions of what is and is not ‘sexual’, exploring with people of all ages the possibility for embodied and material intensifications that extend beyond narrow definitions” (Fox & Bale, 2017, p. 406). The poster is a flaunting and embrace of all that is deemed undesirable by the heteronormative discourse of sexuality.
Wish List:
I hope my artefact inspires viewers to read and seek art and writing by white and non-white disabled artists and writers. Santos & Santos (2017) explicated the ways the current regime of sexuality regulates sexuality are diametrically opposed to disabled people and women, doubly so. Disabled people’s sexuality is infantilized and desexualized which serves the heteronormative economies of desire. Even in spaces of disability studies, Kim & Schalk (2019) identify the lack of critical engagement with scholarship that address race, gender, class, sexuality and disability; whiteness generally shapes the direction and scholarship of the field. Furthermore, I would extend this argument to spaces of disability media, activism and organisations. I want to echo Kim & Schalk’s call in anchoring the field of sex and disability in the works of feminists of colour and critical race theories to advance the feminist disability studies (2019). These relations of power have significant material impact of disabled queers and women of colour that cannot be ignored by the general lack of attention on the multiplied intersections queers and women of colour occupy. Their sexuality has nuances that diverge from scholarship and art focused on disabled white people. I hope the artwork by Lyric Seal a queer, multi gendered and Black porn performer inspires a more radical approach to disabled sexuality that holds potential for an alternative “sexual becoming” (Fox & Bale, 2017) that does not seek respectable and palatable inclusion into the state and that flaunts their bodies and desires proudly.
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One Comment
Hello Sam 😊,
I can see the immense effort you have put into the description of your artefact, it is such an informative read. I respect that you are using your learnings in Disability and Sexuality to challenge the cultural assumptions and aesthetics surrounding sex and bodies. Sex is portrayed as a privilege of the white, heterosexual, young, single and non-disabled (Tepper, 2000). Your work provokes the need for inclusion and that sex and sexuality should be accessible for everyone. The thought you have put into this beautifully written piece is inspiring and commendable. You are going to do great things for those who need to be heard and I wish you the very best!
Michaela