Sexual health is important to your wellbeing, no matter who you are. More and more attention is being turned towards the sexual needs of disabled people, but the true pioneer that celebrates sexuality for all people are the Erotic Awards.
The Erotic Awards take place every year and thrust the sexual needs of disabled people into the spotlight. Thanks to pioneering sex campaigner Tuppy Owens, the annual awards ceremony and post-ceremony kink party Night Of The Senses has been going for 25 years, raising money for Outsiders – a charity that helps disabled people find sexual partners. Last year’s film The Sessions explored that taboo of sex and disability, telling the story of a paralysed man who loses his virginity to a ‘sexual surrogate’. Then you have the Channel 4 documentary Can Have Sex Will Have Sex, which details the sex lives of four disabled people, including one who has sex with an escort hired by his mother.
Such programmes and films are important because they tell us something Owens has been asserting for decades: disabled people have the same basic human desire for sexual intimacy. This is why Owens set up the awards: to recognise and celebrate sex-positive artists, campaigners, academics and sex educators. Last year, finalists included Tits And Sass – a group blog run by sex workers, including strippers, porn performers and prostitutes – and Sue Newsome, who developed a multi-sensory massage for a man paralysed from the waist down. However, the evening is about more than handing out trophies. Once the winners have accepted their awards (known as the Golden Flying Penis), it’s time for various tents, with names such as The Grope Box and The Petting Zoo, to open.
Though Owens created and has led the event for almost a quarter of a century, last year she stepped down as head honcho and instead took up her role as disability steward. The 69-year-old pioneer is retiring from the event to focus on her own research and writing. Instead, the mantle of last year’s event was passed onto award-winning producer Lianne Coop, 36, and photographer Grace Gelder, 29, who runs Juicy Productions. A seemingly odd choice compared to the experience in event-planning and status of their predecessor, but, as ever, there is a method to Owens’s madness: they are enthusiastic, bright and, most importantly, they are young.
Owens comments, ‘When it started 25 years ago, all my friends came along to support me. They still come along, of course, but they are also nearly in their seventies. It’s time for a new generation of people to hear about the event, so we need young people to run it.’ Last year, Owens’ wish came true when the crowd turned out to be a youthful mix of Gelder and Coop’s friends and those who had benefited from the word-of-mouth campaign. Unfortunately, however, the number of disabled guests in attendance at the event is still relatively low.
Even though carers are free to attend and the venue has wheelchair accessibility, Gelder estimates that just 10% of the crowd were disabled at last year’s event. The photographer, who met Owens while researching a documentary on sex and disability, enthuses, ‘Obviously we want more to join in. There needs to be a place where disabled people can come and enjoy themselves and their sexuality.’ Hopefully, this wish will come to light at the 2014 Erotic Awards, for which Gelder and Coop hope a famous name will help promote. Gelder notes, ‘Someone such as Sam Roddick [founder of erotic emporium Coco de Mer] would change everything for us.’