Lessons about Love and Sex by Wheelchair Users (Part 1 & 2)
2h 17m
Trailer
Part A
Part BContent: This is an interview discussion of four women who are wheelchair users. Alex Cowan (UK), Jacqueline Kool (Netherlands), Inge Bockmans (Belgium) and Yvonne Dolonen (Norway) have been actively involved in helping individuals understand what good sex and pleasure is about as well as how it can be achieved. They generously share their sexuality and relationship luggage, which is a combination of personal and professional experiences. They talk about sexual pleasure, sexual practices, sensations, love, attraction, relationships, motherhood, divorce, societal norms, pleasure, dance and much more. This interview is incredibly inspiring and helps sexual health professionals better understand the beauty of sexuality. Get ready to broaden your mindset and feel this positively powerful experience!
Produced in 2021
Alex Cowan
Educator & Disability Consultant
Speaker
Alex has a BSc Hons in Psychology and Education and has received special training in sexual medicine.
Alex Cowan is an educator, writer and performer, giving talks, presentations, workshops, and peer advice to promote a holistic understanding of disability and sexuality. Alex encourages us to think beyond the prescriptive, disablist limitations by which we live, and recognize and celebrate the difference and humanity in everyone. Alex examines taboos and myths that surround disability and sex, and looks at some ways to break down these barriers. Alex is a wheelchair user with Multiple Sclerosis, she is married, she was the first wheelchair user in ‘The Alternative Miss World Contest’, and she has experienced skydiving.
Inge Blockmans
Qualitative Researcher & Consciousness Coach
Speaker
The work of Inge Blockmans (PhD) is driven by her belief that everyone can experience their body as a warm home and as a source of giving and receiving pleasure
Her qualitative doctoral research project explored the lived experiences of being a woman with sexual desires living in and with a body with spinal cord injury (2014-2019; Disability Studies research group at Ghent University & Institute for Family and Sexuality Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium). This resulted in the dissertation “Manoeuvres in the dark: Re-creating (new) stories about sexuality and the body”: a blend of auto-ethnography, life stories, collective biography, ethnographic fieldwork involving hospital-internships, photography and dance, alongside academic writing experiments inspired by poetry and theatre. Her PhD inspired her to continue her work as a researcher, creative consciousness coach, and story teller around reclaiming ownership of one’s body and desires, connecting and discovering one’s body from a place of curiosity and unconditional love through creative practices including dance and tantra, “pleasurising” one’s life despite the presence of medicalisation, and rewriting sex scripts. In her interdisciplinary postdoctoral research (2020-2024; Disability Studies & Studies in Performing Arts & Media, Ghent University, Belgium) she dives into people’s infinite potential for pleasure through dance.
Jaqueline Kool
Social Worker & Theologist
Speaker
Jacqueline Kool [1963] studied social work and theology in the Netherlands. She was co-founder of and works as ambassador for Disability Studies in the Netherlands (www.disabilitystudies.nl).
She publishes in the area of participation and representation of disability experience and disability studies in which she is also working as a consultant. She published e.g. the books Goed bedoeld. Levensbeschouwelijk kijken naar handicap en ziekte (2002), on religious perception on disability, and Eros in de kreukels. Verhalen van lijven, leven en lust vanuit de kreukelzone (2010) on disabled women and sexuality.
Yvonne Dolonen
Sociologist & Sex Counsellor
Speaker
Yvonne Dolonen has been working at Sunnaas Rehabilitation Hospital in Norway since 2005. As a peer consultant and sexologist she helps people with challenges after severe illness and injury.
Yvonne Dolonen is educated as a social worker and specialist in sexological counseling. She completed her education in sexology in 2017 and simply loves her new profession. In addition to her professional knowledge, she has personal experience in living with a disability. Her path to become a sexologist started when she got a spinal cord injury as a young woman. Then after many years as a peer consultant and conversations with patients about sexuality, she started her education in sexology. Now she sees that both personal experiences and competence on the field constitute her strength as a sexologist.
