Episode 31: Victoria's New Secret

TRANSCRIPT OF “VICTORIA’S NEW SECRET”

[rock guitar music]

MALE VO [00:03]
This is Bad Attitudes.

[rock guitar music]

LAURA [00:20]
Hello friends and strangers! Welcome to another episode of Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast about Disability. I’m your host, Laura.

Apparently, the sex and romantic lives of disabled peopre are becoming a theme on this podcast. Oh well. I just work here.

If you like this episode, share it and the podcast with your friends. Word of mouth is absolutely the best way to grow this podcast and our community. And please continue to leave ratings and reviews wherever you listen!

If you’d like to contribute to the show, please visit ko-fi.com/badattitudespod. Your contributions help keep the pod running and each donation gets a shout-out in a future episode.

Through March and April, I will be donating half of each donation towards a Ukrainian relief organization. I haven’t decided which organization yet, but when I do, I will announce it on social media, so be sure to follow @BadAttitudesPod on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. So, if for example, someone makes a donation of $10, $5 will go toward Ukrainian relief efforts.

For questions, comments, or ideas, email badattitudespod@gmail.com or reach out through social media.

As always, I want to remind you that disability is not a monolith. My experience as a disabled person is going to be different from the experiences of other disabled people. I am one voice for the disabled community but I am not the only voice.

If you haven’t been on social media or watched the news or been among people in the past month or so, you might not know that Victoria’s Secret released a new collection on Valentine’s Day, the campaign for which featured a disabled model. Puerto Rico native Sofia Jirau is the first Victoria’s Secret model with Down syndrome.

Predictably, the non-disabled “saviors'' came out of the woodwork to protect Jirau: “Stop sexualizing people with special neeeeeeds!” they cried. 

Gee, where do I begin?

Obviously, “special needs.” We’ve had this conversation before. Just say “disabled.” It won’t hurt.

Jirau is 25-years-old and completely capable of making her own decisions. It’s not like Victoria’s Secret signed a model without the mental capacity to choose the trajectory of her own life, or that she is being taken advantage of by her guardians or something. Jirau signed the contract herself; her Down syndrome does not make her unable to make these kinds of decisions.

Jirau is an adult who WANTED to be signed by Victoria’s Secret and she achieved her goal. There is nothing dangerous or damaging about putting her in skimpy lingerie. The danger and the damage comes from the so-called “saviors” who think sexualizing disabled people is somehow wrong.

They’re worried about sexualizing disabled people; meanwhile, disabled people are begging to be sexualized MORE. See us as sexual beings; see us as beings worthy of desire, see us as beings worthy of love and lust and all the emotions in between. The danger is in the DEsexualition of disabled people.

Desexualizing disabled people doesn’t just mean that the non-disabled don’t view us as viable romantic partners. It means that disabled people are more likely to be victims of sexual violence and domestic violence. It means that disabled people are offered limited sexual education or even denied sexual education altogether. Given the state of sexual education in this country, can you imagine how lacking the education given to disabled kids is? I shudder to think.

I guess these “saviors” are worried that if the sexual side of disabled people is shown, they will be fetishized. But, guess what? DISABLED PEOPLE ARE ALREADY FETISHIZED. And not necessarily in the way you think.

Yes, they are fetishized sexually. There are those individuals who view disabled bodies as kinks and not as housing actual human beings. They are known as “devotees” or “devos.” The majority are male, and are attracted to disabled women, particularly paraplegics, wheelchair-users, or amputees.

But the infantilization of disabled people is a fetish too. One of the definitions of “fetish” is an object of irrational reverence or obsessional devotion. If you don’t think insisting that disabled people are child-like and innocent is making them an “object of irrational reverence,” you are not paying attention. It is fetishization to try to turn disabled people into children. We are not pure, innocent, angelic beings. Two of the biggest douchebags in American politics — Madison Cawthorn and Greg Abbott — are members of the disabled community and go a long way to disproving the myth of disabled innocence.

Let me say it plain, because some of you just aren’t getting it. Disabled people have sex. Romantic sex, casual sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. Do you need some smelling salts?

You can’t sexualize disabled people because they are already sexualized by virtue of being human.

It makes no sense to say “Stop sexualizing disabled people!” because Victoria’s Secret signed a disabled model. There was a time when Victoria’s Secret didn’t have Black models. So when the first Black model was signed, was there an uproar about sexualizing Black people? If Victoria’s Secret branches into plus-size models, will there be an outcry about sexualizing fat people? NO! Because neither skin color nor weight is seen as a factor in limiting someone’s sexual nature, even if you don’t find them sexually appealing.

Disabled people are the only group of people which society actively tries to deny and dismantle their sexuality. It doesn’t matter the type or extent of disability, disabled means asexual, or worse, anti-sexual. Mostly because the non-disabled majority does not understand the nuances of either disability OR sex.

Real world sex does not look like porn, and it doesn’t even look like the most tasteful, most romantic sex scene ever to grace a screen. The only media I can think of that even hinted at a disabled character’s sexual journey was “Friday Night Lights,” the TV show. It showed newly-paralyzed Jason Street (played by Scott Porter) and his girlfriend Lila (played by Minka Kelly) exploring the ways in which their sexual relationship had changed through the use of educational materials and videos aimed specifically at disabled people.

Does sex look different for disabled people? Sometimes, sure. But it’s still sex. It’s still basically the same. By acknowledging that disabled people are sexual beings, you aren’t inviting the opportunity to corrupt individuals pure as the driven snow. I and my disabled friends are pretty corrupt to begin with.

It is not up to non-disabled “saviors” to protect disabled people from the ravages of sexuality. We don’t want it and we don’t need it. To be fair, there are disabled people whose disability does make it possible for them to be taken advantage of. And they should be protected. But the majority of disabled people have the mental faculties and capacity to take care of themselves. We can decide what to do with our bodies, including signing a contract that allows us to pose in lingerie in front of a camera.

Thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you in the next one.

[08:33]
rock guitar music