15.12 @ 12:30 - 15:30

BOJANA KUNST (SI)
The Pain of Incision: A Brief History of Bodily Disclosure

Despite the fact that modern medicine, science and art present the body as a mere reconstruction, with the organism transformed into codes and heaps of binary files, we can still trace a remnant of the old views originating in the age of the Enlightenment, when, for the first time in history“we gained access to information - through the methodical autopsy procedure” 6. According to Stafford, modern people still believe that by the observation of visual characteristics they can discover something about the very essence of man; even more, we seem to believe that by means of further combinations of these characteristics we can compose an “ideal” human being (for example, by means of genetics), and one fit for the new challenges set to its survival by technology. The judgements of the body remain those acquired by looking into its interior; furthermore, the body turned inside out is becoming a document of identification and an insurance chip. In the future, it will probably play an important part in job interviews, family planning, the prediction of a given individual’s predisposition to disease or crime and the evaluation of genetic material. Today, high technology provides the same illusion as that of the microscope in the age of Enlightenment, providing a wonderful ability of magnification - and the illusion that we can in fact catch sight of the invisible, flawless information net, the virtual and statistical field of the perfect body.

Biography

Bojana Kunst, ph.d. is a philosopher and performance theoretician. She is currently working as a researcher at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts - Department for Sociology. She is a member of the editorial board of Maska Magazine and Performance Research. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and publications and she has thought and lectured extensively in Europe. She published three books, among them Impossible Body (Ljubljana 1999), Dangerous Connections: Body, Philosophy and Relation to the Artificial (Ljubljana, 2004). She is also working as a dramaturg and artistic collaborator. She is leading the international seminar for performing arts in Ljubljana.

Andrej J. Jug
ON ILLUSIONS IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A WOMAN AND A DISABLED MAN

Ljubljana, Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Questions

1. Can the disabled have sex?
a) Who are the disabled?
b) What does it mean to have sex?
- What are the necessary conditions for having sex (screwing or making love)?
- Does the body have to be whole for a person to be able to enjoy sex?
- Does enjoying sex mean only to be satisfied, assuaging one’s sexual desire, or does it also mean taking part in the satisfaction of the other person?
- In which way is it possible to take part in the pleasure of the other if 1) I am missing arms and legs, 2) I cannot change my position in bed; 3) I have spasms, am rigid and shake; 4) if during the act I am likely to get epileptic attacks and so on?
- What body parts can I be wanting?
- Is a body without some of its organs necessarily ugly?
- Are scars on the body necessarily ugly?
- While having sex do I have to hide my scars?
- Is it wrong if I kiss a scar, touch it, take pleasure in the scars of the other (can scars be erotic, attractive, sexy)? Is there anything wrong in the other person not letting me?
- Is it wrong if at first my scar puts the other person off? Am I supposed to be offended?
- Is it wrong if during having sex the partner feels that he or she can’t go on (if he has a penile dysfunction or if the genitals are painful)? Am I supposed to be offended, concerned, hurt, angry?
- Is it wrong if I don’t myself experience orgasm and just take pleasure in touches, kisses, pleasurable excitement, tenderness? If the partner experiences orgasm on his or her own?
- Is it wrong if during the sex act I imagine someone who is not my sexual partner? Should I feel guilty? Should I be angry if my partner admits thinking of someone else and not me, of someone who is not disabled?
- Is it better to leave my partner instead of candidly admitting that my sexual capacity is limited and that I cannot do everything expected of me?
- Can I enjoy sex without forcing my partner into kinds of pleasure that put him or her off? Can I be satisfied only if I have my way?
- Is sex really like pizza - there is no such thing as a bad one?
- Is sex really like cleaning your teeth, something that is done routinely, periodically, something that has to be done, because we believe it’s better to do it than not to do it?
- Are we inevitably going to get bored with having sex with a single person after a certain period of time?
- Should one have sex with just a single partner at a time?
- Is having a constant partner really a condition for having good sex?
- Is sex really something that is animal, instinctive to people, something that happens all by itself, without us having to think about it?
- Should one be inventive, playful, relaxed, ready to change oneself and surprise the other person, in order to be able to enjoy sex permanently?
- Is it really sensible to determine the frequency of sexual relations and force oneself to have sex just in order not to be different from other people?
- Is an assistant an insuperable obstacle in the attempts of two people to enjoy sex?
- Can a disabled person who is not able to masturbate expect help from other people (friends of either sex) without being therefore considered a deviant?
- Can a person who is not disabled offer to help an disabled person if it is known that he cannot or only with difficulty satisfy him or herself?
c) What does it mean to “be able” to have sex? Does it mean that it is permitted to have sex? Or that people of capable of having sex? Or does it mean that it is not difficult to have sex, that they do it with ease?

2. Do disabled people want to have sex?
a) Are there any special reasons why disabled persons would not want to have sex? Are these reasons persuasive?
b) Are there any special reasons why people who are not disabled would not want to have sex? Are these reasons persuasive?
c) Are there any special reasons why people who are not disabled would not want to have sex with disabled persons? Are these reasons sensible?
d) What kind of people do disabled persons want to have sex with?

3. Do disabled persons want to talk about sex?
a) Do they talk about it by first of all reading good books?
b) Do they only repeat prejudices and communicate in a vulgar manner?
c) Why is there any point in talking about sex?
- Isn’t there a danger that through talking we will try to define, predict, plan, saturate interpersonal relations? Aren’t such talks futile and beside the point?
- Doesn’t this mean that we first have to learn to talk, in order not to constantly push the other person off, frustrate, underrate or overrate them?
- Can sex be good if the partners first of all agree in detail how the act itself is going to work out?
- Is it good if a disabled person tells his or her sexual partner what he or she can and cannot do? Can this have any effect except to put the person off?
4. What is love?
5. Do disabled people have sex (enough)?
6. What about the mentally impaired?
7. Is disability infectious?
8. Do the penises of disabled men get tumescent and why would anyone think differently?
9. Is a woman with serious mobility problems fertile?
10. Is it true that a healthy, i.e., not disabled, man is more capable because of his physical capacities of satisfying a woman than a disabled man?
11. Is it true that a disabled man really cannot provide a woman with security?
12. What do women want?
13. What kind of a woman does it take to decide on a disabled man?

Biography:
I am thirty years old, and study philosophy and the sociology of culture. In addition I am into psychoanalysis. I read books from social and natural sciences. In brief, all things that have forced me to think about myself and the position that other people put me in because of my physical disability. Since I talk with people a lot, I have the privilege of being able to observe their fears. Perhaps the least marked but then the most effective is the fear I was the only one in Slovenia to dare to talk of. Years earlier I had spoken out and said: OK, if you can’t love me, then at least provide me with a decent sex life. That is how I began dealing with sexuality and physical disability.
Once I posed naked. I acted in a porno film. There’s no better proof than that that we disabled people want to have sex. I gave lectures about it to psychologists, psychiatrists, girl students, gynaecologists and various representatives of disabled people’s organisations. No one took me seriously.
In my late teens I wrote a book in which I started thinking about the body. My ambitions are modest: to live a quality life in which sexuality will play a part.

Andreja Bartolac (HR)
How they See Me:
the experiences of men and women suffering from cerebral paralysis with respect to their intimate lives

The presentation deals primarily with the experience and views of adults with cerebral paralysis with respect to their own intimate life, and the manner in which the environment in which they live experiences them. Differences between men and women with CP are presented, differences concerning their experience of their selves, their bodies and the experience of their own sexuality; their views about partnership and marriage; and the feeling of social isolation and stigmatisation when it comes to exercising the rights to a full life in all segments of the term. A particular stress is put on raising new issues that should be further explored in this area, and proposals are made for new departures so that the rights of persons with CP to a normal life can be exercised as far as is possible to the full.