Sex Gets Real 241: Andrew Gurza returns to talk disability, toys, & his mom

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Welcome back, Andrew Gurza!

When Andrew reached out to me asking to come back on the show, I immediately said yes. We always have so much fun chatting, AND I was delighted that it was an excuse to get to see his new documentary, Picture This. You can see it, too, for free here.

Andrew and I talk about what it was like to have his life filmed, coming out to his mom about hiring sex workers for his sexual pleasure, creating sex toys that are truly for disabled people designed by disabled people, toxic masculinity in queer men’s spaces, and so much more.

Follow Dawn is on Instagram.

In this episode, Andrew and I talk about:

• How Andrew recently told his mom about working with sex workers and what it was like for him. We talk about the transition in their relationship as mother and son as a result of his openness.
• Respecting and recognizing sex workers boundaries and learning how to detach from the emotions of wanting a deeper, conventional relationship.
• The line between maintaining a professional relationship with the sex worker you’re working with but also seeing them as important, impactful personal relationships that really matter.
• What to expect when hiring a sex worker and the judgement that people will throw at you.
• The stigma around sex workers that’s informed by toxic masculinity, misogyny, & sexism.
• Why sex toys that claim to be accessible often aren’t and how this experience fueled Andrew’s idea to creating truly accessible sex toys, a project that he gets to share with his sister.
• Andrew’s Picture This documentary can be seen here for free! He’s shaping narratives around disability.
• The name Andrew wants to use when he gets into porn, and why porn can be a platform to show that disabled people can be sexual & are capable of giving and receiving pleasure.
• Confronting sexual ableism & how magical it would be to find porn that celebrates the diversity of bodies.
• Shitty ableist behavior especially in hookup apps, and why it hurts so much. (Hookup apps are often the only accessible space for a lot of disabled people to be sexual or sensual.)
• How our culture sees sex as genital-focused and goal oriented instead of enjoying the different kinds of pleasure that we can bring in sex that doesn’t have to have anything to do with genitals.
• The ways that capitalism & ableism insist that we should be productive & perform productivity to avoid being seen as lazy, disabled, or broken.

About Andrew Gurza:

Andrew Gurza is a Disability Awareness Consultant and Cripple Content Creator whose written work has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, Men’s Health Magazine, Daily Xtra, Gay Times UK, Huffington Post, The Advocate, Everyday Feminism, Mashable, and Out.com, and several anthologies. He was the only disabled cast member of MTV Canada’s hit show, 1Girl5Gays. He is the host of DisabilityAfterDark: The Podcast Shining a Bright Light on Sex and Disability available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher. Follow him on Twitter @andrewgurza.

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.

Dawn Serra: Happy Holidays to you, listener, because the drawing is still open to receive a Merry Clitmas Card. If you are listening to this episode before December 18th, 2018, I got 10 of these beautiful holiday cards from the Vulva Gallery. They say Merry Clitmas on them and then they have various drawings of vulvas, courtesy of the vulva gallery. And I want to be able to send these cards to you. 

So if you want to enter to be one of the 10 who will receive a handwritten holiday card from me to you, all you have to do is go to dawnserra.com/holiday/ and there you can enter your name and your email address to join the drawing. I will be doing the drawing at 9:00 AM Pacific on December 18th and I would love to send a holiday card to you because you can’t go wrong with a vulva card. That also helps to ensure that you’re on my newsletter. If you haven’t heard the emergency episode that I released a couple of days ago, you might want to go listen to it. 

Facebook, since the time that I actually recorded that, has been really cracking down even more on sex educators. It has gotten rather dire on Tumblr. They’re even banning anything to do with transness and transition photos. It’s gotten so bad and I fully expect the show’s page to be banned in – it’s a matter of time, honestly, at this point I will probably have the show banned from Facebook. Because it violates their new community guidelines and Facebook owns Instagram. There is a chance that I will have to stop posting about the show there too. And who knows what’s going to follow after that because of the FOSTA and SESTA laws that are essentially making it impossible for anyone to talk about sex, sexual preferences, anything like that.

Dawn Serra: So I would love to stay in touch with you. You can do that by entering to win the Merry Clitmas Holiday cards at dawnserra.com/holiday/ You can also sign up to get the recommended book list that I created. It’s gorgeous and full of books at dawnserra.com/books/or you can go to exploremoresummit.com and sign up to grab your spot. It’s free and online and in February. Any of those will get you to my newsletter. And at least for now, I think I’ll be able to keep my website and the podcast going. So I want to be able to connect with you if I get in eliminated from all of the social media channels. 

Also for now, Patreon is allowing me to keep my page, but most of the sex educators that I’ve talked to have expressed a real concern that Patreon is going to purge all of us from their platform as well. So if you have any money that you can give to help support the show, now is the time to do it because we may not have much time left to be able to do that via Patreon. So if you go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast, you can donate any amount of money that feels good. But for now, people who are supporting at $3 a month and above get weekly bonus content, all kinds of really fun stuff. And if you pledge at $5 and above, you can help me answer listener questions. 

Dawn Serra: So this week conversation is with Andrew Gurza. He has been on the show before. He just had an an entire documentary made about him that you can watch for free online. There is a link if you go to dawnserra.com/ep241/ for episode 241 or if you head to the show notes for this episode, there is a link so that you can check out that awesome documentary. But we have such a fun chat all about hiring sex workers and prioritizing pleasure and the agency of being able to engage in sex on Andrew’s terms. We talk all about the documentary and him coming out to his mom about some really interesting things, plus, the partnership that he has formed with his sister around making some sex toys for disabled folks by disabled folks. And then we talk about a whole bunch of other stuff like toxic masculinity and queer spaces. You are going to really enjoy this super fun conversation. 

So let me tell you a little bit about Andrew. After you hear the main episode, pop over to patreon.com/sgrpodcast. We did a bonus chat for all of the folks supporting at $3 and above. So don’t miss that. And again, don’t forget to sign up to potentially win a handwritten holiday card from me at dawnserra.com/holiday/ and then that also gets you on the newsletter so we can stay in touch. 

Andrew Gurza is a disability awareness consultant and cripple content creator who’s written work has been featured [in] so many places like Los Angeles Times, Men’s Health Magazine, Huffington Post, The Advocate, Everyday Feminism and several anthologies. He was the only disabled cast member of MTV Canada’s hit show, One Girl Five Gays. He is the host of Disability After Dark, the podcast shining a bright light on sex and disability. So here is my conversation with Andrew and then pop over to Patreon for our bonus discussion. 

Dawn Serra: Welcome back to sex gets real, Andrew. I am delighted to have you here with us.

Andrew Gurza: I am so happy to be back here, Dawn. This show I’ve been listening. I re-listened through a whole bunch and I’m just falling in love with the show again. So honored to be here.

Dawn Serra: Yay! Well, I am super excited to talk to you because you’ve got all kinds of really interesting things going on and of course as always, you’re having really important conversations about sex and disability. So this promises to be super fun.

Andrew Gurza: So much fun. And you and I are going to go off, I’m sure. But it’ll be great.

Dawn Serra: Heck yeah. Let’s see what happens. 

Andrew Gurza: Awesome. 

Dawn Serra: So here’s where I want to start. You, when we were talking about what we wanted to talk about, said, “I also just told my mom I work almost exclusively with sex workers,” and that was an amazing conversation. That is, one, awesome. I don’t think most people who work with sex workers can tell their moms. But I would love to hear how that went, what that was like for you. Let’s de stigmatize the thing.

Andrew Gurza: Oh yeah, let’s jump right in. So I’ve been working with sex workers now for about a year and a half and it wasn’t an a decision that I came too easily. There was a lot of stigma and self shame and self talk that I was telling myself about hiring sex workers that I was like, “No, no I can’t do that. I am not one of those people…” All the stuff that I knew was wrong and inappropriate and like all the things, the toxic stuff that I knew intellectually was not okay to feel emotionally I was feeling. And so it took me a long time to be in a place where hiring sex where or working with a sex worker rather was something I was comfortable with. So, I didn’t want to tell anybody initially when I first did it. 

I remember I had my first session with somebody and I kept it quiet and I didn’t broadcast it. It was really personal. It was my thing. I’m not going to tell anybody. It was like a dirty little shameful secret. And then I realized how transformative those experiences were and how important that was. So I started quietly telling friends instead of putting it out there, but still saying like, “Oh, I worked with a sex worker. But like it was no big deal. It’s okay, right?” Immediately negating the experience by saying, “I worked with a sex worker, but…” which immediately made the experience less important to me by doing that. I’d still tell people but still, I wasn’t telling my family and so when they would ask me, “Are you seeing anybody? Are you having any sexy times?” Because my mom and I are opening that way. So I’d say, “Oh yeah. I’m seeing some people and we’re hanging out,” or I’d say, “Oh, I have to go get tested this week because a guy I’m seeing blah blah blah…” But I would never say, “Oh, t’s a sex worker that I’m working with,” because I had just so much shame around telling her that. And there was a fear because I’m a disabled person and because I’m already considered so vulnerable by our population to to admit that was like, would they be afraid for me? Would they be afraid for my safety? Would they be concerned about my disabled body being hurt? All those things, you be a worry for them. 

Andrew Gurza: I just didn’t want my parents to judge me and to think that because I was disabled, this is the only way that I could achieve sexual pleasure. So just really concerned about that and really worried about how that would be taken. Last week my mom and I were on the phone, we were talking about something and I said, and I said, “You know, mom, I work with sex workers.” And she went, “Oh, okay. Alright, that’s great. That’s no problem. That’s good.” And I was waiting for shock and awe to happen and it didn’t, and that shocked me. I was like, “Why aren’t you concerned?” I was ready for like a discussion about how it was wrong. I shouldn’t do it. And she was like, “No, no. If that’s what you need to do to be sexual then I totally support you.” And she said, consensual, healthy sex is important in this is how you’re going to achieve it. Then I’m there. “ And I was like, wow. 

I remember sitting on the phone being like, “Okay.” And I took a deep breath and I launched right into some of my experiences with her and we just had a – It was almost like we had dropped the structure of mother and son for a minute and we’re like friends, which we always were. We were very close that way, but this was like another layer of, we can share in this and you’re going to just listen to me and be there for me in this. It was just a really transformative moment that I’m still, a week and a half later, still kind of like, “Whoa, that happened.” 

Now when I say to her, I’m having someone over, I can use the word, “I booked a session,” and have it be completely… She doesn’t bat an eye and that feels just really, as a disabled person who struggled to find community and they struggled to find acceptance and who struggled to find sexuality that was mine. Her understanding that to do this for me took a lot of chutzpah and a lot of kohones and a lot of guts to be like, “Okay, Andrew. You’re going to work with a sex worker. This is how you’re going to do this,” took a lot for me to get there. So to have her fully accepted that and what was so cute about it was I put it on Facebook like two or three days later and she commented the next day and was like, “Yep, it’s totally great. I fully support it.” And I love that because people could see that the parent of somebody with a disability was saying, “Yeah, my son does work with sex workers and I’m there for that.”

Dawn Serra: That is awesome. And go mom.

Andrew Gurza: Right?

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Andrew Gurza: Hi Mom. 

Dawn Serra: Hi Mom! I love that so much. Hiring sex workers is something that I recommend frequently, not only on the show but to clients. If you’re really struggling with something, hire a professional. We hire professionals for so many things and the only reason we have feelings about sex workers is because of sex stigma and all the things we attached to that; and knowing that you not only gave yourself permission to start doing that and had to confront some of that stigma and shame you carried. But then being able to share that with someone that you care about and have it received so generously is magic.

Andrew Gurza: Yeah, it’s just been – I’m still in shock that she’s soaks up. It just makes me feel like we’re that much closer so I can say to her, I can tell her things about sessions. I mean, not explicit things but I can talk about… But if I want it to be really explicit with her and tell her those things, I could now. It feels like there’s a whole wall did I built that didn’t need to be there that’s now gone.

Dawn Serra: That’s a beautiful transition in your relationship.

Andrew Gurza: I haven’t even told her how – I’ve told her a little bit – But I haven’t told her how important it is for me that this happened. I emailed her a few days after I told her and said, “I just want to thank you so much.” And she was like, “Oh, I got your email. You didn’t have to be so worried about it. Don’t worry.” That, again, was a nice reassurance that she got it. She got that sexuality would be a different journey for me because of my disability, because of all the things that I encounter, because I’m a wheelchair user, because I don’t look a certain way, because I can’t easily emulate parts of my queer community that are considered quote unquote attractive. So she understood that this is a path I have to take to have my needs met and that that was really powerful.

Dawn Serra: And how has it been for you now that you’ve kind of given yourself permission to do it and you’ve been doing it for the past year and a half? What is it like for you to know, “Hey, I am feeling some sort of feelings and now I can book a session with someone and we’re going to have something super sexy happen?”

Andrew Gurza: It’s been an interesting journey of me trying to realize that with a sex worker, there need to be boundaries – healthy boundaries. And that has been a journey for me because when I have sex with somebody, I get attached really fast because I’m so often isolated from my community. So when somebody says, “I’m going to engage sexually with you,” whether it’s a session or not, I have all these feelings that I’m learning to compartmentalize and I’m learning to healthily, for myself, detach from the need to feel emotion for this person that aren’t necessarily real; that are projected onto them because they’re providing me sex. 

So I’m learning to like, “It’s okay. It was a session, now it’s done. You had a good time.” Keep that memory but don’t expand that into the need for a relationship or the need for something deeper because it can’t be that. Learning that it’s been a challenge but it’s been one that I think is really important.

Dawn Serra: Do you have someone who is a favorite or do you have a smorgasbord of awesome people you’ve been working with?

Andrew Gurza: Well, I’m exploring different options I’ve worked with. I’ve worked with a few. I worked with one person that didn’t work – The first person that I worked with didn’t work out. Things kind of fell apart and our relationship deteriorated, rather. Not quickly, a few months after we started working together, it just didn’t jive any morning and words were said and moments were had and tears were shed and things went down. I don’t see them much anymore. But then I immediately was like, “Okay, I’m going to get back on the horse and find someone else.” I immediately was like, “Okay, if sex works the way I’m going to do this then I’m going to immediately go and hire my next person to work with,” and try to build that professional qualified professional trust right away. I do have one guy that I’ve been working with for over a year now and when we had our year together, we had a little mini like celebration of like, “We’ve been working together for a year.” I sent him an email and bought him a box of cookies, and just said like, “Hey, I really appreciate what we’ve done together. It means a lot to me because sexuality is hard for me to access.”

I tell all these workers, “I don’t see you as just a quote worker. I see this as an important like a professional relationship that is really valuable to me.” So I try to build that trust immediately because I need them to also do parts of my care to get me in and out of my chair, to get me undress and redress. All those things have to be done. So I feel the need to make them as comfortable as possible within our time together.

Dawn Serra: Something that you just said I think is so important. And culturally, we kind of have these really bizarre rules and boundaries about the relationships that we have with helping professionals. And I think it’s a really fine line. Of course, we need to respect everyone’s autonomy and that there’s money being exchanged or labor being exchanged. That can be kind of complicated for variety of reasons, but also the relationship that I have with my therapist, who I am giving money to and who was a professional, that’s a really important relationship in my life. I consider it an important relationship in my life and I want it to be a relationship that we nurture and grow into. And I can see how having a relationship with anybody that helps us, specifically someone that we’re actually engaging with body and touch and intimacy with would be a relationship that we want to honor. It might not be the kind of relationship that goes in Hollywood movies as being ultimate romance. But I love how you had this ritual around your one year anniversary and you’ve acknowledged that there’s this professional line that you’re walking. But also that just personally it’s important and it feels good.

Andrew Gurza: Yeah. And It does feel good. With the prison that I have the year with, there was a moment or two where I was texting them rather frequently and they had to be like – they had to text me and be like, “Whoa, let’s take a step back. I’m working with you. So if you’re texting me every minute of the day, I technically would have to charge you more because I’m working.” So it was a wakeup call for me to realize that it wasn’t a quote unquote conventional relationship. And there may be feelings there, but it was an important moment for me to recognize that boundaries are healthy and boundaries are important. Because I think when you’re disabled, like I am, at least in my experience, boundaries are set for you by non disabled people telling you what are okay and what’s not okay. So my relationship to boundaries have been like, “Fuck boundaries. I don’t have those. I’m going to go against these boundaries because watch me, I can.” to prove that I’m an independent person. 

I remember when he sent me that text, initially, I was really mad. I was upset for a day or two because I thought it was over. I thought I had fucked up again, blah, blah. But then I realized, he was just trying to set a proper boundary for himself and for me, to realize that this relationship wasn’t going to be the love to end all love. It was simply – it was transactional, but it was still an important.

Dawn Serra: If there is anyone listening who’s thinking about working with a sex worker, maybe somebody who is disabled or somebody who is struggling with some kind of chronic illness, what would you offer to them if they’re hesitant to work with a sex worker? 

Andrew Gurza: I would say, look at your financials, make sure that it’s something you’re actually able to do and that you have the means to do it. Because I will admit that it’s a privilege that I have and it’s a part of my privilege that I have the funds, that I’m working enough to maintain those kinds of relationships financially. If it’s something you can’t afford, don’t jump into it asking the sex worker for a discount. Don’t start the relationship that way because when I work and when I go give a talk or go give a lecture on disability, I don’t – If the organization was like, “Hey, can you take 50% off before you get up there?” I would have to say no too. It’s really important that you check and see that it’s financially viable for you to do that, that you’re okay that you can still buy groceries before you by dick. That’s a real thing. 

Let’s just say thanks visa. It’s a real thing I had to consider. Make sure you can buy groceries before you by dick, and really do your research on the person that you want to work with. Send them an email maybe, first, and say, “Hey, I’m considering this. I’m really want to see if it’s something I can do. I’m really scared.” Lay all that out for them because if they really value their job as a sex worker, they will listen to you and try to make you more comfortable. I’ve said to sex workers I’m seeing somebody tomorrow and I have said to him multiple times, “I’m nervous.” He was like, “Why are you nervous? We’re going to have a great time. Don’t worry.” And that’s really comforting to me to have somebody say, “Don’t worry. You’re going to enjoy yourself and I’ll make sure of it.” Then I can just take a breath and relax. But make sure that it’s something that you really ready for and also be aware that if you decide to tell people your friends and your family or whoever it is, or your care workers, if you have to, they will judge you. 

Unfortunately, my care workers, they’re good about it now. But there was a period of time when I first started doing it like, “Why are you doing that? Go find somebody in the normal way.” There will be a lot of stigma around it. And that was really hard for me to hear every day when I would say – when I would say I’m having somebody come over, they’d say, “Oh are you paying him?” And I would say, “Yup.” And they’d say, “Oh, why? You’re an attractive guy. Go find somebody in the real way.” And I was like, “This is a real way.” So be ready for some judgment from the sidelines. But know if it’s something you want to do, also realize that you have agency in that. By hiring a sex worker and working with a sex worker, you are making the decision. They’re not your savior. They’re not saving you from a poor, sad, sexless existence. You are deciding that this is what you want, and by putting down your hard earned money, you are saying, “This is valuable to me and my sexuality has worth. And here it is.” 

So I think it’s a really powerful thing that people can do. But make sure that it’s right for you. It isn’t right for everybody. I’m not saying everybody should run out there and hire sex workers. I mean, I think they should. But if it’s not for you, then okay. But if it’s an avenue you want to go down, I fully support you. And if anybody wants to talk to me more readily about it, I’d love to chat with them.

Dawn Serra: I appreciate so much what you just said because I think you’re so right. There’s this bizarre stigma and I think it’s tied to toxic masculinity, specifically, sexism and misogyny for sure. And then, of course, sex worker stigma and anti-sex sentiment. But there’s this stigma of, “I shouldn’t have to pay for this. And if I do, it says something about my worth as a human being,” and 100% not true. But we live in a culture that pushes that down our throats all the time. So then people take it in and feel really angry and bitter about it. I love how you’re saying, “No, this is a powerful use of autonomy and agency. I am choosing this.”

Andrew Gurza: Such a powerful thing. I chose it. I remember when I first hired somebody. I spent two weeks going back and forth on my website every day looking at the exact ad that I wanted to click on, being like, “No, no, no, I can’t. No, no, no, no, no.” Literally every day would go on the site and look at the ad that I wanted to contact and be like, “No, I can’t. No, that’s not for me. I’m disabled and this would say so much about who I am, and I have to be better and stronger. No, I’m not one of those poor disabled people.” Then one day I was like, “Fuck it. I’m horny and I can’t do this myself. I’m going to click on the ad and see what happens.” And it ended up being – the relationship didn’t end positively. But the interim stuff did and it taught me a lot about my own self. It made me feel sexy, I felt wanted for a couple hours. And that was really powerful.

Dawn Serra: So you mentioned the folks who help you, and that was something that was featured in the documentary that you’re a star of. 

Andrew Gurza: Yay. I love this. Thank you. 

Dawn Serra: Yes, congratulations. So for everyone listening, I will have a link in the show notes so that you can watch this documentary for free online. It’s called Picture This. It’s about 33 minutes long and it’s all about you and what it’s like to be in your life and grappling with some of these big questions. One of the things that really stood out to me in the documentary, and I actually talked to Alex about this afterwards and we just kind of explored it, was you were talking about how you had been gifted a sex toy. But it was a toy that you couldn’t ultimately use on your own and what that meant and kind of the mindfuck that ensued. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

Andrew Gurza: [I] sure can. I was gifted a sex toy by a sex company in the UK. I’m not going to name them because they don’t want to… They’re great and they support what I do and thanks, sex company. So they sent me this toy and said, “Oh we’d love for you to try it and give us a review.” So I said, sure. They sent it to me and I had to go to the post office and pick it up, which already as inaccessible thing. I went to go do that and it’s in a box that I can’t open. As soon as I got home, I was like, “I can’t even open the box to open the toy. Well, I’m fucked.” Because I have no dexterity, so I can’t – that should have been sign number one. 

I opened the toy and I flung it across the room because I had a spasm so I flung it across the room and this vibrator clings on the floor. And I was like, “Oh fuck.” So now I had to call my attending care worker who, very awkwardly, was like, “What is– Oh, that’s okay. It’s a sex toy.” And I was like, “Can you just pick it up, please, and let me have a look at it?” So they did that and then a couple of hours later I called and got one of my workers, that I was close to rather, help me put it on and she said, “Okay, I’ll help you.” So she put it on for me. But as she’s putting it on, she’s preparing for the cleanup. She was like, “Okay, call me in 20 minutes and I’m going to set the blue pads up and get you ready to be cleaned up.” And I was like, “Cool, I’m trying to get in the zone and get off here and there you are in the corner setting up for the cum shot that I haven’t even produced yet. I don’t know how to feel about that. So she laughed and she said, “Okay, call me in 20 minutes.” And I was like, “Oh God.”

Andrew Gurza: So I’m trying to get off in that time limit because she now gave me a time limit. I felt pressured to hurry up and cum already, which weirdly enough now is totally not how I play. She left and I have the thing on my genitals and it has this button that you’re supposed to press to make it go faster and to vibrate in different ways, and I can’t reach it because I have no dexterity. So I accidentally spasmed and I put it on the highest vibration levels and I was unable to turn it off and it’s clamped to my balls and I can’t turn it off. 

Dawn Serra: Oh, no!

Andrew Gurza: For five minutes, I was like, “Okay, this is really uncomfortable. But I’m going to close my eyes and I’m going to pretend that I’m getting pounded really hard by this toy.” So I’m trying really hard to be like, this is what – and I’ve never been sucked that way – so I was like, “This is what anal sex is going to be like, just enjoy this, try to enjoy this.” So let’s try to picture a dude fucking me with this toy. It wasn’t working. It was actually hurting me a lot. My balls were red. It was really uncomfortable. So finally, I called my worker and I said, “Can you come right now?” And she goes, “Oh, did it happen?” And I was like, “No, it’s hurting my balls and you need to come right now.” So she ran up there and turned it off, and we got me cleaned up, and put pants like nothing had happened. But I remember feeling so annoyed because I was like – I couldn’t do that. What if another disabled person tried to use that thinking it would be their favorite toy and it did that to them? 

I had to email the company back and be like, “Thanks for trying. But this was a huge bummer, here’s why…” which led me down to… the catalyst for what I’m doing now, where I’m trying to create the first line of sex toys for and by people with disabilities.

Dawn Serra: I think that that is magic. I love that idea. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read it that Mia Mingus wrote a story for Octavia’s Brood which is a speculative fiction by people of color series anthology.

Andrew Gurza: I haven’t but I’m already like, Where do they get it? 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. So it’s edited by adrienne marie brown. One of the essays is by Mia Mingus. That essay was my favorite of the entire book. And it basically is, what would happen if ableism just fully took over Earth and they shipped everyone with disabilities off to Mars because they just didn’t even want to deal with it? And what would happen if disabled folks could truly create a world for themselves by themselves so that everything was accessible for all of the different types of disabilities and needs; and they create this really beautiful colony where everything is accessible: all the work, all the passageways, all the everything. 

Since then I’ve been thinking, what if disabled people and fat people and older people designed all of the spaces and furniture that we had, how much more accessible would it be for all bodies? And so I love that you want to create sex toys by disabled people for disabled people. Because it’s really clear when you hear that story that pretty much no sex toy that I’ve ever encountered is really truly accessible.

Andrew Gurza: No, I mean, they really are. So what we’re doing, we’re actually working with RMIT, a university in Australia. Because my sister and I are working on this together. It’s a cute little family endeavor that we’re doing. My sister’s not disabled, she’s able bodied. But I was in Australia this past April for a family vacation, because you know, that’s how I roll. I just go off to Australia for vacation. I was there and she said to me, “Hey, what’s one thing you really want to be accessible?” And so I said like, “I want to grabber that works.” She goes, “Andrew, you work in sex and disability. Why don’t we just jump right in and make the first line of accessible sex toys?” I grinned and was like, “No, no, it’s okay. I’ll deal with the sex stuff.” And she was like, “No, it’s a family thing. Let’s do it together.” 

I realized how transformative that was because it meant that somebody in my family also saw the need and saw that my work that I’ve been doing for seven years already was important and we should collaborate. I immediately jumped on board and we started contacting universities and people to find funding because we want to do our research. This isn’t something where we’re going to get a bunch of sex toys that are already made and slap some things on the shoddily. We want to do it properly and find out how to make sex toys accessible. And so right now, we’re looking it physically disabled individuals. We’re looking at people with cerebral palsy, motor things. People who also may be a little bit older as well. We’re looking at those populations to try to create something, but we have to do the research. 

So what we’re doing right now is – we haven’t done anything yet. People keep saying, “When is the line coming? We keep going, “Probably four or five years. Thank you so much.” So right now what we’re asking for is donations for research. So I’m going to just shamelessly plug it right now. If anybody wants to spread the word or if they can donate, we would really appreciate it. They can head over to deliciouslydisabled.ca and there’s a big donate button there and they click on there. It’ll take you to my GoFundMe. We’ve raised about seven or eight grand. We’re looking for about 15,000 so whatever you can throw in, if you can, or if you’re disabled and you can’t spend the money because I know that a lot of us don’t have a lot of disposable income like that. If you can spread the word and say, “Look, these people are doing great things. We want to support them. Here’s the thing…” But I’m really excited by it because it wouldn’t be adaptation. It would be what I call disability driven design, which I think is just amazing because there’s not enough companies out there doing stuff around disability and saying, “Let’s put disability first.” I’ve always been, as you know, I’ve been…. This is another way for me to do that and to bring in a family member to learn about my experience and to pick out. 

Andrew Gurza: I remember I was sitting with my sister on a Skype call with the university a few months ago when we were just setting it up; and to have my sister is sitting there on Skype hearing me tell that story with the vibrator and have her nod in agreement and understand what it was. Also again, a really powerful moment for me to bond with family. I don’t have the ability to get laid easy and here’s my reality. To have both my mom and sister understand that in different ways this past year has been really, “Wow,” just shockingly powerful and so important for me.

Dawn Serra: There’s so much about thought that I love. I mean, the first is, I saw a talk by Robin Wilson-Beattie at sex down south a couple of years ago.

Andrew Gurza: Isn’t she… Oh my god.

Dawn Serra: She’s amazing. And it was all about adapting existing sex toys and sex aids in order to work for folks with a variety of physical disabilities. The thing that struck me was, one, her creativity was fantastic and she had some really funny stories, but also some really heartfelt and sad stories about the ways sex toys had failed her. What really did strike me was she had found creative ways to alter existing sex toys, and it was like, “This is the best that we can do right now.” That just felt frustrating. It’s like, “Yay that there’s a way for some people, but also, why isn’t there things that just work without having to be adapted?” 

Something else that strikes me is so many run-in-the-mill vibrators are just terrible designs. I mean it’s like people who are like, “Let’s do the bare minimum to get this sex toy out there.” And I think so much of it has to do with shame and stigma and not wanting to try and do research and get the word out to get feedback. It’s like, “Let’s just put this out and people will just deal with whatever we do. Because there’s not a lot of selection.” It’s gotten a lot better. But one of the things that I think is so beautiful about what you’re doing is it’s going to really force people to confront a lot of the stories that we all have about what it means to be sexual, what it means to use toys, and how that’s not a lesser than version of sex. What it means to be disabled and to be in a body that maybe is able bodied now, but we’ll probably be disabled at some point down the future. I mean, it’s this nexus of really rich discussions that reveal a lot of the stigma and the fear that so many people have.

Andrew Gurza: Totally. And as you always say on your show, I think it’ll bring a lot of yummy discussions to the forefront. I’m a listener. I listen to you all the time because you’re just the best. So again, I’m kind of starstruck to be here right now. To be back as a repeat guest is really nice.

Dawn Serra: Well, I’m so glad you’re here because every time we talk it’s just so easy and so fun. So fun. Okay. So let’s talk more about your documentary because that leads me to a question that I can’t wait to get to. But first, so Picture This, it’s all about you. It talks about the play party that you had organized and your mom is in it and your best friend is in it. So for people who are tuning in, can you talk a little bit about what the documentary is about and why it was important to you?

Andrew Gurza: Yeah. The documentary is about my journey as a queer disabled person. Back in 2016, we were trying to launch the second deliciously disabled sex party in Toronto and thing fell apart. The person I was working with, who you fee briefly in the film, unfortunately our relationship dissolved and things didn’t go to plan. And then the producers came back to me and said, “Okay, things shifted. Do you now want to be the focus of this thing?” And I was like, “Alright, sure.” I remember when the producer reached out to me, initially. She was like, “I want to do a film on disability but I don’t know anything about disability.” And I was like, “Great, let’s talk about this.” Because it meant that I could help her shape a narrative around disability in a really real way. That wasn’t inspiration porn. That wasn’t from an ableist narrative, that wasn’t from all these problematic views. I could say, “Use your skills as a filmmaker to bring the story that I’m going to tell you into a true light.” And we did that. 

The film is a really short, 33 minutes of me trying to navigate queerness, disability, sexuality, along with trying to navigate attendant care, along with trying to navigate my own emotions around it, along with trying to run my own business as a disability awareness consultant trying to make all of this stuff go. So I’m surprised that in 33 minutes, they kept it as much as they did.

Dawn Serra: There’s a lot of richness in a very short amount of time which, to me, speaks to really skilled editing and filmmaking, but also just the vulnerability with which you allowed yourself to be captured. 

Andrew Gurza: That was tough. I mean, there was points of that filming where they were with me for one day – they were with me for 17-18 hours and I remember it at the end of it being like, “Can we be done now? I don’t want to do this.” I was finished. There were a few moments, the director and I are great friends now, but there were a few moments where I had to say, “No, I don’t want to do it that way. Here’s why. No. I’m disabled and it will look like this. Please don’t film it this way.” There were a few moments where they had originally wanted me to look at the window and look sad and I had to be like, “No.” Because that’s going to create the narrative that I’m a sad disabled person and I don’t want that. So then they changed things around for me and we did it differently. But it was a really big learning curve for both of us to figure out how do you tell the story in 33 minutes.

Dawn Serra: Now that you have this documentary out in the world and so many people are seeing it and sharing about it. You had mentioned to me that you’re interested in doing more film work, but in really leaning into the side of film that would be much more revealing about sex and sexuality, and that you had started reaching out to some mainstream porn companies. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Andrew Gurza: Yeah, sure. I’ve been dabbling with the desire to do porn for a good long time now. But again, the stigma and the fear of what people are going to think and oh my God. But now it’s funny. Now that I’ve kind out of myself to my mom about working with sex workers, I feel much more confident to be like, “Hey, I want to suck dick on camera. What are your thoughts?” And I told her that and she went, “Okay, no problem. Sure, as long as it’s artsy and great.” So she was really comfortable. And now that I’m being honest with her, I feel the floodgates opened up all the things that I was afraid to say that I can now say because… And people have said to me, “Andrew, you don’t do it. It’ll ruin your brand.” And I was like, “Do you realize my brand’s already about sex? And if I censor it, I’m not doing a service to anybody.”

I think having a disabled body on camera, especially in queer spaces saying like, “Look, you can be with me, too, and my genitals work. They may not work in the way that X able bodied person’s genitals do, but I can still derive pleasure.” I think what’s important for films like that for me – and if I do get into porn, my porn name would be Ben Wellington. I don’t know why. 

Dawn Serra: I love that you already know.

Andrew Gurza: Ben Wellington, well actually because I grew up on Wellington street and every time someone was named Ben– Do you remember the show? 

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Andrew Gurza: Ben was the main character and he was hot. I mean there it is. I don’t even remember what I was talking about. What I want to do with porn is I want to show that a disabled person can provide pleasure. When I work with sex workers, too, I always say to them, “Hey, please tell me what you like and please tell me what gets you off? And please tell me what you enjoy because I want to spend time pleasing you. I want to spend time being submissive to you. I want to spend time giving you pleasure.” Because so many people think that when you’re with a disabled person, it’s your job to get them to get off and then you’re done. No, it’s about creating pleasure for both of us. So I constantly have to tell the workers that I work with, “You can find pleasure in this too and you can tell me that and that’s okay.”

On film in porn, I think for people to see a disabled person suck a dick to give some pleasure, a disabled person can eat someone’s ass out as a form of pleasure, a disabled person can top somebody maybe in a different way that provides pleasure. To show that I can be a pleasure provider is– That, I think, is important for audiences to see. I would want to create a porn that moves away from the inspirational porn narrative of, “Oh, you’re disabled. Let me take care of you.” No, I don’t want that. I want to fuck you and have you enjoy it, is basically what I want. So I think showing that on camera to an audience, whether that’d be in porn or in an art film about porn is really, really important. 

Dawn Serra: Last time you were on the show or maybe I was on your show – I can’t remember – But one of the times that we’ve had a conversation, we talked a lot about the toxic masculinity that’s present inside of gay male spaces, in queer spaces; and the way that hyper masculinity is so valued, and just the bullshit of the desirability politics inside of queer circles. I think you’re right to have porn that really shows your body and shows the ways that you engage in sex will not only really helped to confront some of that, but so much of those sexual ableism that I know you share on your Facebook page of the ways that people on hookup apps respond to you. I think it would also help to combat that because you’d be saying, “Here I am and here’s how my body works, and here’s how sex can be with me and it’s super rad.” It would just help shift that narrative a little bit away from an able bodied person imagining what it would be and actually saying like, “Here’s evidence. Check this out. It’s really hot.”

Andrew Gurza: Yeah, and I think like on the sex apps with my titles and everything, I call myself Thick Dick Cripple. I call myself Bear in a chair. I am very upfront about the fact that I’m in a wheelchair, but I also play with it. And so I think a porn that’s like, “Thick Dick Crip starring Ben Wellington and X. That would be super hot. 

Dawn Serra: Oh my God, that would be fantastic or like, “Bear in a chair: Ben Wellington.” That would be pure joy and I would be 100% on board celebrating that.

Andrew Gurza: To any porn producer listening, I’m ready to go. Let me know where to sign and let me know how much I’m getting and we’ll figure it out.

Dawn Serra: Heck yeah. Because we desperately– It’s hard enough to find hot erotic porn that features non-thin, able bodies or y older bodies that’s not in a super fetishy way. Just older people having hot sex where it’s not all about, “Grandma’s seducing her nephew,” or whatever, or MILFs, But to be able to feature bodies with a variety of abilities and disabilities, all interacting with each other and engaging in a variety of types of sex. I mean, let’s show group sex, let’s show really romantic one on one sex, let’s show kinky fucking, and it’s people in chairs and people with [crosstalk] Yes, yes. I am so on board for that.

Andrew Gurza: That’s a brand (Ben Wellington) right there. So also anybody who wants to help me make them Ben Wellington for real, let’s talk about it. I’ll do it.

Dawn Serra: Hopefully, I mean, I know there’s some porn directors and producers who have been on their show and listen to the show. So hopefully, they’re listening. You’re a brand is about sex and disability and about revealing the things that people don’t like to confront and don’t like to talk about. 

Andrew Gurza: You know what’s funny about the brand – I’ve created other brands around disability that had nothing to do with sex and nobody paid attention to those. I created a brand that where like, “Let’s talk about disability, just disability,” and that did not get as many views as when I was like, “Hey, let’s talk about my dick and disability.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Because I think it’s something lots of people are curious about and have lots of shame around, and also something that we just don’t see a lot of. It’s certainly not mainstream, So, leverage that.

Andrew Gurza: I mean, I want it to be mainstream. But also at the same time, I kind of get off on the fetish of it all a little bit. I kind of like, I like being someone’s first disabled lover. That gets me rock hard both emotionally and physically because it’s like, “You’ve never experienced disability before? Great. Let me shape that for you in a way that you can remember that.” And then you can see that sex and disability is not terrifying.

Dawn Serra: That just sounds like a porn right there. It’s like, “Oh, so you’re a virgin? Let me help you with that.” Please make that too. 

Andrew Gurza: Let’s make it happen. Let’s go.

Dawn Serra: So one of the other things that I would love for us to just touch on, because there’s a lot of people who listen to the show who do have a variety of disabilities, but there’s also lots and lots of people who listen to the show who are able bodied. I know that ableism is something that I am constantly unpacking and butting up against. And there’s so many things that I still have yet to unpack in that space. 

One of the things that you do that I think is so powerful and enraging, one, I mean every time I see you post a screenshot of a conversation that you’ve gotten on Scruff or Grindr – It just makes me so mad. But I also appreciate that you’re making visible things that for able bodied people are probably very invisible is all these posts around sexual ableism and the comments and the ways that people ask you questions, and make assumptions about your body and who you are. So I would love it if you could just talk a little bit about, specifically to people who are able bodied, what is sexual ableism look like? How does it show up so that they can confront that in themselves?

Andrew Gurza: Sure. Sexual ableism is basically a live in by itself is just generalized discrimination against the disabled prison for anything, for being disabled. But sexual ableism tends to happen in the bedroom and tends to happen around your genitals, and tends to happen around your body. So people will say things like, “Hey, does your genitals work?” That’s sexual ableism. People will say things like, “Can you get an erection? They’ll often ask you in really inappropriate ways. Or they’ll say things like – I had someone say this a few weeks ago – Say stuff like, “Nobody would want to sleep with you. God did all of us a favor by making you in a wheelchair.” And they would write this on apps. And I was like, “Wow…”

Dawn Serra: Wow.

Andrew Gurza: It can be really subtle like what I just said or really direct… There’s a spectrum, but I think we have to confront the fact that, even me, who works in sex and disability, who has disabled friends, who has had disabled sex, I can be an ableist too. I think all of us, whether we’re disabled or not disabled, to have to realize that we’re all ableist to begin with just like we’re all racist, just like we’re all classist. It’s all there. We just have to own it and do better. That’s all it is. People have said to me, “Why did you put their name? Why didn’t you black out their name?” And I’m like, “You know what? When someone’s being an asshole, they deserve to be dragged.” They deserved to be dragged just a little bit because then people will see how hurtful it is and so I don’t cover their name. I leave it right out there so that if anybody else is on the apps and wants to find them say, “Hey, don’t do that again. You’re a dick wad.” They’d get a nice dressing down because people need to see that it’s real and because these apps, for many of us, are the only accessible space where we can access our sexuality or sensuality. When somebody does that to us, it really hurts and really stings with a lot more than, say, somebody who can just turn off the app and go to the bar. For me, I can’t do that. The app is where all that stuff happens. So when somebody is rude, it causes me a lot of pain, so I need people to see it. That’s why I put it out there quite openly so you can see that this is not a joke. It really happened. Here it is.

Dawn Serra: And one of the things that it reveals is, one, how genitals-centric the sex is that most people are having, myself included, and how limited sex is for so many of us; in that sex is this one thing or this one body part being able to do this one particular thing in this one particular way and it feels like, “Oh well then I can’t fuck you if this one singular part of your body works in a way that’s different than I was expecting.” I mean, sex can be so many things. But so many of us are closed off to those things. We’re just focused on orgasms and arousal, genitals and that’s kind of the end all be all, which is just so limiting for us.

Andrew Gurza: So one of the things that working with sex workers is it has really taught me is that sometimes because, I’m not touch the way that I want to be touched, I cum really fast. So the first couple of times I was with a sex worker, I came within two minutes and I would immediately have a flood of shame of like, “Oh fuck, I just came. The sessions now over. I just spent X amount of dollars with this worker and now what’s the point?” And what I learned was, “No, no, no, you’ve cummed. Who says you can’t cum again? Or who says you can’t build the intimacy now?” Teaching myself that even though my disabled body didn’t do be able body thing, it didn’t have the money shot and we didn’t have this moment of TV Hollywood ecstasy that we’re supposed to have – I’ve never had that, by the way. 

Dawn Serra: A lot of us haven’t. Thanks, Hollywood.

Andrew Gurza: Yeah, thanks America. So even though I hadn’t had those moments, I really value, oh, “I just came, great. Let’s cut it out for a minute. Let’s talk about how that felt.” Let’s just be with each other or if I cummed and they haven’t gotten off yet, “No, no. My job’s not done. Let me, now, please you.” So I’m learning that it’s okay and I have to teach myself as a disabled person to stop apologizing to people before I have sex like, “Oh hey. I might cum fast. You’re not going to get mad, are you? I literally texted that to workers and they’d be like, “No, why would I get mad?” I’m like, “Because it’s not sexy.” There’s all this internalized ableism in those experiences that I’m constantly confronting and I have to try and change.

Dawn Serra: And I think, too, so much of that is also tied to capitalism and the ways that under capitalism, we’re all expected to be highly productive and to produce in a very specific way. And if we aren’t, then we’re lazy or broken. I think ableism and capitalism are so tied up in each other because producing and being efficient and performing to the highest standards then you’re a failure.

Andrew Gurza: Every time you said “produced” just there, I kept picturing cum shots.

Dawn Serra: And they rained from the heavens. Yeah, I love that note to self of, “You’ve got to stop apologizing.”

Andrew Gurza: Yeah. And that’s a big one for me. I always apologize to new lovers. Sometimes I won’t even say sorry. I’ll say like, “Is my disability okay with you?” And that’s such an apologist thing. I’m learning to like, “It better be okay with you because I’m working with you and I just paid you money so make it okay,” or have told me before that it’s not. I had somebody on the site where I find my workers from, I said, “Have you been with the disabled guy before? I like to work with you.” And he goes, “Well, yeah. But I would actually charge more for that.” That’s another form of sexual ableism too. If you’re a set rate is X and you charge next to $100 simply because I’m disabled? That’s wrong. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Yes it is. 

Andrew Gurza: That’s gross. Most disabled people don’t have income. They can just– “Sure, I’ll just add on a $100 because…” I have negotiated with the workers once we’ve gotten comfortable with rules and things like extra time we can add on. I’ll say like, “Hey, we might need an extra 30 minutes because you have to get me in and out of bed, in my chair, undressed and redressed. So I’ll say, “Do you have an hour and a half rate that I can look at? Can we look in an hour and a half rate to make this work?” I always try to put their livelihood first and realize that it’s important to honor that. But when this guy said, “Oh yeah, I’ll charge you an extra hundred just because you’re disabled.” I was like, “That’s gross.” And so I tried to tell the website and the website said, “Oh, no. There’s no problem here.” And I was like, “Yeah, there is.”

Dawn Serra: Yeah. The respect has to go both ways folks. 

Andrew Gurza: It totally does. 

Dawn Serra: Well I could totally talk to you for hours at a time because we just have so much fun. And the time has flown fun. But for people who want to stay in touch with you, how can they find you online and follow along with all of your adventures? 

Andrew Gurza: Sure thing. They can reach out to me at andrewgurza.com that has all my website, that has the Picture This video there. Some other videos I’ve done in there and my speaking gig is in there. If anybody listening wants to hire a speaker, I come and talk about this stuff and I can build a presentation around sexuality and disability for you. If you want to hire me, I do them. I can come to you or I can do it over Skype. I got to say, I’ve done some really cool talks about sex and disability where I didn’t even have to leave my house or put on pants. So they can reach me at andrewgurza.com, @theandrewgurza all over Twitter. I’m going to just plug my podcasts because it’s my thing. So if you also want to listen to more of this stuff and listen to more of a really concentrated discussion around sex and disability every week, download Disability After Dark on your podcast thing. That’s how you get ahold of me.

Dawn Serra: Yay. I will have links to all of the things in the show notes for this episode so everyone can just click through to follow and subscribe, and donate and watch all the things. Thank you so much for being here with us, Andrew. This was delightful.

Andrew Gurza: It was so fun and I love your show and Sex Gets Real is one of the best. And I am so proud of what you do and I’m glad to be in your company.

Dawn Serra: Thank you so much. Oh my God, that feels so good to receive. I feel it’s so hard. Everyone, please totally tune into Andrew’s podcast because there are some rad conversations happening over there that all of us can learn from and sit in, and delight in. To everybody who tuned in, thank you so much for listening. Don’t forget to hop over to patreon.com/sgrpodcast for this week’s bonus. And until next time, I’m Dawn Serra. Bye.

Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and to get awesome weekly bonuses. 

As you look towards the next week, I wonder, what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?