5:46pm June 28, 2014

➸ Access Intimacy: The Missing Link

fierceawakening:

youneedacat:

There are many ways to describe intimacy.  For example, there’s physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, intellectual, political, familial or sexual intimacy.  But, as a physically disabled woman, th…

Okay, so I just saw this referenced in another article that was referenced in another article that was referenced in another article.

I can’t understand it.

The reason I can’t understand it is that throughout the entire article, she use the word “access” and “access intimacy” but she never once provides a single, concrete description.  Anywhere.  Not one.

I understand, in general, what access is supposed to mean.  I haven’t been involved in the disability rights movement since the nineties for nothing.

But I’m struggling with what access intimacy means.

And I’m struggling with it because while she talks about it, and talks about it, and talks about it, nothing, nothing, nothing is concrete. 

Not once does she give a concrete example of “There was this one particular kind of access (which I’m going to now describe in detail so that people can understand what I’m talking about), and we experienced intimacy over it, and that proceeded in this particular way (which I’m going to now describe in detail so that people can understand what I’m talking about).”

She just sort of takes it for granted that people will be able to fill in the blanks.

I can’t fill in the blanks.

At all.

And it means that I can barely read her article, let alone understand it.

Which is frustrating, because I’m 99% sure that I’ve experienced this thing she calls “access intimacy”.  But because there is not a single concrete example in the entire article, I’ll never know.  And since it’s one particular person coining the word, I’d be most comfortable if she were the person to explain, but I’m not sure if that’s going to happen either.

All it would take, is one really good example of a very specific type of access in a very specific situation and a specific person or people, all described concretely and with as few broad abstract terms like ‘access’ and ‘access intimacy’ as possible.  But that doesn’t happen in the article.  Not even once.  I kept reading it and reading it, hoping that eventually it would happen.  But no.  Just ‘access’ said over and over and over and over and over again.

Can anyone help me here?  And I mean, not just guessing.

I am not quite sure, but I think the author is saying that some people intuitively understand or sense her access needs, where many (most?) other people don’t think in terms of how her body works and what she needs for her environment to be accessible. I think she’s saying that when she is with someone who looks at the environment in ways that include looking specifically for access issues that would prevent her moving freely in the environment, that fosters a kind of closeness (“intimacy”) that is important to her.

I’m not certain, though, because to me “intimacy” is something that develops when you know someone, and the article kind of sounds to me like she’s talking more about someone “getting it” or “grokking” what she needs and/or how she moves in the world right away, and that is different from intimacy as I understand that word.

To me, the thing that made the most sense was the idea that she expected this kind of understanding her access needs to come with someone being her sexual partner, or with someone having similar politics/ideology, or other forms of connection with someone, but that those other forms of connection don’t necessarily mean “access intimacy” will be there too. I think the big thing I take from it is the idea that relating to someone on a sexual, personal, or political level won’t necessarily come with or attach to people understanding her access needs on this kind of level.

I get the general description, I just need specifics about at least one instance where this happened.

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