by Tuppy Owens
In the early part of 1979, I met a boy who was in a wheelchair and who complained he had no personal life at all and, at the age of 32, had never seen a naked woman. I got to know him over the next few months, introduced him to friends and tried to help him improve his love life. As his problems began to be solved, we decided to start a club to help people such as himself. A friend of mine, Nigel Verbeek, who had recently lost his sight, said he would help us run the club, and Patricia Gillan, the psychologist and sex therapist offered us her support. We called it The Outsiders Club.
Small newspaper and magazine articles brought a response not only from this country but from all over the world. In their letters, socially and physically disabled people described how they had never dared to express their sexual needs to anyone before, because society had never considered that pleasure was their right. The club since has grown quite large, with about a thousand members. We offer members an opportunity to meet each other for romantic, intimate or other friendly pursuits.
ISAO TAIRA (Tokyo) - paper cutting art
My involvement with the members has proved endlessly fascinating and enjoyable. I quickly realized how ignorance of disability makes most of us treat disabled people in a diabolically inhumane manner. I have never met people before who are so eternally and systematically let down and kept waiting. Hours are spent in inactivity, or in fantasy.
In order to cope with lack of fulfillment and lack of contact, some disabled people express themselves artistically. My friend, Nigel, for example made a sculpture of a girlfriend's body when he could no longer see her, almost in lieu of having a photograph. Some of the members of the club are artists and we decided that the club should hold an exhibition of art for the International Year of Disabled People. Originally, the theme was to be erotic, but we later broadened it to include all emotions.
I wondered how and whether the interesting aspects of sensuality and disability which had been communicated to me verbally would emerge in the artists' work. I had discovered for example, that when a certain part of the body is disabled, it is very often that part, in its 'perfect' form, which becomes the most erotic aspect of other people's bodies. I discovered great sadness amongst some, who whilst watching lovers wandering hand-in-hand, lying or sitting together are pushed in their chairs by detached 'helpers'. Some disabled people, although thankfully few, have an exaggerated sex drive: frontal brain damage can produce this, together with lack of control over sexual urges. MS can produce a colourful sex drive, and at the same time, impotence.
Victor Willing (London) - Dream
People who go through their adolescence as disabled invariably experience a separation from their peers, both because of their inability, physically to participate and because they are not expected by their peers to cope with adolescent sexual activity. Thus, they fail to learn how to start relationships and, in adult life, fear of rejection and lack of social skills make the prospect of an affair beyond reach.
How much of this is communicated in the art, you may judge for yourself. Certainly, the art is not so different from that done by other artists. Yet you can see at a glance Nabil Shaban's obsession with the foetus, which may result from the fact that he was born disabled with multiple fractures. John Newton, the 26 year old boy who has lived in institutions all his life, draws with meticulous care in a child-like style, reflecting perhaps the fact that most if not all institutions find it easier to deal with people if they keep them in a child-like condition.
One might ask how many artists have communicated their true emotions, how many resisted the invitation to submit work for fear of having their dreams exposed to an unreceptive public? This collection of work comes from an unusual and possibly fortunate group of artists who find themselves disabled, in as much as some of them have been able to use their insight as artists to express their emotions, an opportunity not within the grasp of many people disabled or not.