Complicatedly and Substantially Human: A Documentary on Disabled Sexuality

'Yes, we fuck!', is a Spanish film by Antonio Centeno Ortiz and Raúl de la Morena, a documentary that fundamentally muddies the usual waters of how we think about sex, lust, desire and beauty. Although it is a film that explores sex as multifaceted and expansive, and something intrinsic to being human, I feel it’s also effective in challenging the toxic mainstream narrative about how human beings should look, feel, function and fuck.  It exposes the utter oppressiveness of social constructs that shape us, and tell us how we should inhabit our bodies. Through six real stories, it interrogates the multitude of ways that any capitalist society prioritises physical independence over human connection. I have called this film “beautiful” a number of times, in describing it and I don’t quite know why, like in spite of the fact that I literally and necessarily engage with sex on that, “anything goes” level, it is so awesome to see it shown so raw and explicitly in a documentary. It shows how disabled bodies are absolutely, complicatedly and substantially human, which is an absurdly uncommon sentiment in our society.  For example, my body is constantly perceived as wrong and deformed, and so I really enjoy seeing different physicalities on screen, not in a tokenistic and palatable way.  It also challenges the ableist dialogue in my own head, and also normalizes different embodiments, and human dependence. So often physical inability and dependency is viewed as an infant-like weakness, that positions disabled people as inferior, requiring sympathy or charity to just survive. These stories challenge that, showing that disabled bodies and the people who live in them, are desirable, strong, powerful and complex, and that can enhance the landscape of sexuality. After all, sex and human connection are essential parts of humanity, and they need to be transgressive of the current fucked societal structures to create worthwhile social change.