By Robert St. Martin
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times)7/18/23 – A documentary of interest at this year’s Outfest Los Angeles is Acsexybility, an 86-minute-long exploration of the interaction between physical disability and queerness. Playing on the word “accessibility” in relation to coping mechanisms, a wide range of “disabled” persons talk frankly about their sex lives, their fantasies, and their experiences with fully “abled” persons – gay, straight, trans and cis. Brazilian director Daniel Gonçalves uses the observational power of the camera to document the raw sexuality, fantasies, and erotic expressions of a wide array of subjects with rare candor and vulnerability. As a queer man with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and dealing with some challenges with the use of his own mouth to speak, Gonçalves has provided us with a fascinating entry into the very personal sex lives of Brazilians with physical disabilities.
This film does not shy away from the complexities and challenges of sex for people with physical disabilities. It embraces both cis and queer persons and, in doing so, illuminates how they impact their own sense of body and adds a new dimensionality to the way we can and should interact with them. Embodied sexual explorations are balanced against interviews that in their frankness and insightfulness criticize and deepen the lacking conversation around this intersection in the wider discourse. Gonçalves’ Acsexybility had its World Premiere at Outfest Los Angeles on Sunday, July 17, 7:15 PM at the Directors Guild of America. If you missed the theatrical screening, Acsexybility can be viewed online through Outfest Streaming, from July 18 through July 23. Go to: www.outfest.org.
Those interviewed in the documentary are rather resilient individuals – all living in Brazil – who have found ways to address their own sexual desires and find sex partners. The interviews help the average viewer better understand that the people with physical disabilities have the same sexual desires as more “abled” individuals. We hear from several wheelchair-bound paraplegic men and women, from a deaf person, a woman who is blind, a man with Dwarfism, a young man with Downs Syndrome, a wheelchair-bounded trans woman, a cis male amputee with one arm and a buffed gay male amputee with one leg. These are very real people with real names: Giovanni Venturini, Lelê Martins, Estela Lapponi, Luca Munhoz, Cida Leite, Amanda Soares, Dudé, Clara Sasse.
One of the most humorous personalities in the documentary is a very handsome young man with multiple sclerosis who is trying to open a sealed condom and struggling repeatedly to force open the sealed packaging, even using his teeth. He never gives up and is determined to succeed. This young man is emblematic of the determination of these Brazilians with physical disabilities to succeed in their personal goals as well as finding a way to have their sexual desires met. On the other hand, there is a 40-year-old cis woman, who is wheelchair bound, but enjoys fetish play with seemingly-gay young men with dog masks, body harnesses, and “puppy” butt-plugs.
Several of those interviewed talk about the difficulty of finding real lasting relationships due the frequent rejection they experience once a prospective interested sexual partner “freaks out” over their physical disability. Some speak about how an “abled” sex partner is often only interested in a one-night stand based on curiosity or the sense of something exotic and strange. Some have more success in meeting their sexual desires than others. Not all those interviewed are “queer.” They range from cis to trans, gay or straight, bisexual and non-binary, homosexual and lesbian. What one soon realizes is the rather surprising physical beauty of those interviewed. Gonçalves makes us care about these individuals and make them desirable in his presentation. The honesty of those in the film is bold and surprising. I am sure that Gonçalves probably ended up interviewing far more people with physical disabilities that we meet in the film. But the ones selected are articulate, determined, and emotionally accessible.
This is not really a “queer” film or just another documentary physical disabilities but a loving exploration of the humanity of a group of people who still remain largely marginalized in our discussions about sex and sexual identity. There is no letter in the acronym LGTBQIA2S+ for this group of generally over-looked individuals. In some ways, this film calls into question the all-so-comfortable assumptions about the “rainbow” of non-normative people in our society. For myself as a reviewer, I have worked with programs that serve a wide range of disabled persons – both those with physical disabilities and those with cognitive disabilities. Gonçalves’ film hits its mark on subjects that are generally not discussed in the United States, probably due to our rather Puritanical culture that assumes the people with physical disabilities are asexual and have no interest in active sexual lives.
In 1990, the U.S. Congress passed The Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA – An act to establish a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability. Since that time, the changes in attitudes, services, and education for disabled persons has improved in manifold ways. The law does not explicitly deal with the sex lives of disabled peoples, but it is a civil right to which such persons are entitled. On January 2, 2016, the Brazilian Law on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (Law no. 13,146/2015) took effect in Brazil. Designed to be a breakthrough toward guaranteeing rights for as many as 45 million people with disabilities living in Brazil. I am so grateful that filmmaker Daniel Gonçalves has made a film that not only Brazilians need to see but policy-makers and ordinary people in the United States would benefit from viewing. Especially important is that the LGBTQ+ community in the United States become more understanding and inclusive in its thinking about this under-represented group under its “queer” rainbow flag.
