Editor’s note: The following story includes a brief mention of sexual assault.
According to “People with Disabilities and Sexual Assault” by Thomas C. Weiss, 83 percent of women with disabilities will be sexually assaulted in their lives, compared to one in five women overall. These higher instances of sexual assault among disabled people and the general lack of bodily autonomy granted to people living with disabilities are what inspired disabled artist Jessica E. Blinkhorn to launch a project aimed at honoring the sexual desire and pleasure of the disabled community.
Blinkhorn, a 45-year-old performance and visual artist living with spinal muscular atrophy type two and a survivor of sexual assault, is the mind behind SPANKBOX, an award-winning photographic installation depicting people with physical disabilities in hypersexualized poses. The photos, which are submitted by anyone who wishes to participate in the project (called “Spankers”), are styled like vintage peep-show posters and include a question the Spanker wants to ask the nondisabled community about their body or sexuality. Questions include, “Do you think I fuck in my wheelchair,” “Do social stigmas stop you from pursuing someone with a noticeable disability,” and “Would you have sex if you knew it would dislocate your joints?”
“When you label an entire community as broken or weak, you offer them no way to have a sexual identity,” Blinkhorn told Georgia Voice. “You take away their sexual autonomy … [SPANKBOX] is about putting ourselves out there and owning our beauty and owning our sexual power and being unafraid of offending people by being innately sexual, which we, for the majority, all are.”
Blinkhorn, who describes herself as a very sexual person with “a great sex life,” seeks to both empower the Spankers and give them confidence in their bodies while educating the “for now” nondisabled community on the realities of disabled sexuality. She says the project grants the audience “permission to look, fantasize, and question disability and sexuality in a safe environment.”
Blinkhorn has built her career on the intersections of performance and advocacy. In 2019, for her performance piece REVERENCE: We 3, she sat in public spaces that weren’t wheelchair accessible for three hours, inviting strangers to lay flowers at her feet in acts of reverence. She’s inspired by the work of Bob Flanagan, a performance artist with cystic fibrosis who would engage in sadomasochist performances, like nailing his penis and scrotum to a board in Nailed, to take control over his body and find pleasure in the pain of his disability.
“Artists, by nature, see the world through different eyes,” she said. “We look at the world always in a creative way. We not only try to see the beauty in objects, but in the destruction of objects … Art is great for advocacy because you’re taking something that people are a little too intimidated to acknowledge or look at or question, and you’re giving it to your viewer in either an aggressive way that will shock them and get their attention, or in a very palatable way they’ll easily digest and understand what’s going on.”
Blinkhorn finds that the power in the shock value and the discomfort that may arise when one views SPANKBOX is integral to the impact of the work.
“I was not gonna allow people within my community to feel like they couldn’t feel good about themselves, like they couldn’t feel sexy,” she said. “It’s not fair. The conversation [on sex] kind of ends with people talking about disability and sex because it makes other people uncomfortable. I have to be uncomfortable 93 percent of my time on this earth, you can be uncomfortable for about 30 minutes to an hour. You’ll be okay.”
Blinkhorn was awarded a fellowship by the John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for her work with SPANKBOX this year, and she intends to use the fellowship funds to bring the exhibit to Miami and possibly run a billboard of her personal SPANKBOX photo (pictured above). SPANKBOX will be back on exhibit in Atlanta during the Atlanta Art Fair at Pullman Yards from October 3 through 6; in the meantime, you can purchase a T-shirt or sticker at Kiss and Ride in Little Five Points to support Blinkhorn and her mission to spread the truth: disabled people fuck.
To learn more and keep up with SPANKBOX ATL, follow on Instagram @spankbox.atl. You can find Jessica E. Blinkhorn on Instagram @wheelie_an_artist.