By now you probably know that I am an increasingly disabled human who LOVES disabled humans, disability history, and disability rights. I spend a decent bit of my time and energy advocating and educating about these issues, in fact, and I love every minute of it (even when I’m whining on Twitter about it, lol)
So I decided, heck! I already have this blog space where I sporadically post articles where I word-vomit novel-length articles about whatever thing has been kicking around my brainpan that week, and then some poorly-written and totally unedited poetry… why not intersperse some pieces highlighting awesome disabled people, cool pieces of disability history, and stuff like that! So from now on until I run out of spoons or forget (I have good intentions but also know who I am, ha!), once a month or maybe more often you’ll be able to find a nice, well-researched piece about disability history/education/etc right here! I’m aiming for, like, first Saturday of the month? We’ll see.
I figured I’d kick off the whole shebang with the disabled fella who first got me thinking about this… a man most of you probably have never heard of, Gosnell Duncan.
I was listening to a great episode of one of my favourite podcasts, Maintenance Phase, about vibrators. You read that right. It was a super episode about sexual health and the history of vibrators and dildos, their creation, stigma, their role in the feminist revolution, and so on. 10/10 recommend, it’s a great listen. ANYHOW, one of the amazing things they mentioned that sparked a marvelously kinky deep dive was that dildos as we know them today - those wonderful silicone feelgood things - was pioneered by a disabled man! You read that right! But let’s get a bit of backstory here, first.
According to a great & incredibly well researched article in Bitch Media, up until and into the 1970’s, dildos were made of heat-treated rubber and would actually melt with heat, like… say… when you wash them with hot water (or possibly when they are otherwise in, um, hot places…). They also were often made of not very pleasing materials and could have strong rubbery odors to them. Part of the reason that dildos were so godawful was that they were still technically illegal at the time, thanks to good ol’ puritanical bullshit, specifically the Comstock Law which is a set of very old anti-obscenity laws that prohibited the buying of, selling of, possession of, or distributing of through the mail any “obscene material.” So for dildos to be legal, they had to be sold as medical devices, and if any of you have ever experienced any medical device at all, you know how very little goes into making them comfortable, welcoming, pleasant, or desirable. Especially anything even pretending to be targeted towards women’s/people with vagina’s reproductive health. Basically, dildos were kind of awful.
So in 1965 there was this fellow named Gosnell Duncan, a US immigrant from Grenada. He’s working as an auto mechanic in Chicago, welding the bed of a truck when something goes wrong, and the truck falls on him and he is paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. Gosnell has a girlfriend (who is not at all concerned about him being disabled, because apparently she was a cool human and saw him as a whole-ass person, like all people should), and they got married while he was in the hospital. But he had feels about the fact that he would never be able to achieve an erection again. He wanted to be able to have good, penetrative sex with his lady (not that that’s the only type of good sex out there), and as he got more involved with the disabled community, found that there were actually a lot of people who wanted to be able to have good, penetrative sex, but didn’t have any decent options and because they were disabled, their sex life was considered not only a very secondary concern if even that, but also extra stigmatized (this is actually still quite true to this day, which is exhausting, but that’s another rant for another time).
So Gosnell said “well fuck that” (wink) and started looking for solutions. He didn’t really care about what was considered acceptable, or even legal. He wanted love and connection and intimacy for disabled people just like abled people get to have. Which I think is absolutely fucking beautiful. Dildos weren’t great for the reasons mentioned above, but he used to be an auto mechanic, and had noticed silicone that was flexible also able to withstand the heat of an engine, but unfortunately it wasn’t really safe for, um… internal use. So he reached out to General Electric and told them he needed silicone that WAS friendly to the human body, and they connected him with one of their chemists, with whom he worked for the next 9 months, tweaking silicone formulas until they finally got one that made Gosnell happy, and patented it. Gosnell then set up a full-blown dildo lab in his basement and went to work creating the first silicone dildos as Paramount Therapeutic Products!
So, if you’ve ever enjoyed a good time with a silicone toy of ANY variety, you have a disabled man to thank!
You can read more about Gosnell Duncan in that amazing Bitch Media piece I mentioned HERE. While I did a ton of research across the web, I pulled very heavily from this piece as it really is the crème de la crème.
Also, I want to take a hot second and rep an amazing local company that makes silicone toys designed for disabled folks and general ergonomic use (you know how your wrist hurts when you’ve been going at it for a while? Check these out!). Even if you think it’s not up your alley, click this link and give their sit some traffic, it’ll be great for their SEO! CHECK OUT SILCARTS HERE!
Lastly, if you enjoy my work and appreciate the hard work I put into my research, writing, advocacy and education here, there, and everywhere, if you have the resources and can do so safely, please consider supporting a poor disabled creator using any of the buttons below. Thank you so much.