Reaching More Customers with Disabilities and Health Conditions

We’re putting a call out for people with disabilities and health conditions that affect their sex lives to get in touch and help us expand the ways Hot Octopuss serves them.

We want to know what works about our products, what can be improved, and what we could produce in the future to make sex toys that are accessible for more people.

And we want to hear from writers and sex educators with disabilities and health conditions who’d be interested in joining our growing pool of paid guest bloggers, to make our site a resource for people who want to find out more about sex and disability.

The story so far

I’ve been involved with Hot Octopuss since the beginning, but I only came on board full time as Chief Operating Officer in September. Since then I’ve read through our guest blogs from disabled writers and seen testimonials from disabled customers about how our toys have improved their sex lives.

I’ve learned from guest bloggers Emily Yates, Leandra Vane and Andrew Gurza about the barriers they’ve faced when exploring sexual pleasure and masturbation, and about how they’re claiming their right to these things despite those barriers.

And I’ve also worked with Brook, who provide sexual health education to disabled young people, and learned that often disabled young people are not educated about their bodies or pleasure, in the belief that they will never experience these needs or opportunities – something entirely unfair and unnecessary.

Of the many testimonials I’ve read, one of the most moving was from a male paraplegic customer, who wrote: ‘In enabling me to masturbate independently, PULSE has brought back a pleasure and sense of dignity in life that I believed was lost to me after my accident’.

As a non-disabled person, it has made me reflect on what it might be like to rely on a care provider to assist with sexual release and imagine the frustration that one could feel when completely unable to masturbate or have sex.

PULSE doesn’t work for everyone

While it’s always wonderful to receive testimonials from people for whom PULSE works, we know that it doesn’t work for every disabled person. It would of course be impossible to produce a toy that would work for everyone, whether disabled or not – bodies and sexual needs and preferences are too diverse for that. But we’d like our toys to work for more disabled people than they currently do. And we’d like to do more to try to break down the stigma around disability and sexual pleasure.

As part of that, we are inviting anyone with a disability or health condition that affects their sexual needs to contact us and let us know what kind of products would help them explore sexual pleasure and masturbation more fully.

And we will use this space to host more regular content from people with disabilities, sexual health experts and our own writers, aimed at people with disabilities, erectile problems or other sexual challenges and their carers and loved ones. Our aim is to explore every aspect of disability and sex, and to better understand how to support those who need it to have fulfilling sex lives.

If you are a writer with a disability or health condition and have ideas for our blog, get in touch by emailing media@hotoctopuss.com.

If you have a disability and would like to know more about how our products might work for you, please get in touch via enquiries@hotoctopuss.com. Even if you can’t afford our products, we may be able to help you.