벤 르윈의 <세션>에 나타난 장애인의 섹슈엘리티와 능력주의

Critically acclaimed as "heralding a new cinematic sexual revolution," Ben Lewin's The Sessions tackles the thorny issue of disabled sexuality which has long been shunned by Hollywood producers. The film, based on an article by Mark O'Brien, "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate," traces the journey of the quadriplegic hero who gets out of his iron lung to embark on a sexual quest with a sex surrogate, Cheryl, and portrays their sex scenes in such a manner as to subvert the stereotype of asexual disability. Their sex therapy sessions function as a rite of passage that transforms him into a "male Homo sapiens' and thus humanizes him. Lewin's intention is to foreground Mark's achievement of much desired masculinity and humanity, but this interpellates him into the dominant gender ideology, and, more importantly, into the ideology of ability, which is predicated on the view of the polymorphous world of disabled sexuality as substandard, and thus, as something to overcome.