One doesn’t usually expect to be moved by porn. No, I mean, emotionally moved. However, watching Loree Erickson’s short erotic film Want is moving and challenging and unlike any porn you’ll ever find at your local mainstream smut store.

Though, if she has it her way, maybe you will find it there one day. Loree, who “moves through the world in a wheelchair” as she likes to put it, was tired of people viewing those with disabilities as sexless creatures to be pitied.

She’s actually had complete strangers come up to her and say things like: “Don’t lose faith, dear, lots of people like you find ways to live fulfilling lives.” And when it comes to sex, our attitudes are equally insulting. That’s only for able-bodied folk, thank you very much. As a result, Loree, disabled since birth, has grown up with low self-esteem and a severely negative body image. She certainly never thought of herself as “hot.”

That all changed when a friend asked if she could take some erotic photos of her. Loree was nervous and uncertain about it. She did it, and when the photos came back, she was pleasantly surprised. She thought, “Wow, I actually look hot!”

The experience opened up a whole new erotic world for Loree, and she went on to make Want, a short erotic film that includes a very graphic scene of her making out with and getting manually pleasured by a cute, butchy, able-bodied lesbian lover.

The result is beautiful and intense. Watching it, I was blown away on so many levels. Not only does it challenge our idea of what is sexy, it shows that, in the right hands, porn can really be revolutionary. It can be a powerful tool in changing people’s sexual views.

The Want DVD includes a second very short film featuring Loree’s wheelchair — with a hand erotically caressing its curves, knobs and handles. It is beautiful and, for Loree, a poignant statement about her disability. She made the “wheelchair porn” short because she was tired of people wanting to separate her sexuality from her wheelchair. She’s been in a wheelchair her whole life. It is part of her. Yet even sex-positive people would imply that her erotic pictures would be so much hotter if you didn’t see her chair. That somehow, by wiping out the thing that physically reminds people of her disability, it would make them think about her more sexually.

It’s these kinds of attitudes Loree is fighting to change. A self-described porn star academic and activist who is currently doing her PhD at York University in Toronto, she has banded with others to form A is for Acsexxxable, “a collective of people with a variety of bodies and identities.” According to the group’s website, acsexxable.ca, “some of us are disabled, and we work with our allies to promote and create sex-positive spaces that are inclusive of disabled people.” The collective believes that all people, with all kinds of bodies are sexy, and that sex should not be shameful.

Tired of sex parties and bathhouses that weren’t accessible, and not being able “to hook up with hot people with disabilities at such events,” the collective organizes workshops as well as sex parties and make-out fundraisers “that value bodies, identities and experiences that are typically excluded from sex-positive spaces and generally sexually oppressed.” Past workshops have included Flirting 101 and oral sex workshops that teach “techniques and adaptations for hot and fantabulous oral sex with folks of all genders and abilities.”

Most disabled rights movements and organizations are so busy focusing on the basic human rights and needs of the disabled (housing, attendant care, transportation and employment) that sexuality is often overlooked and not addressed. Add to this our societal discomfort with and disgust towards the idea of disabled people as sexual beings, and sex gets taken completely off the agenda in both the abled and disabled communities.

If Loree Erickson has it her way, “the perceptions of persons with disabilities as non-sexual, undesirable and unimportant can change through the creation of spaces where the full beauty, complexity, agency and desirability of all people is respected, celebrated, and fucked silly.”

And one day, maybe Want will find its place in the XXX video store right next to Shaving Private Ryan.