The name Empowered Fe-Fes (pronounced “fee-fees’) may conjure up images of French women or poodles. But Fe-Fes is slang for females, and these Fe-Fes are young disabled women who meet monthly to talk about a subject not commonly connected with disability: Sex.
In meetings that seem like a cross between a consciousness-raising group and an Oprah show, the Fe-Fes have talked about sexual positions that work with various disabilities. They have written personal ads to meet men. They have learned how to use condoms.
They speak freely, albeit in some cases with speech impediments. At a recent meeting at the Near North Public Library on the North Side, the subject turned to dressing sexy, and Aurora Padron offered a sharp analysis of the power of apparel.
“I get stared at because I look like a damn kid,” said Padron, 23, of the North Side. “But when I put on something short, I look…well, certain guys come up to me. I say, ‘Damn–back off!’ ‘
No holds were barred when the talk turned to bodies, either.
“I have something to say about big boobs,’ said Dawn Ramsey, 23, putting her soda pop on the table.
“Oh-oh; she has to put down her cup,” grinned Susan Nussbaum, the group’s creator, who is Transition Program Coordinator at Access Living, a disability rights group.
“Big boobs are a headache,” Ramsey said. “And they hurt your back too.’
“I would not know,’ sniffed Taina Rodriguez, 21, of the Northwest Side, the group’s high-energy, low-inhibition assistant. She was wearing a strappy tank top that revealed her daisy tattoo, along with her scar from the open heart surgery she underwent to treat her disability, Marfan syndrome, an inherited disorder of the connective tissues.
The meeting ended with a brief private lesson: Carolyn Gordon, the Fe-Fes’ unflappable co-coordinator, showed Omaira Garcia, 29, of the Northwest Side, the proper handling of a condom.
The group is the brainchild of Nussbaum, a theatrical director, playwright and disability rights activist.
“Who we see ourselves as includes an awful lot about how we view our sexual self-worth,’ said Nussbaum, 47, of the North Side, who has used a wheelchair since suffering a spinal cord injury when she was 24; she was hit by a car as a pedestrian.
“When that’s being questioned by all the imagery around you…and it’s not even addressed by health-care professionals…(who) get this blank expression on their face–when that happens, you could worry.’
There is little talk here about medical problems or wheelchairs. “I am continually struck by how little this group is about disability,” said Nussbaum.
It has been about birth control, sexual orientation, dating violence, how to talk to a partner about what feels good, masturbation and bad boyfriends.
No question is out of bounds. At the first session, the first question was what position the speaker used for sex with her husband.
“You can discuss things here that you cannot discuss with your parents,” said Ramsey, who lives with her parents in Elmwood Park. “They would be, like, `Why are you thinking about that?’
“My parents treat me like I’m a little girl, and I’m not,” she said.
“We talk about stuff that people should know about,” said Kellie Green, 19, of the Northwest Side. “At first, I was very shy. I didn’t talk at all. Now they can’t get me to shut up.”
A number of the young women were similarly reticent at first. But then Nussbaum, who speaks to disabled students at high schools in her work at Access Living, met the hip and sassy Rodriguez at Spalding High School and hired her as an assistant. Rodriguez brought her friends and her irreverence to meetings, and suggested the Fe-Fes’ name, albeit jokingly.
Groups press on
The Fe-Fes, like two other discussion groups Nussbaum started, were intended to be short-lived. But more women started showing up. “That workshop was not going to end unless we stopped it,” said Rodriguez.
She has won two youth leadership awards from disability rights groups for her work in helping coordinate the Fe-Fes. She recently left her part-time job at Access Living for a full-time job as a receptionist and staff assistant in the Chicago office of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, but still attends Fe-Fes meetings.
The Fe-Fes have the same sexual desires as other women and are eager to satisfy them, said Rodriguez, who has had a steady boyfriend for three years. Some of the Fe-Fes are particularly eager, or, as she put it, “just dying to get freaky.”
Discussing dating
Nussbaum had asked for volunteers to meet at Access Living’s South Loop office to help plan the next session. The Fe-Fes group is not intended to be a program presented to disabled women, but one designed by them.
“My goal is that I don’t have to be in the group any more,” she said.
Garcia had brought a printed page of suggestions for future meetings. Ramsey, whose spina bifida has impaired her vision, held the sheet almost touching her face to read it.
Among Garcia’s ideas: Pooling their money for field trips; a talk by an obstetrician/gynecologist; and more sessions on how to ask a man for a date.
“It might be embarrassing for us because of the wheelchair or because of a speech problem,” she wrote.
“When you have a speech impairment that makes your voice change all the time and you see a guy who is next to gorgeous and you are scared of talking to him because what if he does not understand you.”
“Any ideas for icebreakers?” Nussbaum asked.
A group lesson on how to put on a condom, Garcia suggested. Gordon liked the idea, but suggested using zucchinis for the exercise instead of sexual aids to save money.
“OK, so everyone has a zucchini, and puts a condom on it,” Nussbaum said. “That’ll break the ice.”
“Oh, that’ll break a lot of ice,” Rodriguez said.
A new best friend
At the next meeting, Khedra Graham, 22, was in a mild snit. She had fallen a few days earlier–she uses a wheelchair and has limited mobility after an asthma attack when she was 16 robbed her brain of oxygen–and she was self-conscious about the bruise on her forehead.
She had asked Dawn Ramsey, who sells Avon products, for help.
“I said, `Don’t forget to bring foundation,'” she said.
“And I still forgot it,” sighed Ramsey. “She’s really mad at me.”
Ramsey and Graham have become fast friends. At meetings, Ramsey sometimes helps Graham eat. The two had coordinated their outfits by phone that morning–they were both wearing bright capri pants with matching tops.
Graham lost her other friends after her disabling asthma attack. “All my girlfriends stopped calling me,” she said. “But I got a new best friend now. And this group, because it’s for people like me.”
The condom lesson was the ice-breaking success predicted. Giggles rolled through the room as the women rolled the condoms over the vegetables.
That merriment was topped at the next meeting–a field trip to a sex shop.
It was the Fe-Fes’ idea, Nussbaum said, and strictly optional. But interest was such that nine women, several with personal assistants, gathered in brutal heat on North Broadway with wheelchairs and crutches before heading into the Pleasure Chest.
Inside the sexual paraphernalia store, there were shrieks of laughter as the women peered at suggestively shaped lollipops and water bottles.
In front of the vibrators, Nussbaum was explaining the purpose of the toys, and of this trip. These were all aids to add to the pleasure of sex, which Nussbaum told one of the women was a delight of life. “It’s a wonderful feeling,” she said. “It’s better than chocolate.”
Sex shop feedback
Over lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant afterward, the Fe-Fes gave their verdicts on visiting a sex shop.
“I have not gotten used to it,” said Padron. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”
“I liked the books,” said Garcia. “I’d like to get some.
“It was very nasty. Very dirty,” said Sharzett Osler, 19, of the North Side.
“Very good,” she added, grinning mischievously.
Nussbaum hopes to take that kind of open talk about sexuality and disability national.
“Our real goal is to put a manual together, a handbook, and train the girls in how to start their own groups,” she said. “The girls would go around the country with the Fe-Fes, seeding the earth with Fe-Fe philosophy.”
Seeing young disabled women learn about sexual pleasure has given Nussbaum pleasure of a different kind.
“To discover myself as a sexual person all over again and to discover other people with disabilities as, in some cases, irresistible, was intensely exciting and intensely important for me to totally assimilate my disability,” she said.
“To watch young women have that experience before my eyes is a joy.”
