For people that are on apps and stuff, can you stop writing preferences of height in your bio? I think it's a horrible standard we're throwing with the height thing, because this is literally the one thing you can't control.Imaan Hadchiti
When I'm dating someone, I receive a lot of stares, misguided compliments, like how beautiful and it's so nice to see, which implies that my dates are doing me a service by dating me!Alex Reimers
Also Joining the conversation is Megan Walsh - researcher at Murdoch Children's Research Institute and experienced speech pathologist who specialises in working with people who use Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC). Megan discusses how people who use AAC are often excluded from romantic opportunities due to harmful misconceptions and infantilisation and offers insight into what needs to change to create a more inclusive dating world.
It's understanding that people with disabilities, including AAC users, can be and are people who can have great sex. There's so much that we can all learn from the way disabled people have sex and the way disabled people go about dating.Megan Walsh
Credits
Hosts: Madeleine Stewart & Alistair Baldwin
Producer: Eliza Hull
Sound Design & Mix: Session in Progress
Executive Producer: Attitude Foundation
Art: Lucy Melvin
SBS Team: Joel Supple, Max Gosford, Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn
Transcript
Alistair Baldwin
This episode is recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri, Woi wurrung people of the Kulin nation, and would like to give our respect to their elders, past and present. Love without limits is a podcast about intimacy and yes, sex. Just a heads up, we'll be talking openly about topics that might not be for everyone.
Madeleine Stewart
I'm Madeline Stewart,
Alistair Baldwin
and I'm Alistair Baldwin, and this is Love without limits, the podcast where we get real, we get deep, sometimes a little spicy, talking about sex, love relationships for disabled people like us.
Madeleine Stewart
Each episode, we'll be joined by a guest who lets us into their world, sharing the laughs, the struggles and the juicy bits of navigating intimacy and desire in a society that stigmatises our sexual identities.
Alistair Baldwin
And on today's episode, we're diving into how disability influences our search for love and sexual self expression. You know, whether you've acquired a disability or you were born this way, hashtag, Lady Gaga, having bodies that are outside of rigid abled norms can mean our journeys towards love and sex are far more interesting than boring abled people.
Madeleine Stewart
Dating wise, when I started off dating, I always felt like I had to be grateful for, like, whatever I got, and which is not the healthiest approach to dating,
Alistair Baldwin
And it's just your catch, babe, they should be grateful.
Madeleine Stewart
I mean, now I can appreciate that, but there was, like, a societal sense that like, and if an abled person dates a disabled person like they're somehow, like settling like it makes me feel like I'm one of those ugly fruits and vegetables that don't make it to woolies.
Alistair Baldwin
God, I feel that, and what I hate is, like the implication that any abled guy who's with me is some like, hero for being with me. Because not only does that devalue me, like, I hate the implication that I'd ever date like a good guy, like I'm a bad boy. I want another bad boy. I want a guy who's evading taxes, you know, leather jacket, not like a nerd. But, I mean, it goes to show that, you know, even the two of us who present as confident, vibrant podcast hosts, even we can struggle with self doubt implanted into us by an ableist society. And you know, I've heard sometimes even abled people struggle with self confidence too.
Madeleine Stewart
Oh, my god, yeah, you look it's a wild ride. We're all on a path to loving the body we're in, regardless of how long we've been disabled, and this can totally shake up how you approach Love, Sex and connection. So buckle up. This one's got layers.
Alistair Baldwin
Well, our first guest is Imaan Hadchiti, an Australian comedian and actor of Lebanese descent, as a truly original, daring comedian. And I mean, my friend, he brings a unique perspective that blends raunchy humor and heartfelt moments. You actually, no one else I know blends raunch and heartfelt. Thanks for coming on the show today.
Imaan Hadchiti
Thanks for having me.
Madeleine Stewart
What's harder stand up, comedy or dating apps? What's up?
Imaan Hadchiti
Well, depends. Are we talking about the act of doing stand up? Sure, or booking the gig, because it's pretty much the same skill set. Yeah, you got to write a decent bio, and hopefully someone likes what you said, send your head shot, tell them your measurements. I've stopped the apps because I didn't I don't know what to write in them, because I don't want to write Lebanese midget, but I don't want to not write it, you know, because I don't want to just show up going, Oh, he stood me up again. No, no, sorry, I've gone off the apps, because it's just I don't like I want to meet people out in nature.
Alistair Baldwin
Well, what are the weirdest assumptions that people have made with you when you're flirting, when you're in that kind of first flirty moments. What are the weird assumptions people are making?
Imaan Hadchiti
I mean, the assumption is that I'm not a threat, right? So they like they feel real comfortable around me, but they don't see me sexually. We're having a good time. We're talking about everything. And then, yeah, you know, yeah.
Madeleine Stewart
So you're friend zoned constantly.
Imaan Hadchiti
Yeah, yeah. I'm Chihuahua zoned.
Madeleine Stewart
We'll pop you in your little handbag on the way to the park
Imaan Hadchiti
Yeah very, very cute to attract the attention and then shut out of the room.
Imaan Hadchiti
It's all good.
Alistair Baldwin
Um, was that ever backfired on you? Where you, I guess are just so used to that friend zoning being done to you that you've missed, that someone has been flirting right back.
Imaan Hadchiti
Oh yeah, heaps of times, yeah. So I'm like, I don't really do the make the first move if I can kiss you. You wanted me to kiss you, yeah? So there's that kind of element. But, um, yeah, it has backfired. But you know, you missed opportunities are fine. You know, you get on. Get on with it.
Madeleine Stewart
Speaking of kissing, perfect segue, because I wanted to ask, how do you navigate a height difference when dating, especially kisses? Because I'm like, Are you Spider Man in it? Are you coming down from the ceiling? You know, if you said to me, come meet me at my lip level, I might just spoon. Like, I will swoon. I will spoon and swoon.
Imaan Hadchiti
Yeah. Well, sometimes when I say lip level, they get confused. It's generally like the I would do, like a like a come hither thing, yeah,
Imaan Hadchiti
When you hold hands, you kind of give it like a little, oh, a little, a little tug. You don't want to tug on the dress because, but I once, which I thought was quite romantic move, I told someone, don't move. And I ran and got a chair, and I just came up like, Please don't move. Please don't move, and I climbed and I gave them a kiss.
Madeleine Stewart
If I were to go on a date with you, how would you prefer people to navigate the height difference? Do you want to both sit down? Do you like to stand down? Do you like to stand up? Do you get insulted if people come down to your level?
Imaan Hadchiti
Not at all. I also want people to feel comfortable. So if you feel comfortable coming down, you're more than welcome to come to my level. If you want to pretend like it's not a thing, then we can pretend like I had a I did have a girlfriend once who was so slick with it because she was like she'd walk, would walk down the street holding hands, and then we hit the lights, and then once we're waiting for the crossing, she'd just do a squat, in one move. Like, like it was no thing. Oh, and then she'd walk a little bit in the squat, and then stand up and would go further. And she was just slick with it,
Madeleine Stewart
oh my god, kind of like, what's the thing that thing...
Alistair Baldwin
Vogueing, doing duck walk down there.
Imaan Hadchiti
Yeah, and like, the first date at a bar, I went to the bathroom, and I went to come back, and was sitting on the high chairs, and she didn't even bat an eyelid. She just put her foot out so I could step on it and then use that as a lift.
Madeleine Stewart
Tha'ts like innovative thinking,
Imaan Hadchiti
She was wonderful, Hi Jane! I still love and miss you
Alistair Baldwin
Have you, I guess, in your interactions and sex and kissing and stuff like that, have you ever had the response of like I've never been with someone like you. Are you often someone's first entry into maybe hooking up with a disabled person.
Imaan Hadchiti
Oh, I would say I wouldn't know about this, because they don't put, when people are hooking up with me, they don't go, you're my first disabled person. They go, you're my first little person. So I'm not sure, for sure. I think I am the first little person.
Madeleine Stewart
Do you feel pressure? You're like, oh my gosh, I'm your first little person. I'm why I have to perform well for you. Got to give you a good experience
Imaan Hadchiti
No, because I'm a very lucky little person. I'm very agile. I know I'm the best.
Alistair Baldwin
You don't have to prove it. You know it,
Imaan Hadchiti
I'm calling you out. Peter,
Alistair Baldwin
Dinklage found dead.
Madeleine Stewart
So, Imaan, I have a question. Do you think that there's a secret to finding love when you're disabled? Or do you have any advice for other disabled folk or little people who'd like to get out there and date more? Oh,
Imaan Hadchiti
No, I'm very bad at it
Madeleine Stewart
Picked up anything in your experience
Imaan Hadchiti
Just like it's a cliche thing. It happens when you least expect it. Don't settle, yes, figure out how to be happy on your own, and then it usually, if you can be happy on your own, then someone will want to steal that from you, and then that's how you find love.
Alistair Baldwin
That is the best advice we have, find joy internally, so someone tries to steal it by being in a relationship with you.
Imaan Hadchiti
Exactly. That's yeah, yeah.
Alistair Baldwin
Make yourself great bait for a succubus, and then
Imaan Hadchiti
You gotta, you know, be a plump and juicy Caterpillar for the birth to come and eat you.
Alistair Baldwin
Plump Caterpillar also feels like a euphemism on this podcast. Specifically, yes, what's the number one thing that you just would like everyone to know beforehand? Anyone who listens to this podcast and is going to ask you out on a date, what's something that you would just like to tell them about? You know, dating or hooking up with a short statured person? So you don't have to answer this one annoying question you always have to answer
Imaan Hadchiti
For people that are, that are on apps and stuff, can you stop writing preferences of height in your bio? It's a strange one. Yeah, it's like, you know, you can say I prefer a man taller than me, but you can't say I prefer someone skinnier than I. One you can control, and the other one you can't. Yeah, I don't get that. I generally like, I think it's a it's a horrible sort of standard we're throwing with the height thing, because you can't. This is literally the one thing you can't control. But I also, you know, if you have a preference, you have a preference. Who am I?
Alistair Baldwin
Political Activist, sexologist, comedian, thanks for coming on the show Imaan.
Imaan Hadchiti
No worries. Thank you.
Alistair Baldwin
Now we're diving into what it's like to look for love when you communicate in different ways, including using an AAC device. AAC stands for augmentative and alternative communication, a tool that helps people express themselves when spoken language isn't the primary option.
Madeleine Stewart
Our next guest is Alex Reimers, who is a queer, disabled model, poet and all round, fabulous human being with a passion for advocacy.
Alistair Baldwin
We sent our questions to Alex ahead of the interview so she had time to consider her answers before delivering them on her iPad. Welcome, Alex.
Madeleine Stewart
Hi, Alex. Welcome.
Alistair Baldwin
First off, Alex, can I ask what have been some of the biggest challenges you've faced, searching for love?
Alex Reimers
Honestly - My biggest struggle is finding decent humans when dating a lot of people are either attracted to the idea of dating someone who presents as vulnerable and has extra physical needs to take care of, or they are not willing to learn about someone living with disability. It's a funny balance between wanting to educate people about disability and actually wanting to live my life without being interrogated by strangers, although I do answer most questions, because I like it when people are politely curious, except for when I match with someone and they jump straight into, can you have sex? Because I find it very rude and presumptuous. I don't ask a random person on the street that maybe I should respond back with the same question in the future.
Madeleine Stewart
100% Absolutely.
Madeleine Stewart
Oh my gosh. We also totally connect with everything you said, 100% agree,
Alistair Baldwin
Yes, politely curious. Could be an alternate title for this show. I think
Madeleine Stewart
So do tell us more. We want to know more.
Alex Reimers
Another date a few years ago, I met a girl in another small country town. We had lunch at a cafe where she proceeded to Huck snot out of her nose onto the concrete and insisted on talking to my support worker more than me. I need 24 / seven hour care. For context, it felt like she was dating my support worker and not me. I quickly finished my lunch and left as fast as I could, both my worker and I screamed all the way home in between laughing fits of disgust. I'm still looking, to be honest, it's hard out her.
Alistair Baldwin
That is for sure
Madeleine Stewart
Can you share any memorable or funny experiences you've had while dating, especially online?
Alex Reimers
My very first experience of online dating was with a guy from Melbourne, as I live in central Victoria. When we met, he chose to wear a hoodie and track suit pants to our dinner date, refusing to take off his sunglasses inside because he didn't want to be recognised by authority, I decided to give him a chance, because I felt very behind in the dating scene compared to my friends who were able bodied. So as it progressed, it became super apparent that he had only one thing on his mind, and he kept asking to do it in the accessible bathroom. I got the ick really bad, and ended the date. A few days later, he contacted me for money, and I blocked him, not sure what sort of transaction he thought our date was, but definitely one of them.
Madeleine Stewart
There's much to unpack there, Alex, lets be real, the track pants, the sunglasses,
Alistair Baldwin
Demanding money. I can't believe it
Madeleine Stewart
I mean, also offering to fuck in the accessible bathroom. We've all been there. We've all suggested that.
Alistair Baldwin
Well, Alex, can I ask you how you've observed the social attitudes towards you when you've been dating?
Alex Reimers
When I'm dating someone, I receive a lot of stares, misguided compliments, like how beautiful and it's so nice to see, which implies that my dates are doing me a service by dating me. I even get looks of shock, followed by whispers like they are dating or they are kissing. Once my long term ex partner was asked if they were my father and my support worker who was with us at the time, my mother. I don't know if any of us fully recovered from the horror and disbelief.
Alistair Baldwin
I mean, that's happened to me, but it's more because daddies are my time. Yeah. That's a little on purpose, but I definitely relate to that experience of people thinking that the abled person dating a disabled person must be some great person doing a huge favour.
Madeleine Stewart
Now this is a bit of an intimate question for you, Alex, as an advocate for disabled folk exploring their sexuality, how has your own experience of Wink, wink, self exploring maybe? How's that been for you?
Alex Reimers
My journey with self exploration has been a difficult one due to my lack of fine motor skills and limited accessible toys for adults with disabilities. In the past few years, I've just discovered ways to masturbate, and I'm still finding new opportunities to explore. Our society, sadly, doesn't cater for any sort of access needs, which not only hurts but also puts us in danger of decreasing in mental health and suffering abuse. I'm speaking from experience, and I know that the NDIS system doesn't recognise it as being reasonable and necessary, but it's a human right, and need to explore pleasure.
Alistair Baldwin
Alex, why do you think there's still so much stigma around disabled people dating and finding love?
Alex Reimers
I think there continues to be a lack of awareness and education, even though we're becoming increasingly more inclusive as a community, people are still not sure and frightened by disability. So if you're curious, ask, as long as you're coming from a good place and a considerate. In my experience, our society isn't built to be accessible for minorities such as disability, and so we still need to advocate for change. We are different, and that's what makes us beautiful.
Madeleine Stewart
Often we forget about that, and you're right. So many marginalised groups and we normally, we all need to remember that
Alistair Baldwin
yeah, and the world would be really boring without any of us
Madeleine Stewart
Yeah, yeah. What plain Jane's they'd be, you know boring.
Alistair Baldwin
Well, Alex, you've been so charming and funny on this episode, I'm sure when it goes live, you'll have a few new suitors sliding into those DMS.
Madeleine Stewart
Yeah, yeah, only if you dress well and you don't like putting a snot on the ground. I think the bar's on the ground. We can certainly get you a couple of dates from the podcast
Madeleine Stewart
Our next guest is Megan Walsh. Megan Walsh is a speech pathologist, completing her PhD at Deakin University after attending Northwestern University in the United States, living in Victoria since 2007 as a clinician, her focus has always been on working with people who use alternative and augmentive communication, otherwise known as AAC. And we all know communication is the foundation of any good love story. Welcome Megan. Hello
Megan Walsh
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Alistair Baldwin
Thanks so much for coming on the show. Now to kick off, I was wondering. There's obviously still so much discomfort around disabled people in society being shown as romantic people, as sexual people, I think especially for AAC users. Why do you think that is? Where do you think that fear or resistance to seeing people's full sexual identities comes from?
Megan Walsh
People often assume that they have a significant intellectual disability, and so a lot of what they face is what people with significant intellectual disabilities face, which is getting understood either as an eternal child and they don't have a sexuality or being described as deviant, you know? So the focus is all about on challenging sexual behavior. I'm putting that in air quotes for anyone listening. But it's on managing appropriate behavior, instead of this person is a person with agency who is a sexual being,
Alistair Baldwin
Right. So it's an extreme polar opposites of extreme infantilisation, or you're just this other kind of thing
Alistair Baldwin
You're kind of, we don't want to engage
Megan Walsh
yeah, yeah, instead of understanding that this person is a human who is a sexual and gendered being.
Alistair Baldwin
So do you think that's one of the biggest myths around AAC users when it comes I mean, what are some of the other misconceptions, maybe that people have around people who use AAC to communicate?
Megan Walsh
I think that assumption that they don't have capacity is a huge driver of why so in general, we don't even think about talking to AAC users about sexuality. It just doesn't even come to mind that you would bring it up
Alistair Baldwin
Would you say, as someone who's obviously done a lot of training and education in speech pathology, is that something that you think is lacking maybe in some of these academic institutions about how to approach these topics, specifically with AAC users,
Madeleine Stewart
Or even, like, just sexual agency and able to communicate that, or things like that?
Megan Walsh
Yeah, yeah, I just had big agreeing facial expressions. But yes, so when we, when I was looking at the research that had been done before about communication, about sexuality for AAC users, my research is with AAC users who have cerebral palsy. And there was so little research with AAC users, particularly with adolescent young adults, teenagers, people going through puberty, that I also looked in the cerebral palsy research. So all the cerebral palsy research predominantly excluded people with communication disabilities, right? And then so that. So in this whole comprehensive search, I found four articles that talked about people who adolescents who use AAC, and none of them talked to the AAC users themselves about sexuality, not a single one.
Alistair Baldwin
We're just talking to what doctors and families
Megan Walsh
Parents, educators, doctors,
Megan Walsh
Yeah. And so the idea, it's, it's brand new, the idea that you can even talk to teenage AAC users about sexuality themselves.
Alistair Baldwin
Right? That's how they might want to talk to someone else themselves, right?
Megan Walsh
That's how far behind going into this research and as a clinician, I was looking at communication about sexuality. So I was looking at, do they have access to be able to say the words they want to say, and are people talking to them about this, and what do they want to be able to talk about? And I didn't see what is now very obvious, which is communication and those interactions is part of how you develop your identity. And so every time we're not talking to a young AAC user about relationships or sex or puberty, you know, or gender identity, it's telling them that we don't think that they can be that, yeah, we have a profound impact on their identity and an impact on their development. You know, even of understanding things, some of the young people in my research hadn't, didn't understand what consent was because nobody talked to them about it before.
Alistair Baldwin
There's no one mode of communication, which is right or better than another, but communication itself is so foundational to building these like flirting or something like that, like those early moments of, I guess two people connecting is, you know, the initiation of communication. But I suppose for people who maybe the way they communicate is not, I guess, taught to other people or people have less understanding. Have you seen anything in your research about, I don't know, that first moment of flirting, or those first dates, and how that typically might go?
Megan Walsh
Yeah, less in my research with the young people. But there's, there's some research about adult AAC users with physical disabilities. And there was some research in San Francisco with men with cerebral palsy, including some AAC users. That research included AAC users. And it was really interesting, because the all that research talks about creative ways of communicating, you know, establishing intimate ways of communicating. You know, when you're in bed with a partner, like somebody, there was a gay man who with his partner when they were having sex, he would suck on his partner's finger, and his partner would say letters of the alphabet, and then he would like suck a different way to say yes, that letter. Oh, and there are deaf, blind people who have created some signs for their partners that they can do to their partners back.
Madeleine Stewart
This is sexy. Oh my gosh. I'd love someone to do all these things to me.
Alistair Baldwin
One of the things with sex is that, like, often it's over way too quickly, and it's like, I would love if someone could slow it down a little bit, I think there's so much, it's almost the curb cut effect where, like, We honestly, could all benefit from learning more creative, lateral ways of communicating in the bedroom.
Megan Walsh
There's also people, particularly people with cerebral palsy, speaking and AAC users, who talked about how it's a bit tricky to perform kind of your gender, or to perform some of those traditional flirting things when you can't make your body move in that way. So those men in San Francisco talked about like they can't put their arm around a woman, and so they had to find other ways to kind of show that they were caring, or to do those flirting motions. You know, a light touch is not always. Easy when you have cerebral palsy. So they were finding other ways to kind of do that flirting.
Alistair Baldwin
Well, that intersection of how disability affects gender presentation is so interesting. I mean, you know, someone with muscular dystrophy very weak, it's like so much of male identity is being able to open jars, yes. And I'm like, where does that leave a guy like me. I'm, like, always going to the women my life, being like, Can you open this sprite for me, please? And I'm, like, all of the sitcoms I watched growing up was, like, men's major role in the house is opening jars.
Megan Walsh
Yeah, yeah. And there's something about AAC users who use speech generating devices as well in terms of identity, because it's, it's pretty tricky to have tone, you know, if you think about, you know, your phone doing something like speech to text, you know, it's in like, the Google Maps kind of tone
Alistair Baldwin
Yeah, there's not, like, a sultry mode that you can set when you're moving into, like, sex conversation,
Megan Walsh
yeah. So a lot of AAC users either don't use that in those moments because also it's really slow or will supplement with their body language and, you know, with their voice and things like that.
Madeleine Stewart
Is there a moment from your work that really challenged your own assumptions about how people with complex communication needs experience love or intimacy that you can think of?
Megan Walsh
So there was a young woman, she was about 14 at the time, and I'd worked with I'd been her speechie since she was three, and I had learned about helping build sort of consent protocols for personal support, you know, so that she could start saying yes and no to when people were providing her with personal care, like toileting, bathing. And so I sat down with her mum, not with her at age 14. Sat down with her mum to work out what words she would need in her AAC device to be able to talk about this stuff. And I asked her mum, what do you call her vagina when you go to wipe it? And her mum said, we don't. And I said, Oh, it's like, if you have a euphemism, it's fine, you know? And her mum's like, No, we just don't talk about it. So for this young woman who had has a profound physical disability, she couldn't look down and see her her genitals. She couldn't reach down. She didn't have the fine motor skills to touch her genitals, and here, in her entire lifetime, I hadn't provided her with the vocabulary to talk about her genitals, and that was such a reflection of me, of like this. This person is 14 years old, and I have not given them the power to know their own body. And so that's and that's the level we're at, you know, so in terms of intimacy and sexuality, like we're not even giving people words to talk about their own bodies.
Madeleine Stewart
A lot of parents don't want to talk about body or sexuality with their disabled children. And yeah, I think that can be a little bit of a dangerous thing to do.
Alistair Baldwin
Yeah, I feel like having language to talk about this stuff is really important as well, because it's when stuff goes unnamed that a lot of abuses of power can happen as well, and if people don't know how to express that something's happening to them. A lot of other people can take advantage of that kind of gap in communication.
Megan Walsh
You know, earlier you asked me sort of what, what the biggest myths and misconceptions were and things like that. And I talked about people are infantilised, you know, and treated like eternal children. They're also the main thing people talk about is abuse, right? And so AAC users are being seen as potential abuse victims. How do you form your identity as a sexual person? How do you form a healthy sexual identity when all you ever hear about is that you're gonna get abused. We're protecting you from abuse.
Alistair Baldwin
Sexuality is always seen as this thing to be addressed or fixed, or if there's no space talking about it as like a positive thing, then just protecting them. The only thing they're internalising is the threat of
Megan Walsh
You're painted as a victim, instead of, again, somebody with agency.
Alistair Baldwin
Well on that, if there was one major thing that you could change in society when it comes to how we're viewing AAC users. What would that be? If you could make one big you know, can yell it to the prime minister or what are some of the structural things
Megan Walsh
it's understanding that people with disabilities, including AAC users, can be and are people who can provide care and who can have great sex. And I think there's, there's this understanding of disabled people where it's, it's almost like disabled people are receivers. Right, receivers of support, receivers of care. And it's kind of like, no and like, you know we were talking about before with different ways to communicate during sex and during relationships. There's so much that we can all learn from the way disabled people have sex and the way disabled people go about dating. And so it's like, take it out of this sort of like other and less than group to this almost like we how we've learned a lot in the queer community about how you can do things differently and in an awesome way. It's like, yeah, people with disabilities have really awesome ways of going about this
Alistair Baldwin
Absolutely and often, the default care dynamics that we've received societally in, you know, by heterosexual relationships and stuff like that, aren't necessarily good, like we should all be taking from different relationship dynamics, because, you know, the default nuclear thing isn't like what we're all aiming for and falling short of
Megan Walsh
Difference can be so awesome.
Madeleine Stewart
Well, I think that's that's it for us today. That's all of our questions. We've had such a wonderful time with you. Thank you.
Alistair Baldwin
Thanks for coming on the show. Very informative.
Megan Walsh
No worries. Thank you.
Madeleine Stewart
Thank you so much everybody for listening to love without limits. What was your highlight? Alistair.
Alistair Baldwin
I loved hearing about Megan's research into people with AAC and using different devices to find self expression and really affirm their identity through the words and the vocal qualities of their devices. It was so interesting.
Madeleine Stewart
Yeah, and I really loved Alex. Alex. Alex has such incredible stories, and I loved the story where her date fell in love with her support worker. I think that's the story that'll stick with me for a while.
Alistair Baldwin
Oh my god. And speaking of looking for love, Imaan is just so funny. I fell in love with him today. What a ball of lineup we had.
Madeleine Stewart
Speak for yourself. Well, thank you for all of our guests for sharing their personal and professional wisdom with us on our journey towards love, whether it's romantic or platonic or self love,
Alistair Baldwin
I believe it was Shakespeare who wrote, If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else? And I think all of our guests today helped show that. So that's it for love without limits today. Thank you.
Madeleine Stewart
Bye.
Madeleine Stewart
This has been love without limits, hosted by us, Madeline Stewart and Alastair Baldwin
Alistair Baldwin
And produced by Eliza hull, in partnership with SBS and attitude foundation. SBS team is Joel supple and Max Gosford, recorded at session in progress.
