Conversations about sex after illness, disease or the onset of disability tend to stall on the same question: How far does the sex you’re having now fall short of the sex you used to have?

That comparison can make it difficult to imagine what satisfying sex might look like when pain, fatigue, reduced mobility, changes in sensation or difficulty holding certain positions make familiar sex harder to sustain. Some people keep trying to reproduce the sex they used to have. Others withdraw from sex altogether.

Sexual scripts are cultural and interpersonal routines that guide who initiates sex, what activities follow and how it should end. Traditional ones tend to centre penile-vaginal intercourse as “real sex,” and everything else is treated as tangential — a warm-up or an afterthought.

Adapting to these changes tends to require sexual flexibility — a willingness to explore new and different ways of experiencing sexual satisfaction, pleasure and intimacy.

Sex toys can help facilitate that shift. Used as accessibility tools, they can deliver controlled stimulation, reduce the physical effort sex requires and broaden what satisfying sex can involve and look like.

From taboo to useful toolkit

For many years, sex toys were associated with films like Secretary and........

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