Disabilities and sexual expression: A review of the literature

Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, scholars have sought to advance a more nuanced and robust understanding of the sexual lives of disabled people. In doing so, these scholars have identified some of the barriers to sexual expression that disabled people face as well as some of the positive and pleasurable aspects of disabled people's sexual lives. This article reviews research regarding the sexual expression and activity of disabled people as well as some of the challenges to sexual expression that people with disabilities experience. Persons with disabilities—whether they are acquired, congenital, intellectual, physical, and/or sensorial impairments—continue to encounter alienation, stigmatization, and discrimination, particularly in terms of their sexuality. However, I argue that if proper laws, policies, and adequate supports are in place, people with disabilities can further challenge and push past these barriers to engage in a wide array of sexual and erotic acts. Furthermore, although the amount of disability‐sexuality‐related research has increased over past decades, I argue that many intersections of disability and sexuality remain under‐studied and that further research in this field is necessary.     

A rights-based conceptual framework for the social inclusion of children and young persons with an intellectual disability

There is a basic principle that all children and young persons with intellectual disabilities should be able to enjoy citizenship on an equal basis with others. This includes enjoying personal dignity and exercising choice, control and freedom in social, community and cultural life, in keeping with their individual lifestyle preferences and aspirations. There is a need for a stronger human rights narrative to achieve this. This article identifies a conceptual framework for a rights-based approach to the integration of children and young persons with disabilities. Seven components of such a framework are identified: citizenship and social inclusion; recognition; agency; voice; capabilities; equality; and self-realisation. This framework was developed as part of an Irish case study involving consultation with young persons with intellectual disabilities, their parents or guardians and professional staff delivering support services. The rights of children/young persons with intellectual disabilities are essentially those of children generally. While this principle may be obvious in many respects, its implementation presents significant challenges. The need for a transformative narrative and its components are outlined.     

从516份司法裁判文书看残疾人权益保障及其完善

通过梳理涉残疾人案件的司法裁判文书,可以发现残疾人通过司法诉讼寻求权益保护的整体概貌.面对残疾人包括健康权、生存权、公民权、政治权等权益诉求,涉及自然人、法人等多元侵权主体以及司法过程中支持性服务供给、经济成本耗费、裁判结果与预期等诸多问题,必须增强残疾人权利意识与维权能力,多角度、多渠道保护重点权利和规制侵权主体,构建立体的权利救济体系.     

Dangerous Discourses: Anxiety,Desire, and Disability

The pleasure and danger of sexuality thematizes erotic desire as always accompanied by a certain anxiety. Although some anxiety is material and precautionary, I address the issue somewhat differently through investigating the psychic factors at play in the western imaginary. Discomfort with manifestations of erotic desire is most clearly invoked by differential embodiment where the challenge to the normative body not only results in disqualification from discourses of sexuality but also raises the contested question of who is to count as a sexual subject. My purpose is not to inquire empirically into the ways that people with disabilities are denied sexual subjectivity but to ask what is at stake in the cultural imaginary that requires such a closing down of possibilities. I develop a psychoanalytic approach to sexually marked anomalous embodiment and ask what part the link between desire and lack plays in thwarting a positive model of disability and sexuality.     

Sexual Abuse Prevention: A Training Program for Developmental Disabilities Service Providers

Persons with developmental disabilities are at an increased risk for becoming victims of sexual abuse. Research has revealed that the largest group of identified perpetrators of sexual abuse is developmental disability service providers. The purpose of the present study was to develop, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of a sexual abuse prevention training program. Participants were administered a survey assessing knowledge and attitudes before and after the training workshop. Small improvements in knowledge and attitudes about sexual abuse and the sexuality of persons with developmental disabilities were found; however, ge-neral attitudes about individuals with developmental disabilities did not change. Suggestions for future directions in this area are provided.     

Cripping sexualities: An analytic review of theoretical and empirical writing on the intersection of disabilities and sexualities

This paper provides a review of some of the literature addressing the juncture of disabilities and sexualities and invites sociologists to build on this work and take part in this important intersectional field. First, I discuss the central relevance of an intersectional lens for making sense of the unique experiences of queer people with disabilities who are located at the crossroads of various stratified systems. Then, I discuss some of the many unique challenges that queer disabled people face when exploring their sexuality, establishing relationships, and remaining sexual. The invisibility, marginalization, and discrimination of queer people with disabilities in both queer and disability communities are the focus on the third section. The fourth section speaks to current theoretical dialogues between disability studies and queer theory that have illuminated new pathways for theorizing the intersection of disabilities and sexualities, “cripping” sociological theories, and reimagining disability within sociology. As I demonstrate, this literature is growing; however, myriad exciting opportunities for empirical and theoretical sociological exploration remain and I will conclude with a discussion of possible directions for future research.     

Reconstructing the Sexuality of Men with Learning Disabilities: empirical evidence and theoretical interpretations of need

Research and practice in sexuality and learning disability has directly and indirectly highlighted the pathological sexual behaviour of men with learning disabilities, particularly their abuse and exploitation of women with learning disabilities, and relatively high HIV risk sexual behaviour with men without learning disabilities. It is consequently argued that there has been a relative neglect of their wider sexuality and sexual needs. This paper reconstructs this wider agenda, drawing on empirical evidence and theoretical interpretations of need from research and sex education in support of the observations made. In identifying a range of key issues for sexuality work with men with learning disabilities and arguing that they require greater recognition and attention, the paper also provides directional pointers for informing such work and for responding more widely.     

Discriminative Assumptions of Utilitarian Bioethics Regarding Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

'Bioutilitarianism', which is a position presented by the well-known utilitarian philosophers Helga Kuhse, James Rachels and Peter Singer, views the potential existence of infants with intellectual disabilities as less valuable than the existence of 'normal' infants. I will argue that their arguments are based on misleading and biased information about the characteristics of individuals with intellectual disabilities and their quality of life. By ignoring the social constructionist dimension of disability the bioutilitarians make questionable moral conclusions. Also, the underlying assumption of their position is an 'intelligist' intuition, namely that intellectually 'normal' human beings are morally more valuable than human beings with intellectual disabilities. I contend that there is no reasonable basis for viewing infants with intellectual disabilities as being less entitled to life than 'normal' infants or for considering people with intellectual disabilities as less valuable than 'normal' people.     

‘Some people are not allowed to love’: intimate citizenship in the lives of people labelled with intellectual disabilities

Disability helps us think differently about the ‘ideal’ neoliberal-able citizen who may not equate to ideas of productive, sexual, ‘normal’. Intimate citizenship – our rights and access to intimacy – is often ignored by those working with people labelled with intellectual disabilities and in research. In this article, we discuss the outcome of a dialogue between self-advocates labelled with intellectual disabilities, academics, service providers, Aboriginal leaders, students and artists about intimate citizenship through love, intimate work and consumption.     

Sexual Identity and Transformation at a South African University

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of policies ostensibly protecting all persons' rights, and mounting critical academic debate and scholarship on sexuality and sexual orientation, sexual orientation in the academy remains a site of deep contestation. The first section of this paper discusses the national legal framework as a basis from which the state's new social engineering uses liberal human rights as tools for the democratic transformation of society. In the second section, by focusing on the University of the Western Cape, my critique examines the persisting evidence of prejudice and homophobia in South African society alongside seemingly progressive policymaking and intellectual debate. I consider the centrality of national law and policymaking in the restructuring of the higher education environment and assess the extent to which the new education, labour, and other national policies and legislative measures substantively change the climate and culture of higher education institutions. In developing this critique, I map out some of the everyday struggles which may often be marginalised by an over-emphasis on national and institutional policy making for change.     

Undoing Sexual Objectification in the Japanese Socio-Juridical Context: The Human-Rights-Oriented Transmutation of the Conception of "Obscene" Material

Abstract: This article argues that in the socio-psychic phenomenon of the sexual objectification of girls and women manufactured by certain media and the majority of conventionally so-called pornography, woman is represented, perceived, and treated as a sexually materialized object ready to be exploited exclusively as a means to produce sexual gratification, but not at all as an end in herself, i.e. a human subject with her own sexual will and human dignity. The article exposes the social role of sexually objectifying merchandise in rendering the viewer's sexuality compulsive and addictive, and in producing the viewer's psychic desire for sexual violence especially against those who are most vulnerable (such as children, women who were sexually abused as children, women with intellectual disabilities, etc.) by referring to a number of sociological data and actual evidences collected in Japan and North America. As an alternative modality of sexuality, the article proposes sexual intersubjectivity. In light of sexual objectification, this article qualitatively analyzes and criticizes the conventional definition of "obscene" material, which revolve around discipline and order, and that of "pornography", and proposes the human-rights/equality-oriented transmutation of the conception of obscene material. The article argues that merchandise which produces the desire for sexual violence is disqualified as a concretion of the freedom of expression. This article then attempts to examine the constitutionality (referring specifically to the freedom of expression) of Japanese Obscenity Law by delineating the precise criteria of judgment for obscenity itself and the very method of its enforcement.     

Political and economic determinants of expenditure on day services for persons with intellectual disabilities or autism

This study investigates whether the Swedish national entitlement legislation, which is known to be one of the most developed in Europe for persons with intellectual disabilities or autism, accomplishes its aim to provide equal quality of day services independent of location. We estimated a reduced-form model of demand and supply-side determinants of a latent quality variable for day-service programmes using panel data on expenditure per attendee for the 290 Swedish municipalities 2004–2012. We found that expenditure per attendee is among others affected by changes of the local tax base and outcome in elections to the local assemblies. These results imply that rights of persons with intellectual disabilities with regard to equal quality of day services independent of where they live are not fully honoured in budget allocation decisions made by local governments.     

“Empowered Criminals and Global Subjects”: Transnational Norms and Sexual Minorities in India

In this paper, I comparatively examine the influence of transnational advocacy on legal struggles around sex work and homosexuality in contemporary India. While transnational scholars of sexuality understand globalization as a contradictory and uneven process, there has been little attention to how this unevenness is manifest in the realm of sexual rights and law. Based on qualitative research, I show how transnational discourses on health—in particular, HIV/AIDS interventions—and on human rights interact unevenly with national discourses on sexuality. Whereas discourses regarding HIV/AIDS enable sex workers to mobilize at the national level, global anti-trafficking discourses effectively reduce sex workers to “victims.” For Indian LGBTQ groups, discourses regarding the HIV/AIDS epidemic and global human rights enable these groups to problematize the anti-sodomy law in national politics. However, national legal discourses effectively reduce LGBQ individuals to “criminals,” and legal advancements in this arena are uneven. Focusing on this unevenness produced by transnational advocacy this paper highlights how sexual rights are articulated in context of asymmetric and uneven globalizations.     

‘An Ordinary Sexual Life?’:A Review of the Normalisation Principle as It Applies to the Sexual Options of People with Learning Disabilities

This paper explains why the normalisation principle has had so little effect on the sexual options open to people with learning disabilities. It analyses discourses about services and about sexuality and suggests that one implicit role of services is the regulation of sexuality and the creation of sexual boundaries. The paper questions whether there are homogenous sexual values, and challenges the assumption that sexuality is 'natural' arguing that this view is simplistic and hides the extent to which rules about sexual behaviour are applied on the basis of social inequalities. Thus, the paper explores assumptions and ideologies about sexuality, normality and integration and reinstates all three concepts to a problematical status. It questions the ways in which people with learning disabilities are really free to be 'sexual' and the penalties they face in breaking out of the roles which have been prescribed for them.     

Kenyan Religious Leaders’ Views on Same-Sex Sexuality and Gender Nonconformity: Religious Freedom versus Constitutional Rights

Religion plays an important role in framing the public discourse on sexuality, especially in countries where religion fully permeates social life. We explored the perspectives of Kenyan religious leaders on sexual and gender diversity in their country’s specific context. A total of 212 Catholic, Islamic, and Protestant leaders from urban centers and rural townships completed a self-administered questionnaire specifically developed for this study. The leaders’ perspectives were predominantly negative. Limited acceptance was conditional on sexual minorities not engaging in same-sex practices or seeing such practices as sinful. A substantial minority (37%) endorsed the use of violence for maintaining social values, especially regarding homosexuality and gender nonconformity. The majority of religious leaders agreed on the difference between civil law and religious doctrine. Human rights principles enshrined in Kenya’s Constitution were considered to be applicable to sexual and gender minorities. Decriminalization of same-sex sexuality was seen as against one’s religion. Perspectives were less negative if leaders were familiar with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. Interventions that promote intergroup contact could be effective in changing religious leaders’ mind-sets and advancing human rights and health for sexual and gender minorities.     

Philosophy and profound disability: learning from experience

Reflection on profound and multiple learning difficulties and disabilities raises a series of questions in moral and political philosophy, a claim supported by philosophical argument but also given credence by human testimony, some examples of which are presented here. I introduce three young people with profound learning disabilities, before presenting testimony on their behalf, organised so as to coincide with a series of related philosophical questions about human dignity, respect, citizenship and dependency. I suggest that there are implications that apply to all people and not only to those with profound learning difficulties.     

Exploratory research on the death and survival of neonates with congenital disorders in North Korea

In 2016, North Korea ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). However, previous data and the testimonies of North Koreans have suggested that infants born with congenital disorders are either being euthanized or else left unattended resulting in their deaths. The study focuses on the question, “How is the life or death of infants born with congenital disorders determined during childbirth in North Korea?” In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 North Korean refugees who were involved as doctors, nurses, or party officials in the policies and practices related to persons with disabilities. We analyzed the interviews using the Grounded Theory with constant comparison and confirmed that infants born with congenital defects were intentionally euthanized with the acquiescence of the North Korean political party, hospitals, or their parents. It was also observed that children with disabilities in North Korea are subjected to severe human rights abuses. The dismal conditions in North Korean society have made parents unwilling to and incapable of raising their disabled children. To preserve the lives and dignity of infants born with disabilities, systematic and profound changes are necessary in North Korean disability policies to comply with international disability rights standards. This study remains at an exploratory stage due to obstacles in accessing research data on North Korean governmental policies and the lack of credible statistics on persons with disabilities. Nevertheless, the current study offers a deeper insight and understanding of the actual conditions in North Korea. This study is significant as it addresses and shares the issues of human rights and welfare of persons with disabilities in North Korea with the concerned members of the international community.     

The politics of sexual citizenship: commercial sex and disability

This paper breaks a long silence by bringing together two areas of literature that have generally been considered separately: that of sexuality and disability with findings from studies on sex work. Presenting empirical findings from two studies, one with sex workers who work from indoor sex markets and the other with men who buy sex, this paper exposes the existing relationships and practices between men with physical and sensory impairments who seek out commercial sexual services from female sex workers. In the discussion the politics surrounding sexual rights and commercial sex will be addressed. In the context of commercial sex, quality of life issues, complex power dynamics and the common ground between disabled people and sex workers rights are discussed. This paper considers the negative aspects of promoting commercial sex for people with impairments, as well as the positive aspects regarding the wider campaign for sexual citizenship. Finally, I set out recommendations and a new research and policy agenda that investigates the complexities of commercial and facilitated sex.     

Romanian approach to media portrayals of disability

There is a wide range of media representations of disability, but not just because of the societal stigma. They are a function of norms of journalism as well as biases among people with disabilities themselves. This article is a contribution to the issue of social representation of persons with disabilities from a Romanian perspective, which will help to witness the transformation of the general perception of persons with disabilities by seeing the evolution of the terms used to name disability in crucial years of the socio‐political development of Romania (1989, 1990 and 2003). The existence of different categories of representations will reveal the evolution of society, which switched from a culture of protection to a culture of promotion for people with disabilities.     

Sexual professionalism: for whom? The case of sexual facilitation in Swedish personal assistance services

Sexuality is a taboo subject in disability services, leading to insecurity for both service users and personnel about how to handle upcoming situations. In Sweden, there is also a lack of policy in this area, highlighting the need to study sexuality both as an individual and a political, and in this case also, depoliticized issue. A critical feminist policy analysis reveals that norms around disability, sexuality and professionalism in a particular legal, political and cultural context strongly influence the willingness to recognize disabled people’s sexual rights. The Swedish case indicates a need for increased transnational work to develop ethical, professional and non-discriminatory rights-based approaches to sexual facilitation.