The Sexual Needs and Rights of People with Impairments

No longer are we able to control totally the environment in which society’s more vulnerable members are cared for; they now have a say in that care and their needs within the system. This has in the past caused major heartache for many parents who have struggled to let go of their dependent offspring and who have found it difficult to entrust the care of their son or daughter to another. Yet the overwhelming majority of young adults leave home and adapt to their new independence. It is hard for a child with cerebral palsy, a learning disability or spina bifida, to develop the skills of independent or near independent living, but thousands of young adults out there in the community show it can be done, where the Social Model has been applied. They are frequently less fearful than their parents about leaving home. The new Human Rights legislation enshrines the rights of the individual, no matter what their impairment, to lead a life that allows for the maximum potential of that person to be achieved. It adds a new dimension to the Social Model and provides a legal impetus for change. There is an analogy with feminist movements, which have moved away from the notion of women as victims to seeing women as active participants in processes that objectify and dominate them and towards trying to alter this.

Risks

There are risks to be run by individuals who try to challenge Society’s conventions, and organisations managing the care of individuals are naturally anxious about their responsibility in law where the individual puts him/herself at risk. Hunt, writing of risk and responsibility, states that we live in a current climate which denies responsibility and criticises the “responses to risks in which individuals refuse to accept responsibility for tackling risks resulting from their own choices and transfer responsibility and blame onto others.” Fear of litigation is a powerful inhibitor of freedom. This and other issues will be discussed in the chapters that follow.

This book aims to address some of these tangled legal and professional dilemmas; while also attempting to look beneath the care framework at the effects of impairment and dependence on the sexuality of disabled individuals. Part of this process is to examine the impact of impairment on the sexual and emotional development of human beings, and their sexual conditioning, so that we may gain a holistic understanding of them, and ourselves, as people.

The cases I have cited in the book are all real people, and real situations, but any identifying detail has been changed. I have included some information too from people who gave me permission to use their experiences, and I owe them my thanks.