The Sexual Needs and Rights of People with Impairments

These rights are enshrined in law, and on top of this layer of statutory legislation, there is also a professional set of standards that aims to protect clients from exploitation by their carers and families. This set of standards upholds the rights of clients to protection and in some cases may be a more compelling right than their right to sexual freedom. We need to adhere closely to these standards, including our professional duty of care for the client, while questioning our own value judgements and assumptions. This is a difficult task. Most of us who are at present not experiencing a disability will develop health and mobility problems if we live long enough, and many of us, especially if female, will end up caring for another. Our best hope is that those caring for us will pay attention to our needs and wishes, providing they are not too destructive, and will give us room to be ourselves, without patronising us; enabling us to maintain the relationships we have and to form new ones. We should strive for no less for our clients.

Changes in the Sexual Climate

Times have changed. The sexual mores of twenty or thirty years ago are now no more. Consider the changes: we now have access to pornography, internet sex lines, telephone sex lines, sexual activity disguised as massage parlours, escort agencies, and the like. Sexual words are heard on radio and television and programme after programme is devoted to sexuality in all its manifestations. We can advertise for sexual partners; we can hire sexually explicit videos, we can visit sex shops. These are rights and liberties that everyone has. Couples live together without getting married, homosexuality is more and more accepted, and transgendered people have more of a place in our society than before. This is not to say that prejudice and legal anomalies do not exist, only that things have changed and are continuing to change. All of this has an impact on the aware disabled person.

When we consider the needs of people with impairments and those caring for them, we can see that the social and the medical models may be in opposition at times, as staff unwittingly impose their own moral values on what they consider is best for their client, rather than their clients becoming enabled to decide for themselves. There are therefore two factors that we need to separate in this whole debate: the rights of clients as enshrined in European and UK law, and they and their carers’ judgements and beliefs. We may not like the existence of telephone sex lines, but we all have the legal right to use them, as long as we can pay for the call. I have strong reservations about prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation, but whatever my reservations it is the law that states the rights of the individual and dictates how sanctions will be applied.