Sex Education

Health Education Journal, 2024

Background: The pathologisation of people with disability 1 has long affected the educational quality of the sexuality education they receive. Whilst concern for people with disability has been growing in some comprehensive sexuality education settings, the quality of education in these spaces is variable and typically accommodations for people with disability are not made. The lack of accessibility fosters few opportunities to learn about and practise skills related to establishing and maintaining social relationships, including platonic, romantic and sexual relationships, thereby limiting informed decision-making. Moreover, the lack of good quality sexuality education significantly increases the risk of sexual abuse, assault, and family and domestic violence-impacting people with disability's self-determination, autonomy and ultimately, ability to work, live independently, and maintain their mental and physical health. Objective: Few reviews of comprehensive sexuality education programmes for people with disability have been reported. Therefore, four current comprehensive sexuality education programmes for people with disability were reviewed, including their content and the topics included; the feasibility of implementation including costs; different accessibility considerations for varied learners and disabilities; and methods of delivery. This allowed an assessment of their strengths and opportunities for people with disability. Results: The review highlighted strong positive changes occurring within the field, as well as challenges due to funding limitations, and the extensive number of topics under comprehensive sexuality education that need to be addressed in teaching and delivering quality comprehensive sexuality education to people with disability. Conclusion: Informed by the evidence in this review, we advocate for the inclusion of a more comprehensive range of topics, including gender and sexuality diversity within accessible comprehensive sexuality education for people with disability, and the establishment of appropriate forms of teacher education and training to increase confidence and comfort when delivering comprehensive sexuality education to people with disability.

Sex Education, 2018

This paper analyses sexuality and relationship education (SRE) in a Swedish college programme aimed at young people with mobility impairments. Interviews and focus groups were conducted to explore students’ experiences of the structure, content and usefulness of SRE, and college personnel’s SRE practices. Results show that, although many of the issues covered are pertinent for all young people, being disabled raises additional concerns: for example how to handle de-sexualising attitudes, possible sexual practices, and how reliance on assistance impacts upon privacy. Crip theory is used as an analytical framework to identify, challenge and politicise sexual norms and practices. Students’ experiences of living in a disablist, heteronormative society can be used as resources for developing cripistemologies, which challenge the private/public binary that often de-legitimises learners’ experiences and separates them from teachers’ ‘proper’ knowledge production. Crip SRE would likely hold benefits for non-disabled pupils as well, through its use of more inclusive pedagogy and in work to expand sexual possibilities. Crip SRE has the potential to disrupt taken-for-granted dis/ability and sexuality divides as well as to politicise issues that many young people presently experience as ‘personal shortcomings’.

Sexuality and Disability, 2000

The idea of sex and sexuality education in schools is no doubt an intense debate, and issues of who does the teaching, where, how and who is taught; are central to the argument. Schools are important sites for the production and regulation of sexual identities both within the school and beyond. However, schools go to great lengths to forbid expression of sexuality by both children and teachers. Human sexuality is an interesting issue for the young and the old, the layman and the academic alike, even though it is still closeted in many African societies including Lesotho. In this paper I explore and describe the experiences of youth with physical disabilities and how they construct their sexual identities. Data were collected during individual interviews with grade 12 learners living with disabilities, who are members of the Phomolong Support Group in Maseru. The transcribed interviews were analyzed through descriptive analysis.

Tizard Learning Disability Review, 2003

This article explores criminal law reform proposals on the law relating to sexual offences, scheduled for debate in the current Parliamentary session, in order to illustrate the current tension between sexual empowerment and protection of people with learning disabilities from sexual violence. It suggests that law's response to the sexuality of people with learning disabilities, evidenced by the Sexual Offences Bill currently before Parliament, will always be inadequate for as long it is characterised as choosing between protection and empowerment. An alternative conception of sexual rights has the protection to provide a fuller and more persuasive account of the sexuality of men and women with learning disabilities.

Disability & Society

Child: Care, Health and Development, 1995

Child: care, health and development VOLUME 21 NUMBER J 1995 PAGES 3JI-361 O 199s Blackwell Science Ltd Summary This annotation addresses the debate about the availability, taboos, choices and risics concerning the sexuality and abuse of young disabied people, it highiights the vuinerabiiity of some disabied young people and discusses the diiemmas of maintaining the disabied person's dignity, safeguarding his/her independence and recognizing the need for appropriate sex education while providing protection from abuse, it is suggested that statutory agencies as well as iegisiation shouid assume greater responsibiiity for protecting and safeguarding the interests of disabied youngsters, some of whom may risi( physical, emotional and sexuai abuse beyond childhood. The manner in which sexuality and abuse are dealt with often ref iects the way disabled peopie are regarded by the society. This paper attempts to address some of the iegai and conceptuai issues surrounding this area.

2015

America is obsessed with sex, and has been for a long time. However, the realization that people with disabilities have sexual desires is a relatively new idea. Before the 1970s, there was little to no research in this area of sexuality and disability, even within the disability studies literature. To start, it is worth noting what we mean by sexuality. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) defines sexuality “as multifaceted, having biological, social, psychological, spiritual, ethical, and cultural dimensions”. As we will see, this paper adopts the social model of disability. In terms of the quantity of persons with disabilities, over 56 million of US people (almost 20%) have a disability according to the most recent data in 2010. In terms of the amount of people engaging in sex in the US, among adults aged 25–44, about 98% of women and 97% of men had vaginal intercourse, and with 89% of women and 90% of men ever had oral sex with an opposite-sex partner. Despite the numbers of persons with disabilities, the barriers facing sexual expression by this group are so extensive that Siebers argues that those with disabilities are a sexual minority. This category of persons are denied access to sexual experiences and control of their own bodies. Historically the topic of sex and disability “has been stigmatized as taboo.”

Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 2007