Today in the United States, we are experiencing a movement to recognize and appreciate a diverse array of sexual identities and epistemologies. Amazing progress is occurring at an unprecedented rate. While there is of course pushback against our growing acceptance and celebration of difference, the long arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. However, the current state of popular sexuality discourse does not include everyone. People with intellectual disabilities are often left out of the conversation. Oftentimes, generalizations of intellectual disability and ability to consent strip any notion of sexuality from disabled individuals. These generalizations are a form of sexual ableism, a system which, according to Michael Gill in Already …show more content…
“Women with Intellectual Disability: Their Sexual Lives in the 21st Century” reviews research “demonstrating what women with intellectual disability are saying about their intimate relationships and sexual lives in the 21st century” (124). McCarthy finds that as a result of the combination of focus on abuse and preventing reproduction and larger misogynistic norms of relationships, women with intellectual disabilities generally report dissatisfaction with sexual experiences (McCarthy 2014 125). While they felt positively about caring for someone, a variety of experiences contributed to their negative outlook. Many women had been thwarted in attempts to engage in sexual relationships, necessitating “sneaking around” (McCarthy 2015 126). A majority reported receiving little to no pleasure from sex (McCarthy 2014 126). In addition, women who reported being abstinent did not, in general, decide to abstain out of a positive choice but out of fear of inevitable adverse consequences of being sexual. Overall, McCarthy concludes in her book Sex & Women with Learning Disabilities that women with intellectual disabilities lack sexual agency, “absence of the women deciding for themselves what they wanted to do, with whom, when and how” (203). Rather than feeling empowered to make choices about their own lives, these women are controlled by partners and parents. In these experiences, discourse around sexual ableism finds roots in broader feminist critiques of norms of
Eli Clare in Reading Against the Grain mentioned that the mainstream culture has a tendency to stereotype people into eroticizes culture such as thinking all African Americans males and Latino women are hyper-sexual, perceiving Asians as passive beings, and assuming that disabled individuals have no sexual desires. Somehow people regurgitate these stereotypes as if they’re empirical facts. Objectification usually reinforces or maintains the institutionalized power differences, which can deprive some groups such as the disabled from self-determination. The section of Pride and Exile brings to light how some members of the disabled community feels that they are denied of their personal autonomy. In Clares case, she explains how the MDA fundraisers
As mentioned previously, the chances of becoming disabled over one’s lifetime are high, yet disabled people remain stigmatized, ostracized, and often stared upon. Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University, Mark Mossman shares his personal experience as a kidney transplant patient and single-leg amputee through a written narrative which he hopes will “constitute the groundwork through which disabled persons attempt to make themselves, to claim personhood or humanity” while simultaneously exploiting the “palpable tension that surrounds the visibly disabled body” (646). While he identifies the need for those with limitations to “make themselves” or “claim personhood or humanity,” Siebers describes their desires in greater detail. He suggests people with
Gender has been broadly used within the humanities and social sciences as both a means to categories dissimilarities, and as a logical concept to give details differences. In both the humanities and social sciences. Disability studies has appeared partly as a result of challenges to give details gendered experience of disability and partly as a challenge to contemporary feminist theory on gender which fails to take description of disability. Disabled people have frequently been standing for as without gender, as asexual creatures, as freaks of nature, hideous, the ‘Other’ to the social norm. In this way it may be taking for granted that for disabled people gender has little bearing. However, the image of disability may be make physically powerful by gender - for women a sense of intensified passivity and helplessness, for men a dishonesties masculinity make by put into effected dependence. Moreover these images have real consequences in terms of
Popular culture does not showcase the intimate lives of people with disabilities because society does not acknowledge that people with disabilities can participate in sexual activities. Nussbaum explores this common misconception in her novel, through the characters of Yessenia Lopez.and Joanne Madsen.Yessenia seems more comfortable with her sexauality than most teenagers with disabilities.She
Society must realize the “collective obligation and responsibility to treat people with disabilities not as recipients of charity and goodwill, not as objects of compassion, but as the primary subjects of justice” (Kuick 292). Every individual deserves the opportunity to be sexually active, regardless of his or her physical or mental abilities.
In today’s society, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community has been more accepted then in years prior, especially in the 1960’s and years prior to that, when anyone in the LGBT community would be horribly ridiculed, if not tortured. However, there still lies a long road for the LGBT community, as it pertains to human rights, equality, and particularly, marriage equality. Each individual has their own perception on marriage equality, whether it is based on moral basis, or on a humanistic (humane) basis, which is the belief of not denying anyone the right to be who they are, and therefore love who they love. However, as a society, we must examine the facts, as well as ourselves, as we address the debate for marriage equality for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community.
She saw that the disabled were being excluded and placed in custodial institutions. They were often ignored and neglected, however she knew that they had many talents and gifts to offer.
Sex is one of the most central themes in society today, with generally everybody in the world, adults and children, either seeing it in the mass media or taking part in it, whether it be for their career, for reproductive reasons, or for pleasure. Because of its predominance, sexuality plays an important, if not the most important, role in social inequality, causing double standards, violence and internal self-worth issues for minorities. Factors such as pornography, prostitution, and the way people view homosexuality and intersexuality as repugnant all influence the prejudice ways in which society views and treats women, homosexuals, and intersexuals.
In the United States, 4.9% of the population is considered intellectually disabled. In other words, from a base population of 287,572,700 people, 14,144,300 of them have an intellectual disability. In the state of South Carolina, 5.6% of the population has an intellectual disability. This means from a base population of 4,311,200, an estimated 242,600 are considered to have an intellectual disability. This survey included all ages, races, all genders, and all education levels (“Disability Statistics”).
High functioning Special Education students in grades six through eight have to sit the same SC-Ready Assessment as the Regular Education students. In the self-contained Intellectual Disability class, there are twenty students, 14 males and 6 females, age ranges from eleven to fifteen years old. These students are mostly African American boys with different socioeconomic background. Some of these students have behavior issue and are moved from school to school. It is assumed that these students have already possess the necessary skills to cite evidence and create a summary since they are high functioning. Majority of the students have Mild Intellectual Disability and are intellectually two to three years below their peer. They are average readers
Disability studies, like Cyberfeminism, is still developing. It’s an area of analysis and activism that’s open to some interpretation, accounting for the individual lived experiences of both individuals with impairments, and others who are affected by the stigmas disability carries. Disability is its own dichotomy that needs to be critically considered, and ultimately disbanded so that worth is not determined by a perceive lack or abundance of anything. Kafer concludes her argument for a more politically situated disability by reminding the reader that we all have “sifting abilities,” whether that be of body or of mind (13). Age, accidents, and environment can all change our level of ability at any time. So, therefore, the historical, social,
Being disabled is just a single facet of their life, and they have the same capacity to be happy as anyone else. While these three authors have different reasons to write their essays, be it media unfairness, ignorance, or ethical disputes, they all share a basic principle: The disabled are not viewed by the public as “normal people,” and they are unfairly cast away from the public eye. The disabled have the same capacity to love, desire and hurt as any other human being, and deserve all of the rights and privileges that we can offer them. They should be able to enter the same buildings, have representation in the media, and certainly be allowed the right to live.
Throughout Western civilization, culturally hegemonic views on gender and sexuality have upheld a rigid and monolithic societal structure, resulting in the marginalization and dehumanization of millions of individuals who differ from the expected norm. Whether they are ridiculed as freaks, persecuted as blasphemers, or discriminated as sub-human, these individuals have been historically treated as invisible and pushed into vulnerable positions, resulting in cycles of poverty and oppression that remain prevalent even in modern times. Today, while many of these individuals are not publicly displayed as freaks or persecuted under Western law, women, queer, and intersexed persons within our society still nonetheless find themselves under constant
Every day in America, a woman loses a job to a man, a homosexual high school student suffers from harassment, and someone with a physical or mental disability is looked down upon. People with disabilities make up the world’s largest and most disadvantaged minority, with about 56.7 million people living with disabilities in the United States today (Barlow). In every region of the country, people with disabilities often live on the margins of society, deprived from some of life’s fundamental experiences. They have little hope of inclusion within education, getting a job, or having their own home (Cox). Everyone deserves a fair chance to succeed in life, but discrimination is limiting opportunities and treating people badly because of their disability. Whether born from ignorance, fear, misunderstanding, or hate, society’s attitudes limit people from experiencing and appreciating the full potential a person with a disability can achieve. This treatment is unfair, unnecessary, and against the law (Purdie). Discrimination against people with disabilities is one of the greatest social injustices in the country today. Essential changes are needed in society’s basic outlook in order for people with disabilities to have an equal opportunity to succeed in life.
As a result of eugenic beliefs perpetuated throughout society, “The mentally disabled [partner] constituted a threat to communal morality, as would any potential offspring who might inherit the parent’s ethical and physical deficiencies and thus impede genetic improvement,” (Arant 70). This concept of the disabled presenting a threat to the community which must be contained is not only evident in the aforementioned works, but other works as well and presents a key motivation (however despicable and unsound) for many of the imprisoning actions detailed in early American disability literature. The short story, “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies” captures where these concepts of moral intelligence and containment meet. The story alludes to the idea that the three, self-righteous women who see themselves as protectors of the disabled protagonist, Lily believe that they have a higher moral intelligence than her and as such have the right to control and govern her life. They see themselves as the righteous protectors of the community, thus when it is discovered that Lily may have been sexually promiscuous they take it upon themselves to contain her and prevent the threat of her sexual maturity from ruining the morality of the community. It is evident that they do not care how she is contained, only that her risk is removed when they vacillate in between sending her to an institution or marrying her off. They bribe her and ultimately use