Issues of sexuality and relationships

Sexuality in the lives of people with intellectual disability is almost always conflated with sexual abuse, sexual behaviours, sexual knowledge and questions about capacity to “be” sexual. Rarely is sexuality discussed in a more holistic way that acknowledges pleasure, desire, identity and “self-authored” sexual expression. Writers like Michael Gill (2015) suggested this is due to sexual ableism which he defined as “the system of imbuing sexuality with determinations of qualification to be sexual based on criteria of ability, intellect, morality, physicality, appearance …” (p. 3). Through this lens, sexuality in the lives of people with intellectual disability is mediated by ideas about capacity and competence, assumptions of desirability and overshadowed by a discourse of risk and vulnerability. Foley (2017) reported that underpinning this discourse is a “paternalistic regime” whereby the sexual lives of people with intellectual disability are strongly surveilled, often by parents or other caregivers. He described this regime as being played out where people with intellectual disability, despite their chronological adulthood, “either must ask permission and/or are prevented by their parents from taking control over their social/sexual lives” (p. 6)