Social Acceptance of Cognitively and Physically Disabled Men’s and Women’s Sexuality
摘要
Historically, disabled people have been subjected to involuntary sterilization, gender-segregated institutionalization, and restricted sexual rights. The Disability Rights Movement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s to collectively fight paternalism within the home and systemic oppression within society. This social justice movement gave birth to Disability culture, fostering pride, a sense of community, and a new cultural identity. People with disabilities have experienced contradictory stereotypes with respect to their scrutinized sexuality. Ableist attitudes have framed them as unfit parents or as burdens to society. The present study was designed to support Disability culture, to measure attitudes about sexuality within the disability community. Specifically, the experiment assessed the general public’s social acceptance of sexual behaviors as a function of disability type (physical, cognitive) and gender across four aspects of sexuality (sexual rights, parenting, non-reproductive sexual behavior, and sexual self-control). Three hypotheses were tested on 303 participants using a 3 × 2 × 4 mixed factorial design, with target disability and target gender as between-groups variables and sexual behavior type as a within-group variable. To assess both disability types, we modified and expanded a version of the Attitudes to Sexuality Questionnaire (Individuals with an Intellectual Disability). In addition to expanding the ASQ instrument, images were standardized and used to assess perceptions of people with a “mild” disability. Overall, the public was fairly accepting of disabled individuals’ sexuality. Perceptions were dependent on disability type and sexual behavior type. Implications for policies and practices are discussed to support sexual self-determination and agency within Disability culture.