There are many reasons for these appalling statistics, including their vulnerability at the hands of caretakers, but additionally there’s this: disabled people don’t have equal access to sexual health care and sexual education, and when there is an assault, they are often not believed. According to one study at the University of Michigan, as many as 40% of women with physical disabilities experience sexual assault or physical violence in their lifetimes, and more than 90% of all people with developmental disabilities experience sexual assault. Still, study after study of attitudes of the non-disabled towards the disabled show how many people have misconceptions about the sexuality of people with various disabilities – the primary one being that they simply don’t have sexuality.Īnd when an individual’s sexuality – their humanity – is denied, bad things happen. In 2012, the World Health Organization declared that sexuality is a basic need, an aspect of being human that cannot be separated from other aspects of life. It is a fight right up there with gender and racial equality. That is the result of years of political activism, and anybody who wants to learn a little more about this movement needs to watch the award-winning documentary Crip Camp right now (currently streaming on Netflix).īut the campaign against ableism – discrimination based on a person’s physical appearance or cognitive differences – is entering a new chapter as the disabled battle to be recognized as equal sexual citizens, with control over, and access to, their sexuality and to fulfilling sexual relationships. Yes, it’s very nice that in the US ‘accessibility’ is the law of the land (in policy, if not always in practice), that there are programs and precedents for employing people with a variety of disabilities. But the societal obstacles she and millions like her face are daunting There is good reason to believe that will change. (We met several years ago when she read the book about my autistic son Gus, To Siri With Love she knows my hopes and worries for him, particularly about finding love, are never far from my mind.) So far she has had several “situationships” but no lasting partners.
Vito, 28, just got her Masters in social work she has cerebral palsy and lives with her family in Westchester County. “They see me in this chair and the thinking is, Oh, poor thing, you can’t have sex, you can’t have kids…I mean, what’s the thinking there? I can’t walk so I don’t have my period?” Oh, it’s so unfortunate you can’t have children. You’re so pretty for a girl in a wheelchair.Īngelique Vito has to laugh it’s just one of the more memorable things well-meaning people have said to her.