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Impairment, socialization and embodiment: The sexual oppression of people with physical disabilities

Abstract

People with disabilities face multiple forms of social exclusion, discrimination, and oppression, including in the domain of sex and sexuality. From a critical psychoanalytic viewpoint, social responses to persons with impairments are strongly unconsciously mediated, and often dominated by projections based on archaic anxieties about dependency, vulnerability, and shame. Where disability meets sexuality, these defenses may be more prominent still, resulting, for one example, in the prejudiced myth that people with disabilities are disinterested in, or not capable of, sex. Using this theoretical stance, this paper examines how the developmental role of family and societal influences on the social constructions of sexuality and disability are internalized, resisted, and negotiated by two South Africans with physical disabilities. Data are drawn from interview material elicited via photovoice methodology. The interview narratives and photographic images are used to explore how sexual oppression may be internalized, creating intra-psychic barriers to inclusion for this already structurally disadvantaged group.

Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

Affiliation

  • SINTEF Digital / Health Research
  • University of Essex
  • Stellenbosch University
  • University of Cape Town

Year

2019

Published in

Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society

ISSN

1088-0763

Volume

24

Issue

3

Page(s)

260 - 281

View this publication at Norwegian Research Information Repository