‘I don't want to get in trouble’: a study of how adults with intellectual disabilities convert and navigate intellectual disability sexual fields

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with 46 adults with intellectual disabilities in Ontario, Canada, this article suggests a different starting point in understanding the constraints that limit which sexual fields are available to people with intellectual disabilities. Because of surveillance, infantilisation and control, people with intellectual disabilities sometimes have to claim and convert other spaces such as day programmes, group homes and other residential settings into sexual fields. Without understanding these experiences, we may not recognise these intellectual disability sexual fields as settings for the pursuit of intimacy and love. These are valuable insights that bring into view how some marginalised sexual actors may covert social fields into sexual fields as a means of responding to lack of access to and exclusion from mainstream sexual fields.

Keywords:

• Disability
• sexuality
• infantilisation
• sexual fields

Acknowledgements

I thank research participants for generously sharing their sexual stories. Thanks also go to Melanie Heath, Tina Fetner, Ann Fudge Schormans, Nancy Fischer, and the journal’s anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality; the Province of Ontario, McMaster University and the Ontario Association on Developmental Disabilities.