Sexual surveillance and control in a community-based intellectual disability service. (September 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Feely, Michael
• Is Part Of: Sexualities. Volume 19:Number 5/6(2016)
• Page Start: 725
• Page End: 750
• Publication Date: 2016-09
• Subjects: Assemblage -- Deleuze -- Foucault -- intellectual disability -- sexuality -- surveillance; Sex -- Periodicals; Sex customs -- Periodicals; Sex (Psychology) -- Periodicals; 306.705
• DOI: 10.1177/1363460715620575
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1363-4607

Abstract

Within contemporary policy documents regarding intellectual disability and sexuality we often find a progress narrative that contrasts a dark past, when the sexuality of disabled people was suppressed, with an enlightened present, when we recognize the sexual rights of all human beings. In this paper – which pertains to the Republic of Ireland – I take up the Foucauldian and Deleuzian position of treating such progress narratives with suspicion. From this perspective, I offer an alternative reading of the treatment of intellectual disability and sexuality in the present, and I seek to map just some of the subtle but effective ways this population's sexuality continues to be controlled today.