ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on a study of sexual facilitation in personal assistance services (PAS) to people with mobility impairments, that is, the support needed to achieve one’s desired sexual practice. The research included interviews with adult personal assistance users, personal assistants and managers, as well as analysis of relevant documents and policies. The law governing PAS (LSS) aims to make it possible for assistance users to “live a life like others.” However, sexuality is not mentioned, leading to insecurity as to whether or not sexual facilitation is a legitimate or even legal service to request and provide, respectively. Sexual facilitation is a complex phenomenon constituting a field of antagonism between the rights and responsibilities of concerned parties. For example, assistance users’ sexual rights (sexual citizenship) is often countered with personal assistants’ rights to a mentally and physically adequate work environment (workers’ rights). Sexual facilitation becomes individualised whereas, essentially, it is a political welfare issue. Do service users have a right to sexual fulfilment, and, if so, how is this to be catered to in practice, and, if not, on what grounds can (non-disabled) people in power positions define and even delimit disabled people’s sexual lives? This paper aims to develop an understanding of how the concept of sexual citizenship needs to be elaborated in order to better encompass disabled people’s sexual realities.
(sexual facilitation, personal assistance, disability services, disability policy)
