The Romantic and Sexual Lives of Adults with Intellectual Disability in Ontario, Canada

Abstract

The intersection of disability and sexuality remains a taboo topic. Along with this taboo, people with intellectual disabilities are rarely afforded the opportunity to share their experiences and desires when it comes to their intimate lives. This research examines the romantic and sexual lives of adults with intellectual disabilities in Ontario, Canada, by putting into conversation theories from the sociology of sexualities and critical disability studies. It uses a sexual fields analytic framework (Green, 2014) to explore the consequences of sexual stratification on the experiences of disabled people. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 46 adults with intellectual disabilities, this research explores how they are kept out of sexual fields through a series of disabling social processes. It also examines how participants make sense of their gender and sexual identities based on gender habitus acquired in their lives and how they are often confined to “hetero-romantic” forms of sexual expression and traditional gender roles. Finally, this project explores how participants navigate the sexual fields available to them and their strategies for negotiating those fields. This research brings to view previously unexplored sexual fields within the existing sexual fields literature. I discuss what I call intellectual disability sexual fields, spaces exclusively for people with intellectual disabilities, as well as more mainstream sexual fields.