Essay 1500 words

DIVERSITY IN SEXUAL PRACTICES:

DISABILITY

I. DISABILITY

A. DEFINITION

disability = reduced ability to perform tasks one would normally do at a given stage of life – disability is made worse by individual as well as institutional discrimination

B. STATISTICS

20% of U.S. pop has some type of disability –

15% born with it; 85% get it later in life (accident, disease, crime victimization, environmental hazards, elderly)

C. TYPES

physical, mental/intellectual, learning, emotional

II. DIFFICULTY IN FINDING A PARTNER

* physically disabled individuals are often viewed as unattractive by society’s standards of beauty –

physically disabled men seen as weak, passive, not a real man, so some men compensate by doing athletics they can like lifting weights, wheelchair basketball, etc –

physically disabled women seen as not pretty:

“My shoulders droop and my pelvis thrusts forward as I try to balance myself upright, throwing my frame into a bony S. One shoulder is higher than the other, and I carry one arm bent in front of me, my fingers curled into a claw. My left arm and leg have wasted into pipe stems, and I try always to keep them covered. When I think about how my body must look to others, especially to men, to whom I have been trained to display myself, I feel ludicrous, even loathsome.” (Mairs, 1992)

--

disabled people can have hard time finding partner, bc access is difficult to clubs who don’t want the “unsexy” and also just physically hard to get in w/no ramps (NY: guy in wheelchair on dance floor)

stereotyped as asexual, don’t see role models in the media

III. ABORTION DEBATE

* EUGENICS

*abortion is tricky: even people who support abortion have hard time, bc what does it symbolize if a person chooses to abort a fetus bc it will be disabled if born? society pities the disabled -- fear that abortion of disability will lead back to eugenics

*goes back to debate over eugenics: (Wikipedia)

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.[2] Throughout history, eugenics has been regarded by its various advocates as a social responsibility, an altruistic stance of a society, meant to create healthier, stronger and/or more intelligent people, to save resources, and lessen human suffering.

Beginning with Connecticut in 1896, many states enacted marriage laws with eugenic criteria, prohibiting anyone who was "epileptic, imbecile or feeble-minded" from marrying. In 1898 Charles B. Davenport, a prominent American biologist, began as director of a biological research station based in Cold Spring Harbor where he experimented with evolution in plants and animals. In 1904 Davenport received funds from the Carnegie Institution to found the Station for Experimental Evolution. The Eugenics Record Office opened in 1910 while Davenport and Harry H. Laughlin began to promote eugenics.[36]

Eugenics was supported by Woodrow Wilson, and, in 1907, helped to make Indiana the first of more than thirty states to adopt legislation aimed at compulsory sterilization of certain individuals.[33]

Some states sterilized "imbeciles" for much of the 20th century. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case that the state of Virginia could sterilize those it thought unfit. The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963, when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States.[43] A favorable report on the results of sterilization in California, the state with the most sterilizations by far, was published in book form by the biologist Paul Popenoe and was widely cited by the Nazi government as evidence that wide-reaching sterilization programs were feasible and humane. When Nazi administrators went on trial for war crimes in Nuremberg after World War II, they justified the mass sterilizations (over 450,000 in less than a decade) by citing the United States as their inspiration.[39]

Although the law was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court in 1921,[34] the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions in 1927.[35]

IV. AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT

signed by Bush 1990:

prohibits occupational discrimination in workplaces with over 15 employees

prohibits discrimination in publicly run programs like bussing

private businesses open to public must make buildings accessible

phone and internet accommodations (for speech and hearing impaired)

but

FAU elevators break in SO, etc – lots of place not in compliance