Securing Intimate Citizenship: The Effect of Capacity to Sexual Consent Policies and Practices on the Right of Women with Intellectual Disability to Sexual Relationships

Project Abstract: The goal of this project was to promote a shift in the paradigm of disability policies and practices from one that abridges the right of women with intellectual disability (ID) to sexual relationships, to one that secures the inalienability of this right. Partnered and sexual relationships are fundamental to many people’s physical and emotional well-being and the opportunity to pursue and maintain such relationships is an important quality of social inclusion and community living. However, Capacity to Sexual Consent (CTSC) policies and practices pose a significant barrier to such relationships for many women with ID as they are often used to abridge their right to sexually intimate relationships. Despite growing objections to the ways in which the socio-sexual opportunities of women with ID are obstructed, relatively minimal scholarship has examined the effects of CTSC. Operating from the position that sexual rights are universal and inalienable, the aims of this project were twofold. The first aim entailed critically evaluating how CTSC renders conditional the right of women with ID to sexually intimate relationships. The second aim was to offer an alternative paradigm for services that secures the inalienability of this right, while accounting for variation in women’s abilities. To pursue these aims, this project involved three conceptually-related research studies, each using a different analytical method to examine one particular quality of CTSC. Study 1 was a critical conceptual analysis of the misalignment of CTSC policies with the right to sexual relationships for women with ID. Study 2 used critical discourse analysis to elucidate the ways in which CTSC assessment tools abridge this right in practice. Study 3 was a survey analysis of disability professionals’ perspectives regarding CTSC policies and practices. Each study offered specific recommendations for an alternative paradigm with regard to: a replacement policy that secures the right to sexual relationships for women with ID (Study 1); a new assessment practice to elicit women’s directions for their socio-sexual lives and connect them with vital resources (Study 2); and the necessary supports for disability professionals to support the right of women with ID to sexually intimate relationships (Study 3).