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Disability Issues
Dr Christine Peta
TODAY I explore the subject of disability and sexuality, particularly focusing on women with disabilities.
The impartation of sexuality education is a highly contested area because of the divergent perspectives that come with it.
Whilst proponents of sexuality education argue that it is necessary in equipping people with skills and knowledge to foster healthy and responsible sexuality, critics argue that the best thing is to keep the subject hidden.
The general belief is that talking about sexuality will result in the awakening of sexual feelings in persons with disabilities.
However, the proponents argue that there is no such thing as “awakening” feelings because the feelings are already there. The fear of awakening feelings can be attributed to the fact that some parents often struggle to embrace the sexuality of their daughters, whom they perceive to have “damaged” bodies and minds.
Nonetheless, persons with disabilities can learn about sexuality through school programmes, friends and parents, among others.
However, it may not be easy for a woman with disabilities to make friends, as disability stereotypes may prevent her from experiencing normal interactions with other women.
But women with disabilities often desire to make friends and build closer and warmer relationships with others.
Research indicates that women with disabilities usually face challenges in starting and sustaining romantic relationships. Reasons vary, but they may include the suspicion by potential suitors that women with disabilities may not be able to reciprocate affection and friendship.
In addition, dating a woman with disabilities also comes with stigma, which many potential partners without disabilities may not be willing to experience.
In African contexts, such stigma may be fuelled by the fact that disability is often associated with the breaking of taboos, witchcraft and evil spirits.
Most women with disabilities often encounter great difficulty in attracting partners.
Some people often find it hard to believe that women with disabilities may want to get married or that they may become parents.
However, marriage and other social relationships provide an avenue for women with disabilities to feel accepted, secure and escape the identity that is linked primarily to disability.
The National Disability Policy has sections that are dedicated specifically to sexuality and women with disabilities.
Such provisions of the policy resonate with Article 23 (c) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which clearly states that persons with disabilities should be allowed to retain their fertility in the same manner every other person does.
In addition, Article 23 (b) of the UNCRPD states that persons with disabilities have a right to responsibly and freely decide on the number and spacing of their own children.
In Zimbabwe, the rate at which persons with disabilities are marrying is increasing and some of those marriages have proven to be both successful and stable. But there are studies that have indicated that some women with disabilities may prefer to confine themselves to a life of celibacy for fear of being rejected on the basis of disability. Other women with disabilities often experience various forms of emotional abuse, which may include being shouted at and subjected to threats of desertion by their spouses.
Women who acquire disabilities during the course of their marriages often get divorced, as opposed to those who marry whilst they already have impairments.
Society tends to judge a person by their looks, thus raising the question: Do we really have to judge the status of another’s soul on the basis of its container? A section of women with disabilities choose male partners with disabilities in the belief that such relationships may offer them solidarity, friendship and common values on the basis of their condition.
We also have some women with disabilities who are discouraged from having biological children due to a fallacious belief that they will give birth to children with disabilities.
Thwarting the ability of women with disabilities to reproduce is tantamount to attacking their legality as citizens and telling them that they have no space in the arena of childbirth and in the universe at large.
There is need for all of us to contribute towards ensuring that the recognition of the rights to sexuality for women with disabilities and the realisation of such rights are simultaneously achieved.
Dr Christine Peta is a disability, public health, policy, international development and research expert who is the national director of Disability Affairs in Zimbabwe. She can be contacted on: [email protected]
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