A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

felt (particularly during adolescence) to have been an area of human experience they were
excluded from. As Sarah put it:
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It‟s, like, for everyone else, but not for you… like, why? (l.1:1207).
In contemporary British society there appears still to exist a strong taboo around the subject
of disabled sexuality. For instance, the Observer Sex Poll 2008 found that:
Seventy per cent of Britons would not consider having sex with someone who had a
physical disability... while only four per cent have actually had sex with someone
with a physical disability (Guardian.co.uk, 2008:unpaged).
It appears that the idea of disabled people having sex or of having sex with disabled people is
one that causes considerable public discomfort. There are many reasons around themes of
normality, abnormality, aesthetics, eugenics and economics that could be suggested to
explain this, but the impact on the identity of people with impairments is to undermine their
sense of worth as human beings.
Sarah talks about her experience of having been denied the opportunity to think of herself as
a sexual person or to develop a sexual identity. This has been felt both in family settings and
among peers. The opportunity for young adults to engage in romantic attachments and to use
these in order to experiment and develop emotionally is regarded as a usual part of growing
up. Sarah describes being faced with expectations that this is something she will not
participate in:
(My gran will) talk to my cousins about stuff that she won‟t talk to me about,
like…the prospect of me having a boyfriend to my gran is just alien… but, erm, my
cousins who are the same age as me, that‟s fine… and it‟s like I bring it up, and I‟m
like “Oh, Gran, I‟ve got a boyfriend...” and she‟s just like, “Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
he‟s just a friend…” (l.1:472ff.)
It is as if it is thought that ignoring the emotional and physical feelings of disabled young
people will somehow make them go away. Sarah adds further on:
It all comes back to sex, I‟m sorry, but there‟s never any… oh God, here I go…