Inclusive sexuality education: achieving sexual justice, sexual pleasure and sexual agency for women with disability

This chapter explores the importance of inclusive and relatable sexuality education for women with disability to achieve sexual justice, sexual pleasure and sexual agency. Womenwomen with disability experience dual oppression because of their gender and the presence of impairment/chronic illness. Having access to sexuality education has been recognized as a human right. However, traditional and contemporary sexuality education within educational settings focuses primarily on the biological, reproductive and functional aspects reinforcing the idealized female body and excluding women with disability. Furthermore, the discourse of sexual pleasure is not only absent from sexuality education, policy and practices but also from the sexual lives of women with disability. Since sexuality, sexual identity and sexual expression are fundamental to the human experience, it is critical that the stories and lived experiences of women with disability be at the core of sexuality education and legislation, upholding the mantra of the disability rights movement ‘Nothing about us, without us’.