CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Federle, Cheylsea Lauren |
|---|---|
| Title | Schooled Sexualities: The Nonsexual Becoming of Young Adults with Developmental Differences |
| Summary | This thesis investigates the ways in which young adults with developmental disabilities are constituted as being nonsexual through educational environments and are thus denied comprehensive sex education. Specifically, I examine the formal and informal educational practices at a short term specialized education and job training program for people ages 18-21 with developmental differences. This was done by way of participant observation and interviews at the program described above. In analyzing my ethnographic findings, I utilize Foucauldian approach to discourse and disciplinary power, in addition to scholarship on disability and sexuality, sex education, and the social and discursive constructions of childhood. I argue that developmentally disabled adults who are also students are constituted as children by way of their identity as being both disabled and student. Moreover, I surmise that the discourses that suspend developmentally different adults into a perpetual state of childhood also suspend them into non-sexuality. That is, rather than being prescribed with compulsory heterosexuality, developmentally different students are prescribed a compulsory non-sexuality through cultural discourses on sexuality. These discourses seek either to ignore and silence or discipline and manage the sexuality of disabled people. These considerations constitute the barriers that block developmentally disabled people from receiving inclusive, comprehensive sex education. |
| Supervisor | Redai, Dorottya |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/federle_cheylsea.pdf |
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