If you were a teenage girl and raped by someone, what would
you do? You would tell the truth from anger, or maybe you would
hide the truth from shame. It is too far from my ordinary life
just to imagine such troubles happening to me. So I do not know
which I would do, telling the truth or keeping a secret. But it
is indubitable that I would be annoyed, feel ashamed and get
angry.
Two girls were raped. They were my junior high school mates.
When I was a third year student of a junior high school, these
girls were raped by a high school boy who was the brother of
another schoolmate. The two girls were raped by him in the
elevator of an apartment house where all of them lived.
When I first heard this news, I was so shocked that people
around me were involved in such trouble. I felt sympathy for the
two girls, and I got angry with the boy. But now, I think we
should not angry with the criminal himself and should not
sympathize for the victims themselves. I will tell something
hiding behind the crime. And it is the thing we should think most
deeply about this crime.
It was that the two girls were not educated about sexual Can
you guess what was behind the crime? Both girls were mentally
handicapped. They did not know what rape was, and of course they
did not know the rape was unjust and illegal thing. They could
not do anything about being done by the boy. They could not
understand the injustice of being raped. I think it is what we
should sympathize with the most. And we should be angry that the
boy raped them thinking that their lack of knowledge about sexual
matters would allow him to avoid detection of this crime.
I think if the two girls were informed enough about sexuality,
this crime may have been avoided. In this paper, I want to lay
bare the present condition that the sexuality of mentally
handicapped is ignored. In the first part, I want to point out
why it is ignored. In the second part, I will show how sex is
deeply concerned with our life through advertisements, and point
out how it causes a bias that sex is for limited people. Next I
am going to introduce some opinions which are against mine, and
in the fourth part, I will develop a refutation those opinions.
In the fifth part, I will put the reason why we should start to
think about this problem in spite of there being many other
problems concerning handicapped. In a result I want to say that
there are so many handicapped all over the world, and they are
not minorities. I will suggest that we must think about the
sexuality of handicapped as our problem and that we should all
change our consciousness.
In this first part, I want to list two reasons why sexuality
of handicapped is ignored. Handicapped want others to think more
deeply about this topic and need more information about sex, but
handicapped people can not get enough sexual information.
According to Hirayama (196-197), it is not the fact that mentally
handicapped have no desire for sex or have no right for sexual
matters. The truth is that mentally handicapped want to have a
chance to experience sexual matters; and at the same time,
parents of those handicapped children want their children to have
sexual experiences. But the sexuality of mentally handicapped
people has been ignored. We can find two reasons why this has
been so.
For the first, sexuality of handicapped is ignored because "a
sexual matter itself is a hard topic to talk in public," as
Oshima said (912). There are so many problems concerning sex all
over the world. AIDS, the right of homosexuals, pregnancy and
abortion by rape, sexual abuse of children, purification between
different races, getting money from prostitution, are just some
examples of the sexual problems we have now. For human beings,
problems concerning sex seem the biggest tasks that we must
solve, because problems connected with sex contain almost all
social problems like, medical problems, problems of human rights,
faintly problems, cultural problems, problems in politics, and so
on. But people still tend to avoid talking about sexual problems.
We can not still open to talk about sexual problems, because we
can not still stray from the old common law of human beings.
The common law is that we regard sex as a taboo. The history
of regarding sex as a taboo is so long. It started from the era
of the Bible. Adam and Eve were punished by God for taking the
forbidden fruit. And God made humiliated them for being naked. In
the Bible, the first punishment for the first crime by human
beings was the shame for sex; and for hundreds years, we have not
been able to depart from the Bible story. Rumors like "someone
has sexual connection with someone," have been always big
scandals. For instance, consider Marie Antoinette and Hans Excel
Von Feltsen or Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy. And in Japan,
Taisho era, there was capital punishment for wives having sex
with men who were not their husbands. And now, to have sexual
connections with unsettled partners is not written as the crime
in the law, but thought of as morally bad and criticized.
The second reason is that sex for handicapped people is
thought of as a luxury, as Kawahara said (84-85). There are some
people, even those who take care of handicapped as volunteers,
who think it is too lavish for handicapped, who cannot live
without help, to pursue the right of sexual matters. According to
Wrenre and Johansson, "It is the fact that handicapped children
generally reach puberty as early as all healthy children"(29).
But as Yamamoto, points out, "They just tend to be late for being
aware of their changes in mental and physical states"(50). There
are people who say that sex is not a fundamental human right, but
an additional one after people can stand with their own legs. In
the national law of Japan, it is fact that there Is nothing
written about sex for handicapped. They think to hide information
about sex keeps handicapped from being interested in sex, even
after they reach puberty. The reason why people want to hide
sexual information from handicapped people is that sex is thought
of as a luxury. This is the second reason why sex of handicapped
people is out of our general thought.
Sex of handicapped people is ignored two reasons; those are
because of the nature of the matter, taboo, and because of our
thought of it as a luxury. But it is not true that sex really has
such a taboo element that we cannot talk about, and it is not the
truth that sex for handicapped is really a luxury. I think sex is
deeply connected with our daily life. Sex is so general to talk
about. In this part, I want to show how sex is deeply concerned
with our usual life through advertisements. And I want to point
out that we should be aware that these sexual advertisements
create a paradox that sex is not for everyone.
First, I want to show that sex is very close to our daily life
through recent research. Elmer-Dewitt did face to face interviews
with random samples of nearly 3,500 American, age 18-59. And in
his article, he reported that 90% of men and 86% of women had sex
in the past year. And 54% of men think about sex daily. This
indicates that sex is deeply important to our everyday life.
Moreover, as Elmer-Dewitt points out, "sex is everywhere:"
advertisements, TV shows, films and videos. Likewise, pornography
is easily available.
Yet why we cannot stop regarding sex as property for everyone.
It can be said that the reason lies in the way sex is used in
advertisements. Werner said "most advertisements adopt beautiful,
healthy, young people when these advertisements appeal to sex"
(40). I've never seen ugly, shabby, dirty or handicapped people
in such advertisements. And I can easily guess people would buy
something recommended by a beautiful lady or a handsome guy in
advertisements. Wrenre and Johansson asked "[we] wonder why these
people in advertisements must not be fat, miserable or having
handicaps." And they answered that we are in a paradox. So much
sex in advertisements indicates the generality of sex or sexual
problems in our society, but at the same time, beautiful people
in advertisements reinforce the illusion that sex only for
beautiful people. These advertisements make us think sex is a
privilege for limited people.
Now we must be aware that we are in the paradox. And we must
understand that sex is natural for everyone. Sex is proper for
you, your friends and someone whom you completely don't know. Sex
is also for handicapped people. Sex is not a special topic to
talk about, and not a privilege for someone. And I dare say
regarding sex as a luxury is just a pretext. Sexual desire is
mental and physical desire beyond the words of a pretext. To an
extent that handicapped people want to experience sexual matters,
we should think about sex for handicapped people.
In the first part and second part, I pointed out two reasons
for sex being ignored for handicapped people, and I suggested
that we should aware of being in a paradox created by
advertisements which appeal to sex. And in this third part, I
will introduce two opinions why handicapped should not be
informed about sex. The first opinion is because of the heavy
loads that people who take care of handicapped have to take on
their back, and the second is because of the danger that
handicapped will become sexual criminals after being informed
about sexual matters.
For the first, handicapped being aware of sex brings heavy
loads on back of people taking care of handicapped. According to
Wrenre and Johansson, there are some people who say that talking
about sex of handicapped people is like waking up a sleeping
bear: "the bear once awakened would start to search for peaches
to eat. That means once handicapped people know about sexual
matters, they would be eager to do such things and would be eager
to search their partners" (18-19). In general, there are few
chances for handicapped to have sexual connection. So big effort
is needed for searching partners or searching places where
handicapped can experience sexual matters. And when handicapped
cannot find partners or places, searching partners or places
becomes a task of people who takes care of handicapped people.
Those who are against giving sexual information, worry about
their heavy loads increasing by this task.
Further still, according to Hiravama, "The most anxious thing
is that handicapped search their partners in the wrong way" (12).
People are afraid of that handicapped people will commit sexual
crimes because of their desire for sex. In reality, there are
many troubles that handicapped people do sexual mischief or rape
people shortly after being informed about sex. And sexual
troubles committed by handicapped people happen more often than
those by healthy people when we count the small one like the
handicapped boy who steals lingerie or touches women's bodies. So
people tend to think it dangerous to tell about sex for
handicapped people.
I introduced two opinions opposing against mine in the former
part. Those who were against me said that to teach handicapped
people about sex makes people taking care of handicapped people
put heavy loads on their back. And they thought it also brings
hard consequences in sexual crimes committed by handicapped
people, These opinions can not be completely denied because it is
a fact that handicapped people come eager to search partners and
ask volunteers to help to search them. But I dare say that sex
education for handicapped can help them avoid troubles of both,
one is committed by handicapped and another is involved in as
victims like my junior high school mates. In this part, I will
make reputations of the opinions and say that it is necessary to
teach sexual matters to handicapped to avoid tragedy.
First, I will make a refutation of the opposed opinion. It is
true that sex education for handicapped people cannot help
prevent all handicapped people from becoming criminals of sexual
crimes, by Yamamoto (77-78). Sex education is not an almighty
prescription. It is a fact that when some handicapped people are
sexually aroused, they try to do things with others who do not
want to be involved. So a superficial sex education promotes
these actions called sexual crimes. But this kind of sex
education is not complete. Complete sex education should contain
not only the subjects of how and what sex is, but also contain
the matter what human beings are allowed to do. As Taniguchi
points out , "It can also be said that most sexual crimes by
handicapped people are committed without consciousness that they
do wrong things. [T]he things that they just want to do is the
sexual crimes for others. So handicapped people need sex
education which contains the subject what they are allowed to
do" (234-245).
Sex education helps handicapped people to avoid being victims
of sexual crimes like in my friends' case. Troubles like my
schoolmates are not the rare troubles. Handicapped people tend to
be involved in sexual crimes as victims more than any other group
of people. The reason why they are easy to be seen as targets is
just that they do not know enough about sexual matters. People
who commit sexual crimes on handicapped people have an estimate
that handicapped people keep secret from their lack of knowledge
about sex. Oi asserts that "sex education helps handicapped
victims to say 'NO' when they are raped" (52).
I believe that sex education contributes to decrease the
number of both handicapped criminals and victims of sexual
crimes. Complete sex education helps handicapped people to select
and decide what they want to do and what they should do by
themselves. Handicapped criminals become able to make a judgment,
right or wrong. And handicapped victims become able to say 'no'
when they are in trouble.
It is not good to deny that adolescent handicapped are
interested in opposite sex. When they are interested in the
opposite sex or in sexual matters, the correct way is to do a
complete sex education. It is necessary to teach them how to
refuse things they do not want. Only complete sex education has
high possibility to help both handicapped criminals and victims,
I think. The idea of 'waking up a sleeping bear' is a
self-centered opinion of those who think it difficult. In this
society filled with so much information, there may be no deeply
sleeping bears. All sleeping bears are ready to wake up by the
sound of TV or the letters in the magazines that say "sex", sex",
"sex". All we should do is not to sing bears to sleep but to
co-operate to search delicious peaches in the right way.
I've explained the necessity of sex education for handicapped
with some examples through the four parts above. I expect that
there may be some people who wonder why I started with this topic
when I think about the problems of handicapped people. Some
people may pose a question why I do not start with other
problems, like more elevators of stations, more dogs for the
blind or more TV programs for the mute. But I want to ask those
people why we should not start with this topic. In this part, I
want to state the reason why I started with this topic and show
the necessity to start with this topic for thinking of the
normalization of handicapped people.
First, I want to point out that sexual problems are different
from other problems in the point of that most people agree with
the solution or not. Jinushi said "There are a lot of problems
which is concerning with handicapped people in the world." Many
handicapped people are annoyed so much with problems like what I
mentioned above, the problems of the establishment of elevators
at every station, better training of more dogs for blind people
or necessity of more TV programs with letters for deaf people. Of
course, "These are so important topics for us that we can not
neglect, and we must try to solve these problems eagerly",
continued Jinushi. So I never say that these problems are not
important to think about or that these problems are less
important than the sexual problems of handicapped people.
What I want to say about these problems is that we can see the
goal to solve these problems more clearly than with sexual
topics. As Kawahara said, "The difficulties to solve these
problems seem just money problems" (210). There are few people
who are against establishing elevators for the handicapped. But
the difficulties to bury the gap of opinions between yes-side and
no-side arguments are not found once the money is available. Yet
as Akamatsu said, "The problem of ignoring sex of handicapped
people does not have the same element as that other problems [;]
it is difficult for us to work out a policy about the problem
which cannot be solved through money" (113-114). The key of
solution is our minds changing.
I will show how it becomes the path of normalization. Kawahara
said that "this point that solution of the problems concerning
with sex could not be done without the agreement of others is the
hook to start thinking of the normalization" (212). To solve
sexual problems, it costs little money but needs much
cooperation. And the most important thing for normalization is
co-operation. By the way, what is real normalization? According
to Ramon, "Normalization is defined as the principle by which
people with a disability have the right to lead a valued ordinary
life, based on the belief in their equality as human beings and
citizens" (6). According to Oshima, the thought of
normalization started in Sweden (932); and Wrenre and Johansson
showed that the way of thinking of normalization was adopted as a
right of handicapped people in the United Nations General
Assembly, in 1971 (128).
Now the idea of normalization is spread out all over the
world. Many people have tended to think of handicapped people's
life not as a special one but as the same as others in this
thirty years. But we have not completely thrown away the thought
that it is only enough to donate money to solve the problems.
To realize a real normalization, handicapped people want
others to change their thought that it is enough to donate money.
This is proved from Wrenre and Johansson's report that
handicapped people feel others attitude keep them from living a
comfortable life: "Handicapped people do not want a solution with
money, but with changing our minds. Handicapped people want
others to think of them the same as others" (120). This is
the very meaning of normalization that handicapped people and
others stand at the same point. We should not think of ourselves
as helpers, teachers or donators, and we also should not regard
handicapped people as help donated or from an under-class.
Equality is the point of normalization. It helps normalization to
think about this problem.
Through the first four parts, I pointed out the status quo of
how sex of handicapped people is ignored, and showed my opinion
that it is necessary for handicapped to have information
concerning sex. In the fifth part, I introduced the reason why I
started with this topic, and I emphasized the equality of
handicapped people and others. In conclusion, I want to insist on
the necessity of changing our consciousness that people without
handicaps are the privileged majority into that handicapped
people is the majority in the world.
The number of handicapped people in the world is 450,000,000,
according to the United Nations' Research (Ogawa 256). This
is about 10% of all the population of the world. It means that
one out of ten people has some handicap. And I agree the opinion
of Oshima that there is no completely healthy person from their
head to their toes in the world, and every one will have
handicaps when they get old (912). We can never say that
handicapped people are minority. We can never judge ourselves as
majority consisted with healthy people. So having handicaps is
natural and usual thing.
From the research of the number of handicapped people by the
United Nations, we should agree with Murakami's point that
"Handicapped people are not special, so others should view
handicapped people as comrades." We should think about
handicapped people as we think about ourselves. Doing so, we will
never have problems, like when handicapped women have their wombs
extracted without agreement in order to stop the menstruation and
decrease the work of nurses (Mainichi Shimbun). We can avoid
other sexual problems of handicapped people. For instance, more
translated erotica for the blind, publishing manuals on sex for
physically handicapped people and so on. The thought of equality
brings the solutions of sexual problems for handicapped people.
We should always keep the real meaning of normalization, the
equality of all people in our mind. And we should start making
equal the rights of us all with contribution not at material
level but at mental level first.
by Naomi Kohgo
Works Cited
Hirayama, Hisashi. Shougaisha no Sei to Kek-k-on (Sex and
Marriage of Handicapped People). Kyoto: Minerva Shobo,
1985.
Oshima, Kiyoshi. Imidas "Sel to Shakai" (Sex and
Society). Tokyo: Shuelsha, 1993.
Masami Kawahara & Akihiro Taniguchi & Shoko Akamatsu.
Shugaisha ga Renai to Sez wo Katatihajimeta (Handicapped
People Start to Talk about Love and Sex). Kyoto: Kamogawa
Press, 1994.
Wrenre, Hans & Evy Johansson. Shugaisha no
Jik-oninshiki to Sei (Normalization and Sex). Abiko,
Daiyosha, 1990.
Yamamoto, Naohide. Kok-oro to Karada no Shujinkou ni (To
Be the Protagonist of Heart and Body). Tokyo: Otsuki Shoten,
1994.
Philip Elmer-Dewitt. "Sex". Time. October 17 1994,42-48.
Oi , Seikichi. Seijin Seikatsu he no Enjo (Help for Adult
Life). Abiko, Daiyo Sha, 1992.
Jinushi, Shigeyoshi & Kiyoshi Murakama. Shakaihoshou,
Shak-aifukushi (Social Security, Social Welfare). Tokyo:
Shucisha, 1993.
Ramon, Shulamit. Beyond Community Care (Normalization and
Integration Work). London: Macmillan Education Ltd,
1991.
Ogawa, Masahiro. Shougaisha no Jinken 20 no Kadai (The 20
Problems of the Human Right of Handicapped People). Tokyo:
Zenshoken Press, 1992.
Mainichi Shimbun June 12 1993: 34.
