A critical discourse analysis of literature pertaining to the historical "management" of the sexual and/or intimacy needs of people labelled as having a learning disability in Australia and the United Kingdom

The research presented here analyses and compares textual narratives generated within policy, scholarly and popular media to discern how the sexuality or intimacy needs of people categorised as ‘learning disabled’ have been historically and more recently managed in Australia and the United Kingdom. The research uses a modified critical discourse analytical approach which, in order to clarify the distinct role of power in the construction of discourses of sexuality, is mediated by the more recent ideas of progressive phronesis offered by Flyvbjerg (1998a; 2001). The analysis identifies three broad stages in the historical development of the discourses about the sexuality of learning disabled people. The first phase was prior to the 1800s, when these people were labelled non-derogatorily as ‘idiots’, and perceived as childlike, innocent and asexual. The second stage was in the 1800s when, with the emergence of scientific rationality and medicalisation, so-called idiots became medicalised and categorised as ‘feeble-minded’ or ‘moral imbeciles’. This thesis demonstrates that, during this period, an emphasis on sexual self-denial, anxieties about venereal disease and non-procreative erotic pleasure helped to inform discourses of eugenics and learning disabled people became perceived as a sexual threat to the society. This underpinned policies of sexual control through institutionalisation, gender segregation and sterilisation. The third period in the development of discourses relating to the sexuality of learning disabled people paralleled the ‘sexual revolution’ of the late- 1900s and the move towards deinstitutionalisation and human rights. This analysis shows that, although the principle of ‘sexual freedom’ was ostensibly incorporated in modern policy discourse, the sexuality of learning disabled people continues to be influenced by significant barriers of sexual intolerance, demonstrated by continuing practices of sexual segregation, sterilisation, criminal labelling and imprisonment. The analysis indicates that a discourse of sexuality, which has legitimised the control and management of learning disabled people in varying forms since the Enlightenment, continues to be encountered in policy and popular narratives. Robust sexuality awareness and education programs for carers of these people, and society in general, are necessary so that intimacy and/or sexual desires are accepted as a normal need for all human beings.