Risky business? Organizing sexual facilitation in Swedish personal assistance services
By: Julia Bahner
Abstract
Despite nearly two decades of disability research highlighting the need to take greater account of disabled people's sexualities, sexuality is still largely a taboo subject in disability services, thus limiting service users’ possibilities to express their sexuality. In this article, I aim to show how Swedish personal assistance managers organize sexual facilitation, that is, assistance from personnel in service users’ sexual engagement. The article draws on findings from a focus group study with managers of municipal and private service providers. Three main themes are discussed: the managers’ different ways of organizing sexual facilitation; how they conceptualize sexuality and normality; and risk management practices. I argue that societal discourse on sexual normality greatly influences managers’ views on and strategies for organizing sexual facilitation. Hence, sexual facilitation in personal assistance services is viewed as a non-normative form of sexuality and a work-related risk rather than a possibility to increase service users’ sexual rights.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15017419.2015.1063540 | Journal eISSN: 1745-3011
Language: English
Page range: 164 - 175
Submitted on: May 2, 2014
Accepted on: Mar 12, 2015
Published on: Jul 2, 2016
Published by: Stockholm University Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Keywords:
© 2016 Julia Bahner, published by Stockholm University Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.