Historically in India as elsewhere in the world, there has been a deep-rooted cultural antipathy to persons with disabilities. They have been portrayed as medical anomalies, helpless victims and a lifelong burden for family and society. While today there is a general recognition in India of the need to enhance educational and employment opportunities for persons with disabilities in order to promote economic self-reliance and independent living, their sexual needs, dreams and aspirations are more or less invisible. Sexual and reproductive rights are considered irrelevant for persons with disabilities. Using qualitative data, this paper discusses notions of sexual identity among urban Indian youth through four case studies of college students in Delhi. Gender emerges as a key analytical category in perceptions of sexuality among young men and women with visual and locomotor disabilities. The paper does not claim to capture the complex reality of disabled sexuality in India, but highlights some key issues in a hitherto largely under-research domain. But the author's analysis carries added value, since she herself has low vision; thus conferring a reflexive angle to the research.
Gender Subjectivity and Sexual IdentityInstead of giving rights to citizens with disabilities and empowering them, a culture of charity and welfare has been systematically promoted in India since the colonial period. The disability discourse has primarily focused on issues related to the medical management, education and employment of persons with disabilities.
In communities in which arranged marriages are common, physicians caring for PWE are best-equipped to counsel them about their marital prospects. Marital plans and aspirations should be discussed with the family of the person with epilepsy in a timely and proactive manner. The benefits of disclosing epilepsy during marital negotiations should be underscored.
People with epilepsy frequently experience problems in marriage including reduced marital prospects, poor marital outcomes and diminished quality of married life. Conversely, marriage might impact epilepsy self-management and quality of life in people with epilepsy. There is little in published literature on marriage and epilepsy, so there is a need for psycho-behavioral research. Here, we focus on arranged marriages which, although now rare in western cultures, are widely prevalent in South Asian communities. Arranged marriages, in which families rather than individuals choose marital partners, are particularly problematic because epilepsy is frequently hidden during marital negotiations as well as later. From the psycho-behavioral perspective, marital prospects, outcomes and satisfaction should be examined in relation to the type of marriage (arranged vs. love) and whether or not epilepsy is hidden. Additionally, culturally-relevant tools to appraise marital quality and epilepsy self-management within marriage should be developed. The main objective should be to develop a multi-sectorial action plan with interventions at several different levels involving different stakeholders to mitigate stigma associated with epilepsy in matrimony.
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