People with disabilities deserve the right to be recognized as potentially sexual beings, but oftentimes they are not.§ Little has been done to end the discriminatory attitudes of the prevailing mainstream society toward the sexuality of people with disabilities. There is a long history of treating the sexuality of people with disabilities as “deviant” and something that should be suppressed, rather than a natural human desire. According to Tom Shakespeare, a leading disability rights scholar, people with disabilities are seen only on two ends of a spectrum: either completely asexual or “perverse” and hypersexual.54 A portrayal of a diverse group of people as only on one or the other end of a spectrum of sexuality minimizes the breadth of their experiences and perpetuates stereotypes. For example, there are some people with disabilities who may enjoy having a lot of sex, some who only have sex occasionally, and some who are asexual. For LGBTQ and BIPOC people with disabilities, these stereotypes can be further compounded by stereotypes and stigma rooted in racist and heterosexist conceptions of sexuality and sexual expression.

People with disabilities also struggle to assert their sexuality due to the prevailing notion that they are unable to consent, which has historically been shared by medical professionals.55 People with disabilities are often forced to prove to the state that they have the capacity to express or deny consent to sexual activity. There is no national consensus on what these types of “consent assessments” should entail, but they generally touch on a person’s knowledge surrounding the physical and emotional consequences of sex, their ability to engage in a rational process of decision-making, and their understanding of choice.56 This type of knowledge is generally covered in sex ed classes, to which, as previously stated, people with disabilities frequently lack access. Therefore, many people with disabilities are judged incapable of consent based on a lack of knowledge that is itself the result of inadequate or unavailable sex ed