After a long and intolerable silence, science first and then our culture, have gradually tended to grant all people the right to live and to express their sexuality. However it seemed it was hard for the necessary strategies to emerge and to face problems connected with emotional feelings and sexuality of people with disabilities. And yet this is the main task for both people with disabilities and all those people who struggle for them: to let disabled people be as independent as possible and to give them the opportunity to live their lives making their own decisions and to eventually share feelings and emotions with someone special. So it is important to give space to their desires and to return the caresses of their hands.

The modern use of the term “differently able” instead of “disabled” still moves us away from the essence of the problem, leaving us in peace with our conscience. Sexuality has always been considered an embarrassing argument in every age, even in modern times although now we talk about it.

Sexuality, free for who? Drawing this concept near disability is still considered taboo. Our culture has always condemned sexuality and disability. Could you only imagine sexuality and disability joined together?

The common attitude towards sexuality in disabled people is irrational as it is based on prejudice and fear. People usually tend to deny sexual needs to the disabled (even if they are considered, physically, adults) as they are perceived like eternal children.

Furthermore, people are scared by sexuality of the disabled who are affected by mental diseases as it is imagined bestial and uncontrolled: maybe it happens because people project their unconscious fears and desires towards this kind of sexuality. This is, in brief, the twofold attitude which wavers between the denial of the disabled having sexuality and the erroneous consideration of it.

Still the attitude of the family is not completely right. Parents are used to protecting their disable sons too much and as such they relegate them, unconsciously, to a world without sexuality. Parents should remember that the bodyʼs erogenous areas are many and different. In addition to sexual prejudice, the total lack of information leads people to think that a disabled person doesn’t feel any emotion even when a physiotherapist touches his neck or body. The disabled often feel ill at ease even in the easiest daily actions and it is not the same thing to hear people saying “I’ll dress you” (and to be treated like a child) instead of “let me help you to get dressed”

To be moulded like a puppet is always an attack against personal dignity. Still those who work everyday with the disabled find it difficult to accept their sexual needs, maybe because it is hard to face something that they haven’t resolved with themselves. People used to think that the suffering and the crying of a disabled person for not finding a partner is just connected with a basic need of affection and care. And if it was just a natural desire of relationship? Or if it was only the need to satisfy his sexuality? To face and to talk about these kind of problems is not that easy.

And still when it is proposed to the disabled a socialization in an “inhospitable territory”, a job in an “alienating factory” or a free time with activities and games (which will make even those who are not affected by any kind of handicap feel stupid), isn’t that violence?

The difference between common people and disabled consists only in their scarce competitive capacity. But a disabled mustn’t be considered only a load for our society as he could easily become a manager.

At this point this argument gets more and more complicated: until our culture will continue not to put the human being at the centre of the world, the weaker classes of society will be always penalized.

This is only the expression of the need of a society, commonly considered healthy, which keeps on excluding people with disabilities. Very often “love-barriers” have more harmful effects than architectonic barriers. Mental barriers prevent normal people granting to disabled the right to live a complete relationship where feelings and sexuality are claimed by men and women who don’t want to be halved.