Below we present excerpts from Vittore Mariani's book "L'educazione sessuale delle persone handicappate" (Editrice Elle Di Ci), which we reviewed here.
Sex education is far more than information about how genital contact occurs, what its consequences may be, or how to use contraceptives. Sex education is not about creating opportunities to explore genitality. Sex education belongs to the broader education of the whole person—to respect for oneself and others, to self-control, to listening, to communication and dialogue, to accepting others as they are and welcoming them. It means learning to live alongside people of the opposite sex by first establishing friendships, then learning to serve, to give, to share.
These aims require adult educators who exemplify a way of life and who can understand and relate to the people in their care.
We need spaces where people of different sexes can meet, get to know each other, share community and cooperative experiences, so that mutual respect, esteem, and appreciation can grow—times of serene and joyful sharing.
Let us be clear: we do not claim that the cultural and educational approach we describe is certainly the best. We do say, however, that it meets the human person (all human persons) where they are—realistically and hopefully—avoiding the dangers of reductionism or fragmentation (treating the personality as if it were divided into sealed compartments). We maintain that our criticism of the dominant cultural approach to sexuality, and of its advocates, flows from a single desire: to seek the best for every human being, and to offer people with handicaps too the chance to feel themselves as sexual beings, fully men and women, and therefore more fully human and happy.
The handicapped person, often met with subtle or open rejection from those around them, struggles to develop their personality in a whole and peaceful way. Relational deprivation frequently causes deep trauma, so it should come as no surprise when difficulties arise in the sexual sphere as well. We say "as well" because we understand fully that the person is one, and all aspects of personality—interconnected as they are—suffer together. The problem is not sexuality alone! We cannot reduce our work with someone who is psychologically wounded to the "little piece" that is sex. We must not be naive.
Educators must recover the language of the body and become fully aware that "the body has a language that opens me to the other, toward the search for complementarity and unity." Especially in adolescence, the way these gestures appear reveals different degrees of closeness, participation, and communion—they express intention. Gestures must never cross the boundary of fraternal relationship. Every educator must understand when, where, and how to express certain gestures and physical contact, so as not to encourage, for instance, gestures that become too intense and so create sexual problems or frustration born of false hope.
The educator working with the psychologically disabled adolescent, young adult, or adult must know that "wounded in heart and in relational dimension, the handicapped person often searches for an authentic relationship in which they can be valued and recognized as a person. They carry an immense need for affection. Sometimes they feel an excessive desire to be surrounded, touched, loved—they seek an experience of intimacy with another. The gestures of tenderness that the handicapped person shows toward others do not necessarily express a desire for sexual relations." According to Jean Vanier, "it would be wrong to believe that gestures of tenderness and affection are searches for genital sexuality." In the vast majority of cases, these are spontaneous and natural gestures through which the wounded person expresses their happiness in someone's presence. Such gestures reveal their undeniable emotional richness and their appeal for tenderness. It is important, therefore, to read these gestures of tenderness rightly.
The loving, fraternal accompaniment of the educator matters deeply. We understand fraternal love as "a sense of responsibility, care, respect, and understanding for others; it is marked by the absence of exclusivity. In fraternal love there is a desire for union with all people, a need for human solidarity."
The mentally handicapped adult often finds themselves outside the family and educational context they came from, now living in institutions or communities, guided by new figures of authority, new educators who may know little of their past history and upbringing. Often these "new" educators encounter handicapped adults who are withdrawn, closed off, labeled somewhat "autistic," with poor relationships and strange sexual expressions. What to do? Simply supervise and ignore it? Repress it? What should we offer? How should we intervene? Given habits already formed, what interventions remain possible? These questions, and others like them, circle endlessly in the minds of confused, uncomfortable, uncertain educators, worried about hiding behaviors and expressions.
The first watchword must be "understanding."
Understanding means grasping the situation, accepting it, welcoming the person as they are and not as we wish they were. It means recognizing, for instance, that most mentally handicapped adults are not able and not in a position to sustain a stable partnership or to build a family. Yet understanding also means allowing them an intense and fulfilling life of relationship and affection.
Given the absence of complete autonomy for most people with mental handicaps, the vast majority cannot form a family, because a family realistically demands of a couple:
- fidelity in the relationship;
- assumption of responsibility;
- capacity to educate;
- capacity to manage and organize;
- economic and social independence.
The mentally handicapped person faces enormous difficulty in taking on, as the primary and active agent, the role of parent—since they themselves require continuous support. "The most delicate fact is that often the mentally handicapped person is unable to raise a child. A mentally handicapped mother can certainly nurse a baby, feel deep joy watching them, holding them, playing with them. But when the child becomes aggressive, difficult, anxious, she risks becoming terribly insecure and anxious herself. At that point she may abandon her maternal role or even mistreat the child. It is precisely in education that a handicapped mother risks failing completely. Authentic education demands a security, a freedom, and an inner peace that handicapped people often lack. It is grave to allow them to have children they clearly cannot raise."
Experience shows us that mixed group homes—where men and women live together in a fraternal way—allow a reduction or at least an easing of sexual expressions such as masturbation or homosexuality, which often stem from histories of rejection, abandonment, loneliness, anxiety, ghettoization, marginalization, and harmful habits. Men matter to women and women to men. They integrate and calm each other. Simple exchanges of tenderness, friendly physical contact, the natural liking between mentally handicapped men and women—these improve the lives of those who experience them.
As we approach the threshold of the third millennium, our society must make an effort to pursue results not only in science, technology, and productivity, but also in the spiritual realm and in the peaceful, constructive living together of all people. A world as advanced as ours in science and technology, yet so filled with wars and hidden violence, hunger and disease, mental illness and addiction, handicapped people marginalized and considered useless ballast—such a world demands our reflection.
We need a cultural conversion and a new educational action so that the human city can truly be built to the measure of humanity—of all humanity, excluding no one. And so we may someday find ourselves in the "City of the Sun," where people with physical, sensory, and mental handicaps have their place, are called by their own names without need for general words that emphasize their disabilities, are loved by many and can love many in return. In pursuing the dream and desire of the "City of the Sun" lies humanity's possibility of continuous growth.