PART OF OUR RESOURCE 2024 SERIES: Expanding your options and your community
Featuring guest blogger, educator, author, and advocate, Katie Thune who highlights issues around sexuality for the special needs community.
All you need is love. What a lovely concept. Beyond just love, I truly feel that we need support. When it comes to who we are as humans in this world (gender) and who we love or are attracted to (sexual orientation), it takes time for us as humans to figure this out. It takes support and love from people in our lives to help us figure this out. People with disabilities sometimes need a little more love and support from people in their lives as they navigate these concepts and figure out who they are in this world.
In my book, Sexuality for All Abilities, I focus on teaching and discussing sexual health in special education. The second edition of the book will be coming out in December 2024 and an updated chapter focuses on gender identity, sexual identity, and sexual orientation in the context of development and disability. For this chapter, I asked questions of young people with disabilities about their lived experiences with gender and sexual orientation. I found that they were extremely willing and even thrilled to share their experiences with readers. Here are some excerpts from that chapter that explore the importance of educator and family support, as well as how intersecting identities impact community identity and assistance.
The Importance of Educator Support
Research has reported that youth with LGBTQ+ identities want support from their educators and believe it will help them (McDonald, 2018; Roe, 2017). We can provide this support and play an instrumental role for our students, particularly when parents or family members do not accept the identity or sexual orientation of their family members with disabilities. Support may also mitigate the findings that youth with disabilities and youth with LGBTQ+ identities (along with youth of color), are disproportionately punished in schools for public displays of affection and violating gender norms (Himmelstein & Brückner, 2011; Snapp et al., 2015; Snapp & Licona, 2016). A supportive adult in a classroom can help to reinforce the message that the classroom is a safe place for everyone and a place where everyone can be themselves.
Most teachers already know that support can be shown in many ways. For instance, teachers and educators can proactively show that a classroom is LGBTQ+ friendly with posters, stickers, “all are welcome here” signs, and by using pronouns as a standard part of daily introductions. Ideally, signals of support are backed up with staff members who are also welcoming and capable of supporting LGBTQ+ students. However, teachers and educators may also need to communicate these expectations and foster the skill set they require.
Familial Support
Most respondents said their friends, family, and broader community were supportive of their identity, even if it took them some time. Of course, experience tells us that support is crucial for developing young people, particularly support for those who may not receive it elsewhere.
Meredith spoke to the importance of the somewhat unexpected support she received:
“I came out around the age of 30. I very much anticipated my coming out as something that was going to be very stressful and I was afraid of what others were going to think due to my upbringing. Because of this, I didn’t come out as soon as I had hoped. Once I did come out, I was greeted with much love and support by my family and friends along with the welcoming of my partner. It seemed easier to come out to my friends versus my family and took my family a little more time to accept and understand. Today though, I am embraced by very loving and accepting family members and friends.”
Avery, who we heard from in a previous chapter, received what we might consider more passive support:
“Around the time I was 13 or 14, my mom set me down and told me that if I ever had any questions about sex or sexuality, I could feel free to ask her and if she didn’t know the answer, she’d find out. That was basically the extent of ‘the birds and the bees’ talk with my mom. As somebody who was realizing that he might be gay, that was not a discussion that I wanted to have with my mother at the time. I read a lot of books and watched a lot of TV to get the bulk of my knowledge around sex, some of which was educational information and some of which was not. I don’t remember any formal sexual education at school past 9th-grade health and family life classes.”
Linnea is in their late-20s, and identifies as nonbinary, biromantic, and asexual. Linnea has autism. They describe another form of support from family:
“I can remember four conversations with my mom about sexuality over the course of my growing up years. When I was in preschool, she shared a picture book with me about how God made little boys and little girls with different parts so that, when they grow up, they can make more little boys and little girls. When I was nine, my mom and I talked about how I was starting to develop breasts and I needed to be more careful about closing the blinds when I change, not changing clothes in front of guys, etc. Sometime when I was in middle school, my mom told my sister and me about the Kinsey Scale and made it clear that she and our dad would love us no matter the gender of the person we loved. And then when I was 15, my mom and I talked about sex, and she told me that she doesn't believe that sex can only happen within the context of marriage, but that sex is a very vulnerable act and I should only have sex with someone I really trust.”
Ric, a 38-year-old man with autism, received passive support from his family, which he augmented with self-education:
“Sexuality and gender identity wasn't really something that came up much back then. But I remember seeing an episode of Roseanne where Fred Willard and Martin Mull portrayed a same-sex couple and had a commitment ceremony, and my mom and I had a little conversation afterwards, because she wanted to be sure I understood the context of what I'd seen. After high school, I sort of took a DIY approach to learning more about sexuality and gender identity as the internet really started taking off into our current information age.”
While these participants may not have received a comprehensive sexual education from their family members, most were able to recall some form of support indicating parental acceptance. Moreover, self-education was critical to their efforts to learn about sexuality, and family support was welcome.
Being Part of a Community
For people with disabilities, their different sexual desires, and their different conceptions of healthy romantic relationships can cause tension between their identity as LGBTQ+ and their sense of belonging within that community. In some ways, a dual identity is divisive and may implicitly force people to choose between one identity or the other to fit in (Maroney & McGinley, 2020; Nabors, et al., 2001; Ramasamy, 2020). Meredith speaks to this challenge:
“Being a part of both minority groups, there can be potential for twice the stigmas or challenges. Sometimes as a member of both communities, there come situations where I must fight harder for one community than another or I feel like my identity to one minority group needs to be on the “back burner”... (and) there can be too much segregation between the (LGBTQ+ and disability) communities sometimes and it creates more problems and barriers amongst people.”
Ric agreed:
“I realize most people with disabilities already have a hard time fitting in at school as they try their hardest to make and keep friends who don't suck (I know I did). And if they're queer-identifying, it probably feels like a double whammy that way. They feel like people already hate them for having a disability, which isn't even really their own fault. Now they feel completely ganged up on when people realize they're queer-identifying on top of that. It's bad enough that the people they go to school with refuse to accept them for who they are for whatever reason. It must feel all kinds of awful when they realize the people in their lives that they're supposed to depend on aren't very supportive of them either.”
Although acceptance may be the major challenge, other people, even well-intentioned, supportive people, can act as challenges, too. For example, Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) and caregivers are often a big part of life in the context of disability. DSPs and caregivers help people live independently and with self-determination. However, as discussed in the context of classroom management and support staff, they can indirectly act as a barrier to healthy relationships. While this topic is under-researched, comments and stories like the one told by Jillian are common:
“As an advocate, I see a lot of individuals that require support as being pushed into heteronormativity. There is also a trend within guardianship – a lot of families use guardianship in an attempt to control and direct the romantic interests or gender identities of their adult children with disabilities…”
I share these stories and research in hopes that they provide you with insight and ideas to help support your loved ones with disabilities. If you are looking for more information and tools in this area, or other areas of relationship and safety education, visit madhatterwellness.com.
References
Himmelstein, K. E., & Brückner, H. (2011). Criminal-justice and school sanctions against nonheterosexual youth: A national longitudinal study. Pediatrics, 127(1), 49-57.
Hughes, O. E. (2024). Inclusive research to promote gender and sexual self-determination for LGBTQ+ adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (Doctoral dissertation, Boston University).
Maroney, M. R., & McGinley, M. (2020). Mental health for sexual and gender minority individuals with physical or cognitive disabilities. Rothblum (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of sexual and gender minority mental health, 407-418.
McDonald, K. (2018). Social support and mental health in LGBTQ adolescents: A review of the literature. Issues in mental health nursing, 39(1), 16-29.
Nabors, N. A., Hall, R. L., Miville, M. L., Nettles, R., Pauling, M. L., & Ragsdale, B. L. (2001). Multiple minority group oppression: Divided we stand?. Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, 5, 101-105.
Ramasamy, V. R. (2020). Young, disabled and LGBT+ identities: Personal explorations of intersectional discrimination and support challenges. In Young, Disabled and LGBT+ (pp. 159-177). Routledge.
Snapp, S. D., Hoenig, J. M., Fields, A., & Russell, S. T. (2015). Messy, butch, and queer: LGBTQ youth and the school-to-prison pipeline. Journal of Adolescent Research, 30(1), 57-82.
Snapp, S., & Licona, A. C. (2016). The pipeline population: Interrogating the patterns and practices of its production, for. Sexual orientation, gender identity, and schooling: The nexus of research, practice, and policy, 126-142.
Guest Bio: Katie Thune
Katie Thune is an educator, author, and advocate for people with disabilities. She was a Special Education and Health teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota for 12 years and has extensive experience in curriculum writing on relationships and sexuality education.
EQUITY, COURAGE, CONNECTION
Mad Hatter Wellness creates comprehensive sex ed and health curriculum that educates and empowers people with intellectual disabilities and their support systems.
Mad Hatter works with people of all abilities and specialize in health and sex education for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We provide training for families, caregivers, educators and direct support professionals.
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