Abstract

NAZARE ORNELAS FRANCA, Dalva. THE SOCIETY AND SEXUALITY OF BLIND PEOPLE:: PREJUDICE, CURIOSITY, INDIFFERENCE OR LACK OF KNOWLEDGE?. rev.latinoam.bioet. [online]. 2013, vol.13, n.1, pp.88-95. ISSN 1657-4702.

This study aims to identify and analyze how blind people define the perception of not blind to their sexuality. Participated eleven (11) blind people of both genders, aged between 22 and 54 years, educational level from elementary to upper incomplete. Interviews were conducted semi-structured and focus group sessions with a tape recorder. The interviews and focus group sessions were transcribed in full and analyzed qualitatively in the light of hermeneutic dialectic, seeking a link between the empirical and the theoretical. Two categories emerged: 1) A blind person seen as asexual; 2) Lack of knowledge as a generator of curiosity and indifference. The interviews and group sessions revealed: that blind people realize that society considers them as asexual devoid of sexual desires and unable to manage their own lives, that the lack of knowledge about blindness leads society to see their sexuality as curiosity, reaching the indiscretion and mistrust or simply invisibility, blind people already recognize changes have occurred in society in the sense of inclusion in many ways, but evaluate the prejudice against sexuality is still great. We conclude that the attitudes of discrimination and prejudice in society towards sexuality of blind people, is the result of a socio historical segregation of people with disabilities. We point to the need to seek new paradigms, to give to those people, respect to differences, autonomy, dignity and fundamental rights.

Keywords : Sexuality; Blindness Society; Human Rights.

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