Notions of sexuality: an analysis of the interplays of gender and care among adults with intellectual disabilities in Kerala.

The paper critically engages with the notions of sexuality in the lives of women with intellectual disabilities through the analytical categories of gender and care. An in-depth narration of the case study from a BUDS Rehabilitation Centre in Kerala, South India, is used to trace the patterns of care that monitor the sexuality of persons with intellectual disabilities. There is gender bias in the interpretations of sexual expressions and emotions of a woman with intellectual disability as immoral and hypersexual in the BUDS Rehabilitation Centre. The prevalence of sexual ableism leads to hypersexual objectification of a woman with an intellectual disability. The sexual rights of the woman are suppressed by the discourse of vulnerability. The study also traces the resistance from women with intellectual disability towards ableist notions of normative sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]