Project on the body of people with physical disabilities between identity, sexual embodiment and sport.

Abstract

If the sexuality of disabled people, in its complexity of embodiment, is considered a cultural taboo, a mere physiological problem in medicine, and has not been the subject of much attention from the social sciences, it should be noted that even the disability policies themselves have only recently begun to recognize their myopia with respect to sexuality. The  concept of sexual citizenship has offered a promising way forward, aiming to relate the sexual self and the social self, thus framing sexuality in a perspective that integrates desires and rights, intimacy and civil recognition, sexual bodies and legislative bodies. A further focus on the corporeity/disability binomial can be found by deepening the educational value of sports practice for the disabled person, and the social and cultural phenomenon of the Paralympic Games. The pedagogical-special field, is actually increasingly expanding today - in line with the recent "UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities" - to the problems that emerge in relation to work integration, the right to leisure and recreation, and basically to the search for an adult identity for the disabled person. Accordingly, it is in this broadened horizon of perspective of the Special Pedagogy studies that we can integrate and investigate the formative value of the corporeal dimension, the educational and social value of sport for the disabled people.