"Ela está apaixonadinha, e agora?" reflexões antropológicas sobre a sexualidade da mulher com deficiência intelectual

Abstract

This dissertation presents reflections of the research that deals with women with intellectual disabilities (ID) and their experiences related to the field of sexuality. It has as its background the studies on sexuality and disability in anthropology. The objective was to verify and understand how sexuality is present in the daily lives of these women. The study enters the universe of six adult women with ID attending an NGO that serves people with disabilities, located in the city of João Pessoa. Participant observation techniques, interviews, and focus group were used for the development of the research. From the observations and monitoring during the ethnographic field, it was possible to observe that there is a strong tendency to the infantilization of these women by the family group and also by the professionals, which interferes with the ability to assign them autonomy and decision-making power in issues relevant to love relationships, which allows us to think that the capacitist assumptions also act in this field. On the other hand, in the interaction with women with ID, the issues related to sexuality appeared and were very revealing, indicating that not only do they exist but deserve to be further studied, because it is a universe still little explored.