MENTAL RETARDATION & PDA
Sexual feelings are completely normal regardless of any disabilities/illnesses a person may have. When discussing sexuality, however, a demographic I personally feel is overlooked would be those with mental disabilities.
In College Student Attitudes Concerning the Sexuality of Persons with Mental Retardation … (1996), they say that, unfortunately, even service providers for developmental disabilities hold various stereotypes regarding people with mental retardation, including ones about their sexual behavior. Although various studies have found that people with mental retardation are sexually active and report sexual experiences such as kissing, oral sex, vaginal intercourse, etc., staff members of residential facilities typically allow only less “explicit” behaviors like holding hands, kissing, and masturbation. Behaviors such as intercourse or oral sex are prohibited.
MR & PDA (CONT.)
The journal continues, elaborating on the lack of inadequate studies done on how service providers view the sexuality of people with mental retardation; criticizing a lack of general population “norms” as well as “norms” for the mental retardation demographic.
The authors, including Joseph R. Scott and Brenda S. Slack, directed their focus to addressing these issues. Here, they explore the attitudes college students have about people with mental retardation (MR) and their sexual behavior compared to people without MR. Looking at 135 undergraduate students enrolled in psychology classes at a southeastern university, they examined their responses to a Perceptions of Sexuality Scale (POS) that measured their attitudes toward male-female and same gender sexual behaviors (e.g. holding hands, fondling, anal intercourse, etc; 29 items overall) on a five point scale (with 1 being “not acceptable at all" and 5 being “totally acceptable”). Respondents would indicate on the scale how acceptable they felt each behavior were for both a) “you and other college students like yourself” and b) “adults with mental retardation”.
Generally, the results found that the college students found several sexual behaviors of people with MR to be less acceptable compared to other college students. When it comes to behaviors such as public and private displays of affection, college students found them to be less acceptable for those with MR. In contrast, other behaviors including same gender activity and risky sexual activities (i.e. intercourse without condoms) were perceived as less acceptable for anyone.
Although an unfortunate sign for those with MR, the authors hope that the research can spark change those currently providing service for persons with MR. Hoping to give those in the field knowledge on people with MR and their sexual behaviors, they can grow more comfortable when serving them and ultimately provide a more liberating, positive experience for those with mental retardation.
THE OTHER SISTER
As aforementioned, I feel that those with mental retardation is a group that goes unspoken for. In my experiences, while I have encountered depictions of some traits of MR in shows such as CSI: Miami and in professional wrestling (yes, professional wrestling...), I hadn't come across anyone with MR engaging in PDA. That's when I decided to look into it.
Upon Google searching, "movie characters with mental retardation", the first name that popped up was that of Carla Tate of The Other Sister. With initial search results coming with a mere eleven names, I can tell that representation of people with mental retardation in film are far and few. SPOILER ALERT - In the 1999 film, Carla Tate marries Danny who is also mentally retarded. The newlyweds celebrate, kissing several times throughout the scene.