Medicalized Pleasure and Silenced Desire: Sexuality of People with Physical Disabilities

In 2016, Japan started to enforce domestic legislation in the form of the Act of Elimination of Discrimination against Persons with Disability, along with ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2014. However, the interpretation of these new pieces of legislation is often not clear, especially when it comes to issues of sexuality. Thus, this research is carried out at a time when Japan is making important policy decisions about the rights of people with disabilities, in a culture in which the decisions of people with disabilities have often been restricted by caregivers and family members. This paper focuses on opinions concerning the issue of masturbation assistance in Japan by introducing two assistance organizations. Since not much research is conducted in this area in Japan, this paper contributes by examining how the dominant discourse medicalizes the pleasure of people with physical disabilities in the name of “nursing care”, and by presenting the diverse responses from people with physical disabilities regarding such assistance in their own words. Through this paper the researcher hopes to raise awareness of the current situation of how masturbation assistance and sexuality are treated as “taboo” for people with disabilities. The researcher also hopes to raise awareness of the complexity of this ethical and human rights issue and the danger of oversimplifying it, as it involves such factors as the form of the assistance, the gender of the assistant, and differing opinions on the extent to which masturbation assistance can be considered nursing care.