"Mom is down": the sexuality of people with disabilities within discourse of Época magazine

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Ana Flávia Teodoro de Mendonça
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Araújo, Clarissa Martins de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Educação Especial (UFSM)
• Texto Completo: http://periodicos.ufsm.br/educacaoespecial/article/view/24946
• topic: Disability; Cultural representation; Stereotype; Deficiência; Representação Cultural; Estereótipo

This article analyzes a media cultural artifact that produces narratives about people with disabilities and their sexuality, as noticed in the report Mom is Down, published by Época magazine. Based on post-structuralist perspective of Cultural Studies and on Foucault's approach, the goal of this paper is to analyze the cultural representation of disability and also to identify stereotypes and existing essentializations in the discourse about people with Down. The results indicate that the narratives about disability are linked with a conceptual apparatus, coming from a medical knowledge, providing a sense of disability closely related to the biological question. Thus, the causes, the diagnosis and the possible treatments offered to these subjects are presented. In this game of forces, there are narratives in which the sexuality concept is not only connected with biological aspects, but also with the cultural representation that people with disabilities can enjoy their sexuality, a life together and the experience of motherhood.