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Showing posts from December, 2017

Survey by ENIL Youth Sex and Relationships Task Group

In this time when media and other means of mass communication are overloaded with all aspects of sexuality issues and relationships, and because it is an attractive and interesting topic especially for young people, I was wondering: why there is still a taboo when discussing this issue in relation to disabled people? Are we being considered as non-sexual beings, or is it just that non-disabled people consider us to not be capable of having relationships in an ordinary way? Part of the answer came to me when I was in a shop with my ex-boyfriend, who was not a disabled person. A lady who was working there asked me, while he was not there, if he was also a disabled person (she knew me for some time, so she was familiar with my disability). When I answered no, she was very surprised, and she could not hide it. In my culture, this is one of many unwritten rules: if you have any kind of disability, you should only date disabled people or you should not date at all. But if you, by any cha

Pride and prejudices

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“Thinking is difficult; that’s why most people judge” Jung It took me a year to think over and over about lecture that I had last year at my former high school for International Day of Persons with Disabilities. That day was emotional breakthrough for me in many ways and the chance to give lecture named “Life with Disability: how to stay the same and is it the essence” enabled me to see things in better light regarding work with youth, which is my current job. I acquired my disability while I was a student of that same high school, fourteen years ago. That was the hardest period of my life, since my chronic disease repeated and struck the strongest: I could die easily. But life gave me another chance. I had to quit school for a year and a half, continuing schooling with different start ground: seeing double, taking strong medicine and having hemiparasis were just part of my problem. More important in psychological sense was that I was abandoned by most of the people who used