Social limitations in the sexuality rights of people with Down syndrome

Abstract

Sexuality is a complex process, especially when related to people with Down syndrome.
This work identifies social limitations in this population’s exercise of sexual rights.
The review includes information from publications of the years 2006–2019 in Spain, Argentina and Colombia. The greatest constraints on the emotional and sexual needs of people with Down syndrome are their infantilization, overprotection from families, excessive repression and control, coercion of self-determination, and absence of sex education; factors that limit their real inclusion in society, which considers them asexual beings or that their sexual exacerbation must be inhibited or controlled. In addition, several authors state that sexual education is not provided, since childhood, for fear of arousing desires that cannot be controlled, a situation that ends up coercing their development as a person, their social inclusion, the development of a quality of life, and being subjects of rights and duties.