“危险”的性意识:对福利院残疾儿童性教育的反思

“Dangerous”Sexual Consciousness: A Reflection on the Sex Education for Disabled Institutionalized Children in China

研究考察浙江一家福利院中保育员对机构养育残疾儿童性意识和行为的看法,以及对此作出的回应。研究发现保育员通常从生物医学的角度来理解残疾儿童的生理及心理特征,将后者视为"无性"或者"性方面不成熟"的个体。这导致了她们在后者身上发现性意识和行为时倍感焦虑,并将其视作"危险"和"不正常"的表现,进而采取切断性信息来源和体罚等措施。尽管如此,残疾儿童仍具备性感知能力,甚至有部分人发展出策略性的手段来满足自身的需求。通过展现保育员和残疾儿童就性问题展开的互动,文章揭示了福利机构对性需求表达的限制与残疾人在性问题上的能动性之间的矛盾。文章的发现或对政府部门、儿童和残疾人权利保护机构有一定的政策意义。

This ethnographic study investigates how childcare workers view and react to behaviors of disabled institutionalized children which they consider sexual in a Chinese orphanage.Presuming them primarily as“asexual”or“sexually immature”subjects based on a biomedical understanding of disability and childhood,the childcare workers are anxious to find signs of sexual consciousness in some of these children.Labelled as either“dangerous”or“abnormal”,the sexually conscious candidates are subject to physical punishment and denied access to sex information.In spite of this,they continue to have sexual feelings and engage in sexual behaviors,and some may even develop specific strategies to fulfill their own needs.The interactions between childcare workers and disabled children exemplify the tensions between a disapproving environment for sexual expression and the sexual agency of disabled people in China.The findings may have wide policy implications for the state,as well as organizations of childrens rights and disability rights,to promote ideas and measures that enable disabled institutionalized children to develop into sexually expressive and fulfilled persons.