‘Nothing about us without us’: sex education by and for people with intellectual disability in Australia

People with an intellectual disability experience a protective regime when it comes to their sexuality. Families, carers, services and others mediate their experiences and act as gatekeepers through policies and practices that focus on the regulation and management of sexuality. Sex education has traditionally been ‘for’ people with intellectual disabilities provided ‘by’ health professionals, teachers and other professions who position themselves as experts with the power to shape the sex education, information and learning opportunities that people with an intellectual disability access. This paper presents an alternative programme developed in collaboration with people with intellectual disabilities, which uses the stories of people with an intellectual disability and is facilitated by people with intellectual disabilities as peer educators. Crip theory rejects approaches to understanding the disability experience that privilege particular characteristics of disability experience over others including cognition. This paper argues this idea can offer a ‘way in’ for people with intellectual disabilities to research, debate and progress sexual rights within the current sexual rights vacuum in international law and policy. The paper demonstrates how an Australian peer education programme provides a liberating sex education for those involved through a focus on rights and use of peer education.