title: Citizenship, human rights, and dementia: Towards a new embodied relational ethic of sexuality.
abstract: Sexual citizenship and sexual rights scholarship have made important contributions to broadening citizenship and more fully accommodating rights related to sexuality. However, this scholarship has concentrated primarily on the sexuality and intimacy-related needs of younger people and those who are not cognitively impaired. Consequently, it has inadvertently served to marginalize persons living with dementia who reside in long-term residential care settings. We argue that supporting sexual rights for persons with dementia requires a particular human rights ontology for citizenship-one that recognizes that corporeality is a fundamental source of self-expression, interdependence, and reciprocal engagement. This is an ontology that underpins our model of relational citizenship and that grounds our articulation of an ethic of embodied relational sexuality. In our view, this ethic offers important direction for the development of policy, legislation, and clinical guidelines to support sexual rights for persons with dementia in long-term residential care.
authors.affiliation: Toronto Rehabilitation Institute-University Health Network, Toronto, Canada; Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada pia.kontos@uhn.ca.
authors.forename: Pia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kontos
authors.affiliation: Toronto Rehabilitation Institute-University Health Network, Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: Alisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Grigorovich
authors.affiliation: Human Rights Law Section, Department of Justice, Ottawa, Canada.
authors.forename: Alexis P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Kontos
authors.affiliation: Toronto Rehabilitation Institute-University Health Network, Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: Karen-Lee
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D003704:Dementia / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care; D008297:Male; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D028723:Personhood; D019529:Sexuality / Q000941:ethics*
keywords: embodied selfhood; ethics; long-term care; relationality; sexual citizenship; sexual rights