Sexuality education for disabled children and youth in Ontario, Canada: Addressing epistemic injustice through school-based sexuality education

Abstract

While conversations pertaining to school-based sexuality education are becoming more prominent, the experiences of disabled children and youth are still under-discussed in research. Despite disabled childhood studies emerging as a field of inquiry, there is still a lack of critical conversation pertaining to disabled students' sexuality education within their respective schooling. This article draws from Fricker's theory of epistemic injustice to describe some of the ethical questions that arise in the denial of disabled children and youth's access to sexuality education in school contexts. By engaging with relevant literature on sexuality education and disabled students in schooling, this article puts forward that the continual exclusion of disabled students from accessing school-based sexuality education promotes a form of epistemic injustice and silencing of the voices, perspectives and experiences of disabled students.