There was an expectation that impaired peoplea€™s sexual desires needs to be set-aside and disregarded, since they should nota€”or could nota€”be contented.
Another trope would be that disability are a discipline wreaked for committing a sin and, as such, the disabled people was a wholly unsuitable intimate spouse since they are wicked and, paradoxically, strong. One of the best advice are William Shakespearea€™s Richard III, who’s created as twisted in body and mind or, while he claims of himself, a€?rudely stampeda€? and made impotent by their real limitations.
Handicapped people have confronted this stigma. A lot of women with mental-health conditionsa€”along with seniors showing signs and symptoms of alzhiemer’s disease, and people with harmless and malignant growthsa€”were swept up into the European witch-hunts associated with the 17th 100 years, including. One observer during the time, Reginald Scot (a justice from the peace in Kent, England), observed they happened to be a€?commonly outdated, lame, blear-eyed, pale, bad, filled up with lines and wrinkles a€¦ trim and deformed, revealing melancholy within their faces, into terror of all that read all of them.a€?