“We know it matters, but we don’t do it”: institutional inaction and sexuality education for learners with intellectual disabilities in Kenya

Despite recognition that learners with intellectual disabilities face heightened risks of sexual abuse and exploitation, few receive meaningful sexuality education. This article offers a Žižekian critique of this persistent inaction, drawing on qualitative data from teachers, caregivers, religious leaders and policy actors in Kenya. It is argued that institutional paralysis is sustained not by ignorance, but by contradictory fantasies: learners with intellectual disabilities are viewed as simultaneously too vulnerable to ignore and too innocent to educate. Using the concepts of parallax, jouissance, and objet petit a, this contradiction is shown not to be resolved but sustained, because it is enjoyed. Sexuality education becomes a space of moral performance rather than meaningful intervention. Institutions enjoy the failure to act not because they wish harm on learners, but because avoidance allows them to feel morally good, safe, or in control, without having to change anything. Thus, the issue is not whether people care, but how that care is expressed, and whether it leads to action or avoidance. A reframing of policy and practice is needed, one that begins with discomfort, dismantles fantasies of institutional innocence, and affirms disabled learners’ right to sexuality education.