The Four Factors: Sanism, Pretextuality, Heuristics, and “Ordinary Common Sense”

Abstract

It is impossible to make any conceptual sense of the relationship between mental disability and any aspect of the law without an understanding of four critical factors that dominate—and control—this relationship. And this applies with even more power to the topic under consideration in this book: the sexuality rights of persons with mental disabilities. What is most vexing is that these factors often exercise this domination in an invisible manner (Perlin, 2000d). We have been writing about these factors— sanism, pretextuality, heuristics, and “ordinary common sense”—in different guises for over two decades (Perlin, 1992b, 1991b, 1990b) and continue to write about them in different contexts to this date (Perlin and Lynch, 2014, 2015b; Perlin, 2011b; Perlin and Dorfman, 2011; Cucolo and Perlin, 2012, 2013; Perlin and Weinstein, 2014).