This article uses the work of Eva Feder Kittay and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to advocate for LGBT-inclusive intake questions across aging network services. I argue that care providers need to know their charge's sexual orientation and/or gender identity because caring touch is responsive, meaning that the care provider understands how her touch will be perceived and can change her actions accordingly. Information about a charge's sexual orientation and/or gender identity is one important way to furnish the care provider with the information (...) she needs to calibrate effectively the expressive impact of her touch. (shrink)

The “new sociology of childhood” replaces the historical notion of children as inherently vulnerable, helpless and in need of protection, with a perception of children as capable of competent, autonomous, social participation. Although this new sociological perception underlies current children's rights literature, Canadian common law, and important Canadian pediatric health care guidelines, children's autonomy in health care contexts remains easily denied or subverted in favour of adult conceptions of their best interests. In order to try to understand why, I use (...) a feminist, relational approach to autonomy to analyze how oppressive social forces might hinder children from developing and exercising their autonomy in health care, and uncover a tendency to silence the voice of the child within bioethical discourse. These results suggest that greater levels of pediatric autonomy could be fostered by overcoming oppressive social forces and by fostering the skills necessary for the development and exercise of autonomy. (shrink)