The paper describes and evaluates an initiative recently promoted through the web in Italy: a signatures gathering campaign for formal recognition of professionally trained sexual assistants to disabled people a job that already has proper legal status in several Western countries. I analyze the pros and cons of this kind of answer to the sexual difficulties, and needs, of disabled people, and then move on to the more general issue of disability and what has come to be known as “sexual citizenship”. The contemporary theoretical alliance between critical disability studies, feminist studies, queer theory, critical race theory and postcolonial theory, suggests for us the need for a global cultural revolution: it is necessary, first of all, to understand, and then try to correct, the various, and often unconscious images, associations, and feelings that oppress some groups in our societies. A radical change in view is suggested not just about the image of disabled people, but also for gay men and lesbians, women, people of colour, migrant people, sexual workers, and old people.

In this short profile, after an outline of Dewey's life, we first of all illustrate and explain his reconstruction of philosophy; then we show its deep relevance as a coherent basis of his pedagogical thinking and his theory of democracy.

Are we today in a post-patriarchal or in a neo-patriarchal society? To answer this question, the article explores – in a gender perspective – the contemporary redefinition of public and private sphere, as well as the main changes taking place in connection with reproductive and sexual freedom, and in family life.