The Moral Significance of Sex Workers and People With Disabilities
As many of them will testify, being a person with a disability makes acquiring sexual and romantic fulfilment difficult. Denise Beckwith, a medal-winner in the Sydney Paralympics, told ABC News that her interaction with a sex worker helped her develop in ways she otherwise may not have. “I have a disability (cerebral palsy) and my first sexual experience was with a sex worker, and I really value that experience because it gave me confidence to then pursue other relationships.” When she was 16, her father helped her acquire time with a male sex worker. ‘Brad’ from South Australia told Touching Base (another organisation helping people with disabilities reach sex workers):“I would not argue for a minute, that the services of a sex worker can replace a loving intimate partnership. It cannot. I married a few years later, in my early 40’s, for the first time.
However, anyone with a few grams of practicality and common sense can see that disabled people are not as freely able to access forms of erotic touch, as every other person. It is disturbing, heart rending, when it is stated that disabled people are not as readily chosen as sexual partners as those without disabilities and many people rush to deny this fact.”
Indeed, even he acknowledges one of the problems that reverberates into making such interaction harder for people like him is “a lack of respect of the role of the sex worker”.
Sex workers are able to cater to those needs, allowing for these persons to fulfil their fantasies in a consensual relation with another adult. As sex worker and campaigner Rachel Wooton said: “I treat them as human beings. And they all have different needs and desires…it’s just about changing my service delivery slightly.”
like Deuce Bigalow but without being a punchline
Seeking Sexual Surrogates
great post!!
I saw this movie a few months ago and enjoyed it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1866249/
The Sessions
A man in an iron lung who wishes to lose his virginity contacts a professional sex surrogate with the help of his therapist and priest.
I agree. Great post.
Though it's not strictly a disability issue. That is to say, I think some people assume so because they see some people with disabilities as an exception for something that they would otherwise see as wrong -that this is acceptable only because it concerns people who we assume have no other option.
In fact it's not strictly true in either sense - that disabled people aren't capable of meaningful physically intimate relationships, or that there aren't people without physical disabilities who might need the services of a sex surrogate.
In a perfect world there is no reason why anyone who has legitimate need for this kind of service shouldn't be able to find it.
Of course, we will probably never live in that perfect world; the whole issue of sex as a service, like the argument for "free love", inevitably runs into the issues of power, abuse, responsibility, safety, and gender inequality. And aside from that, the issues of morality and intimacy that are wrapped up in this. So to say that it is right in one case, doesn't mean that there is a great danger for abuse.
But although there are practical reasons why this is a disability issue, I think it bears pointing out that the real issue is broader than that.
Important topic. Terrible movie. The film makers seemed to believe that the only aspects of Mark O'brian's life worth dealing with were his sexual frustration and his self loathing. He never seems to interact with anyone outside of his circle of care givers, and John Hawkes plays him as a pathetic victim. Add to that the fact that Hawkes is able bodied, and you have a movie that does not realistically portray the disability experience.