Sex, Disability, Prostitution, People

One of the arguments that kept coming up during my post suggesting mockery rather than anger towards those who deny or refuse to acknowledge the agency of prostitutes** was how disabled people need to be able to hire prostitutes because... well, perhaps it seemed obvious?

But it actually isn't. Dig around on the web, though, and you'll see at least one big divide in the language used about disabilities and sex in general, and disability and prostitution in particular.

Able-bodied people speak in terms of "providing" prostitutes *for* the disabled, with a sometimes covert, sometimes overt implication that they could find partners no other way. Disabled people seem to *surprise!* express the question more in terms of agency -- not that the government should buy them sex but that they should have the means to buy it themselves. The question often occurs, by the way, in the larger context of the right to have sex experience their sexuality fully and without shame *period.* [Thanks to Amber for the clearer phrasing. --fl] Which, as frequent commentator Eurosabra pointed out in an earlier post,

Access to sex workers' services is an issue that disabled-rights groups have raised on their own in the UK, as it is the experience of some young disabled men that reactions to their sexual expression are (across-the-board) demeaning, discouraging, etc. I doubt people would have any respect for it were it not a grass-roots effort, but you hear things like "The health aide won't leave the room so we can f***" or "The health aide won't give me a lift so we can f***" from disabled people in relationships ALL THE TIME. And those are people with supposedly-"okay"-in-societal-terms het relationships. Hostility to sexual expression of that type gets conflated with difficulty in partnering-up in some people's minds, which is possibly begging the question. Certainly the lobbying tends to come from a certain "git 'er done" constituency, and in reply feminists have chosen to emphasize the "git" factor. We are a long way from Zamyatin's _We_ or Huxley's _Brave New World_, where the Tables match you up, or "everyone belongs to everyone else." Or, heck, even "Enemy at the Gates"--"We tried to create the new Socialist Man. But some are rich in love and some are poor."

He said it here.

Anyway, I'm just saying that questions of the sexuality of people perceived to be in social custody instead of being capable of individual autonomy is a big deal.

And at least in this case, while I think it's really a good idea for people to fan out and find their own avenues into the question of disabilities and sex***, I'd like to point out a tidbit from a BBC News report that

A survey for the Disability Now website in 2005 suggested that 75% of disabled people believed in the legalisation of prostitution, with 62.5% of men and 19.2% of women saying they would use trained sex workers. It's a situation that exists in the Netherlands where a voluntary group provides just such a service for disabled people. Most clients pay for it themselves but some local authorities subsidise the service.

There is also a group within the UK attempting to put disabled people in touch with suitable prostitutes, but there are those for whom visiting a brothel is morally wrong.

Anna Bowden, of Eaves, a group that helps vulnerable women, including those who have been trafficked into prostitution, recognises that disabled people face "a very difficult situation".

"Obviously I don't think the answer is perpetuating a form of violence against women. We reject the view that men have a right to sex."

And one from Wheelchair Dancer

The newest star is Encarna Conde: "Her first film, Breaking Barriers, is, however, already the subject of debate on internet chatboards and has even had entire pages dedicated to it in the Spanish press. The reason for the fuss is that Encarna is a wheelchair user who has a muscle control disorder called ataxia. She is also president of the Association of Andalucian Ataxia Groups.

The tone of the piece is one of bemused congratulation. Another barrier broken. Another thing those crazy disabled people do -- remember the coverage about the criticism of the Danish govt, because it pays for PWD to have sex with professional sex workers?

I'm conflicted.

...

The disability perspective is what bugs me: journalism like this and perhaps even the film itself provides fodder for a rather large community of wheelchair pretenders and wheelchair fetishizers.

She says it here.

The point being that, people with disabilities being *people* and all, questions about sex, sex work, desire, and being desired are only complicated by disability and not "othered."

[** Which, in my first iteration, I mistakenly placed on customers alone and not to everyone else who, for purposes malevolent and benevolent, do the same. --fl]

[*** It's not an abstract question -- as the old bumper stickers used to say, at best most people are only only temporarily abled. And if you really enjoy sex now, unless attitudes change there a very non-zero chance that once you reach a certain age or infirmity you might wind up with your arms bound to the bed -- in the bad way, not the kinky way -- to keep you from doing anything about it with yourself or with anyone else. --fl]