Bethany Stevens, on her new Crip Confessions blog, has a post about sex work and disability that’s well worth reading. On the few occasions when the topic of sex work and disability comes up, it’s usually presented in simple ways. It’s either a radical topic that makes you think and then affirm your groovy sex positiveness. Or it’s a travesty, a double exploitation (after all, to the narrow minded and paternalistic on the left and the right, who are better pity targets than sex workers and disabled people? Imagine that telethon).
In fairness, this topic isn’t something people have written or talked much about publicly, so the discussion is new. Which makes Stevens’ commentary all the more exciting, as it begins to untangle a complex mess of issues and experience. Her focus in the post isn’t as much the public discussion as it is the existence of government policy that funds sex specifically for people with disabilities. It’s a policy that irks her, and she writes:
While many disabled people are economically ghettoized, the framing of policy like this reinforces the charitable model of disability by implicating that disabled people are sexually-deprived. It supports the already pervasive claim that disabled people are not sexually worthy and thereby must seek out the services of a professional, because few, if any, would voluntarily have sex with us.
Note that Stevens’ problem is not narrowly focused on the policy itself, it’s with the framing of the policy. Indeed she goes on to talk about how these policies, while problematic, serve both practical and philosophical functions, calling us all to look not just at the policies and practices that surround sex work and disability, but at the conditions within which such policies and practices develop.
Over the course of my many years as a sex educator working in both rehabilitation and disability communities, and as an ally to disabled friends, family, and lovers, these issues, both in theory and practice, have come up often.
I remember a man I corresponded with in Germany who had access to direct funding from the government in order to pay for services he needed related to his disability. But he was required to submit receipts and, essentially, justify any expenses which weren’t standard on the government forms. He was able to use the money for things like massage, talk therapy, homeopathy, etc… He wanted to use his money for sex work as well, and he didn’t see this as fundamentally different (he described all these things as human needs). Whatever I, or anyone else, thinks of the way he experiences sex work, the bottom line was that because of his disability he was required to justify what he would spend his money on, something that I as a non-disabled person would never have to do. Were I living in Germany I wouldn’t have to do this with tax refunds, I wouldn’t have to do this with unemployment insurance, I wouldn’t have to do it period.
From my perspective (which is, of course, heavily informed by being currently non-disabled) this is first and foremost an issue of access. In the case of the man from Germany this is probably fair because he was identifying it as an access issue.
The problem, which Stevens so skillfully teases out, is that I (we?) can easily generalize and say this is always an issue of access, and sometimes come to believe that this is only an issue of access.
Stevens points out that this is about much more than access. Embedded in the do-gooder sex-positive agenda that says people with disabilities should have free access to sex workers is a denial of other important ways that disabled people are systemically denied sexual rights. The lived experience of many people with visible disabilities is that it’s much much harder to find sexual partners. Random hook ups, long term relationships, monogamous marriages, you name it. If you look disabled you get the message that these things aren’t for you.
I’ve been involved in a couple of different ways in making connections individually and organizationally between sex worker groups and disability activists. I do think that there are important access issues that need to be addressed. But Stevens post is a welcome reminder for me that when I only focus on access, I’m not only missing out, I’m shutting out, which is the opposite of how I want to live my life.
Read more – Crip Confessions: Paying for Pleasure: Interrogating Sex Work for Crips
Previously – Sex Work Debate and a Denmark Nursing Home ; Sex Work and Disability ; Adult Film Offers a Good Opportunity to Talk About Sex and Disability
Related – Sexuality and Disability Resources on About.com
Sex Work and Disability Reconsidered originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 00:01:20.
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Sex Work and Disability Reconsidered
