Disabled 'deserve' the joy of sex.

[SmellsLikeTeenStrop]

www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/disabled-deserve-sex-rights/story-e6frea83-1226310720177

In brief, the Dignity for the Disabled MP in Australia wants the tax payer to fund sex workers for the disabled.

thoughts?

gurl of course it's relevant

Loads of people don't have a sex life for one reason or another
The solution doesn't lie in paying others to have sex they don't want

I do sometimes get upset, frustrated and angry that my life has turned out like this. But I don't then feel entitled to either blame DH or mess up some other person.

Yes, I agree about the rather odd remarks that disabled people have a kind of right to break the law! Surely no one has the right to do that?

Also, DS1 is disabled (different thing to his Dad). He gets upset at the thought that he might never have a girlfriend or get married, although I can't see any reason that he might not. But he would not then have any right to pay for sex from someone.

I find the whole idea that the perceived rights of one group of people should be more important than the rights of another quite abhorrent.

I can understand that gurl. It must be very hard and I don't know what to say without sounding glib.

And I agree that the equality movement (whichever arm) is not about enabling people to perform illegal acts. In the UK anyway.

Gurl, precisely

I think that the ideas surrounding sex and disability need serious countering - as seems to be happening in the last few years in the media.

I suspect your son is having standard young person angst although I don't know what his disability is if you don't see it as a bar to relationships etc then I suspect it won't be! All sorts of people out there happy in relationship and having children and having casual flings and all the rest of it. The idea that people with disabilities "don' have sex" is simply wrong I think. Some people might be squeamish about it but that's their problem and sod 'em frankly.

We wld love DS to have a relationship, although he would have problems due to his social issues (ASD). We have to sort out his friendships almost every week! He loves children and longs to become a father. However, he tends to see children as things to be cuddled and hasn't quite got the idea of what parenthood is like!!

There would also be concerns of course as to how we could cope if he did eventually become a parent as he would need a huge amount of support and neither of us are well enough to be able to look after him, his gf and any children too!

That said, I would always stand up for his right to have a relationship if that was what he wanted, even if it would be very difficult for us to support him.

His partner and her family would be there
It wouldn't just be you!

Sounds like you have a lot on your plate, hope you are OK

Thanks SardineQueen, we struggle a lot but just about cope. The problem is that all of DSs friends are also disabled in various ways, usually with learning difficulties of some kinds. Many of their parents have issues too. So we are all propping one another up, sometimes not very successfully.

Anyway, I will now bow out of this thread as I am derailing it really!

Its quite patronising, there are lots of married etc physically disabled people

so the 'we'll pay people to have sex with coz god knows no-one would otherwise' is horrible.

I do agree that if disabled people (or anyone else) experiences discriminatory barriers then those barriers should be addressed rather than condoning sexual exploitation.

I would like to see sex 'neutralised' in our moral environment. While women have been oppressed by rape and sexual violence down the ages, so have women also been oppressed by the moral outrage against women's expression of their own sexuality. Villified for enjoying consensual sex before marriage, cast out for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, 'reputation' ruined for enjoying sex with someone from a non-approved tribal group. A blanket assertion that paid for sex can never represent anything other than a woman being demeaned is to partially play into this moral notion that sex for women makes them bad unless it is in wedlock and for having children. men get raped. Gay men pay men for sex, women pay men for sex. Paid for sex is a more complex thing than it automatically equates with rape.

But none of that is specifically to do with disabled people, and in response to the link in the OP 'Dignity for the Disabled' could be better achieved by addressing the shameful process now in place to make disabled people beg for statutory support, and by stopping the ignorance and discrimination which disabled people face.

And by the way, one of my DC is disabled and I have listened a few times to people blithely saying they could never have sex with someone with that type of disability.

The prospect of your child never feeling sexually loved does make you wonder about our right to such important expression.

A blanket assertion that paid for sex can never represent anything other than a woman being demeaned is to partially play into this moral notion that sex for women makes them bad unless it is in wedlock and for having children.

How do you draw that conclusion? I don't nor do I know anyone else who does.

I'd say that all those things you mention (from rape to sex outside marriage) are different sides of the same coin. And that coin is called 'control of women's sexuality.' Paying for sex is just a different way of exerting the same control, since the person with the money calls the shots.

Feminists don't talk about women being 'demeaned' by prostitution. That's a patriarchal notion and the misrepresentation of feminists as seeing sex as 'shameful' is one of the weapons used by the sex industry against feminism. Feminists focus on the actual harms done to women by prostitution and other forms of coerced sex - the physical, as well as the emotional.

THing is, there are women who choose sex work because they see themselves as healers and therapists. This does happen and it's something that should be encouraged. The insistence by some people that it's not possible for a sex worker to be anything other than a victim does no one any favours, not even the people trapped and exploited as non-willing sex workers.

And no, the argument that a woman who wants to help and heal through sex should not accept money for doing so is both invalid and sexist. It's because women are percieved as loving and giving and dutiful that vital work designated as 'women's work' such as caring for the sick is so badly paid; HCPs can love their work but that doesn't mean they should do it free.

"Paying for sex is just a different way of exerting the same control, since the person with the money calls the shots."

I ask again, as I asked lower down. How does this differ from paying for any other service in that the person paying calls the shots? Except that sometimes the person offering the service and charging the fee (especially in a sellers market) can also 'call the shots'. In a mutual contract. Plenty of escorts etc define thier own terms and are clear about what they will and will not do, what is required of the client etc.

I was at university with someone who made money through selling sex. She was studying law (and is now successful in her chosen branch of work, I see her quoted or cited as an expert in the newspaper sometimes). She had made a decision to separate herself from the prevailing moral currency attached to sex (that it was too special to sell / too demeaning a job / or made her a victim of oppression) and to sell the service of sex on her terms. We all did different jobs to see us through our student years, things we don't do now (mine was washing up on the night shift in a hotel), she chose sex.

Women pay for sex. I don't know how many, but there is a business in male escorts. Possibly more women would pay for sex if it wasn't socially such a taboo for women and they didn't feel embarrassed or self conscious about it. Women pay for sex in other ways - holidays to places where they can meet a local 'boyfriend'. So how can the paying for sex always be about male oppression of women?

Sorry to leave now but I am off to a caravan

Sex work should be a job that people freely choose to do. And sexworkers should be respected whether they are of the healer/therapist type or the 'entertainer' type. Sex is neither sacred nor revolting, it doesn't have to involve any emotions other than mutual goodwill. Paying someone to engage in sexual activity is no more inherently aggressive towards them than paying them to cut your hair, scrub your toilet or put ointment on your piles.
If this bill was one that suggested the state pay (for instance) for the disabled to have aromatherapy massages it would probably have got through even though massage is not viewed as a necessity, it's just something that some people find comforting and enjoyable. SO is sex.

solid none of those services involve being penetrated. you don't stick your cock in the hairdresser. you're talking about penetrating someone - it is different to another job - no other job entails letting people enter and use your body for money.

and as much as everyone seems to know a happy, clever hooker who prostituted her way through uni there are not enough of those people to meet the needs (and tastes) of the demand - the demand requires abused teens, drug addicts, trafficked women, coercion and abuse - there aren't enough middle class women dead keen to take up a career in prostitution to meet the number of johns who feel entitled to enter women's bodies at will. so prostitution equals abuse of vulnerable women, always has and always will unless you're all about to go and volunteer to shag the thousands of johns out there - fat, thin, old, smelly, nice, nasty, into anal, diseased, clean etc etc etc. no picking and choosing and just doing nice work in hotels with middle class business men but ALL of the johns who demand to be serviced by fuck holes.

i don't see you all volunteering so in the meantime there will be the exploitation of poor and vulnerable females to meet the neverending queue of johns. prostitutes have to be made - there is no huge queue of liberated women auditioning for the parts.

The day the pimps go hunting for fresh meat outside the school gates of Eton and Westminster is the day I might reconsider.
While the average age of starting prostitution is 14, and 80% of prostitutes have a history of abuse and the vast majority are addicts, I'm sticking with the basic analysis that the 'sex' industry is shite.

Swallowedafly, why do you keep saying Johns?

''THing is, there are women who choose sex work because they see themselves as healers and therapists. This does happen and it's something that should be encouraged. The insistence by some people that it's not possible for a sex worker to be anything other than a victim does no one any favours, not even the people trapped and exploited as non-willing sex workers.''

TBH I don't really care about them, I don't care about the Belle de Jours who pop up and write about how glamorous it is to be a call girl, or various others who say they're healing people through sex. I don't care, because for the vast majority of prostitutes, rape and violence and being treated like a human toilet is their every day reality. I am not going to ignore their voices in favour of a few.

As analogies seem to be the theme of the day, your stance is along the lines of, the Libyan Rebellion is a waste of time because some people chose to be evil government stooges who enjoy being corrupt, and therefore it doesn't matter about the rest of the population who were exploited and beaten down, living in constant fear of their lives. Treating the average Libyan citizen as a victim of a corrupt regime does them no favours because as I said before, some of these same citizens chose to be a party to all the horrendous government mandated crimes.

Puff, "Johns" are abusers of women

they deserve a special kind of contempt

"John" is a mildly contemptuous name to use

do you have some more descriptive ones ?

what other jobs require children to be abused, runaways to be given crack and gotten hooked, pimps, etc for basic recruitment?

you know there's a huge recession on - people are crying out for work - hundreds of applicants for minimum wage burger flipping ffs. yet still recruiting enough fuck holes for johns requires the grooming of vulnerable children, violent pimps and hard drugs.

no it doesn't compare to any other job/service/paid transaction.

the reality is if you say prostitution should be legal - buying women should be legal then you are approving all of that because the demand for it will always outstrip by a mile the amount of willing, healthy and mentally sound women who want to do it. so either it stops or there will always be children caught in it, trafficking, rape, drugs, violence etc. it is just part of the deal.

johns - punters - think maybe they call them 'tricks' in america?

I call them rapists, but let's not split hairs, eh