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Memoir: The last taboo

By Charlie Stansfield - posted Monday, 24 November 2008


“I just cannot sanction what you are doing,” the manager said. The air of disappointment lifted a little as I registered: Are doing?

“There is a bus available on Saturday night. I will roster you on and get the money from your account, J. But apart from that I don’t want to know anything more about it - OK? You’re not doing this with my permission. And don’t bring me any bloody receipts.”

In the decade-plus since I worked with J, anti-discriminatory and other human rights-based legislation has improved access to employment, accommodation and recreation for people with disabilities. In the big picture, pursuing rights in these areas has tended to push sexual rights lower down on the agenda. Other than the important work on uncovering stories of sexual abuse of people with disabilities, the field is quiet on the issue of sexual rights. Fourteen years on, J would have had to face similar barriers. Sexuality, and more specifically the use of sex workers, remains an unresolved, uncomfortable issue for some of the larger agencies supporting people with disabilities.

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It does seem that, while initial fears centre on protecting a consumer from any emotional or physical harm while pursuing paid sex, a significant underlying concern is actually about protecting the agency and its staff.

A service provider put it this way:

We do what we can. We provide sex education to consumers. We allow staff to represent us on lobby groups like ‘Touching Base’. We run groups on forming friendships and relationships for younger people with disabilities. We support them to participate at SEXPO and Mardi Gras. But when it comes to giving approval to our staff to take people to a sex worker or a sex surrogate, or to directly assist two consumers with a sexual act if that is what they want, the policy is clear: they cannot be permitted to do that.

It could be said that sex workers suffer from similar stigmatisation and misunderstanding to that faced by people with disabilities. Both groups are vulnerable to being perceived solely in terms of their sexuality (or lack thereof), while also being shamed for being sexual. Both are more likely to experience sexual assault compared with other professions or groups of people. People with disabilities dependent upon personal carers have reduced opportunities to set boundaries. Sex workers are often perceived not to have any boundaries at all in relation to sexual activity. Both sex workers and people with disabilities challenge our myths of “naturalness”. In order to cope with any discomfort they might provoke, we push them to the fringes.

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Sex worker Saul Isbister and a small group of colleagues established the non-government agency Touching Base in 2000 after recognising their own needs for training in providing services for people with disabilities. Touching Base was developed as a pragmatic response to the needs of both groups, as Saul said:

While training in sexual health counselling, I started to see that there could be issues with communication and consent and also recognised that practical skills such as the best way to assist someone with a spinal cord injury could assist me. The alarming statistics regarding high rates of sexual assault of people with disabilities made me want to ensure that people I saw would receive a service that did not in any way replicate any abuse they may have previously experienced.

In a world where perfect bodies, youth and beauty are seen as the only prerequisites to a good sex life, someone frequently perceived as an object of care or pity faces huge challenges in developing a positive self-esteem and a healthy sexuality. Of course, it is not necessary to have sex in order to be sexual. There are plenty of sexy celibates. But there’s nothing sexy about enforced celibacy, when the odds of ever falling in love and having a relationship are stacked against you. People denied opportunities to come to know their own bodies or to experience their own or another’s caress may have a greater need for a direct experience of sex to affirm themselves as sexual beings.

Sex workers can provide a different sort of relationship, no less valid than others, that can fulfil the human need for contact on a range of levels.

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This is an edited extract from Griffith REVIEW 22: MoneySexPower (ABC Books). The full essay is available here. Charlie Stansfield has experience in the disability sector which she draws on for this essay based on real events. She thanks Saul Ibiser, Carol Patricia Gibbons and J for inspiring this piece.



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About the Author

Charlie Stansfield spent the 1990s working in the disability sector and is a writer and social worker living in the inner west of Sydney.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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