Should we also lobby for the same in India too?
What do you say Access Indians.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/world/europe/disabled-people-say-they-too-want-a-sex-life-and-seek-help-in-attaining-it.html?pagewanted=all
Seeking Sexual Surrogates: In France, sexual surrogates for disabled
people are not permitted, but some are pushing to make the practice
legal.
By MAÏA de la BAUME
GRENOBLE, France — In her sexual fantasies, she is a fit and impetuous
blonde who dominates her male partners. In real life, she is a virgin
who relies on an electric wheelchair, her body touched only by home
care aides and medical personnel.
France Keyser for The New York Times
Laetitia Rebord, receiving home care in Grenoble, is paralyzed. Her
disability has scared away many potential sexual partners.
“A disabled person is seen as a child,” said the woman in the
wheelchair, Laetitia Rebord, 31. “So inevitably, child and sex don’t
go together.” A translator and teacher, she has a genetic spinal
muscular atrophy that has left her entirely paralyzed, except for her
left thumb and her facial muscles.
Ms. Rebord, who says she feels physical sensation acutely, has looked
for sexual relationships through friends of friends and men on dating
sites and even with male escorts. But her disability has scared many
away, and she says she is now ready to pay for sex in Switzerland or
Germany, where so-called sexual surrogates are legal.
Stories like Ms. Rebord’s are far from unusual in France, where behind
a facade of sexual freedom, disabled people struggle to have a sex
life. But their desires are often disregarded, and while prostitution
is legal here, soliciting potential clients and serving as an
intermediary between prostitutes and clients are not.
The issue of sexual surrogates came up in March, after the National
Ethics Committee, which advises the government on health issues,
issued a report criticizing the practice as the “unethical use of the
human body for commercial purposes.” The report, commissioned in 2011,
was approved by government officials, including Marie-Arlette
Carlotti, a junior minister responsible for issues involving those
with disabilities, who called sexual assistance for disabled people “a
form of prostitution.”
But encouraged in part by the publicity around “The Sessions,” a 2012
American movie about the sexual awakening of a disabled man by a
sexual surrogate, some legislators and associations of disabled people
are demanding the legalization of sexual surrogates.
“Prostitution is a fake debate; the goals are different,” said Pascale
Ribes, who in 2011 founded the Disabilities and Sexualities Group, an
association defending sexual surrogates in France.
“Sexual assistance is about allowing a disabled person who can’t
access sexuality in a satisfying way to reconnect with the body,” Ms.
Ribes said.
Her association is lobbying for a change in the law to allow disabled
people, their parents, their friends or directors of approved
institutions to arrange meetings with sexual surrogates, who typically
charge around $130 a session. She speaks of the “sexual distress” of
many of France’s 1.8 million disabled people of working age,
especially women.
Some need sexual assistance to recover their sexual drive after an
accident, Ms. Ribes said. Others are disabled couples who need help to
“share intimate moments together.” Many wish to explore their
sexuality to regain self-confidence, she said. Most sexual surrogates
are women, Ms. Ribes said, adding that “it is harder for disabled
women rather than men to ask for a sexual surrogate.”
In France, the rarity of debate over the subject, the laws regulating
prostitution and the refusal to legalize sexual surrogates have
encouraged illegal practices.
Aminata Gregory, 66, is Dutch. She retired as a supervisor in the
construction industry, and she has been performing sexual assistance
illegally in France for more than a year. She was trained as a sex
therapist in Switzerland, and her work mostly involves massages and
erotic games without kisses on the mouth or sex.
“If someone is in a wheelchair, I start in the wheelchair,” Ms.
Gregory said. “I start playing the game of getting undressed on the
wheelchair. It becomes a little like a game.”
Ms. Gregory’s clients find her through word of mouth. She has about 10
disabled clients in France and charges them through her company in the
Netherlands. Her sessions cost about $130 and often take place in her
clients’ houses. They begin with background checks and discussions
about the clients’ needs.
“During the session, I can be a friend, the lover, whoever they want,”
Ms. Gregory said. “They can dream, they can speak, they can ask what
they want, and I give them as much as possible.”
Ms. Gregory finds France’s attitude on sexual assistance intolerant.
“In Holland, we have integrity over our body,” she said. “In France,
the law always decides for the individual, and not in his favor.”
On a recent Saturday, Ms. Gregory went to Vedène, in southern France,
to meet one of her clients, Daniel Doriguzzi, 49, a town hall
employee. Mr. Doriguzzi has a rare genetic disease called Friedreich’s
ataxia, a condition that is making him gradually lose physical
coordination and the ability to speak fluently.
“With a prostitute, there is sex and it’s over,” said Mr. Doriguzzi,
speaking from the veranda of his modest ground-floor apartment. “It
lasts for a limited time and nothing else.”
With Ms. Gregory, he said, “we put ourselves in a bubble and become a
normal couple. We talk to each other. We do whatever we want. We ask
each other whatever we want. At the end of the session, we break the
bubble.”
Sexual surrogates are legal in most countries that allow prostitution,
like Switzerland, Germany and Denmark. In Switzerland, several
associations offer training for sexual surrogates.
In 2008, Catherine Agthe Diserens, a Swiss-German educator, started a
six-month training program with former prostitutes, nurses and
physiotherapists. It included classes about disabilities, internships
in institutions, collaborations with sex workers and practical courses
exploring what Mrs. Agthe Diserens called “body skills.”
“It is a totally atypical and extremely specialized training,” she
said in an interview from her home near Geneva. “It requires a lot of
preparation beforehand, and it is extremely intense.” She plans to set
up a second training session in the fall and bring more prostitutes to
train, she said.
In France, offering such training would be unthinkable. For many
French feminists, who associate undesired sex with violence, sexual
assistance is humiliating both for the woman involved and for disabled
people.
“It’s like telling disabled people that since they will never have a
sex or love life, we’ll prescribe them sexual assistance as a
palliative,” said Anne-Cécile Mailfert, a member of Osez le Féminisme
(Dare to be feminist).
For Ms. Mailfert, sexual assistance can also create dangerous
emotional dependency between those who practice it and their clients.
The central question, she said, is less about sexuality than about
teaching medical professionals to understand the sexual needs of
disabled people and to help them meet other people.
But many disabled people, including Ms. Rebord, believe that they have
a right to sexual assistance, a psychological and physical means to
overcome their inhibitions and empower them to find love.
Marcel Nuss, a severely disabled father of two who breathes with an
artificial respirator, is the author of “I Want to Make Love.” The
book describes his personal fulfillment through love with his former
wife and a sex life with escorts. His experiences, he said, persuaded
him to support the use of sexual surrogates.
“Someone like me can’t do anything on his own,” said Mr. Nuss, who
runs a consulting firm specializing in helping disabled people. “Sex
helps the disabled to reincarnate themselves and recover their human
aspect.”
Ms. Rebord shares Mr. Nuss’s optimism and openness about sex. She
lives in a tidy, modern apartment, has a decent paycheck, a Facebook
account and a taste for “Sons of Anarchy,” an American television
series featuring a group of tattooed bikers.
She believes that a conservative society like France moves slowly, as
it did before finally legalizing abortion. In time, she said, France
will legalize sexual surrogates, too, although she was not holding her
breath. “I hope,” she said with a laugh, “I’ll still be alive to see
it.”
Stefania Rousselle contributed reporting from Vedène, France.
--
Avinash Shahi
MPhil Research Scholar
Centre for the Study of Law and Governance
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi India
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