It’s one of those topics people don’t want to think or talk about, the sex lives of the disabled. In real life, however, quenching the sexual drive for people with disabilities quite often falls to “sexual assistants,” which in the United States generally means prostitutes; the only difference being in the area of expertise. Now comes word via the Sydney Morning Herald, that some countries in Europe are considering making the practice of sexual assistance legal via a licensing program.
The problem is, many people who are disabled continue to have a healthy sex drive. Unfortunately, many such people are unable to find a partner due to their disability, which leads to very high levels of frustration; in some cases, to such a degree that people have chosen to take their own lives instead of living such a life in anguish. Thus, some countries such as Switzerland, have set up a program to train people to be sexual assistants, which they say differs from common prostitution because it is designed to provide those with special needs access to an activity that most take for granted. It differs also because many people with disabilities have no choice, it’s either a sexual assistant or nothing. Many cannot even engage in masturbation because they are unable to carry it out. It also differs because those needs can vary so greatly. For example, some disabilities prevent people from engaging in sex of any type. For such people, a sexual assistant may then offer little more than massage therapy. The other difference is that the law disallows sexual intercourse by sexual assistance, which means their sexual assistance is limited to masturbatory type activities. The object in such cases is to provide the simplest and quickest means to assist in achieving an orgasm.
According to the Herald, however, those clients that wish more than can be offered by law are referred to local prostitutes who have built up an illegal clientele catering to special needs patients, whereby local law enforcement tends to look the other way rather than prosecuting.
Such arrangements have held sway for years, though for many it has carried with it a certain stigma. Most view it in the same vein as prostitution, i.e. a dirty business. The end result is people that are frustrated by their disabilities and then made to feel shamed because they seek the only outlet available to them.
Hopefully some sort of middle ground can be reached so that both the person with the disability and the sexual assistant can come to feel better about what, for many, is a very important activity.
Bob Yirka - Bob Yirka has written thousands of online articles and backs them up with a BS in Computer Science/MS in Information Systems Management.
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