Disabled clients

Richard is 76, fascinated by politics, adores the music of the Temperance Seven and the novels of Robert Louis Stephenson. Until recently he was a keen archer and swam competitively. He has an English degree and is keen on photography, developing his pictures himself. He also has cerebral palsy. Until last year he was able to live independently, transferring himself from bed to wheelchair with ease, but a shoulder injury left him helpless and dependent on others.

 

Now four carers come to his home each day, washing him, preparing his meals, putting him to bed, taking him out again. “I’ve never been able to expose myself to so many women with total impunity!” He’s rarely despondent at the path his life has taken, choosing instead to live on his memories – scuba diving off the coast of Tenerife, working for a disability rights charity, that time he almost got a girlfriend.

 

For Richard is a virgin.

 

“All women have an idea of their perfect mate. Usually it doesn’t involve someone disabled.  Women get to pick and choose, and I can rarely compete with anyone. They like strong manly rugby playing types, usually. Men who can provide, save them, scoop them up in their arms. That was never going to be me.”

 

Many men might be angry at this fate; the internet brims with incels, furious they can’t get a woman, not being “alpha males”. Not Richard, however. “I understand I’m not top of anyone’s wishlist. But it does get lonely sometimes.”

 

HIs favourite carer noticed his arousal when she was washing him, and suggested he see an escort. “And I thought, why not? I have a bucket list, there are things I want to experience before I go to the long sleep. Nothing wrong with that, is there? I’m 76, but still passionately interested in women, still curious. As a young man I had a saying, ‘I’d eat my chips out of her knickers!’ Well, I still feel that way now, when I see a pretty girl. Is that wrong?”

 

He saw me on a documentary – Fifty shades of Fetish Model – and on the strength of it put £450 into my bank account and arranged an afternoon with me. I don’t have sex with my clients, but he can’t have sex now anyway. Mostly we talked. I admired his book collection.Then slipped off my clothes and posed so he could take some pictures of me, before standing on a chair, pressing my bottom against his face. “I’ve always wanted to know how it would feel to have my balls slapping against a lady’s bottom while we had sex! That won’t happen now. But this feels marvellous.” He moves his cheek over my curves. His carer shaved him with extra care in readiness.

 

People with disabilities are often treated as though they have no sexuality, and given to understand they should feel guilty or ashamed of asking for accommodations. One of the advantages of hiring a sex worker is unlike most romantic partners they are comfortable catering the entire session to the clients’ needs without projecting their own expectations on to them. They can craft a session which explicitly focusses on the client’s needs and abilities.

 

Richard was perfectly capable of finding my website and sending me an email and payment to arrange a session. For the disabled who would struggle with the practicalities, a war has lately waged over whether their carers should be allowed to intervene and arrange sexual experiences for them. In April 2021 a landmark case found that a care plan to facilitate a disabled man’s contact with a sex worker would not be contrary to section 39 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which makes it an offence for  a care worker to intentionally cause or incite a person for whom they are caring to engage in sexual activity. The case centred around C, a man with developmental delay, in significant need of help with independent living, who expressed a desire for sexual relations, but lacked the capability to safely arrange the practical details. 

 

The decision upset many feminists and conservatives, who argued it would encourage prostitution. The government was granted a right of appeal, on the grounds that the decision contradicted its stated aim to discourage prostitution by means of criminalising demand for sexual services.

 

But if the law banned carers from assisting C in his desire to experience sexual activity, that would amount to discrimination against the disabled, as anyone else could legally purchase sex. Judge Hayden pointed out, “The secretary of state may not obstruct those who wish to participate in lawful transactions nor, logically, those who wish to help them, be they carers or otherwise.”

 

 

Writing for The Spectator, Julie Bindel argues that “the rights of disabled men to buy sex clearly overrides the rights of prostituted women and carers, but also the majority of disabled people who find the assumption that they can’t get a real date offensive. What about deeply unattractive, able bodied men? Should we recognise how difficult it might be for them to get a real date and provide women for them, too?”

 

This argument is deliberately disingenuous. Deeply unattractive men are still able to work a laptop and access funds, which the profoundly disabled may not be. 

 

Does anyone have the right to sex? It isn’t enshrined in the Human Rights Act, true: instead the right to treat everyone fairly, with dignity and respect, is regarded as fundamental. In this category I would include not only the right to explore one’s sexuality, but also the right to earn a living by any means we choose. Should Richard’s condition worsen, and his carer need to drop me a line and leave me a wad of cash, no law should prevent her. Consenting adults must be allowed to behave as they please, provided they harm no one: this is a fundamental tenet and marker of a civilised society.