Not many people feel comfortable asking their mother to call a sex worker.
But for Mark Manitta, who is 48 and has cerebral palsy, this is exactly what he asked his mother, Elaine, to do nearly 30 years ago.
''It's hard being a parent and this comes up,'' Mrs Manitta, 72, said. ''People see them sitting in their wheelchair think, that's it. They don't see what's going on in their lives and Mark would dearly love a relationship.''
Mark, who communicates with a typing device , said his first encounter with a sex worker was when he was 19. His mother drove him to a brothel and waited outside for an hour.
''I feel more relaxed after,'' he said.
New Zealand needs a formalised service to help disabled people find sex, not just for pleasure but also for their health, those working in the disability and sex sectors say.
Male sex worker and activist Saul Isbister left New Zealand in the mid-1990s and headed to New South Wales, where he helped establish Touching Base with his friend and colleague, Rachel Wotton.
The pair are in New Zealand to promote their documentary Scarlet Road and to share their own experience, in the hope that New Zealanders will start talking more openly about this work, and in turn help to destigmatise two sectors of society they say are discriminated against.
Touching Base trains sex workers and those who work in the disability sector and acts as a referral agency, matching people with disabilities with prostitutes.
The charitable organisation started in 2000 after a series of conversations between interested parties.
Sex and disability are murky waters for film. How does a filmmaker depict sex involving disabled people without gawking or needlessly inflating the significance of the event? How to show it as both normal and meaningful?
These questions apply, of course, anytime filmmakers put sex on the screen, but the risks of picketers are lower when you’ve got pretty, able-bodied stars shaking the sheets. Films about people with disabilities often omit sex entirely—consider My Left Foot or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Scarlet Road, a recent documentary about an Australian sex worker who specializes in clients with disabilities, is undoubtedly sex-positive and determinedly non-voyeuristic, but celebrates the central sex worker as a goddesslike savior for her clients.
So I approached The Sessions with generous skepticism. The drama is based on the true story of Mark O’Brien, a polio survivor and writer who spent most of his life in an iron lung. At age 38, he decides to lose his virginity and hires a sex surrogate to guide him through the deed. But rather than glorifying sex or treating it with clinical coldness, writer-director Ben Lewin charts Mark’s quest with grace, warmth and wry humor. Explicit nudity (female only, thanks to the MPAA’s double standard) has never been so moving and delicate.
As Mark, the versatile John Hawkes—recently seen as a menacing meth addict in Winter’s Bone and a sinister cult leader in Martha Marcy May Marlene—turns in an astonishing performance. Hawkes spends the entire film on his back, his head cranked at a 90-degree angle and his spine contorted, but his wheezy voice and expressive eyes convey deep wells of pain and self-consciousness along with biting wit.
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Adelaide Now recently published an article titled “Disabled deserve the joy of sex.”
Kelly Vincent, a member of the South Australian Parliament has been dubbed the “Dignity for Disability MP”. She advocates the decriminalisation of sex work, calling for a "more permissive” culture around using disability services funding to pay for access to a sex worker or sex therapy.
In her proposal, money already allocated for physical therapies or mental health services could be legitimately spent on sex services. Her reasoning is that there needs to be a culture of recognising that people with disability are sexually active or have sexual desires.
The article is concerning on a number of levels. To begin with, there was no reference to assisting the person with disability to explore other avenues of sexuality such as forming relationships, and honouring and respecting the body.
Kelly Vincent, who was elected on a platform of rights for people with disabilities, launched her campaign on Tuesday to support the legal push, saying she feels it would benefit many who are disabled.
Some advocates say it would allow disabled people to get rid of sexual frustration and achieve some happiness, but others say the campaign risks stigmatising those who it is trying to help.
Ms Vincent says if a private member's bill introduced by Labor MP Steph Key is passed in about a month, sex workers with specific training could provide a safe and positive environment for people with a disability to experience intimacy.
If successful, she would then push for a policy to allow people with a disability to use their government funding to pay for sex workers.
"For those people who are feeling frustrated and alienated and alone and sad because they can't access this experience, and for those people for whom the services of a sex worker could make a genuine huge, positive difference to their lives, in a private, intimate manner, then I don't see why that can't be allowed," Ms Vincent said.