This story has an angle that could perhaps be more readily appreciated by mainstream disability rights advocates in the U.S. -- Denmark already pays for disabled citizens to be facilitated in receiving the services of a prostitute, but only for those disabled people who are currently institutionalized. In this particular case the dispute is regarding whether or not the state should help enable one to receive such services in their home.
From Sunday's article in The Observer:
Since 2001, Denmark’s social service guidelines on disability have stipulated that care staff in institutions must be prepared to help disabled people obtain sex. That includes accompanying them to a prostitute.
Arranging sex is part of the job for staff at the Hulegaarden residential home for mental disability near Copenhagen. Its director, Lars Nielsen, said: ‘We have many hours of discussion, in groups, before actually doing so. It is clear that there is no human being who is not also a sexual being. If we do not allow disabled people to have the experience of sex, we cannot expect them to build up their lives.
‘The social workers who accompany people to prostitutes receive their salary from Hulegaarden. In that respect, you can argue that Danish society is already paying for the practice.’
Prostitution is not legal or socially acceptable in most of the United States, so maybe it's hard for some to see how this is analogous to a wheelchair user being charged more than an ambulatory person for the same distance in a taxi or on a train. Yet when considered with a healthy dose of cultural relativism, it seems he's simply asking the state to help mitigate the restrictions caused by an arbitrary barrier that society has created, (i.e., the cost of visiting a brothel is prohibitive for him because of certain architectural barriers that dont exist for citizens who aren't disabled).
i expect more from you, ragged edge. you know that people with disabilities are the minority most likely to be sexually abused and yet you seem to be taking no stance on the practice of socially accepted prostitution. i'd like to see an article on what percentage of prostitutes in a country with legalized prostitution are in fact people with disabilities, and what percentage of those are among the many of us who have endured that abuse.
What a concept - recognizing that psychiatric patients are human beings with human needs. I hope that this ideology spreads acrtoss the ocean real soon. Right now the only human contact too many mental prisoners get is a glower from the nurse who dispenses their daily medications.
For many of us with severely disfiguring conditions, contact with sex workers is the only realistic way that we can experience life as sexual beings. I have to travel to Canada at great expense to visit a legal sex worker thanks to the religious nuts in my state who have persuaded the legislature to impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences for hiring a sex worker.
In an effort to bring this closer to home...
This story has an angle that could perhaps be more readily appreciated by mainstream disability rights advocates in the U.S. -- Denmark already pays for disabled citizens to be facilitated in receiving the services of a prostitute, but only for those disabled people who are currently institutionalized. In this particular case the dispute is regarding whether or not the state should help enable one to receive such services in their home.
From Sunday's article in The Observer:
Prostitution is not legal or socially acceptable in most of the United States, so maybe it's hard for some to see how this is analogous to a wheelchair user being charged more than an ambulatory person for the same distance in a taxi or on a train. Yet when considered with a healthy dose of cultural relativism, it seems he's simply asking the state to help mitigate the restrictions caused by an arbitrary barrier that society has created, (i.e., the cost of visiting a brothel is prohibitive for him because of certain architectural barriers that dont exist for citizens who aren't disabled).
Posted by: meme_mutation | January 6, 2006 05:41 PM
i expect more from you, ragged edge. you know that people with disabilities are the minority most likely to be sexually abused and yet you seem to be taking no stance on the practice of socially accepted prostitution. i'd like to see an article on what percentage of prostitutes in a country with legalized prostitution are in fact people with disabilities, and what percentage of those are among the many of us who have endured that abuse.
Posted by: eleanor | January 9, 2006 04:02 PM
What a concept - recognizing that psychiatric patients are human beings with human needs. I hope that this ideology spreads acrtoss the ocean real soon. Right now the only human contact too many mental prisoners get is a glower from the nurse who dispenses their daily medications.
Posted by: Randle McMurphy | January 11, 2006 03:51 PM
For many of us with severely disfiguring conditions, contact with sex workers is the only realistic way that we can experience life as sexual beings. I have to travel to Canada at great expense to visit a legal sex worker thanks to the religious nuts in my state who have persuaded the legislature to impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences for hiring a sex worker.
Posted by: Gimpy Guy | January 19, 2006 06:48 AM
What's the feasibility of a Ragged Edge online dating service? Everybody's gotta have somebody willing to screw 'em.
Posted by: Evonne | February 17, 2006 05:30 PM