The disabled sexual surrogate

Beginnings

Sexual surrogacy is a form of therapy in which an individual experiencing sexual issues may engage with a paid individual to help them address these problems. In North America, a sex therapist may hire a surrogate for their client. If hired, the surrogate then reports back to the sex therapist about progress being made. Typical issues that clients face might include fear of intimacy, body image problems, problems with sexual performance, adult virginity, not being in tune with their partners and other obstacles that block healthy sexual activity.¹ Whereas the sex therapist engages in talking, the surrogate engages sexually with the client in conjunction with the therapist’s goals for that client.

In a disability context first arising in California many years ago as part of the Independent Living Movement, this type of therapy is now more commonly referred to as “partner surrogacy” to remove the exclusive connotation of sex. Surrogacy is not exclusively about genital stimulation. It is about helping individuals discover their inherent erotic natures and acquire the tools they need to manifest their erotic natures with themselves and their partners.

In my journey of disability empowerment and self-awareness, I have always strived to acquire learning that informs and challenges my own preconceptions about disability. Many years ago when I was taking disability studies classes at Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies in Toronto Canada, it seemed odd that, as a Person with a Disability myself, I was in fact in the minority with my able-bodied classmates. As an above-knee amputee and life-long cancer survivor, my childhood was a medicalised narrative incorporating surgery, chemotherapy, physical rehabilitation and the endless journey of prosthetic purchase and repair, which continues to this day. It was only once in my 30s, that I was able to work with a disability sex therapist and begin to understand how my sexuality informs and empowers me, and that it was not only important but also my right as a disabled person to manifest my sexuality.

Though I try to resist sexual labelling, I happily describe myself as pansexual. As I reflect on a plethora of partners over the years – male, female and transgender – I begin to understand that sex and disability reflect a panorama of issues, triumphs and satisfactions relating to how disability informs body image, sexual functioning and self-esteem.

Throughout all the talk about the rights of disabled people to be sexual that began to emerge in debate amongst the disability activists, spreading across the globe in the early twenty-first century, the focus tended to address sociocultural and systemic shifts required in attitudes, prejudices and discrimination. The tendency to consider individual as opposed to social responses was found predominately in the global North, yet, despite this, I never once came across any disabled people who themselves were ready and prepared to provide sexual surrogacy to their fellow disabled individuals.

The decision

Tired of the incessant calls for sexual rights for the disabled with no disabled person of any profile offering their services as a surrogate, I began to seriously consider my own potential to work in this field.

Perhaps the most important qualification I had when starting surrogacy training was my having attended erotic training sessions with a surrogate in Toronto, and it was there that I began to understand why surrogacy works and the impact it has. While surrogacy can incorporate a variety of sexual scenarios up to and including intercourse, the panorama of surrogacy speaks to a wider spectrum of erotic self-knowledge. My sessions with a Toronto surrogate, whom I later quoted in my policy paper for Disability Studies Quarterly,² was able to create for me a series of physical interactions sensitised to my disability and geared toward helping me understand the levels of my erotic self and my potential as a lover for a prospective partner. She was pleased enough to recognise that our work together had been helpful to me and subsequently wrote a letter of reference for me for my formal training as a surrogate with the International Professional Surrogacy Association.³

And so it was in the summer of 2015 that I went to Murrietta, California and began my journey as one of the few physically disabled people in the world to receive this training. I was committed to addressing the realities of my community, this was what had brought me to this moment. I was embarking on a journey to become what I felt I always was: a disabled sexual surrogate.

Training

My training group of roughly a dozen was largely American but also contained other nationalities. We were all sex-positive people with a sincere interest in helping those in our communities address sexual issues in, what was for me, a highly clinical way of addressing them and the ever-mental presence of the “sex therapists” of the clients we aimed to serve.

We all lived together in a house outside of Los Angeles for a little under two weeks. Each day was crammed with learning activities, the nightly ritual of writing what we had learned as well as completing daily assignments, which our trainer diligently reviewed and handed back to us. Our time together was, for me, overwhelming, liberating, exhausting, politicising and ultimately professionally enriching. As surrogates-in-training, we all felt we were part of something unique. As the only disabled trainee, I felt meaningfully special and, no doubt, my radical body image informed my classmates about the importance of disability in this type of training. Prior to the training, our required reading was Our Sexuality by Crooks and Baur.⁴ Yes, the text does address disability but not my disability.

For me, the foundation of the training was and is “sensate focus touching,” a series of exercises where touch becomes central to erotic self-knowledge. This seemed so fundamental to me, and at the same time so misunderstood by society in its misappraisal of surrogacy. For I believe that what all people, disabled or able-bodied, crave more than all else is touch. So many disabled people, particularly those in long-term residential care, only experience touch as medicinal touch, reaffirming the medical model of disability in which disabled people are objects of care. But genital touch, facial caressing and extremity caressing all, in my opinion, allow clients, especially disabled clients, to welcome themselves into the relationship with their surrogates and their own bodies. Touch is the centrepiece of erotic self-love and was fundamental to my training and work as a surrogate serving the empowerment of physically disabled women.

Very briefly, I would like to outline what I felt were two of the essential learning activities of my surrogacy training and why I believe they have a unique application to disabled clients, particularly disabled women.

1. Body Mirror Mediation

   • This was a highly empowering and emotional experience for me and one I would want to incorporate with all my disabled clients. I believe it is critical to body acceptance.

   • Standing or seated in front of a mirror, the individual looks at their body and describes what they like about it, how it gratifies them or their partner and how they really begin to “see” their body as something desirable.

   • Standing naked in front of a mirror with my partner observing, the activity allowed me the chance to see myself in the way I always would want to be seen, as someone who is sexually attractive. As I described my body parts as I have used them in the past in both sexual and non-sexual ways I began to feel a desirability about myself and my own physicality. The social construct of beauty in the context of the “perfect body” finds its best adversary in the mirror activity and is ideal, in my opinion, in helping disabled women recognise their own inherent beauty.

2. Non-Demand Sensate Genital Exploration/Sensuous Shower

   • I found this activity highly empowering and believe it would work well for any physically disabled person. As the surrogate and client stand (sitting works better for me) in the shower, genital exploration is non-sexual, non-threatening and based on each partner taking turns. It may eventually become a mutual activity.

   • I believe this activity is very relevant and important in disability sexuality for a number of reasons. If scarring is part of the client’s physicality, this issue can be addressed through mutual touch in an environment that dictates confidentiality. What I found so empowering as I worked on this activity with my partner was the way it allowed me to explore my able-bodied partner non-sexually, and thus empowered me as the disabled partner. I believe the trust that is created through non-sexual nudity, particularly when one person is in charge, has a profound application for clients with disabilities and, again, challenges the assumption that surrogacy is inherently sexual. Instead, surrogacy is inherently sensual.

Clients

Returning to Toronto in 2016 where I began work on a new disability dance piece, I sought the input from members of Toronto’s disability sex community, those like myself who advocate for greater sexual access for people with disabilities regardless of their sexual orientation.

Through that exploration, I was pleased to have my first client, a young lady who is a wheelchair user. Over several sessions, I engaged in my first experiences as a disabled sexual surrogate. It seemed strangely familiar to be working with a fellow disabled person and I wondered what she must have thought about taking surrogacy instruction from someone like me. It seemed that, finally, we were breaking through a psychological ceiling that demanded that disabled people only empower themselves by way of an able-bodied authority figure. Here, certainly in one of the first instances, was a disabled sexual surrogate empowering a disabled person. Two disabled persons united in their belief of sexual self-esteem for people with disabilities were coming together to manifest that belief. I felt an incredible sense of purpose with my client. Finally, my training and my commitment to disability sexual rights had its first beginnings. I was empowered.

My client and I worked together using an exceptional book called Touching for Pleasure: A 12 Step Program for Sexual Enhancement.⁵ Using easy-to-understand instructions and vivid pencil illustrations, the volume certainly succeeded in helping me appreciate the incredible impact of non-sexual touch and how best to serve my client without her having to get out of her wheelchair. I was able to come directly to her and work on the touching exercises without any significant inconvenience.

I began my professional relationship as I had learned to, starting with a client history, upbringing, medical background, any current sexual issues and so on. It was moving for me to hear this woman’s perspective. Yes, she could have sex. No, there was nothing particularly painful about it, but there was the issue of positioning following sex and other issues that related to having a better, more fulfilling experience. Again, I was moved. As a disabled person, to hear a fellow disabled person articulate her issues, not to an able-bodied sex therapist but to a person who similarly experiences varying degrees of mobility impairment, was empowering. My experience of being a disabled sexual surrogate went completely beyond the physical to a political understanding of why it is so important that people with disabilities have access to surrogacy in a disability context. That disability context must incorporate the disabled sexual surrogate not simply because the disabled surrogate is a fellow member of the culture but also because the disabled surrogate can identify with the sexual, political and emotional realities of the client. Surrogacy within the context of disability is a bonding force for healing and empowerment.

Drawing from Touching for Pleasure, we began with hand and face caresses, again while my client remained in her wheelchair. I found these activities to be helpful to me in breaking down walls of inhibition and equally educational for me in realising the impact of sensual touch. While it is true that being sensual is not the same as being sexual, I believe that body contact, at any level, plays a larger role for people with disabilities than able-bodied people. Doing touching activities with my client created for me the opportunity to better understand touch from a disability perspective. It allowed me a greater opportunity to see myself as a disabled surrogate aiding a disabled person. The perceived hierarchy of the able-bodied helping the disabled was gone. My client and I were able to create an environment of mutual understanding.

Into the future

Reflections and critique

The perception of the sexual surrogate being (1) genital-focused and (2) able-bodied are the two main stereotypes that I struggle with in my work. I find myself incessantly explaining that this is not about “sex” per se, and that human touch, manifested through different exercises in different ways, can have enormous therapeutic resonance for the client. In the context of disability, I tire of the endless image of the benevolent able-bodied surrogate “helping” the socially isolated disabled man. There needs to be a greater understanding and awareness of disabled people as sexual beings beyond the objectification of disabled people as receivers of sexual services. If there is such a thing as “sexual leadership,” disabled people must pursue it if we are ever to overcome the stereotypes of surrogacy.

The opportunities for disabled people to become surrogates are, sadly, limited. The opportunities for disabled people themselves to access surrogates are also highly limited, restricted to those with financial resources living in wealthy regions where sex therapists practice. In North America, International Professional Surrogates appears to be the only avenue for individuals like myself to acquire surrogacy training, yet many sex workers, including those listed on the website for the Sexual Health Disability Alliance in the UK, list “no training” on their profiles. There seems to be a strange dichotomy between the notion of sex work being inherent, not needing any kind of formal training, versus the notion of requiring the kind of guidance I received in California for surrogacy work. I would argue that, while opportunities for training are limited, surrogacy training is a valued asset since training includes touch focus exercises, like the ones I learned. These can serve as significant advancements for clients.

It’s my belief that people with disabilities seeking surrogacy services are best served when a fellow member of the disability culture in tune to the political realities of what it means to be disabled provides them. This is the ultimate benefit of the disabled male sexual surrogate seeking to serve heterosexual, bisexual or transgendered disabled women in their empowerment. It is a role in which I proudly serve.