整理資料發現近兩年前去某國際研討會分享 #手天使 心得時的講稿，當時把我知道的議題面向都寫進去了。貼上來給有興趣的朋友。
[[slide page 1]]
Thank you for attending this part.
I'm from Hand Angel, a non-profit organization of Taiwan.
The title of my presentation is "As a sex worker and a sex volunteer",
since I'm both a sex worker, and also attending Hand Angel as a sex volunteer.
[[slide page 2]]
Allow me to introduce my organization more,
though you may know some from what Vincent has said in the morning.
Our main tenet is sexual rights to people with disabilities.
[[slide page 3]]
This includes not only orgasm, but also the right to control one's sexuality with autonomy and without discrimination.
People know us usually because we provide limited sexual service for servere physical or visual disabilities, including females.
Hand Angel is not a registered organization in Taiwan,
since we literally provide sexual service, which is considered against public order and morals.
However, we are still able to initiative our idea on the table
because our service are free, which means we actually do not violate any law.
[[slide page 4]]
In Taiwan, the definition of "sexual transaction" includes obscene acts in exchange for monetary,
which means it's considered transactional sex even there is no sexual intercourse.
And since transactional sex is technically illegal in Taiwan,
there's no legal way for us to charge anything by providing any service which may be considered obscenity.
This is much different in other countries.
In Japan, the law prohibiting sexual transaction only applies to intercourse between one male and one female. That's why White Hands and NOIR are able to provide paid handjob. The other reason is that they seem do not locate their service as sexual transaction. We can talk about this difference later.
And in Hong Kong, there's some way for sex workers not to be punished, which is called "one-woman brothel". So the difficulty for people with disabilities to satisfy their sexual desire would be different.
I, who has been a sex worker for years -- under the table, of course -- was invited to join Hand Angel at its very beginning.
[[slide page 5]]
People keep asking me that how a sex worker would think about a free sexual service.
But before that question, I think it's more important for us to know the difference other than money.
What's the difference between a classical transactional sex and our service?
As a sex worker, I hope my customers will come back to me more and more, as many times as they can pay.
But as a member of Hand Angel, I hope the servees would not need us anymore.
In fact, I hope they don't have to come to us at the very beginning.
The reason why people with disabilities may need sexual service, is the absence of sexual resource, the resource to fulfill one's sexual desire.
This is just like other issues of disabilities.
[[slide page 6]]
Just providing a service would not resolve the structural problem.
For example, if you give food to the poor without changing their situation, you would end up finding out that they're still poor.
Now change the "food" to "sex".
If we just give our own sex to those who barely have sexual resource, we'll end up exploiting ourselves, and their bad situation still remains.
The problem is, disabled people are considered abnormal, and they have been treated as no unnecessary needs.
But what is necessary for a person to live her own life instead of just survive?
In our issue, disabled people are usually considered asexual, and seldom sexy. That's the stigma we're going to break down.
[[slide page 7]]
There are some textures talking about disabled people in love and having sex, such as "Scarlet Road", "Sex on Wheels", and "The Sessions".
However, the narrative are usually based on ableism.
Viewers usually focus on how can the service provider "bear" to have sex with disabled people, instead of seeing the obstacles disabled people encounter.
[[slide page 8]]
A feminist has said that the relationship a disabled person has is considered depending on the compassion of the other person. People think their sexuality is disgusting and only saints are able to tolerate it.
So we can see the problem is not only physical obstacles, but also how we think about intimate relationship a disabled person deserves.
[[slide page 9]]
Does Hand Angel care about intimate issue? The answer is yes.
In our service, we provide not only sexual service. Our target is not the physical orgasm, but the infinite opportunity of their own lives.
Here are two examples.
[[slide page 10]] Little Prince
Since this servee can sense nothing below his waist, a classical handjob would be meaningless.
Fortunately, we have a BDSM queen in our team.
She thought of techniques in SM to check how pain it is to the slave, and use the same trick to check how the servee's body can feel.
I have to emphasize: that was not a medical treatment, that was about communication with each other.
They were talking about the feeling of two people, instead of the body of one person.
The whole process relies on the intimacy between the sex volunteer and the servee.
[[slide page 11]] ND
"Strolling" for him was from his room to the front door of his home.
Uh, I'm not talking about he lives in a big house.
Though using an electric wheelchair, ND's finger was not powerful enough to control the device for more than 10 minutes,
which means going out alone is not possible for him.
But after applying for our service, he trained himself to "walk" longer.
Even after our service, we were told that he kept trying to leave home and meet other friends.
Another servee has tried other entertainment such as snorkeling and paragliding after our service.
He's having a more plentiful life than before, and even than me.
[[slide page 12]]
In these cases, we can see that:
First, physical orgasm is not the only purpose of a sexual service.
Secondly, libido, or desire for sexual activity, is a strong energy for people to live.
There's a continuing question for us: People can still live without sex.
[[slide page 13]]
What's so important for disabled people to have sex?
Well, I think sex is probably not important for those who can have sex easily, but the impossibility to sex or intimacy may deny the self-esteem of a person.
Sex is an important reason for most people to make friends. So on the other hand, once a person is forced to abandon the opportunity to have sex, she (or he) might lose the energy to social activities. And that's not good for mental health.
[[slide page 14]] The 3 aspects we care about
First, physical orgasm. This is not only about sex organ, but also those come from your erogenous zone.
The problem is not only that people don't know how to interact with disabled people during sex,
but also that people do not want to know how the sex would be for people with different disabilities.
Second, intimacy. The right to have a satisfying date is also important.
Let's imagine, what if a couple of lovers want to kiss each other while seeing movie in a theater, but one of them is in wheelchair so their positions are actually separated?
Third, social integration. Many people with disabilities don't have enough opportunity to make close friends. One of the reasons is that other people usually don't know how to react with disabled people. Therefore, education is important.
[[slide page 15]] Gender Equity Education
In Taiwan, gender equity education comprises 3 parts: affective education, sex education, and gay and lesbian education.
Though I also want to introduce the situation that the conservative group is raising a proposal of referendum to forbid gay and lesbian education, but that's not the issue here so I have to skip that. I hope people who are interested in Taiwan may notice that same-sex marriage is not the only issue about gender equity.
Uh, back to disability rights movement.
As an organization which cares both gender issue and disability issue, we note that even open-minded gender activists may ignore the existence of people with disabilities.
Gender equity education is never designed or applied in the point of view of the disabled.
For example, there are some materials for teaching safe sex, but people seldom think about how a blind person should know before she (or he) masturbate or have sex.
We have a servee who once masturbated in the bathroom of his home, but couldn't clean up since not knowing where his semen reached during ejaculation, and therefore shocked his sister who later used the bathroom.
And another friend bought an artificial vagina in a sex toy store. But he didn't even know he have to erect before insertion.
[[slide page 16]] female servee
People caring about gender equity keep question us: why is there only one female servee during these 5 years after our foundation?
Well, we think the answer is complicated. But the most important one is: how difficult for a female to "confess" she has sexual desire?
We all know about "slut shaming", and those terms to humiliate females by their sexuality -- such as "bitch" and "whore".
It's difficult even for able-bodied females to state their sex experience and preference.
Then it's even more difficult for disabled females to think what she herself wants.
But before sexual activity with other people, disabled females don't even know their body well.
The only female servee we have, told us she has never seen or touched her own vagina.
So we also hosted some conferences and speeches to discuss about such situation of disabled females.
[[slide page 17]] Androcentrism
This is an important issue for us. And I think it's important for those who care about sexual health of disabled people.
Though there are some textures talking about sexual desires of disabled females. To provide sexual service or even sex education to them is barely seen.
I have to admit that, even though there are more and more female members joining us, androcentrism is still not easy to get over.
[[slide page 18]] limitations
Hand Angel provides service to those with servere physical or visual disabilities.
So here comes a frequently asked question: what about others?
The main difficulty for us is that we don't know enough about the situation of other disabilities.
Of course we know that people with other disabilities also don't have enough sexual resources,
but we ourselves do not have enough resources to share, either.
That's why we also hope other people to compose other similar organization.
Meanwhile, there are some people we cannot help because of law.
Adolescents are the ones I myself care about most,
since male teenagers have overwhelming sexual desire, and that would be hell for those with upper limb disability.
However, there are always laws prohibiting youths to have sex in every country.
[[slide page 19]]
In Taiwan, it is legal to have sexual activity after 16. No matter it's intercourse or not.
But even for an organization providing free service like us, the member who communicate with sex volunteer and the servee would be punished as a broker if the servee is younger than 18.
Actually, we do have an applier who mailed us about his desire when he was 15. What we can do is tell him to wait 3 more years.
Unfortunately, being an adult does not mean your right to sex is permitted.
[[slide page 20]]
People with intellectual disability or mental disorder are also infantilized, treated as babies or angels, and considered asexual.
The dilemma is similar to what teenagers have. Their consents are not considered valid.
That is frustrating. The law to protect them from sexual violence also tortures them.
[[slide page 21]] Acrotomophilia and devotees
While talking about disabled people in love or having sex, this is also an issue we should mention.
Some people worry about that devotees are just trying to dominate or take control of the disabled people.
This is similar to MacKinnon's dominance theory and male supremacy.
Devotees are considered to have more power in the relationship, and thus disabled people have a lack of autonomy.
I think that's a stigma, too.
The dominance theory does not deny free love. It focuses on the power issue.
Thus, the problem lies still on the absence of resources disabled people deserve.
Slanders on devotees are based on the prejudice that disabled people are never sexy,
and that denies the possibility for disabled people to have plentiful sexual activity.
The whole society shall support disabled people to have their own autonomy in their relationship.
[[slide page 22]] Difficulties
Usually, people would understand sexual desire of disabled people.
But to support it publicly is another story, especially for the organizations relying on donations.
There are some social workers and parents telling us that they want to do something to help their cases and family,
but it is still an issue which could not be spoken.
It's never been easy for us to talk about sex on the table, but it should be done.
Even for those who don't agree with the idea of sexual service, I do hope you could at least support disabled people to talk about their sex and romance.
[[slide page 23]]
This ends my report. Thank you for listening.
I'm Kong, a sex volunteer of Hand Angel from Taiwan.
