A short documentary covers the debate over sexual surrogates for disabled people:
James Hamblin sides with the disabled seeking sexual contact:
Near the end many of us will pay for people to help us walk, put food in our mouths, change our diapers. We’ll lose our relationships that afford close physical contact. Once a neuromuscular disease leaves someone incontinent, we as physicians can offer little to restore their abilities. The same is true when a stroke leaves a patient unable to chew his own food. We often can’t restore these basic, humanizing parts of people. There is value in seriously considering every human element that can be preserved. Surrogacy does not replace a loving relationship, and it shouldn’t be expected to. We don’t refuse the help of a physical therapist because it won’t be as good as having never gotten hit by a bus to begin with. When real love is on the table, take it. When the table is missing, or someone’s axed the legs, then there are surrogates.
A fallacy of modern medicine is that anything less than perfect health or complete recovery is failure, or at least concession. Another is that accepting help and treatment admits weakness. As doctors we spend a lot of our time managing expectations. With chronic illness and old age, the job is most often about making the best of imperfect circumstances. Is sexual surrogacy necessarily so removed from invoking the help of any health professional? The grey areas are expansive, but so is the potential.
The Dish 