Surrogate sex partner inspires story, film

[RainDog]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2012%2F01%2F09%2FDD141MKSTA.DTL

Tossing this into the DU mix.

In 38 years as a surrogate partner - a profession formerly known as a sex surrogate - Cheryl Cohen Greene has helped all kinds of clients. She's worked with couples, with married men and single men, with disabled people, with men in their 60s, 70s and 80s who have never had sex.

One of her clients, the poet and journalist Mark O'Brien, was stricken with polio at 6 and spent most of his life in an iron lung. In 1986, when O'Brien was 36 and a virgin, he hired Cohen Greene as his surrogate partner. They met six times and remained friends until O'Brien's death in 1999.

..."He told me nobody had ever touched him other than to bathe him, dress him or do a medical procedure. He said that he felt like he was on the outside of a fine restaurant, looking in the window. Everybody in there is having a feast, but he'll never be able to taste that food."

..."There's a huge population of people with genetic or acquired disabilities who never have a chance to be intimate with someone. Everything is addressed but their sexuality even though their sex drive and sexual curiosity are just as intense as everybody else's."

[Hell Hath No Fury]

1. Mark O'Brien was very well known locally --

..and I remember reading about his use of a surrogate back when it happened. I was very glad that this option was out there for him to have.

[RainDog]

3. Is context everything?

no screaming back and forth about this one.

no forbidden, no coercion.

what does our propensity to sanction behaviors within a "medicalized" context have to do with this?

[Hell Hath No Fury]

4. Nothing, for me.

I have no problem with sex workers of any kind, so long as it is done wholly voluntarily and without coercion.

[RainDog]

5. but the context seems to matter

this person sees her work as a form of therapy

I just wonder what the difference is - if it's set and setting that make up the difference.

maybe it's a class thing.

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt