Open Your Mind to What Goes on Behind Closed Doors: Sex Work, Sex Workers and Clients with Disability

Sexual services have always been provided by sex workers to people with disabilities. Despite this, the sexuality of people with disabilities is rarely discussed publicly or in academic literature, and the sexual needs/wants of people with disabilities appear to be the ultimate taboo subject. Longstanding social attitudes and stereotypes have inferred that people with disabilities cannot and should not express their sexual agency. This chapter draws on a survey of sex workers from New South Wales, Australia, where sex work is decriminalised, and explores their experiences and attitudes to working with clients with a disability. Furthermore, it also examines the barriers and stigma sex workers and their clients with a disability face in relation to expressing their human, labour, and sexual rights.