Dear All,
My husband and I went too to the opening of the Pink Palace today. A great start to a much needed service. I could have wished they had had some nice black satin sheets on the bed, at least for the opening, but that's perhaps asking too much. The bathroom was sumptuous, there's no doubt about it.
I also wish they could have a water-bed; if they did, I would be sorely tempted, I know, to book the room, if not the staff!, at a quiet period, for us, for I made love on a water-bed with my two previous partners, and it is the best way to have a sensation of moving with my hips during love-making; usually the effort is just too taxing. And, as George said, a spa would be lovely...
However, this brothel didn't know whether they could have men for women clients - maybe one has to have an additional clause on the license? (John, [from Eros, Australia's sex industry Association] do you know? I looked up brothels on the Internet last night, but all I could find were listings of recommendations - very interesting! - but not what I really wanted which was the e-mail address of The P.P. to send them my impressions. What I did find, however, was the name of a brothel who DID have male sex workers for hetrosexual women clients, unfortunately I forgot to book-mark it and now can't find it again! Damn!)
AND I didn't ask whether they had men for gay guys - the first question I was asked by a gay friend - over the telephone - when I got home...
Brothels are great for many people with and without disabilities, especially those willing "to look beyond the square", and understand that some sex workers could be allies in our struggles for sexual liberation (in Sydney after the Disability With Attitude conference we attended a SWOP [S.ex W.orkers O.utreach P.roject] forum where sex workers and people with disabilities came together to discuss sex workers becoming sex surrogates for pwd's and our respective sets of wants, needs, hopes and fears), but for the majority of women (and many men, as well, of course) sex workers could never be an answer.
I wonder if many of my female friends who have said "never!" to me, would react the same way if they knew sex workers are, or so I read recently, becoming more popular with ambitious women - as they take their chances "to climb the cooperate ladder"!
Be that as it may, we distance ourselves from the sex industry, firstly because we don't see casual sex as meeting our emotional needs; secondly because we have been influenced so much by the standards of people who take tactile relationships for granted to such an extent that they forget that we are very much the oppressed - in this area of our lives, sometime almost more than in any other - as Dominic Davies intimated when he opened the "Intimate Encounters" exhibition in Sydney.
This is why I want to try to start an "Outsiders" club in Victoria, for those of us with physical and social disabilities. I have been trying to get some information to read (particularly their method of "screening" members) from the "Outsiders" in London for about eight months now; Tuppy Owens has told me somebody sent me a "package", but I haven't received it yet... Please if anyone knows how to contact the London club could they get in touch... I'm really loath "to go it alone"... Though I'm going to have to in the end, anyway, aren't I?
I hope to make the "Outsiders" here a conciousness-raising group as well as a sort of "dating agency" I suppose. It's something I think is sorely needed. Most people in our society don't have a clue that attitudes and structural barriers often "disable" us more than our impairments do, for example. Many people with disabilities lead such sheltered lives we don't have a chance to learn "mainstream" patterns of communication and social behaviour. I know I still find it difficult to make small talk, for example. Some people might laugh at me for worrying about this; I don't. It's just a skill that would have made my life so much SOCIALLY easier, especially when I was younger...
Apropos of all this people may like to see what I issued as a Press Release last year (when I thought the package from Tuppy Owens was on its way). Anybody can comment if they wish:
" 'THE OUTSIDERS'
Ingrid Hindell, Community Development Student at the Gordon, is looking to create a new club in Geelong.
It will be called "The Outsiders", and will be loosely based on a club in London which has the same name.
She is hoping the name will be an "eye-catcher" and self-explanatory.
Ingrid is hoping the club will be a place where disabled people who feel excluded from mainstream meeting venues find the chance and encouragement to make friends in the short term and form relationships (including long-term ones if they so desire) when they connect with the right persons.
It will also, optimistically, be a club for those non-disabled individuals in society who feel themselves to be outsiders for one reason or another (from shyness to political persuasion) to meet others who are excluded from making friends outside their "groupings".
People with disabilities are individuals with widely different interests. At any given time there are a number of us who would like to broaden our acquaintance to those who would respect us and understand from where we have come and to where we are headed.
This is harder than most non-disabled people often imagine, not infrequently due to a simple thing like a lack of ramp access into neighbouring houses.
Ingrid is not only interested in this project from a Community Development viewpoint. She says: 'I am interested in this project personally as well. My husband and I are both "outsiders" (he has a learning disability and I have a physical one) and over the last 18 years have derived a great deal of benefit and happiness from our relationship. I would like others like us to have the opportunity to have what we found in each other.'"
Hope this reads O.K...
Jai Guru Dev; Yours Sincerely,
"Sundari" (Ingrid).
PS I don't know if you got the above e-mail. I never quite trust e-mail!, having heard horror stories. So if you would confirm this, I would be most grateful. Just "Thanks" in the subject line would do until you get the time to answer more fully if you wish to...
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