Another breathtaking photo by my friend Richard Kadrey.
It’s quite sensationalized and comes off initially — annoyingly — as biased against sex workers and sexual outsiders (which I feel is a clumsy attempt to differentiate sex work from sex surrogacy), but the article Sexual Healing: Sad stories and otherwise freaky tales from Florida’s last sexual surrogate is still fascinating and a worthwhile read. For instance, I’ve never read anything about actually going through the International Professional Surrogate Association‘s training program. The article is a mazillion pages long, yet it’s nice to have a current piece on sexual surrogacy, even if surrogacy seems to be dying out in corners of the US. Snip:
(…) Catherine isn’t his wife or girlfriend. Nor is she some trollop off the street. And while technically she is getting paid $185 an hour to play with him in the shower, she is not a prostitute.
She’s a sexual surrogate — a partner supplied by the man’s therapist so he can work through his sexual dysfunction. The concept of sexual surrogates first came about in the late 1950s, when sexology researchers William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson were working with couples dealing with sexual problems ranging from physical handicaps to serious emotional issues caused by childhood trauma. Many of the most severe cases were men and women who struggled with these issues but understandably didn’t have a partner to work with. So Masters and Johnson found open-minded, compassionate young women to fill the role of sexual partner for therapy purposes. Since then, men have also become sexual surrogates.
Partner surrogates can work with patients for as long as several years or for only a few weekends. Over an extended treatment period, a surrogate might dispense anything from verbal encouragement and soft touching to intercourse.
Though most psychologists no longer view surrogate therapy as radical, the practice is rare these days. Dozens of surrogates were spread across the country in the ’70s and ’80s, but today, in a Viagra-infused society, there are fewer than 30 licensed practitioners. And there is just one certified surrogate working in Florida — Catherine. She works with men traumatized by childhood abuse or who have physical or emotional handicaps that make sex difficult.
The merchant marine, for example, felt that his mother’s sentiments about sex had a hold on him that prevented him from connecting with anyone. “It wasn’t until his mother died that he would even think about these things,” says Dr. Marilyn Volker, the Miami sexologist who brought in Catherine to be the sailor’s surrogate. “He had never really been around women, and these thoughts paralyzed him.”
Because he was so accustomed to living at sea, where he showered in saltwater once every few days, Volker and Catherine started by coaching him on simple things like dress and meal etiquette and showering and brushing his teeth daily. They were nonjudgmental and reassuring, explaining how a mature relationship should work.
“It’s not about sex,” Volker says. “It’s about being able to connect with another human being.”(…read more.)
I can understand the need for sexual surrogates (especially since I tend to have intimacy issues myself though I doubt a surrogate could help with mine). I’ve always sort of wondered why it was so far out on the periphery when, from my observations at least, the sort of problems it helps treat are far more common than most people would care to admit.
Then again, we are living in a society which, despite seemingly putting sex and sex appeal right out in front, has problems acknowledging intimacy and the issues that some people have with it. In all honesty, this society even seems to have the mindset of “sex is bad and we shouldn’t talk about it” at the same time that they push sex and sex appeal.
sexual surrogacy has always fascinated me. thanks for keeping this on your radar; it slips through the cracks at most sex-centric web hubs.
dunno if you’ve read mark o’brien’s amazing first-hand accounts on seeing a sex surrogate; erosblog linked to one of his stories years back. very moving stuff.