I loved this unexpected Bloomberg News article about the growing debate in Denmark over sex work. First it was surprisingly non-hysterical given that it’s written for an American audience. And second, without much melodrama or pity, it used disability and sex as a way into the subject. From the article:

When a male resident at Kildegaarden nursing home in Denmark made an indecent sexual proposal to a member of the staff, the home's director, Inger Marie Kristensen, told a nurse to telephone for a prostitute.

"There was a considerable change in his demeanor after the escort girl had paid him a visit,'' Kristensen said in an interview. "We do this for our clients just as we offer them other services that they need as human beings.''

Kildegaarden, located 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Copenhagen in Skanderborg, has about 100 residents, including victims of Alzheimer's disease and strokes. Nurses arranged visits by call girls three times in the past three years.

In 1999 Denmark decriminalized sex work although it’s hard to know exactly what this means for sex workers working in Denmark today. At least two sources I found stated that sex work can’t be your sole source of income and two more from inside Denmark said that it is still a bit of a “grey area” (note: if you’re a sex worker in Denmark reading this, please feel free to enlighten us in the comments section below).

The rest of the article focuses on a growing debate about sex work. The government is apparently increasing its funding in order to “get women out of the sex trade industry” and public opinion cited in the article is changing:

…a December 2006 opinion poll by newspaper Politiken showed forty- two percent of 1,180 said prostitution was unacceptable compared with 25 percent four years earlier. A majority of 54 percent approved of prostitution, compared with 66 percent in 2002.

On the one hand the government’s predicament does seem a bit puzzling; supporting sex work through a funded nursing home on the one hand and fighting it through a public campaign on the other. But don’t governments do contradictory stuff like this all the time? And one has to wonder how much of the increase in funding to get women out of sex work is going to public awareness campaigns aimed at non-sex workers designed to alter the public perception about sex work.

Because I’m as interested in disability as I am sex work my first response to the article had nothing to do with this debate. It struck me that the male resident mentioned in the opening could probably benefit from some support and education around sexual boundaries and not just a trip to a sex worker. I wondered if sex workers were being used as a way for staff to avoid having to deal with the larger social/sexual issues and lives of their clients. I’m all for supporting adults with disabilities in accessing the services everyone else can access, but this doesn’t mean that sex workers should be used as a way for staff to avoid dealing with sexual health education and boundary issues at their facilities. Hopefully this is exactly how they dealt with it at the nursing home. Because the story wasn’t in the end about the details of their call-a-sex-worker program we never really find out much more about it. Maybe she’ll do a follow up.

Read more - Call Girls at Nursing Home Fuel Debate in Denmark

Previously – Access Sex ; Sex Work and Disability ; Adult Film Offers a Good Opportunity to Talk About Sex and Disability ; International Day for Persons with Disabilities: The Sex Edition

Related – Sex & Disability