Kinsanity

What if being bad could do some good? That's the question asked by Come4.org, which describes itself as "the first user-generated, nonprofit pornography site devoted to funding charitable and ethically driven projects."

The site is being unveiled with help from the Paris office of TBWA agency Being, which crafted an explicit 90-second short film, "The Lover," introducing Come4's first charitable initiative—helping to fund the Asta Philpot Foundation, which is committed to raising public awareness about the sexual rights of disabled people. (Philpot, an American living in Britain, advocates the right to an active sexual life for people with disabilities, even if it means paying for sex.)

As a sex worker who has both mental illness(es) and a history of abuse Mia Freedman’s post perpetuates stereotypes and stigmas that harm me. Should my mental illness prevent me from having any agency? Didn’t we do away with locking the mentally ill up and throwing away the key (although this still does happen) because we (as a society) started to recognise the mentally ill as humans with rights? Or do we only have some rights? Like the right to work in a low paying, menial job or the right to exist (not live because let’s face it, it isn’t a living wage) on the disability support pension and that is if you even qualify for it, if you don’t you can always try and get by on unemployment “benefits” while you are made to apply for jobs you will never get. Surely I still have the right to have sex don’t I? I can’t see Mia Freedman advocating for enforced chastity belts for the mentally ill. So, if I have the right to work and the right to have sex, what is wrong with me having sex as my work?