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Commercial Sex, ‘Sexual Assistance’ and People with Disabilities

Parkerad cykel

Guest researcher Giulia Garofalo Geymonat is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Gender Studies, Lund University. Her recent publication Vendere e comprare sesso. Piacere, lavoro, prevaricazione (Selling and Buying Sex. Pleasure, Work, Abuse of Power), Il Mulino, Bologna 2014, reflects her knowledge of the differences among European countries as well as her experience engaging with a variety of audiences, including policy-makers, NGOs and the general population. Recently her work has expanded outside of Europe to include the study of the social organization of gender and sexuality in urban South Korea.

Giulia has published on issues such as exploitation, stigma, violence, and organized resistance in the sphere of sexuality and commercial sex, with particular emphasis on grassroots organizing and on the impact of policies on gender, migration, and dis/ability.

Giulia’s research is led by a concern to understand the experiences of marginalized groups and she has developed an expertise in researching sensitive subjects through participant observation and research-action. Her PhD on the Political Economy of Sex Work in Europe included extensive fieldwork among sex work projects, anti-trafficking projects, and sex workers’ rights groups in Italy, the Netherlands, the UK and France. Drawing from a background in economics (BA&MA Bologna) and in gender studies (LSE and Utrecht University), her work is theoretically informed by feminist and queer traditions with an intersectional materialist orientation. She describes her current project:

"While the sexuality of people with disabilities has been included within the human rights agenda (UNCRPD 2006), the disability movement across Europe claims the issue has not been sufficiently addressed by research and policy, and has specifically demanded a change in the attitudes of health care professionals that would allow access to more accurate and practical education as well as to realistic sexual options for disabled people. This has exposed the problematic role that assistants, family and partners might be asked to play in supporting this access. In some countries, professionalization has been identified as one of the solutions to these tensions, with specialized providers offering ‘sexual assistance’. My research aims at furthering the empirical knowledge of this controversial practice by exploring the case of a European country where training classes are offered to sexual assistants, and of another European country, where sexual assistance is not legal but has entered the policy agenda following visible grassroots mobilizations started in the last few years. The project includes in-depth interviews with people with disabilities and sexual assistants, as well as participant observation with associations active in the field."