Re: How are mentally disabled adults to obtain sexual satisfaction?

On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:08:38 GMT, Palindrome <me9@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Come off it Sue! The effect on the mentally handicapped person is the
same in either case.

Not so. I'm totally confident that you can figure out why.

I cannot. Unless you are saying tht it is OK for mentally handicapped
people to bonk *each other* senseless, but not OK if one of the
partners has the ability to know what is safe and what is not.

If we forbade anyone from supplying the person
with food, would that be acceptable so long as we did not prohibit the
person from eating?

A strange analogy. If the person supplied copious quantities of junk
food, choccies and donuts at every sitting - the recipient would no
doubt enjoy it immensely. But no one would question that this was not
in the best interest of the recipient and should not be allowed.

OK - in that case you have a good and logical reason to disallow an
*excess* of a certain thing, because it has foreseeable and
demonstrable long-term harmful effects.

Now make the same case for prohibiting sex.

Should teachers be able to bonk children that have a crush on them? Of
course not. Is this a constraint on the child? Of course not. It is a
constraint on the adult.

That is a red herring argument because the situations are different in
two very significant areas. The first is that a child will not have
any strong sex drive until they reach puberty, and the second is that
there is not a lifetime universal ban imposed, but a temporary
restriction against *some* forms of sexual activity for a limited
period of time.

So? If new treatment for a particular form of mental handicap appears,
the restriction will be lifted. Many children are not expected to reach
puberty - I assume that you aren't suggesting that sex with terminally
ill children is fine - as their childhood is going to be a lifetime
condition?

If the child is terminally ill *and* the child has a desire to
experience sex before s/he dies (maybe a 14 or 15 year old for
example), then I see nothing wrong with attempting to satisfy the
desire. Which does *not* mean jumping into bed with the child
yourself. What hard do you think it would cause?

I am also not discussing a prohibition on people who are the carers
for the handicapped person, but the prohibition on *all* people.

All people have a duty of care to handicapped people. At least they do
on my planet.

I agree. I do not however agree that having sex with a handicapped
person who desires it amounts to a lack of care.

Adults should recognise that they are in a position of trust when
dealing with handicapped people. They shouldn't talk them out of giving
away their TV - and they shouldn't talk them out of their clothes. Much
as the other party may be perfectly willing to part with either and a
good argument could be made that the loss of either would do them good
rather than harm.

Apples and oranges. The handicapped person is not likely to have any
instinctive desire to give away their TV set, and doing so is unlikely
to cause them any pleasure.

Tosh. Many disabled people derive enormous pleasure from making others
"happy". I could be back here in an hour with half a dozen tv sets, no
problem. And leave half a dozen very happy ex-tv owners behind.

If you can foresee that taking the TV set will ultimately disadvantage
the person, then you would know that you would be causing them harm,
and so taking it would be wrong. In that situation I would try to
fulfill their desire to please in a way that does not cause them
foreseeable harm. If however they were wanting to give you something
that you were pretty certain they would not miss at a later date, then
IMO it would be wrong *not* to take it, even if you throw it in the
rubbish bin as soon as you are out of sight. If it is something that
they will not miss and you would like to have, you are both winners.

IIUC handicapped people can and often do
have a *very* strong desire to have sex with someone else, and can get
a great deal of pleasure from doing so.

As many could from being given a huge box of donuts.

Again, whether you give them what they want or not should depend upon
whether you believe it has a significant risk of causing them more
harm than good in the long term. If you know the person well enough,
you may well know whether or not it is likely to cause them more harm
than good.

To impose a lifetime ban on
sex seems just as cruel as keeping them in a perpetual state of hunger
or thirst.

They have no ban imposed on them.

So who can they have a sexual relationship with?

If they are adjudged incapable of giving informed consent then they are
totally out of bounds to anyone capable of giving informed consent. No
ifs, no butts.

Do you feel the same about consent for medical treatment? What if a
handicapped person has a medical complaint that requires an operation
that will probably relieve an uncomfortable condition, but has a small
chance of doing harm? The handicapped person is not capable of
understanding the issues, so do you believe that nobody else should
make the decision on their behalf?

I met a chap who had a son who appeared normal, but had a progressive
medical condition (systic fibrosis) that meant that he was unlikely to
live beyond his late teens. The man found ways to allow his son to
experience all sorts of activities that his son expessed an interest
in, but would not normally be carried out by a child of that age.
Skydiving, scuba diving, driving, flying. He felt that there would be
no chance for the boy to experience any of those things later, and so
decided to make his short life as fulfilling as possible. Many things
that would normally be unacceptable become acceptable IMO when you
know that there will not be any chance to try it later, and risks that
would normally be unacceptable must be weighed against the fact that
if not taken, an experience will be lost forever.


Ah, so you are suggesting that children with terminal illness are fair
game for anyone that wishes to give them a good seeing to. ;)

AFAIK no form of sex was on the agenda in the case I described -
though my only involvement was to give the child an aerobatic flight &
have dinner with them later so I wouldn't know if it had been. The
father was led by the child's expressed desires, and I should think
that the child at that time was too young to have any desires in that
direction. But as I wrote above, if the child expressed such wishes
when he was a bit older, then I do not see the harm in fulfilling them
so long as it is led by the child and he is not "groomed" into wanting
it. What harm do you think the child would suffer, assuming it is
arranged by someone who genuinely has the child's interests at heart?

I cannot see why any normal person would want to have sex with someone
who cannot understand what sex is.

Who says that they cannot understand what sex is? You may understand
the consequences of sex better, but do you understand *sex* any
better?

To you it may just be a physical
activity done for pleasure and immediately forgotten about.

I should think that is sometimes the case with *everyone*. Certainly
everyone who has ever been a teenage boy!

To a prostitute it is merely a way of earning money.

And sometimes a very lucrative way, though can be emotionally damaging
by devaluing the concept of a relationship unless the prostitute can
metally separate the two. Emotional damage is also caused by
society's general attitude toward prostitutes, which has a high
probability of causing low self-esteem.

To a child it is
something that can cause permanent damage.

Really? You are surely not under the misapprehension that most people
do not experience any form of sexual activity before the age of 18?
The vast majority of child sexual activity is either by themselves or
with similar aged children, and contrary to what you appear to
believe, it is *very* unlikely to cause damage unless their upbringing
has a particularly strong taboo against it.

To someone who thinks like a
child, why should it be anything less?

Why would anyone want to make a mentally handicapped person
comfortable? Why would anyone want to give a mentally handicapped
person something nice to eat? Why would anyone want to have a
conversation with a mentally handicapped person or make them feel
wanted?

You appear to have decided that anyone who has sex with a mentally
handicapped person must be doing so in order to fulfill their *own*
selfish desires. Has it ever occured to you that there are people who
might want to do so because they believe that it is giving the
hadicapped person pleasure - and even increasing their self-worth, and
are not motivated primarily by their own wishes? Do you not believe
that sex can be motivated by a desire to please rather than a desire
to be pleasured - and that is regardless of any "power imbalance".
That a truely caring person who looks after such people because they
have a desire to do so rather than because they are paid to do so
might actually be the victim when they give in to the handicapped
person's wishes?

If, when you are visiting a handicapped person's house, they begged
you and begged you for just one more doughnut, might you not be
tempted to say, "Well, just this one time won't hurt, and it gives
them *such* pleasure"?

And perhaps if you did so, there would be another Palindrome
somewhere, calling for you to be locked up and the key thrown away for
being so nasty and taking advantage of a disabled person so callously.

--
Cynic

.

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