Sex Surrogates, Newer Profession Or World’s Oldest [VIDEO]

There’s a movie coming out Friday called The Sessions that is already generating Oscar buzz. It’s based on the true story of Mark O'Brien, a poet paralyzed from the neck down due to polio who hired a sex surrogate to lose his virginity.

John Hawkes and Helen Hunt star as O'Brien and sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen Greene respectively.

The film brings sex therapy to light and with it comes the comparisons to prostitution. Say Fern Arden who founded an exclusive Central Park West clinic in New York that employs sexual surrogates, “The focus is sex, but familiarity and intimacy” We provide an environment , not for sexual pleasure but for sexual learning”

In the article, Derelle Janey. a defense attorney at the Manhattan law firm Gottleib and Gordon, likens the sex surrogacy practice to prostitution — after all, money is being received for sex: “It doesn’t matter if the client is disabled, it doesn’t matter if he is suffering from some kind of emotional distress — that just makes it kind of sad. They have agreed to pay money for a sexual experience, and everyone understands that’s the transaction. In my view, that’s prostitution.

He’s probably right and I don’t see anything wrong with that. In fact, If I were running a prostitution ring, this is the way I’d go. It’s even kind of accredited, per the article, In 1973 a group of sex surrogates based in Los Angeles tried to accredit their profession. Today the International Professional Surrogates Association has about 30 surrogates registered in the US, Per the organization’s code of ethics, surrogates must have completed a two-week training program with the society and work under the supervision (but not observation) of a licensed sex therapist. Sounds easy enough. But is it legal?

If it were totally legal, if you could learn sex from an expert, from someone who’s tested for diseases and someone who can teach you how to get the most out of your sexual experience as well as please your partner, would you be interested? Could this be a back door for high class prostitution? Would that be a bad thing? Your thoughts?