For the past decade, the Taipei Pride parade, Asia's largest, has been joined by an advocacy group called Hand Angel—the organization advocates for increased accessibility measures in Taiwan, and their volunteers offer sexual services to people with severe disabilities.
On this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Rik Glauert sits down with Jing Lee, a volunteer at Hand Angel. We first zoom in on how their services actually work in practice, then zoom out to understand why Hand Angel believes sexual rights are human rights.
On this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, TaiwanPlus reporter Rik Glauert sits down with Jing Lee, a volunteer at Hand Angel. We first zoom in on how their services actually work in practice, then zoom out to understand why Hand Angel believes sexual rights are human rights.
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00:00Welcome to Zoom In Zoom Out, your global look at news from Taiwan. I'm Rick Lowat.
00:20The last Saturday in every October is Taipei's LGBTQ Pride March.
00:26And every year for the past decade, Taipei Pride has been joined by a disability rights
00:31NGO called Hand Angel. Their name alludes to the sexual services that some of their
00:36volunteers provide. But who are the Hand Angels and what are their messages to Taiwanese society?
00:43Today to further discuss disability rights, we're joined by longtime Hand Angel volunteer
00:50Jing Li. Jing, thank you so much for joining us today.
00:54Thank you. Thank you for having me here.
00:57So my first question is really simple. Just what is a Hand Angel?
01:00So what Hand Angels do, what we do is to promote sexual rights for people with disabilities.
01:07So basically we offer sexual service to those people who need that.
01:12And what sort of services, what does that involve? And where does it take place? What
01:16do you do?
01:17So usually we offer a hand job, but if both parties agree to more, then we also allow
01:23for more. So we try to make an equal agreement for both parties. So like the applicants,
01:29if they want more, like any kind of sex, then actually they can ask a sex volunteer. And
01:35if the sex volunteer also agrees to that, they can do more. But what we offer at least
01:40is the hand job.
01:41You know, actual sex work is illegal in Taiwan, but what you're doing is volunteering. How
01:46is this different from sex work?
01:48So the main difference between us and sex work is that we don't get paid. We do everything
01:55purely for pro bono, so nothing's paid. So it's really, we need to be cautious whenever
02:01we go out to do service. For example, after service, sometimes the applicant, the person
02:05who received the sex service, will want to offer sex volunteer a cup of water. But we
02:11can't take that because it can be considered a kind of sex work. So we have to be really
02:16cautious about it.
02:19And where does the need for this service arise from? You know, the people you work with,
02:24the people you volunteer to help, what sort of situations are they in that they require
02:28the help of a hand angel?
02:30So the thing is, for many like able people like us, it's very easy for us to imagine
02:35or to masturbate every day or every week. But for those people, like people with disabilities,
02:41like say the muscles, they are different. So sometimes it's very difficult or even impossible
02:47for them to reach their penis in their entire life. So for these people, they can never
02:53experience the orgasm or the pressure of sex. So what we need to do is to offer sex to those
03:00people to let them feel like, okay, they are having some kind of pressure from sex. And
03:06their situation is quite difficult because a lot of people in the society won't really
03:12date those people because of all the discrimination and also all the bias. People believe that
03:19disabled people are unable to do many things. Or whenever they want to go out for a date,
03:25for example, like when we are going for a date, it's very easy for us to go to a cinema.
03:31But it's very difficult for people in wheelchairs to go to a cinema.
03:36And is there a lot of demand?
03:37Yes, yes, yes. So now if you're a heterosexual man, you want to apply for a female sex volunteer,
03:45you need to wait at least two to three years.
03:50For one service?
03:51For one service, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can be right, yeah.
03:54And then you might have to wait another two or three years to have another?
03:59Because we are short of staff, as you can imagine, it's not really something that, oh,
04:03I just want to do that, I want to volunteer to do that. It's quite much a taboo for people
04:07to volunteer to do such a thing. And also it's a huge demand from the public. So yeah,
04:14we're still working on that.
04:17Yeah, well, I wanted to ask you that. What made you start to get involved with Hand Angel?
04:21Why did you want to want to do this volunteering?
04:23So it's like almost 10 years ago, I first, first of all, the Hand Angel group, they came
04:30to my university to give a talk. And back then I was very impressed by their talk because
04:37they were talking about like different body, the same desire. And I'm always not the mainstream
04:43type of body. I'm more like obese in Taiwanese society. So back then it really, I thought
04:50the connection between disabled body and also my body is start to bridge a connection there.
04:56So I feel so touched. And also I want to do something for people like us, like them, you
05:01know, we want to, I want to support each other to have a better society. So it really, I'm
05:08not only helping Hand Angel, you know, on the other way, they also helping me to understand
05:13my body and also to help me to accept my own body. Also, for me personally, because
05:21I am a sex coach. So I'm also learning from this kind of experience, like also for different
05:27people, how should I conduct sexual behavior? How should I please them better? So it's on
05:33the other way, it's also helping my own career, because whenever I'm helping different bodies,
05:39it also helped me to rethink about, okay, so for different bodies, different desire,
05:45how should I do better for these things? Yeah.
05:49So if we're working with people that have different bodies, are differently abled, disabled,
05:54what has it taught you about sex and intimacy?
05:58One thing that's very important, I was joking about with my friend, he said, please don't
06:03make sex as penis centric. Because a lot of people, when they think about sex, it's
06:09all about like here, but it shouldn't be like that, because no sex is like so diverse. It
06:15can be like touching, caressing, or just kissing or cuddling, it can be all kind of sex. So
06:22what I try to do is to widen up also to make it more diverse. Especially, you know, a lot
06:29of disabled people, they don't feel much for their penis. So we need to find other
06:35ways to please them, like for example, like caressing their ears, or like kissing their
06:40mouth or kissing their cheeks to try to find other ways to please them. Yeah, so that's
06:44what I learned.
06:45You mentioned the demand is high. So how often can a disabled person access your service?
06:53So for every applicant, they can apply for three times in their whole life. Yeah, only
06:58three times. And we are asked often, like, why only three times? Like, people need more
07:03sex. We understand. But the reason why we make it three times is that when it comes
07:09to the end, we hand angel, we are not a service group. Our main goal is to make society better.
07:18And we don't offer service to you. What we do is we want to advocate, we want to educate
07:23the society. So we are an activist group, not a service group. So the three times reason
07:30is we want the person to feel or to get to test the pleasure of sex. And then they want
07:38more, right? And once they want more, they want to do more. So we invite them to join
07:44us to do the advocate together to be activists together. And in reality, it works. So many
07:51people who already received our service afterward, they come to join hand angel because they
07:57find that this is important for disabled people. They come to us and help us arrange rallies
08:04or help us to write articles to educate the society.
08:12We're going to zoom out now and look at the bigger issues. My first question for you is,
08:17is sex a human right?
08:19Yes, totally. But I find it very interesting because there's a movement called incel, right?
08:25Like involuntary celibate. And the main difference between us and then why we call sexual right
08:31as a human right, and they also believe the same thing. But the thing is, incels usually
08:37believe that, oh, it's a woman's fault that they can offer sex or they cannot offer intimacy
08:42to those men. But to us, the main issue is the social structure or the society. Like
08:49why disabled people can't have sex. It's because they can't go on a proper date because of
08:56the location is very much unfriendly to those people. They just can't access to those locations
09:02or they cannot go to motels because they have steps in front of the door. So, you know,
09:08because of this barrier, so keep people with disabilities out of getting sexual pleasure.
09:14And also it leads to us, sometimes people argue with us that, oh, you know, like incel,
09:19they'll say that, oh, I can't have sex. Why don't have an angel also helping us? But to
09:26me, it's absurd because we never say we don't want to. If you want, you can be part of it
09:31and we can create a better society. If you believe that's your rights, you want that,
09:37then let's go for it together. Let's go on the street. We want those people like so-called
09:42incels to work with us. Let's work for a better society.
09:47That's quite a strong message that sex is a human right and that everyone should be
09:51able to have access to sex and have a frank and open conversation about sexual needs and
09:56desires. How hard is that conversation in Taiwan society?
10:01A lot of people still don't understand why the government doesn't say that, oh, people
10:06with disabilities are not allowed to have sex. Of course, the government doesn't say
10:11that, but so people are struggling to understand that why we need to offer so-called extra
10:16work for those people. It's still quite taboo, quite much taboo, because it's still people
10:24who don't really talk about that. And people are very shy when it comes to this topic.
10:29But over the years, right now, I also see that there are some changes. So I think the
10:35society is still, in general, making progress, but slowly.
10:39We talk about the intersection of quite a few different rights here, disability rights,
10:44the right to have sex. And also you've been marching with the LGBT Pride Parade in Taipei
10:51this week. How does your mission as Hand Angels relate or coincide with LGBTQ rights?
11:00The LGBT movement should be inclusive and should be diverse. So what we, Hand Angels,
11:06try to do is to show different people, especially our people, LGBT people, that we exist. It's
11:14not just about able-bodied, able-gay people, able-LGBTs. We are part of it. If in your
11:20life you don't really have people, you don't have friends in wheelchair, you probably just
11:25don't think about that. Or if you never hear any story or perspective from those people,
11:31you wouldn't think about that. So it's very important for Hand Angels to just tell our
11:36story to people, to make them think about that people like us exist. And whenever people
11:42are advocating for a better society, please also think about us.
11:47Have you had much interaction with the government? And what are they doing to help the sexual
11:52rights of people with disabilities?
11:55It's very complex because, again, it's a taboo thing. So the government doesn't really want
12:00to do that because once they do that, they might lose their vote. And also it's about
12:06long-term care because a lot of disabled people, they really need daycare service. And it comes
12:12down to, okay, if the caretakers, if they don't dare to offer sexual service or they
12:18don't dare to assist any kind of sexual assistance, then it's very difficult. But again, we don't
12:26blame those caretakers because they are part of us. We want us to move on together. So
12:32what we try to do is to do more sex education, for example, to break the taboo of sex, to
12:37make people feel comfortable assisting people having sex, for example.
12:43What's the big dream for Hand Angels? What's the world, the society you want to see when
12:48it comes to these issues?
12:50For disabled people, just live like everyone else. Everyone deserves sex and good sex.
12:58So for Hand Angels, what we want is that we are not asking much. We just want to live
13:04like everyone else in the whole world, in society.
13:09It's actually kind of funny because sometimes people like us, we can't really imagine how
13:15sex can empower us. But to them, for example, I've been to some services and many of them,
13:24because they are disabled, they are in a wheelchair all their life, so they don't really want
13:30to go out of their home or they don't really have the chance. They just don't feel like
13:35doing that. But after receiving our service, they start to feel like, the world is kind
13:41of nice and they want to date more people. They want to date girls like me, for example.
13:46Or they will ask me out. They will ask me, after this service, can we still hang out
13:52more? To me, it's very empowering because it means that they are willing to step out
14:00of their home. They want to do more. They want to see the world. So this is empowerment.
14:08Thank you so much for joining us today. It was great to hear all your insights.
14:13Thank you. Thank you.
14:16This has been Zoom In Zoom Out. For more stories from Taiwan, you can check out Taiwan Plus
14:20on this website or follow us on social media. Thank you so much for joining us and we will
14:25see you next time.