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| How sex surrogates are helping injured Israeli soldiers |
The Tel Aviv consultation room of
Israeli sex therapist Ronit Aloni looks much as you would expect. There is a
small comfy couch for her clients and biological diagrams of male and female
genitalia, which she uses for an explanation.
But what happens in the neighboring
room, which has a sofabed and candles, is more surprising.
This is where paid surrogate
partners help teach some of Aloni's clients how to have intimate relationships
and ultimately, how to have sex.
"It doesn't look like a hotel
- it looks more like a house, like an apartment," says Aloni. There's a
bed, a CD player, an adjoining shower - and erotic artwork adorns the walls.
"Sex therapy is, in many
ways, couple therapy and if somebody doesn't have a partner then you cannot
complete the process," she goes on. "The surrogate - she or he -
they're there to model the partner role in a couple."
Although critics liken this to
prostitution, in Israel it has become accepted to the extent that the state
covers the cost for soldiers with injuries that affect their ability to have
sex.
"People need to feel they can pleasure
somebody else and that they can get pleasure from somebody else," says
Aloni, who has a doctorate in sexual rehabilitation.
"People are coming for therapy.
They're not coming for pleasure. There is nothing similar to
prostitution," she adds firmly.
"Also, 85% of the sessions are [about]
intimacy, touching, giving and receiving, communicating - it's about learning
to be a person and how you relate to other people. By the time you have a sexual
relationship, that's the end of the process."
Mr. A, as he wants to be known, was one of
the first soldiers who got Israel's Ministry of Defence to pay for sex
surrogate therapy after a life-changing accident nearly 30 years ago, when he
was an army reservist.
A fall from a height left him paralyzed
from the waist down and unable to have sex in the ways that he had previously.
"When I was injured I made a list 'To
Do,'" he says. "I have to [be able to] do a shower by myself, I have
to eat, dress by myself, drive by myself, and have sex independently."
Mr. A was already married with children, but
his wife did not feel comfortable talking about sex to doctors and therapists,
so she encouraged him to seek help from Aloni.
He explains how Aloni gave directions and
feedback to him and his surrogate partner before and after each session.
"You start from the beginning: you're
touching this, you're touching there, and then it's building step-by-step until
the last stage of getting an orgasm," he says.
Mr. A argues it was right for the state to
pay for his weekly sessions, just as it did other parts of his rehabilitation.
Today the cost of a three-month treatment program is $5,400.
"It wasn't the goal of my life to go to a surrogate, OK, I was injured and I want[ed] to rehabilitate in every aspect of my life," he says, sitting in his wheelchair, in a tracksuit, on his way to play table tennis.
"I didn't fall in love with my
surrogate. I was married. It was just to study the technique of how to get to
the goal. I took it as a very logical thing that I have to do."
He blames Western hang-ups about sex for
any misconceptions.
"Sex is part of life, it's the
satisfaction of life," he says. "It's not that I'm being Casanova,
this is not the issue."
A steady stream of people of different ages
and backgrounds visits Aloni discreetly at her clinic.
Many are struggling to have a romantic
relationship because of intimacy issues or anxiety, or have suffered sexual
abuse. Others have physical and mental health conditions.
Aloni has focused particularly on disabled
clients since the start of her career. Several of her close relatives had
disabilities including her father, a pilot, who suffered a brain injury after a
plane crash.
"All my life I was next to people
having to deal with and overcome different disabilities," she says.
"All these people were very well rehabilitated and so I had this very
optimistic approach."
Aloni became close to a surrogate who
worked with disabled people while studying in New York.
When she came back to Israel in the late 1980s, she gained the approval of leading rabbis for the use of sexual
surrogates and started providing therapy at a rehabilitation center on a
religious kibbutz - a rural community.
The rabbis had one rule - no married men or
married women could be surrogates - and Aloni has followed it ever since.
Over time, she has won backing from the
Israeli authorities. Out of about 1,000 people who have had surrogate sex
therapy at her clinic, dozens have been injured army veterans - many with brain
trauma or spinal cord injuries, whose treatment has been funded by the state.
Aloni believes that Israel's
family-oriented culture and its attitude toward its armed forces have worked in
her favor. At 18, most Israelis are called up for military service and they
can continue as reserve soldiers into middle age.
"We are in a war situation all the
time since the country was established," she says.
"Everybody in Israel knows people who
were injured, or died and everybody has a positive approach to compensating
these people. We feel obliged to them."
A tall man of about 40 is sitting in his
garden in central Israel with a blanket across his lap. He is a former reserve
soldier whose life was shattered in the 2006 Lebanon War.
David - as we will call him - was left
unable to talk or move.
He can only communicate with the help of
his occupational therapist - if she supports his arm and holds a pen in his
hand, he can write on a whiteboard.
"I was just an ordinary person. I'd
just got back from a trip to the Far East. I was studying at university and
worked as a barman. I used to love sports and being with friends," David
says.
When his military unit came under attack,
he suffered serious leg and head injuries and went on to spend three years in
hospital.
During that time, he says he lost the will
to live.
Things only began to turn around after his
occupational therapists suggested surrogate sex therapy.
"When I started the surrogate therapy,
I felt like a loser, like nothing. In therapy. I started feeling like a man,
young and handsome," David says.
"It was the first time that I felt
that since my injury. It gave me strength and it gave me hope."
This was an intimate relationship that
David started, knowing that it would have to end. So was there a risk that he
would be emotionally hurt?
"Initially, it was difficult for me
because I wanted the surrogate all to myself," he says. "But I
realized that even if we're not partners, we're still good friends. And it's
worth it. It's worth everything. It just helps you rebuild yourself all over
again."
While the usual rules are that surrogates
and clients cannot be in contact outside of the therapy, David and his
surrogate - a woman who uses the alias Seraphina - were given special
permission by Dr. Aloni's clinic to stay in touch when their sessions ended.
Since the treatment, those close to David
say they have seen a transformation in him. He has been focusing on plans for
the future.
While having a sex life remains very
difficult before Covid-19 struck he had begun socializing more, going out with
the help of his carers.
Seraphina has worked as a surrogate with
Ronit Aloni for over a decade. She is slim with bobbed hair and is warm and
articulate.
Recently she published a book about her
experiences. Titled More than a Sex Surrogate, the publishers describe it as
"a unique memoir about intimacy, secrets and the way we love".
Like all of the surrogate partners at the
Tel Aviv clinic, Seraphina has another job. Hers is in the arts. She says she
took on her role for altruistic reasons.
"All those people that suffer under
the [surface] and have all those hidden secrets that they walk around with, I
really wanted to help because I knew I had the ability," she explains.
"I had no problem with the idea of
using sexuality or my body or touch in the therapy process. And the subject was
fascinating to me, sexuality was fascinating to me."
Seraphina describes herself as "like a
tour guide", saying she takes clients on a journey in which she knows the
way.
She has worked with about 40 clients,
including another soldier, but says that the severity of David's injuries posed
a unique challenge. She learned how to help him to write so that they could
chat privately.
"David is the most extreme case ever
known. It was like walking in a desert - you had no idea of the direction [in
which] to go," she says.
"I had to be very, very creative
because he doesn't move at all. I moved his body as I imagined he would have
moved if he could. He felt his body but he could not move it.
"He always said: 'She knows exactly
what I want, even if I don't say anything.' So, it was really flattering."
While being a surrogate, Seraphina has had
boyfriends who, she says, accept what she does. But she knows other women and
men who have stopped acting as surrogates for the sake of their personal
partners or to get married.
She explains that saying goodbye to clients
after they have been intimate is necessary but can be difficult.
"I say, it's like going on a vacation.
We have an opportunity to have a wonderful relationship for a certain short
time and do we take it or give it up?
"And it's the happiest break-up
anybody can have. It's for good reasons. I can cry sometimes, but at the same
time, I'm so happy.
"When I hear that anybody is in a
relationship or had a baby or got married, it's unimaginable how happy and
thrilled and thankful I am for what I do."
Late in the evening, Ronit Aloni is still
working, giving an online lecture to a group of sexologists from Europe and as
far afield as South America.
She recounts cases and quotes studies
suggesting surrogacy is more effective than classic psychological therapy at
treating sexual problems.
"This is most interesting, those
therapists who did already work with surrogates all of them said that they will
do it again," she tells them.
With modern surgery helping more severely
wounded soldiers to survive she believes the surrogate treatment could be used more
widely.
"You cannot rehabilitate a person
without rehabilitating their self-esteem, their perception of being a man or a
woman," she says.
"You cannot ignore this part of our
life. It's very important and powerful. It's the center of our personality. And
you cannot just talk about it. Sexuality is something dynamic, is something
that has to be between us and other people."
In Aloni's view, modern society has
developed unhealthy attitudes toward sex.
"We know how to joke about sexuality.
We know how to humiliate people, we know to be very conservative or too extreme
about sexuality," she says.
"It's never really balanced. It's
never weaved into our life in the way it's supposed to be, and sexuality - it's
life. This is how we bring life. It's nature!"
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