Toronto AIDS Conference

Just add pleasure!

The Pleasure Project did just that at last year’s AIDS conference, which drew up to 30,000 people to Toronto. We hosted a standing-room-only Satellite Session called “Where is the pleasure in safer sex?”, which featured presentations on:
• the erotic potential of the female condom
• how microbicides are increasing pleasure during sex
• talking to sex workers about feeling more pleasure at work and home
• the theory and practice of talking sex and pleasure in Asia

We also showed clips from three erotic films that use condoms in fun and sexy ways.

Helping sexual health educators talk dirty

The Pleasure Project hosted an interactive workshop on how to help sexual health educators get more comfortable talking about sex and pleasure – an event featured in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television report (see it here!).

And we made an oral presentation on our work with sex educators in Cambodia: listen>>>

What the press said about The Pleasure Project:

IndiaeNews.com: “The Pleasure Project first shook things up at the … AIDS conference in 2002 … At the 2004 Bangkok AIDS conference, the organisation hosted a discussion on introducing pleasure into sexual health programming … Their ‘Global Mapping of Pleasure’ initiative is a rich resource of projects and organisations that put pleasure first in AIDS prevention...”

Ms. Magazine: “Mitchell [Warren, executive director of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative] praised The Pleasure Project, a British-based organization that works “to put the pleasure back in safer sex” and presents female condoms as a sex toy.”

Yahoo! News: “Lessons in erotic art, pornography and talking dirty have been a spicy addition to the global AIDS forum here as campaigners try to make safe sex, well, sexy. "Sex sells," commented one of over 100 delegates who crammed into a tiny room for a seminar entitled ‘Where is the Pleasure in Safe Sex?’

“ … The Pleasure Project … has helped health educators in Cambodia to break the shyness barrier in talking about sex … compiled a list of dozens of groups worldwide pushing the Kama Sutra to teach prostitutes how to pleasure clients without penetration and other tricks, and showed British film directors how to use condoms in porn movies "in a sexy way … "

"If people feel good about sex, it minimizes risk (of getting sexually transmitted diseases)," said activist Neha Patel.