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Bill Gates gets it! Has good safe sex finally arrived?

26/03/2013 in People We Like, Pleasurable Products, Pleasure News & Views, Sex in the News by Annie | 1 comment

putting the sexy into safer sexLast week we posted news on our facebook fan page and twitter about the amazing news that The Gates Foundation have issued a GRAND challenge to build a better condom. 

WE LOVE IT ! At last after all these years of pleasure propaganda it seems to be paying off. Good Safe Sex is now a subject to be taken seriously by event the Grand Bill Gates and his Foundation.

When we launched The Pleasure Project at at the 2004 AIDS conference in Bangkok, we seemed to be viewed as a mixture of sublime and ridiculous. Some people though it a good idea if a little wacky, others downright dangerous to be stating the obvious.That..

People have sex for PLEASURE.

And that HIV prevention and family planning promoters need to also think about PLEASURE and safer sex.

omg

Over the following 8 years we were the AIDS Conference infidels  urging people to attend sessions called “Pleasure and Safer Sex: Coming together at last” or asking them to send in their fantasies of life at a conference or even ……play with themselves at night time. Urging people who promote HIV prevention to also recognise that sex can be good.

talk yourself

And it finally seems to be paying off last year many listened to our pleasure propaganda including national  US radio and the Huffington Post.

So we do say “Hurrah!” to the Gates Grand Challenge – but with some trepidation – as the call asks for only ‘product changing’ proposals. This is not just a techno fix…We know that the biggest sexual organ is the brain. …

latexThat is a vibrating cock ring feels sexy, why can’t the ring of a female condom ?

Or if a tight fitting latex dress is hot ? Why can’t the slow roll of a condom down a dick feel the same way ?

Latex dresses and condom dresses….

latex 2lady-gaga-condom-snippets

condom dress

Isn’t good safe sex is just a state of mind…..

 

 

 

 

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Feminist Porn and cherry lube

11/03/2013 in *What We're Up To, Meetings & Publications, People We Like, Pleasure News & Views by Annie | No comments

The Pleasure Project spent another day at the Women of the World festival in London today.

Today we hoped for some discussion of safe pleasure; but it never got there.

We kicked off by talking to Emma George who is chasing the female orgasm around the world; making a film ‘Around the world in 80 orgasms‘ about the much downplayed joys of masturbation. Always possible. Good. Safe. Sex. I also asked her how she might explain to women how they would know they have had one. Because we here at Pleasure Towers have, to be honest, struggled with that one.

Then we skipping happily into the Porn Session; hoping for an informed debate between radical feminists and a tabloid editor,  and chaired by a well respected human rights barrister and member of the House of Lords. The debate focused on the impact of pornography, whether feminist porn is possible and the evidence that porn increases violence against women.

However, to be honest, the debate was overwhelmed with ideology, polarized positions and personal emotional attacks. And to top it all no one mentioned sexual health or well-being. Porn was being blamed with causing sexual violence in the Congo to erectile dysfunction in ten year olds in the UK. We agree there needs to be better research especially on access to internet porn, which allows unheard of ease to see hard core porn. Watch this space for our upcoming piece on the potential of harm reduction in porn.

Pleasure Propagandists to the end, we asked if the panel, especially those who wanted porn banned had any vision of a world where sexually explicit films could be fun, sexy, safe and not degrading to women. Sadly there was no positive answer, but rather a constant need to criticize what we have rather than aim for something higher. And we thought feminism was about imagining a better world.

But our highlight of the session was the mum who quickly confessed that she discovered cherry lube in her gay son’s cupboard, realised he is having anal sex, wondered why gay people like it and then just as quickly confessed to the world that she has done it not once, but twice.  We love it and salute her bravery, because we know the personal is political ….and she noticed it was cherry lube. Never a dull moment when the topic of porn comes up.

I like female condoms because….

12/09/2012 in *What We're Up To, Pleasurable Products by Annie | No comments

they rub on my clit during sex

they are not just for women, but for guys with guys  too

they allow my dick to slip and move around feeling free

I can go in and out of them taking a pause between rounds but leaving it in

they stop me worrying about getting pregnant, so I sleep well

the inner ring scratches an itch deep inside me

I can walk around with it it in (reaching up  for stuff on that high shelf) to get myself really ready for sex

Or just do that all on its own whilst I’m cleaning the house for a special thrill

More Sexy tips for using the female condom

Happy Global Female Condom Day !

 

 

 

 

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Huffington Post bigs up The Pleasure Project

09/09/2012 in News About Us, People We Like, Pleasure News & Views by Annie | No comments

Okay Okay read all about it. Read Phil Harvey’s brilliant article in The Huffington Post this week on the importance of sex in family planning. (And our work here at The Pleasure Project…)

It might seem obvious to you and me that one of the benefits of contraception is that it means you can enjoy sex without worrying about unintended pregnancy…but that is not a topic often discussed by the family planning industry who prefer to highlight the problems of sex. As Phil Says

“To this day you seldom read anything about sex in the family planning literature. The reason, I think, is that sex bothers people, especially good sex. We hear a lot about problems with sex (and there are many), but very little about good sex, very little about the quantum of pleasure in the world enjoyed by the two billion women and men (and same-sex couples) who regularly enjoy consensual sex. Is not such sex a good thing? Should not we family planners celebrate the fact that the contraceptives we provide make it possible for people to have more sex? Isn’t more sex good?”

Phil Harvey himself is an amazing pioneer  who set up DKT International one of the largest not for profit private providers of contraception and who provided 650 million condoms in 2011 in low income countries. He also set up Adam and Eve sex toys online store whose profits subsidizes the provision of family planning to DKT. He has taken on a few challenges in his life time including the US Government’s censorship laws and so we are of course over the moon that he lays out the argument for the sad fact that,

‘Sex has a long, negative reputation in human history.’

And how it’s important not just to talk about health but the other advantages of safer sex. Um like love and affection..

‘we’d do a better job I think if we addressed the subject of sexual pleasure head-on. After all, sex without pregnancy is a powerful expression of love for many couples.’

And of course the icing on the cake for us is his mention of us as ‘ a brave band’

‘There are some positive signs on the horizon. A brave band of concerned family planning and HIV/AIDs professionals has formed The Pleasure Project, which works tirelessly to remind conference goers and others that sexual pleasure is an important part of the equation. At one international conference, the Pleasure Project put up posters in the corridors, asking “Did you have sex with yourself last night?”

Oh yeah… Oh yeah…. dats us  (Dance around front room wiggle hips)

To finish off with some words of wisdom – but please read the article here

‘So let us celebrate. Sex is unquestionably necessary; why shouldn’t we be pleased that it is also good?’


Have a Pleasure filled, Fun, Indulgent AND Sexy Women’s Day you all

08/03/2012 in People We Like, Pleasure News & Views by Annie | No comments

Well this international Women’s Day we at The Pleasure Project  hunted for some feminist slogans on pleasure.

We also looked for some slogans on indulging our desires on International Women’s Day and enjoying ourselves.

We even searched to happiness and women’s day.

It’s a poor show I’m afraid.

There are loads of great posts and articles (including this rather brilliant one by zoe williams): but little very little on us women and our male comrades in the struggle being pleasured or enjoying ourselves today.

In fact we got depressed when we found a website that highlighted” pleasure and women’s day” and turned out to an international bridal search service.

Please cheer us up by sending glorious, luscious, feminist, naughty quotes.

In the meantime we have decided that we need some images of women who like sex, know what they want, have fun and  would use women’s day as an excuse to tickle themselves pink , touch themselves up, have a beer and ignore stupid advice.

We hope you do the same , Just stay safe we need you on the front line of the pleasure revolution.

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The sexiest three little words: I want to

16/01/2012 in People We Like by Annie | 1 comment

The Pleasure Project was lucky enough to run into two amazing women from YP Foundation in Goa recently. Ishita Choudery and Gopika Bashi. They rock. They made us laugh and inspired us.

Ishita Choudery started the the YP Foundation to fill the a political gap in India -  ensuring that young people get heard when it comes to policy decision about their sexuality, political rights  and right to information (amongst other things).

They have done heaps to get young people recognised as valid political partners in decisions about their futures and have worked with 300,000 young people since 2002.

And the reason we love them is because they lobby for comprehensive sex education in India with their “know your body know your rights” campaign.

And then we love them more but they don’t shy away from discussions of pleasure and use our Pleasure Project materials to stimulate discussions. We were fishing a bit (just a little) so we asked them why.

Istita says they used our promising practises in safer sex posters to “start conversations about pleasure and whether it is a right” .  She says that the images do not make young people feel uncomfortable, as might be expected, and it also helps start a discussion about consent and what is your own personal “line of consent“.

So this got us talking about how sexy consent is. How the best thing you can hear from a romantic or sexual partner is “I want to” or “please do”.

Because (as all the pleasurists know)  having safer sex is not just about condoms but about making sure you are doing what your partner wants, what makes them feel good and vice versa. And rather than thinking our partners should automatically know what we want;  it would turn them on to tell them.

As we concluded girls are not meant to ask for what they want; but boy, do men like it when they do.  As Ishita said “it is sometimes easier to have sex rather than talk” and I added that this plays into our romantic myths of “you must know me and therefore I should not tell you what I want”.

So how do we start to learn to ask and see consent as sexy as it is ? The YP Foundation start with body mapping exercises and let people know the facts. For example the clitoris is not between the toes (as they found some people thought in one workshop ). They then have conversations of what people like and don’t like and what might be their “line of consent”

And they found some surprising twists: it is often assumed that the middle class urban young people of India are better informed about sex with their i -phones and internet connectivity. Not so, not so;  rural young people have more time for sex and  talking about sex and so surprised them with their lack of conservatism. They have more imaginative ideas about sexuality.

So that’s why YP Foundation rocks. Actually speaking as and for young people and telling us things we did not expect.

 

Perfect Poster girls for the "know your rights" campaign

 

 

 

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