Hey Pleasure-verse! I’m writing to you live from the 4th African Conference on Sexual Health & Rights: Sexuality, HIV & AIDS in Africa. The conference has just opened in Addis, and you can tell people are ready to get down to the real work in the coming days. Here’s a bit of a report from the opening evening…
The conference started off today with the opening ceremony and reception. As you might expect, these were a bit on the high-level and dry side. It was notable that both the President and Minister of Health from Ethiopia were there, and they, along with the other speakers were far more open than I expected.
It was clear that pleasure and sex-positivity were the hot topics, and gay people were out. Everyone, including, impressively, the MoH, mentioned that we should stop viewing sexuality negatively and take a realistic approach. They even managed to mention unsafe abortion, and comprehensive sexuality education for youth. The President said we should stop “discriminating against young people by believing that they should only practice abstinence until marriage which is an unrealistic expectation.”