The Pleasure Project take on all things pleasure at the WAS congress!
The second day of the WAS Congress concluded with an amazing moment for pleasure: the WAS General Assembly voted to accept the Declaration for Sexual Pleasure! Often, discussions of sexual health centre around fear, disease shame and death. Conversations rarely focus on sex positively, celebrating all the wonders and benefits it can bring to sexual health. This Sexual Pleasure Declaration being adopted is amazing as it brings pleasure into the limelight, promoting it as the missing link to achieving a holistic understanding of sex and sexuality recognising its benefits to love, consent, respect; allowing people to establish good, safe, sexual experiences.
With the ratification of the declaration pushing the pleasure wave even farther, we expected pleasure to have a big moment at this congress – and we were not disappointed! Keep reading to find out some of our most pleasurable moments at the congress so far!
🎉An Instagram live with WAS Congress and Lisa Walsh 🎉
If you’re still looking for some more explanation as to why the pleasure-based approach is so important, the argument was best described through a cooking analogy by Anne on an insta live with Lisa Walsh – and it makes it make perfect sense. When we teach people to cook, we teach them about the enjoyment of cooking, giving people the necessary skills to cook well and make delicious food. While doing this, we also focus on the risks that could happen – like cutting your finger – and how to be safe to avoid these. We get a holistic overview of the positives and negatives – this is what we need in SRHR programmes. We need to teach people about the risks, while also teaching them about the benefits and joys that can come from sex.
✨The launch of our pleasure principles – woohoo!!✨
Yet another champagne worthy moment – The Pleasure Project were so excited to announce on the Saturday of the Congress that we finally launched our much-awaited Pleasure Principles!
Watch to see each amazing principle appear!
Check out this sexy #pleasurewave designed to act as a guide and inspiration to support people and organisations to embark on the journey towards a sex-positive, pleasure-based approach to sexual health! These 7 aspirational steps towards #pleasurebased sexual health can inspire you to put the newly ratified World Association for Sexual Health Pleasure Declaration into action! As Eli Coleman, the lead of the WAS Pleasure Taskforce said on the Saturday night symposium ‘Why Pleasure Matters’ practitioners can use these principles with the Declaration and the awaited Technical document to move along their own pleasure journey to pleasure-based sexual health. Please visit our website here: The Pleasure Principles – The Pleasure Project to let us know what you think and help support us in making these principles the best they can be!
Launching these Principles was a big moment for The Pleasure Project and the movement toward pleasure inclusion, and the WAS Congress took it in its stride. We got some amazing coverage from many amazing, pleasure positive organisations, including WAS itself! At many talks and lectures throughout the conference, we could see exactly how our principles could help promote pleasure in key topics of conversation.
Anne even got to promote their importance at the symposium on pleasure inclusion on Saturday evening! She concluded the talk in a really powerful way, referencing our final principle: love yourself – everyone should be kind to themselves and each other on this pleasure journey, supporting each other in our pleasure activism as sometimes it can be a lonely journey! We want to change that. So, we can’t wait to get the help of the wider SRHR community to get these Pleasure Principles out there and get everyone surfing the pleasure wave with us!
❤Pleasure is powerful: The triangle approach to sexual wellbeing: Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng ❤
One of our favourite pleasure inclusive talks was given by Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng on how sexuality and wellbeing need to be spoken through the triangle approach of: sexual rights, sexual pleasure and sexual wellbeing. She emphasised the importance of the definition of sexual pleasure as it brings pleasure into the limelight as an intrinsic element of human experience and the right to health. She emphasises that sexual pleasure is an important element of sexual rights – and we can’t get behind this point enough! To move towards leaving no one behind, the aim of this conference, we must use this triangle approach. Many of us are taught to understand our bodies through teachings that focus on risk, prevention and fear. We need to push beyond these, recognising a pleasure-based approach and its promotion of sexual rights: ‘We must centre the right of people to achieve their own sexual pleasure.’
Dr.Tlaleng Mofokeng’s talk made pleasure a powerful world. Emphasising The Pleasure Project’s belief that when we teach sex positively, honestly and openly – we can destigmatise it and stop the shame. One of our favourite moments came at the conclusion of the talk where we got a shout out! Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng emphasised that The Pleasure Project is one of the leading organisations in building this pleasure-based approach – we can’t wait to show you all how we are going to make more pleasure waves!
🌈A mind-blowing conversation: the link between pleasure and health🌈
To conclude a wonderful day of pleasure was the symposium on the importance of pleasure conclusion – and what a good end it was!
If you weren’t quite yet convinced of the links between pleasure and sexual health (we hope you are!?) Eusebio Rubio-Aurioles swooped in to convince you more with his talk on the links between pleasure and health.
Personally, I found this talk absolutely mind-blowing! Our bodies are literally built for pleasure – we can even have pleasure without our genitals – we only need a brain. After an amazing introduction to how the brain is a complex system that helps us receive pleasure Eusebio then moved to talk about the amazing benefits sexual pleasure (orgasms, touch, stroking, arousal, cuddling) can actually have for our health! Please see some of my facts in the screengrabs below:
I watched this talk with my flatmate to introduce her to the wonderful world of pleasure activism and as Eusebio went further and further into explaining the many benefits pleasure can have on sexual health, we sat on the sofa with our mouths open in shock. I am a massive pleasure activist, but even I did not know just how much pleasure could do for sexual health – wow, just wow. After seeing all these benefits, I will be running not walking to seek out all the pleasure I can! And we hope as this research gets more accepted, people will be doing the same towards our pleasure principles. Of course, unsafe sex has negative consequences, but we should also talk about the benefits in sex education.
This WAS Congress has been a major contribution to the building pleasure wave. The Pleasure Project have really enjoyed our time and been so inspired seeing so many pleasure positive voices.
“We are so excited to hear all the enthusiasm for our new Pleasure Principles, from amazing experts at WHO and UNFPA but also the immediate responses from pleasure practitioners who have said how useful this new tool will be. I can’t wait to hear their feedback on our website.”
✨✨✨Tune in to our next blog post to hear from three of our amazing pleasure fellows who were at the WAS congress – their pleasure voices are not something to be missed!✨✨✨