This is a guest blog from our very own Arushi, who is in Bangkok fighting the good fight..she collected this brilliant quote..
“My sexuality is a gift from God and if I undermine it then I’m undermining the image of God. That’s why I teach women about pleasure and encourage them to touch themselves and know their own bodies, because men have no GPS, so the women need to guide them!” (session hosted by TARSHI)
So said a female religious leader at the 11th Asian AIDS conference held in
How else to arrive at the pleasure session ?
Bangkok last week. The Pleasure Project was there and hoping that pleasure would surround us like a warm mist. However it was a bit of a pleasure void, except of course us with our sessions ‘ Having good safe sex means saying no to bad sex’ and our pleasure comrades TARSHI.
With pleasure being one of the key themes of the conference, we were excited to see who else was sexing up safer sex. We did spot the Vagina Door and , there was some male on male ‘Foreplay – the APCOM pre-conference on male and transgender sexual health at the pre-conference..
There was some very important messages at the ‘Foreplay’ conference – Chris Beyrer from Johns Hopkins spoke about a study in Thailand that had followed negative males who have sex with males and found that about a third of them became HIV positive over the course of five years. The highest new infections were among the youngest men and he spoke about the fact that while most studies look at individual risk, this was not enough to tell us why they are not having safer sex. Sexual networks and the individuals who make up these networks are worthy of more detailed study with the fact that men who have sex with men might be the top in one situation (putting their penis in for anal sex) and yet be the bottom i.e. getting fucked by a partner’s penis in another sexual encounter. There is also the scary fact that the probability of HIV transmission per act of anal intercourse is 18 times higher than that of vaginal intercourse (regardless of gender and sexual orientation). Therefore, despite the evidence of effectiveness around treatment as prevention, condoms still needed to be promoted. And what better way to do that than in a sexy, erotic way, we say!
Sadly though, we didn’t find any other mention of pleasure, apart from our own designing good safe sex
Designing Good Safe Sex
satellite session and skills building workshop and one workshop on Women and Sexual Pleasure by our fellow pleasure propagandists at TARSHI. Perhaps that’s why our Satellite Session was packed to capacity and generated so much interest among people wanting to learn exactly how they can get it on in a sexy way with condoms!
We launched our spanking new website at the satellite and talked all about the
Training on female pleasure ?
toolkit that is now available on it for sex educators and others working on sexual health interventions. The toolkit tells you how to help people talk hot and sexy about safer sex and condoms. And because we believe that discussions on pleasure are linked with open communication between partners, our website has a cool, interactive section where you can tell us all about your experience of using the toolkit!
Other stimulating people who spoke at the satellite were, Dennis Altman from La Trobe University, who was categorical that sexual pleasure depends on equality and is very real and great, Ana Santos, our pleasure propagandist from the Philippines, who talked all about her sexy, sassy work with young people and sexuality in her country and Suzanne Noble on skype, who launched Tongueincheek.tv, the newest item to come out of the union between the pleasure industry and public health. After The Pleasure Project’s condom consultancy for porn films, Tongueincheek.tv brings a steaming mobile app that allows users to download clips of sexy, safe porn.
We then got the chance to share our spicy skills from the toolkit and had a blast with creating erotic adverts for male and female condoms, lube and non-penetrative sex! See the videos here….
Sexing Up Safer Sex Workshop participants jazz it up