So, what went down in Sexy September….
Wow, the world has gotten busy for The Pleasure Project so, it’s been a while since one of our monthly pleasure round-up blogs. But don’t worry – with September coming to a close we are back, better than ever, ready to give you all the gossip.
September was a jam-packed month for The Pleasure Project. Here are some of our favourite moments.
WAS Congress
The month started with an absolute pleasure bang with the WAS 25th annual congress.
This congress was an extra special one for the team at The Pleasure Project as the WAS Declaration of Sexual Pleasure was officially adopted by the congress. This was amazing news that had us grinning from ear to ear. And the week just got better and better – the team has two symposiums and two presentations at the congress on our amazing Pleasure Fellows and one on our Pleasure Principles – which excitingly launched the first week of September at the congress!! Woohoo! You can see them in full on our website here! Excitingly, the Pleasure Principles have been officially recognized as the third integral document to put the Pleasure Declaration into action. This is a great first step towards the holistic incorporation of pleasure-based SRHR.
For more insight into what we thought of the WAS Congress, read our three blog posts covering the congress here:
The last blog is extra special as it is one of the first pieces of media from the fresh, pleasure-positive voices of two of our Pleasure Fellows!
Not to blow our own horn but WE WON AN AWARD
The Pleasure Project received the WAS award for excellence and innovation in sexuality education!
Anne’s acceptance speech was pleasurable, exciting, fun and heartfelt. She emphasised the hard work and diligence of the 16 years of The Pleasure Project to get to this point. It’s taken persistence and passion to emphasise the importance of sexual pleasure and sexual rights against the dominant, sex-negative, fear-based narrative. This award shows that the pleasure wave is building, and more and more people are recognising that pleasure matters. What an amazing moment for the recognition of pleasure activist work everywhere: a surge in the building pleasure wave.
Thank you so much to all your amazing support of our pleasure activism – let’s keep going!
The Pleasure Fellows
The fellows have been extremely enthusiastic and amazing pleasure propagandists. The conversations have been interesting, constructive and pleasure pioneering, and we have also been learning through the conversations instigated by the fellows in our training sessions. It’s been great!
With the completion of training sessions, our fellows are now fully-fledged Pleasure Fellows <3 so we have begun introducing them on our social media channels so the world can get to know the amazing fellows as we do. Go have a look at our Instagram and Twitter to read all about them.
Pleasure Picks of the month:
Podcasts…
We have two amazing podcasts that we loved listening to this month – and guess what, they feature The Pleasure Project team. Now, we know we’re a little bias but we think these podcasts are fun ways to learn more about The Pleasure Project and the importance of pleasure inclusive sexual health!
Check them out here:
Anne talks to Carmen Logie about The Pleasure Project’s important work in entering sexual pleasure as key to sexual rights and sexual health and the ways certain sex is more stigmatised than others.
‘Tune in for our first pleasure-packed episode with stories on how young people across the world have been navigating their sexual pleasure throughout COVID-19!
Netflix: Sex Education
Now, you know alongside these pleasure picks we always love to recommend something great to watch. Tv series are a great way to learn about pleasure inclusive mission and one show that does this amazingly is the Netlfix UK show Sex Education.
The show is set in the UK and follows Otis, the main character, giving sex therapy to his classmates to tackle the lack of comprehensive sex education provided in the school. The conversations tackle sex in a frank, open, honest and pleasure positive way. It gets a mention this month as in the latest series, we see Otis and his friends take on abstinence-only sex education. Abstinence-only sex education can be extremely misleading, uninformative and does to equip youth with the tools to navigate safe, consensual, sexual encounters with a focus on how to be safe but also have fun. It is the explicit focus of sex education around the world and is even the preferred education taught in 19 states in America!
In the show – the characters rightly rally against this imposed curriculum seeking to expose it for the sex-negative, dangerous, harmful teachings that it is. It made me smile seeking a popular platform such as Netflix promoting these important viewpoints which go against the dominant, sex-negative discourse, showing all the harm it can perpetuate! Maybe Netflix is our newest pleasure propagandist…
This show is a Netflix original that can be found on Netflix U.K, Canada, Australia. You may have to do some searching to find it elsewhere. But if you can, we recommend the watch.
Chat to you all next month,
The Pleasure Project Team xx