On September 5, 2024, SRHM co-hosted a dynamic and engaging webinar with The Pleasure Project and Agents of Ishq, two international organizations that take a pleasure-focused approach to sex education and advocate for a sex-positive world. This was a uniquely momentous occasion: a commemoration of World Sexual Health Day, the launch of The Pleasure Project and Agents of Ishq’s pension and the first SRHM Journal Special Collection on Sexual Pleasure.
The collection highlights content that explores the often neglected topic of sexual pleasure, as well as the need to destigmatize and engage with the politics of pleasure to achieve holistic sexual and reproductive health and rights. Traditionally, the field of development and health has viewed sex life in terms of what to avoid – such as death, danger and disease – but this collection recognizes that pleasure is both a motivation and a desired outcome for many people.
Eszter Kismodi, CEO of SRHM introduced the hosts, Anne Philpott, Founder and Director of The Pleasure Project co-hosted the launch event with Paromita Vohra, Founder and Creative Director of Agents of Ishq. Eszter highlighted the magazine’s evolution since its inception in 1993 in relation to publication on sexuality and sexual rights. (See all issues of SRHM magazines here)
Anne and Paromita spoke with Shereen El Feki, Director of Solidarity for Change and Voice (S4CV) at the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Lawrence Shapiro, a certified Deaf and Disability Artist with the Canada Council for the Arts, and Zahra Stardust, a sexual media scholar working at the intersections of sexuality, technology, and social justice. The discussion highlighted the importance of pleasure in sexual health and the challenging patriarchal and biomedical contexts. Panelists Zahra, Shereen and Lawrence shared insights on the politics of pleasure, the role of technology and the need for inclusive and diverse forms of knowledge. The session concluded with a call for journal submissions and a poem, read by Paromita, about the multifaceted nature of pleasure.
We hope to help create safe spaces for exploring desires and engaging with pleasure experiences, as well as an expansive approach to the politics of pleasure. We want to see more knowledge rich in pleasure that would lead to wider feelings of love and liberation.
Contribute to the Special Collection for Sexual Pleasure
If you are interested in submitting a paper to the SRHM Special Collection on Sexual Pleasure, you can contact our editorial team at [email protected] or visit us guidelines for writers where you will also find information on discounts and exemptions from the Article Publication Fee (APC). There is no submission deadline. SRHM addresses the imbalances in research publication internationally, paying attention to younger and young researchers, practitioners and advocates who have less experience in academic writing and those from low- and middle-income countries. Our editorial team is committed to providing support to authors whose papers have valuable and ground-breaking information to share, but which require editing and revision to reach the standards required for peer-reviewed publication.
We also welcome blogs, poetry, videos, artwork and other non-magazine content related to sexual pleasure. If you want to submit your work to SRHM, you can contact us at [email protected]. You can check out the SRHM blog here.
Read Anne Philpott’s article, The Pleasure Project and Paromita Vohra, Agents of Ishq
Access the Special Collection for Sexual Pleasure here
Watch the recording here:
Credits
Video: What women want by Agents of Ishq
Magazine cover art: Samuel Bester
Poem: Happy Ending from Pragya
Hosts
Eszter Kismödi is the Chief Executive of Sexual and Reproductive Health Affairs (SRHM). She is an international human rights lawyer specializing in sexuality, sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender diversity.
Anne Philpott founded The Pleasure Project in 2004 out of frustration with the avoidance of pleasure in sexual health. She is passionate about making pleasure-based sexual health the norm and has created the first evidence that it is far more effective than negative sex education.
Paromita Vohra is a director, writer, founder and creative director of Agents of Ishq. Her work focuses on gender, feminism, urban life, desire and popular culture and spans many forms.
Panelists
Shereen El Feki is Director of Solidarity for Change and Voice (S4CV) at the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). A British-Canadian-Egyptian writer, academic and activist on issues of sexuality and masculinity in the Arab region, she is best known for her book, Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World.
Lawrence Shapiro is a certified Deaf and Disability artist with the Canada Council for the Arts and a leading disabled dancer in his native Canada. His current book about the physically disabled dancer will be published next year by Routledge Press in the UK. In addition, Lawrence is a published researcher on sex and disability. His writing on sex and disability has appeared in various journals including Disability Studies Quarterly, Canadian Scholar’s Press as well as SRHM. A proud member of SHADA, the UK’s leading disabled sexual empowerment organisation, he is passionate about sex and disability and plans to write a book about how physically disabled men experience sexual surrogacy. Lawrence will share his views and experiences with UK-based sex surrogates and the critical role pleasure plays in the political empowerment of disabled men.
Zahra Stardust is a sexual media scholar working at the intersections of sexuality, technology, and social justice. He is the author of Indie Porn: Revolution, Regulation and Resistance (Duke University Press).
