On 5 September 2024, SRHM cohosted a dynamic and engaging webinar with The Pleasure Project and the Agents of Ishq, two international organisations that follow a pleasure-focused approach to sex education and advocate for a sex-positive world. This was a uniquely significant occasion: a commemoration of World Sexual Health Day, the launch of The Pleasure Project and Agents of Ishq’s editorial and the first Special Collection of the SRHM Journal on Sexual Pleasure.
The collection highlights content that explores the often-neglected subject of sexual pleasure, as well as the need to destigmatise and engage with the politics of pleasure to achieve holistic sexual and reproductive health and rights. Traditionally, the development and health sector has viewed sexual life in terms of what to avoid – such as death, danger and disease – but this collection acknowledges that pleasure is both a motivation and a desirable outcome for many people.
Eszter Kismodi, Chief Executive of SRHM, introduced the hosts, Anne Philpott, Founder and Director of The Pleasure Project cohosted the launch event with Paromita Vohra, Founder and Creative Director of the Agents of Ishq. Eszter highlighted the journal’s evolution since its founding in 1993 in relation to publishing on sexuality and sexual rights. (See all SRHM journal issues here)
Anne and Paromita spoke to Shereen El Feki, Director for Solidarity for Change and Voice (S4CV) at the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Lawrence Shapiro, a validated 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 emphasized the importance of pleasure in sexual health and challenging patriarchal and biomedical frameworks. Panelists Zahra, Shereen, and Lawrence shared insights on pleasure politics, the role of technology, and the need for inclusive and diverse forms of knowledge. The session concluded with a call for submissions to the journal and a poem, read by Paromita, on the multifaceted nature of pleasure.
We hope to help create safe spaces to explore desires and engage with experiences of pleasure, as well as an expansive approach of pleasure politics. We wish to see more pleasure-rich knowledge that would lead to broader senses of love and liberation.
Contribute to the Special Collection on 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 our instructions for authors where you will also find information about article publishing charge (APC) discounts and waivers. There is no deadline for submissions. SRHM addresses imbalances in research publication internationally, by giving attention to younger and new 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 cutting edge information to share but which need editing and revision to reach the standard required for peer review publication.
We are also welcoming blogs, poetry, videos, artwork and other non-journal content related to sexual pleasure. If you would like to submit your work to SRHM, you can contact us at [email protected]. You can see the SRHM blog here.
Read the editorial by Anne Philpott, The Pleasure Project and Paromita Vohra, Agents of Ishq
Access the Special Collection on Sexual Pleasure Here
Watch the recording here:
Credits
Video: What Women Want by Agents of Ishq
Journal Cover Artwork: Samuel Bester
Poem: Happy Ending by Pragya
Hosts
Eszter Kismödi is the Chief Executive of Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM). She is an international human rights lawyer specialising in sexuality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender diversity.
Anne Philpott founded The Pleasure Project in 2004, in frustration of the avoidance of pleasure in sexual health. She is passionate about ensuring pleasure based sexual health becomes the norm, and created the first evidence to prove it is significantly more effective than negatively framed sex education.
Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker, 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.
Panellists
Shereen El Feki is the Director for Solidarity for Change and Voice (S4CV) at the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). A British-Canadian-Egyptian writer, academic, and activist on sexualities and masculinities 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 validated Deaf and Disability Artist with the Canada Council for the Arts and a leading disabled dancer in his native Canada. His current book on 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 a variety of journals including Disability Studies Quarterly, Canadian Scholar’s Press as well as SRHM. A proud member of SHADA, the UK’s leading organization on sexual empowerment for the disabled, he is passionate about sex and disability and plans to write a book about how physically disabled men experience sexual surrogacy. Lawrence will be sharing his views and experiences with British-based sexual surrogates and the critical role pleasure plays in the political empowerment of the disabled man.
Zahra Stardust is a sexual media scholar working at the intersections of sexuality, technology, and social justice. She is the author of Indie Porn: Revolution, Regulation and Resistance (Duke University Press).