Sexual Pleasure, Sexuality, and Rights
Subtopic 4: Pleasure and Practice – An Introduction 

Greetings and welcome to the introduction to the discussion on Subtopic 4: Sexual Pleasure and Practice! We hope to be able to include threads of the previous subtopic’s discussion into this one and look forward to hearing a diverse set of critical debates on these issues. 

When talking about public health, we talk in terms of protecting the public against ‘something.’ Usually, it is something, such as polio or malaria, is an infectious disease that is going to inflict harm on the public, having ramifications that will be felt throughout society. But what happens when the ‘something’ becomes a ‘someone’? Is that an acceptable approach for public health? What about when the ‘someones’ are scapegoated as homosexuals, sex workers, drug addicts, and migrants? Moreover, it becomes more difficult to apply when extending the public health approach to more contentious issues, such as sexual pleasure. Attributes and behaviors are attributed to entire communities, making them one monolithic reality, rendering them responsible for protecting the public from them – who they are and their entire community. Is there a way to reconcile having guidelines for public health approaches and individual rights?

Second, look at the common approaches taken with sexual pleasure - the medical community commonly leads the discussion on medicines and implants that enhance pleasure, the media has sanctioned the space which will allow them to create ads that have bold sexual pleasure-seeking messages and images, the activist space has begun to look at pleasure as a result of other issues such as gender, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, etc. It would be interesting to look at how the ‘pleasure industry’ engages with the issue of sexual pleasure and if there are some possibilities for crossing paths with the activist spaces. How might these combined efforts look? While the pleasure industry has created a multitude of toys, enhancers, motivators, props, and supplements to “legitimize” pleasure-seeking behavior, it has always been at odds with the activist and public health space, as that behavior is seen as indulgent. 

In thinking about some of these debates, here are some questions to help guide our discussion through the next few weeks:

1. What are the conflicts between individual rights and public health? Can you think of examples to highlight this? Where do you draw the line between individual rights and the “public good”? 
   
2. What are some examples of when health, risks, safety and sexual pleasure are constantly pitted against each other? How can we reconcile these? (there was an previous posting from a participant who asked how to talk to adolescents about the clitoris when conducting sexuality education when all she was permitted to say about it was so medical?) Do pleasure and safety always have to be at odds?
   
3. The first subtopic included examples of a range of safe spaces to talk about sexual pleasure. What other examples exist from different parts of the world on how pleasure is integrated into practice in programming and policy? What have been some of the barriers in doing so, and what were some of the approaches taken to overcome those challenges?
   
4. What are some of the innovative products/projects/ideas that have begun around the “pleasure industry” and its connection with health and wellbeing? Is there even a strong connection? Have any been made?

Please feel free to write in your analyses, observations, thoughts, comments, and examples addressing any, one, or all of the issues and questions raised above. Alternatively, you can also pose new questions you feel are relevant for this sub-topic. As this is the last subtopic, we can look forward to any observations and comments that tie together the discussions from the past two months.

We look forward to an exciting and lively discussion!

Regards,

Neha Patel (Moderator)
The South and Southeast Asia Resource Centre on Sexuality