Sexual Pleasure, Sexuality, and Rights
Subtopic 1: The Language of Pleasure – A Summary

Greetings! It is exciting to have been a part of the debates and questions posed on the forum over the past few weeks. I wanted to share some thoughts, observations, and short summaries of some of the debates with everyone before we wrap up and move to Subtopic 2 next week. 

What is pleasure? When beginning to analyze sexual pleasure, communicating what we mean becomes the biggest challenge, especially if we are trying to articulate a more affirmative perspective of sexual pleasure. We almost always look to language first to try to see if it can capture our multiple experiences, diverse realities, fluidity of expressions, and ever-changing discourses. And taking from one of the forum participant’s questions posed earlier, “What does it mean to talk a language of pleasure?” 

Sexual Pleasure: Can it be still be subjective in a framework? Since sexual pleasure is so subjective, one participant noted that developing a framework only further serves to define boundaries for sexuality, “normalizing” certain behaviors and identities and marginalizing what it still least understood. How can we talk about sexual pleasure and sexuality in a way that the framework doesn’t backfire on us? How can it be fluid, retain several meanings at the same time, be understood in diverse contexts, and expanded to include a range of realities around sexual pleasure? This broad question seems to have thrown up more questions than it answered, reflecting the need to understand how to talk about sexual pleasure.

What are spaces where we can talk about sexual pleasure safely? In beginning to talk about this question, several participants shared what they had experienced in the form of safe spaces and offered suggestions as to what those spaces would need to include in order to facilitate an open dialogue about sexual pleasure. Online fora, discussion groups, the ability to moderate the inclusion of pejorative phrases and words, trying to include a more expanded view of traditional stereotyped terms around pleasure, creating a dictionary of terms to try to diversify the language, and creating environments that made it okay for people to accept that they could define pleasure for themselves, to name a few of the suggestions put forth on the forum. One forum participant brought up that there were numerous factors influencing sexual pleasure and its expressions, including how cultures construct people to think about pleasure, which teaches us who, and how to love. 

Who can experience and describe sexual pleasure? Another interesting thing that was represented in the forum discussions was the language used around who accessed pleasure and we can see how even the language used around who is involved in receiving, giving, and expressing sexual pleasure also need to be expanded. We began by talking about how pleasure was experienced between two people and how it should be defined by those two people, to talking about how men and women might understand pleasure differently. The discussion moved towards using about a more gender-neutral language around sexual pleasure, and how associating sexual responses with gender might create pressure for people to try and “normalize” their sexual responses. The debate was taken even further, as it was discussed that sexual pleasure was not only the physical, but the emotional and mental experiences as well. As one participant shared, sexual pleasure can also be derived from the thought of an act, or the anticipation of it. As others shared, it is self, it is touches, it is images, anywhere, anytime. There were also members who asked that definitions and boundaries of sexual pleasure expand to include language that referred to “people” and not the gender binary of “man and woman,” and not to assume that “partners” meant that only two people could enjoy sexual pleasure together. Additionally, the need to expand the discourse to include that sexual pleasure could be experienced and described by those who are attracted to the same sex was also brought up by the forum. The expansion of the language and understanding of pleasure in such diverse contexts is mind-boggling, to say the least. But at the same time, critical in moving forward a more progressive and inclusive dialogue that more accurately represents the diversity around issues of sexual pleasure.

How we are talking about sexual pleasure? Participants have included examples from the medical and clinical tones surrounding sexual pleasure, and several discussions with respect to reproductive and sexual health, HIV/AIDS, love and intimacy. The fear and values-based discourses that surround pleasure (for example, the “let’s address it and talk about it so that people don’t get out of control” messages). There are rare conversations about sexual pleasure in and of itself – many people think it is indulgent to do so, given there are so many other “legitimate” issues surrounding us – so why talk about sexual pleasure? One forum participant talked about being able to approach sexual pleasure from the perspective that if people feel good about sexual pleasure, it minimizes risk. Several participants talked about how there was not enough emphasis on mutual pleasure, and that the denial of sexuality as a part of wellbeing was part of the problem. And of course, how sexual pleasure was an important aspect of one’s wellbeing! The forum discussion also had participants questioning the wide spectrum of sexual pleasure – the intersection of violence and sexuality, pain and pleasure (“pleasurable pain”), and pleasure and guilt (which we will be doing more in Subtopic 2: The Regulation and Freedom of Pleasure!). As one participant pointed out, these seemingly opposite terms open up a whole new possibility for talking about sexual pleasure and experiences associated with it – uncomfortable, to say in the least, but necessary if we want to begin talking about sexual pleasure in a manner that reflects openness and furthering dialogue. Then there was the teasing out of love, intimacy, sexual pleasure, and motherhood – this was an extremely interesting dialogue, as it threw in culture and mythology into the debate and started to ask the question “Where do we get our ideas of sexual pleasure?” 

What next? The past three weeks have thrown out some interesting questions and debates about how and where to talk about the language of sexual pleasure, as well as questioning the need to define pleasure by language at all. Sexual pleasure does seem to have “legitimate,” yet extreme spaces for expression and discussion in society. However, it seems it is either consumerism versus politics. The language we use to talk about it in those “sanctioned” spaces are limited to include only the range of what we think is possible within those frameworks. For example, there are a variety of images, words, puns, etc. used by media to evoke pleasure and associate it to sexual pleasure. Media engages with people with the IDEA of pleasure and how one can attain it. It confers a certain status on those that are willing to attain it (for example, articles in popular magazines talking about “how to have better orgasms”, or “how to make your partner sexually satisfied”). On the other end of the spectrum, politicization of pleasure, as one forum participant noted has become “professionalized” to the point that science and medicine have claimed so much of the language we use today in communicating about sexual pleasure, that it has not only claimed the public space, but is now used to describe much of the private space that people use to describe individual experiences, often, inadequate. Make it political and it becomes a part of the rights discourse (which we will be discussing more in Subtopic 3: Pleasure and Rights). There is much scope for discussion here and I hope we will be able to delve into that in the coming weeks!

I hope you have been able to gain something valuable from this first discussion. There will be a background note on Subtopic 2 on Monday, November 7. Feel free to use the discussions we have begun already to tie into future topics. Again, looking forward to a lively dialogue around the issues. 

Thank you,
Neha Patel (Moderator)