How The Pleasure Project brought pleasure and sex to an AIDS conference – ICAAP 8, Colombo, Sri Lanka

[Guest guest]

How The Pleasure Project brought pleasure and sex to an AIDS conference – ICAAP

8, Colombo, Sri Lanka

As I attended one session after another at the recently concluded International

Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP8) in Colombo, Sri Lanka last

week, I was beginning to wonder if HIV was actually an airborne disease rather

than a sexually transmitted one. From symposia on infrastructure and mobility,

to sessions on Religion and HIV and AIDS, I was alarmed at the absence of the

mention of the word 'sex' when, in fact, 85 per cent of all new HIV infections

in Asia are sexually transmitted.

By the time Wednesday came around, and half the participants were exhausted,

while the other half had gone shopping, it was time for a skills-building

workshop called 'Where is the pleasure in safer sex?', hosted by an organization

called The Pleasure Project ( www.thepleasureproject.org). In spite of the sexy,

eye-catching flyers I had helped the organizers to distribute all over the

congress venue, I honestly wasn't expecting many people to attend. The session,

scheduled for 2:30pm, clashed with a symposium on the focus of the congress:

universal access.

I had had agreed to help facilitate the session along with Anne Philpott – from

The Pleasure Project – and had arranged to meet her beforehand, the session

started at 2:30 pm. Even before we met, the room was half full; and by 2:20pm we

had more than 50 people seated and waiting for the session to commence. By

2:30pm, we had to place a FULL sign outside the door and stop more people from

entering the room. As we were about to begin, a note was slipped under the door

that said 'Dear facilitator – please let us in, we are 23 people waiting

outside'. But the room could not accommodate any more people as many were

already standing and some seated on the floor.

We did three exciting exercises from The Pleasure Project's training materials.

The first was on naming sexual pleasure: people from all over the region stood

up and bravely told us what sexual pleasure was called in their language; we

heard and learned the names in a number of languages including Telugu, Urdu,

Sinhala, Tamil, Pashtu, Bari, Dhivehi and even in German!

This was followed by another exercise called Places of Pleasure. It involved

splitting up the participants into small groups by gender, and asking each group

to identify 'places of pleasure' by drawing an outline of a body and indicating

which areas could potentially receive sexual pleasure. Each group then presented

its 'pleasure body map' to the other groups, and the groups of the other gender

were asked to comment. All of us women were a little stunned to see that none of

the men had highlighted the clitoris as a 'place of pleasure', but instead

indicated only a general vaginal area. Also, two of the men's groups drew

women's bodies without heads, which seemed to illustrate how some men view women

sexually.

Finally, the participants were asked to market/sell male and female condoms to

each other as tools of pleasure. We heard a heard variety of sexy tips and even

saw an animated mime of a sexy insertion of a female condom by an enthusiastic

participant from Papua New Guinea. By the end of the session, even the most shy

and awkward of men in the room were talking and sharing their ideas.

The highlight of the session came from the testimonials received from the

participants. For example, a woman from Uganda told us: 'We have been doing it

all wrong in my country – people associate the condom with disease and AIDS; but

now I know it can be so much more.' Sister Selinta, a Catholic nun from Sri

Lanka who counsels young couples entering matrimony, said: 'This is the best

session I have attended at this conference.' Another group of young women from

TARSHI (Talking about Reproductive and Sexual Health Issues) and CREA – both

organizations working on sexual and reproductive health in India – also shared

interesting resources and comments with the group.

All in all, the session was so popular and successful that another

skills-building workshop had to be scheduled after regular congress hours for

the 23 people waiting outside. The 23 burgeoned into almost 40 people and

another packed and exciting session was concluded by 7pm.

The Pleasure Project is an educational organization that promotes safer sex that

feels good. We work with NGOs and the public health sector, erotic media

producers, journalists and media outlets to provide training, research,

publications and consultancy that promote and increase sex-positive approaches

to preventing sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

The Pleasure Project – www.thepleasureproject.org

Revati Chawla

e-mail: <revatics@...>