Mapping Pathways checked in with Anne Philpott to get her thoughts on how such an approach can help prevent HIV. “We believe you can have safer sex if you know how to have good sex. Pleasure is the primary reason people have sex” explains Anne, “yet it is almost completely absent in the public health domain – in programming, education and research. Since HIV is spread mainly through sexual transmission, efforts to prevent HIV need to consider the role that sexual pleasure and desire play in sexual behaviour.”
Anne’s personal ‘light-bulb moment’ took place at a microbicides session during an HIV/AIDS conference. “The speaker kept using terms like ‘insertive probe’ and ‘receptive cavity’, and for the longest time I thought he was discussing the technical cellular dynamics of microbicides or something like that. Turned out he was trying to talk about penetrative sex – for me, that was a moment of total frustration with the public health world. Why can’t we just say ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’?”
The Pleasure Project carries out advocacy about the importance of pleasure in sexual health, trains health professionals and educators about the eroticisation of safer sex, conducts research to build the evidence base, and pushes for safer sex in the erotic media industry. It sees itself as a bridging organisation – bringing pleasure into the world of public health and bringing public health into the world of pleasure – and works to make sure that the lessons are learned across the two different worlds.
What is one of the key lessons for the public health community? “Sex sells. People in the commercial world use sex to sell things like cars, toothpaste, pens…almost anything! Why not use sex to sell safer sex?” says Anne. “While working at a firm that made female condoms, I noticed how women would bring up the positive elements of the condom and how it actually increases sexual pleasure. We need to focus on things like that along with conveying the message of protection. That’s what will help motivate more and more people to practice safe sex – fear tactics only work up to a point.”
The Female Health Company, which manufactures markets and sells female condoms, seems to agree wholeheartedly. The company has provided key support to organisations advocating for a more positive, pleasure-focused approach to the female condom. “The innovative approach of eroticising the female condom is already having an impact,” says Robbie Nelson, the company’s programme and sales director. “The NGOs we work with, which have had pleasure trainings from The Pleasure Project, are not only making it easier for people to talk about condoms, but they are showing people how sex can be fun with condoms.”
The Pleasure Project’s strategy certainly seems to be working: Their website gets more than 5,000 unique visitors each month – interestingly enough, there’s been a recent surge in hits from Turkey and countries in the Middle East. The Global Mapping of Pleasure (‘A directory of organizations, programmes, media and people who eroticize safer sex’) has been downloaded more than 20,000 times. The organisation is now also pushing for greater research into the pleasure potential of new HIV-prevention products like microbicides. Numerous other initiatives, such as LifeLube, are also attempting to combine the idea of pleasure with HIV prevention. Together, these organisations may kickstart something of a sexual revolution in the public health community’s efforts to combat HIV.
[Content that is linked from other sources is for informational purposes and should not construe a Mapping Pathways position.]
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