Below are ideas to get you started, and we encourage you to expand on them!

 

With an eye to personal lived realities: We want to bring out personal stories, about how we were raised, what role models we had, where we learned what we did, when we began to rebel, what moved us to strive towards sexual pleasure as an integral part of who we are and the change we want to see.

 

With an eye to cultural pasts and presents: What words do we have for all the different aspects of sexuality, eroticism and pleasure? How does language impact our conceptions of what pleasure is, and who has the right to pleasure? What historical and contemporary literature, films, architecture, and other art forms in our countries, cultures and languages have positively expressed our rights to sexual pleasure? What creative works celebrating women’s sexuality & pleasure; lesbian, bisexual and queer sexuality & pleasure; and third gender, intersex and trans* sexuality & pleasure have moved you? What’s the story behind that?

 

With an eye to advocacy and community organizing: How can we not simply pay lip service to sexual pleasure in our sexual rights discourses (i.e. tacking it on under health), but really work to embody the core principles of consent, respect, autonomy, self-expression, voice and choice in our advocacy and actions? What do these principles mean in practice?

How do we encourage deep engagement with consent, as central to our movement building? How does the right to sexual pleasure intersect with other rights? How can we deepen a sexual rights approach to our movements for economic, environmental, migrant, disability and racial justice? What other lessons can we learn from the right to sexual pleasure that will strengthen our collective struggles for solidarity and self-determination?

What does it mean for us to be responsible for our own sexual pleasure? What support do we need to ensure children, adolescents and young adults grow up with empowering conceptions and practices around sexuality and sexual pleasure?

How can we move our conceptions of sexual pleasure as a right forward in a way that ensures individual autonomy, dignity and integrity? What roles does the state play in upholding sexual pleasure as a right? Should the state play any role at all?

 

With an eye to feminist futures: What radically transformative imaginings and understandings of sexuality, eroticism and pleasure do you have to share? (Creative fictions pieces are also welcome!) What visions, conceptions and understandings of sexual pleasure are still missing in our homes, our circles of friends, our communities and across our movements? How can we work to promote new understandings, to stop marginalizing peoples, voices and experiences, when it comes to celebrating sexuality and the right to pleasure? How can we increase this solidarity?