World Sexual Day: Positive Relationships are key to advancing Pleasure
This blog post is authored by Dumi Gatsha, a W4GF collaborator
I had the privilege to serve as a pleasure fellow in 2021. It served as a pivot for expanding SRHR discourse to unchartered waters. Sex as a topic is normally considered taboo, elicits shame and is outside of cultural, gender and religious norms. Expanding this topic towards pleasure is even more difficult – even within more progressive spaces. However, it was important to illuminate this as I facilitated a conversation around this at a Now Us! convening in Dar Es Salaam with activists from Mali, Niger, Laos, Indonesia, Kenya and Nigeria among others. It was a full circle for me after having done the same in Nairobi in 2019 during the CFCS conference. Since then, it is clear that time and context may vary. The most consistent since then however, is the discomfort that comes with addressing ‘pleasure’: deeply rooted in shame, embarrassment and hidden curiosity. This could not be more critical, as women and girls along with key populations remain the most impacted in new HIV infections.
Why pleasure matter?
Knowledge is power. I have learned from my own experience, that the fears I had on intercourse were reflective of the society I grew up in. The narratives about contracting HIV, sex before marriage or being a sin did not prevent me from having sex or being curious about it. The same applied for those who grew up in other countries represented in the session, including Camobia, Tanzania and the Philippines. As we unpacked the realities of diverse women’s experiences; we agreed on how informed consent, withdrawal of consent, marital rape, ethnic minority beliefs and disabilities are neglected areas in broader SRHR work. The most haunting of these related issues that needs more attention: female genital mutilation. Especially its very purpose being the elimination of pleasure among women. This only shows how deeply unequal and gendered pleasure as a construct, concept and form of oppression is.
We also learned how menstrual health, navigating the survival of trauma and having to be subservient can limit exploring and understanding pleasure. Whether in Christianity or Islam, there were shared sentiments of significant gaps in knowledge and conversations for all the countries represented. These gaps would not have been unearthed had I used normative SRHR dialogue approaches or tools. I learned this much earlier in my career as I explored HIV self-test kits in Southern Africa. It was difficult to assess bodily autonomy within the confinements of standard HIV testing and counselling practices. We continuously encounter this in our own HIV community referral work. Communities are denied ownership, self-determination, diverse expression and learning under the guise of morality, norms and values.
Performative allyship
Health promotion information remains difficult to translate. Whether as concepts, in local language or in community-specific dialects and idioms. This does not just apply linguistically, but in a digital era where various forms of violence are normalised. We are often met with religious and cultural community gatekeepers who would not even entertain a human rights-based approach to health. Whilst significant time is spent negotiating ways to engage communities, unintended pregnancies, new infections and harm prevail. Gatekeepers of morality, norms and values continue to play a key role in communities. Upholding inherently misogynist structures that can’t be meaningfully reformed or changed from within. We continue to see this in moments of protest, populist regression and anti-rights narratives. This is despite significant investments made in ‘ambassadors’ and ‘champions’ campaigns that perpetuated the incentivising of allyship in communities. This only masked away the lack of political will and authentic leadership in improving broader SRHR-related outcomes.
The impact of divestment
I have been exploring a theory on the impact of disinvestments in social behavioural change. Whilst there were budget allocations on this for decades, at some point there was a shift away from investing in socialisation and information dissemination. I argue that this has impacted how human rights-related discourse is shunned and repelled in society. What used to have a positive impact in the HIV response, a “human rights-based approach to health”, now is considered to be anti-morality, anti-gender and anti-queer. Anti-vaxxers and alternative therapies continue to influence public narratives whilst the science and activists intellectualise universal information. The improvements in select health outcomes, digitalisation and integrated care show how the ‘supply’ end of the health value chain is prioritised over communities. Meanwhile, communities have dynamics of behaviours, narratives, and influences of ‘demand’. Society, practices, and social culture continue to shift as more people live longer and medicines improve the quality of life.
Positive relationships
Community organisations and structures continue to hold solutions to development challenges. Investing and harnessing these more positively, equitably and sustainably is the only way to safeguard gains and progress in broader health outcomes. So as we navigate our health, sexuality and their implications – World Sexual Health Day provides an opportunity to focus on those who are left behind. While pleasure may be trivialised, the insights shared above show how it is deeply linked to what information is available, and how and why we make decisions. The relationships between a state and grassroots civil society determine how rapid health responses can be. Just as the relationships between a learner and teacher can accelerate justice in a case of defilement. These examples of positive relations need to be reflected in our homes, spiritual refuges and even workplaces where sexual harassment can thrive. Pleasure is a powerful tool, approach and concept for safeguarding and strengthening sexual health in unimaginable ways.