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Learning Session 1: What is sexual pleasure?
Introduction
Sexual pleasure is a fundamental part of people’s lives, but it’s a topic that many trainers find difficult to talk about. In this session, you’ll get to know about some of the basic concepts around sexual pleasure. This should help you feel more comfortable with completing this course. By the end of this first session you should:
- have a broader understanding of what sexual pleasure could be
- be able to describe the difference between risk-based and positive approaches to sexual pleasure within the Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) curriculum.
1.1 Sex, eating and pleasure
How do we define sexual pleasure? It might be helpful to think about how sex is sometimes like eating. Let’s try an activity that compares eating and having sex.
1.2 What is essential for pleasure?
We also need to think about what young people need in order to have pleasurable sexual experiences. For example, they need to have a choice and not be forced into sex. Likewise, feeling guilty about sex is unlikely to enhance our pleasure; being stressed or anxious is also likely to have the same effect.
Activity 1.3: What is essential for pleasure?
We list below some things that can affect pleasure positively or negatively. On the scale below choose how essential you think each one is for ensuring that a young person can experience pleasure in sex.
Discussion
A further definition of pleasure starts:
Sexual pleasure is the physical and/or psychological satisfaction and enjoyment derived from solitary or shared erotic experiences, including thoughts, dreams and autoeroticism.
This definition continues to state that consent, safety, privacy, trust (confidence) and the ability to communicate are key factors for pleasure and for sexual health and well-being.
This and other definitions establish that sexual pleasure is diverse and sexual rights are fundamental to ensure that sexual pleasure is a positive experience.
1.3 Risk-based versus positive approaches
The next activity looks at risk-based and positive approaches to talking about sexual pleasure.
Activity 1.4: Risk-based or positive?
Part 1
A good way of thinking about the messages we give to young people around the topic of sexual pleasure is to ask whether they are risk-based or positive.
Read the story below and think about the messages the different parents give their children: are they risk-based or positive?
Two children live beside each other on a busy road. On the other side of the road is a playground and each child asks their parents whether they can go to the playground.
The parents of the first child tell him that the road is dangerous. There is too much traffic on the road and he might be injured if he tries to cross it alone.
The parents of the second child tell her that yes, the road is dangerous, but she will have to learn to cross busy roads like everyone else. So they show her how to look left and right and wait until there is no traffic so that she can cross the road safely.
A risk-based approach is an approach which focusses mainly on the risks or negative consequences of certain behaviour. In case of sexuality a risk-based approach means focusing on the negative consequences of sex (such as unwanted pregnancy or STIs) and ignores the reasons why people have sex and the positive outcomes. A risk based approach only warns people against ‘bad’ things, without giving proper information.
A positive approach focuses on sexuality as a potential source for well-being and pleasure in people’s lives. It aims to support people to be able to choose safely, to enjoy their sexuality safely no matter what their sexual orientation or gender identity is. A positive approach also teaches people skills and knowledge on how to prevent problems, and how to cope with them if they appear.
Young people are often told about the risks and the dangers of sex, but seldom about its pleasure and gains. They are often encouraged to feel guilty, ashamed or fearful of their own sexuality. A positive approach to CSE talks openly about risks or negative consequences, but in a wider context which focuses on the pleasures of sexual activity. The positive approach focuses on what young people need to gain sexual satisfaction, happiness and fulfilment in order to avoid the negative consequences.
Both approaches have the goal of keeping young people safe, but they do so in very different ways.
Part 2
Here is a list of the different ways you might teach CSE.
Select the appropriate choice on the scale according to whether you think it is part of a risk-based approach to CSE, a positive approach to CSE, or if you think it could be part of either approach.
Further thoughts
Dona D’Acosta Martinez is Executive Director of the Family Planning Association of Trinidad and Tobago. Dona has some amazing insights into what being ‘positive’ means in practice and why it is important. Watch the clip to find out more.
Transcript
1.4 Being ‘positive’
We now turn to look at how a positive approach to teaching young people about their sexuality can provide them with happier, more fulfilled lives.
Activity 1.5: What does ‘being positive about young people’s sexuality’ mean to you?
The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) framework for CSE identifies sexual pleasure as one of the seven essential components of CSE. The framework says that sexual pleasure starts with ‛being positive about young people’s sexuality’.
In the speech bubbles below, write a word, phrase or sentence that describes what ‘being positive about young people’s sexuality’ means to you. This could be something about the messages you give, the way you treat young people, or how you behave with them.
Discussion
It’s important to really think about how you approach teaching young people about their sexuality. Here’s what Hans, one of our writing team wrote:
Being positive about young people’s sexuality involves respecting them as sexual beings – in their thoughts, fantasies, questions and experiences.
Experiences can include being in love with an idol or secretly with a class mate, fantasising about a person and the sexual acts you might like to do with them, and exploring your body with a friend, or even being sexually active with someone.
Part of this positivity is taking young people’s questions seriously and trying to answer them in a supportive and non-judgemental way. A positive approach sees young people as competent and capable persons. But they need knowledge and support.
It’s also about realising that a lot of young people have been engaged in some form of sexual activity by age 13, like playing 'truth or dare', exploring each other or touching themselves/masturbation.
Further thoughts
Do abstinence-only programmes work?
Programmes that promote abstinence-only have been found to be ineffective, not only in delaying when young people start having sex, but also in reducing the frequency of sex or reducing the number of sexual partners.
Programmes that combine a focus on delaying sexual activity with content about contraceptive use are more effective (Kirby, 2007; Underhill et al., 2007; Fonner et al., 2014).
Some young people choose to abstain from sexual contact with other people. This is a valid choice and should be respected, but abstinence as a message in CSE doesn’t work, as it excludes those who have already had sex with a partner.
1.5 Changing our messages
The final activity below challenges your understanding of risk-based versus positive approaches to teaching about sexual pleasure.
Activity 1.6: Changing messages from risk-based to positive
The table below contains a list of messages in the left-hand column which are all risk-based. Complete the table by writing corresponding positive messages in the right-hand column. We’ve done the first message to start you off.
| Risk-based message | Corresponding positive message |
|---|---|
| If we speak too much and too early about sex with young people, we run the risk of encouraging them to have sex. | Puberty starts between 10 and 13 years old for most children (some earlier). Young people need knowledge about their bodies, sex and sexuality to feel safe and to know their rights; and to be able to say "yes” or "no” to sex, and to enjoy and respect other people. Knowledge can also protect us against abuse. |
| If you have sex you can get sick through STIs or HIV. | |
| If you don’t use a condom you are stupid and irresponsible. | |
| ‘Boys will be boys’ but girls who have sex before marriage can get a bad reputation. |
Discussion
This is how we completed our table - yours might look different to this .
| Risk-based message | Corresponding positive message |
|---|---|
| If we speak too much and too early about sex with young people, we run the risk of encouraging them to have sex. | Puberty starts between 10 and 13 years old for most children (some earlier). Young people need knowledge about their bodies, sex and sexuality to feel safe and to know their rights; and to be able to say "yes” or "no” to sex, and to enjoy and respect other people. Knowledge can also protect us against abuse. |
| If you have sex you can get sick through STIs or HIV. | There are a lot of ways to have sex. Some are safer than others. If you have anal or vaginal intercourse it’s important to use a condom. There are other ways to have sex which are safer than intercourse: touching, masturbating, kissing, rubbing bodies against each other, sucking, licking, etc. Many people enjoy these as much as or more than penetrative intercourse. |
| If you don’t use a condom you are stupid and irresponsible. | Generally, the attitude to people who use condoms or ask their partner to use them is positive. They are considered as responsible, caring and mature persons. |
| ‘Boys will be boys’ but girls who have sex before marriage can get a bad reputation. | Everyone can decide about their own actions. You can enjoy your sexuality, be excited/horny and at the same time be able to respect other people and decide if you want to have sex or not. Everyone is responsible for his/her actions and girls have the same right to sexuality as boys, as well as the same ability to get excited and feel sexual pleasure. It’s society’s attitude towards girls that gives them a bad reputation, not the girls’ behaviour. |
When we take a sex-positive approach with young people we need to think more about what we are saying and give clearer answers.
One of the reasons why risk-based approaches are so common is that it’s easier to just repeat the messages society gives to young people about sex, but as CSE educators, we should be challenging these messages and getting young people to think critically about them.
1.6 Condoms
A risk-based approach versus a positive approach to condoms
In this final section we continue looking at risk-based versus positive approaches to teaching, but turn our attention to looking specifically at the use of condoms.
A risk-based approach to condoms might be to warn young people about the risks of STIs and pregnancy, and to say that the best way not to get an STI is to avoid sex and if you can’t abstain, to always use a condom.
A positive approach would talk about the risks of STIs and pregnancy, but would include why condoms are needed to prevent these. However, it would also talk about how to negotiate safer sex/condom use; what to do in different situations where a condom might be needed, how to get them and how to use them.
A positive approach recognises that condom use is about what happens when two (or more) people meet. Therefore, it would discuss communication, and also get young people thinking about the difficulties they might face – like girls that might be seen as ‛bad’ if they suggest condoms or carry condoms with them. Here it’s not the condom that is a problem, it’s society’s view on girls’ sexuality.
Summary
In this first learning session you learnt some of the important concepts associated with communicating with young people about sexual pleasure. In particular, you learnt what sexual pleasure is and how to define it and you came up with your own definition about sexual pleasure. You also learnt about the differences between risk-based and positive approaches.
But this is only the beginning of your journey. In Learning Sessions 2 and 3, you’ll explore further why talking about sexual pleasure is so important, as well as why people often find it hard to talk about.
Learning Sessions 4 to 6 are packed full of ideas and tools you can use to positively teach the practical elements of pleasurable sexual activity in your classes.
Now you can go to Learning Session 2.