Why pleasure activism matters to queers

by Alexis Hazell

I recently sent a request to the compilers of the ALSO Directory asking if the details about Pleasure Activism Australia could be included in the next edition of the Directory. I received a polite reply informing me that, after looking at the web site, it was decided by the compilers that "PAA does not fall under the GLBTI categories that we include in the Directory."

This struck me as rather odd, to say the least. Pleasure activism is - at least in part - about promoting sexuality between consenting adults as a Good Thing, as something to be celebrated. Which necessarily implies that consensual sex between two or more adult women, or two or more adult men, is also a Good Thing. So pleasure activism inherently involves defending such things as the Melbourne Wankers, the Melbourne Leather Festival, Ten Plus, and Wet on Wellington, all of which are listed in the ALSO Directory.

Pleasure activism also involves celebrating the inherent beauty of the human form, without limiting it to those body types which the mass media promotes as "officially beautiful". Instead, pleasure activists work towards a society where the diversity of human body types is widely recognised and accepted, where people feel comfortable with their bodies and where people of all shapes and sizes and abilities are considered deserving of pleasure.

So given the above, might there not be people in the queer communities interested in participating in an organisation which seeks to defend and promote groups and events which are part of those queer communities? In fact, many - if not most - of the members of the PAA email discussion list identify as something other than heterosexual. Clearly, pleasure activism is something that is of interest to queers.

However, not only is it "merely" of interest to queers, it's something that's very much needed in the queer communities. Some lesbians, for example, seem to believe that a lesbian who occasionally has sex with a guy has committed a sin almost beyond redemption; which would seem to imply that a woman only has a right to control her sexuality, and to pursue sexual pleasure, as long as it doesn't sully her lesbian "purity". Having had their sexuality repressed by patriarchy over the course of thousands of years, one would think that the last thing women need is to have yet another group of people deciding for them what constitutes Ideologically Correct behaviour. Nevertheless, it happens.

That's just one example of why pleasure activism is needed in queer communities; there are certainly more. Indeed, the very fact that a group devoted to pleasure activism is not considered worthy of inclusion in a resource directory for queers is itself an indicator of just how much pleasure activism is needed in the queer community. Pleasure activism is an important component of the struggle for a society in which a plurality of sexual orientations is seen, not as something to be avoided, not as an indicator of a society in "moral decay", but as something to be celebrated, as an indicator of a society which recognises that a diverse ecosystem is a healthy ecosystem.

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