Building A Movement For Sexual Rights And Pleasure

The Chinese NGO Pink Space organises exchanges to build solidarity between people marginalised because of their sexuality and challenge the sources of their oppression, as He explains. Pink Space brings together HIV positive women, lesbians, bisexual women, female sex workers, transgender men, and women married to gay men. Fun, laughter and discussions of sexual pleasure are always part of the agenda. He describes how a focus on sexual pleasure promoted solidarity between women.

In China, He’s organisation Pink Space brought together women from different marginalised groups such as lesbians, bisexual women, women living with HIV, sex workers and wives of gay men. By working together, they moved beyond victimhood, with the realisation that other groups might face even more obstacles than they did. And through talking about pleasure and sexuality they found common ground on which to build solidarity. For Pink Space pleasure and positive approaches are a means as well as an end: the trainings are intended to be pleasurable in themselves, and also to lead to empowerment that includes more pleasure.