Welcome to The Pleasure Report.
When you read the word pleasure, what comes to mind? Is it sex, ice cream, vacation? Does it pair with guilt, reward, or debauchery? Does it seem counterintuitive — irresponsible even — to be talking about pleasure in the midst of a pandemic and a massive shift in consciousness about white supremacy, racism, and capitalism as we know it.
A life without pleasure is survival.
I’m using pleasure broadly, provocatively, to help us think outside of the box, to conceive of pleasure as a human right. I want to create a space for us to imagine into existence a future in which we live in pleasure, all of us, which means we need to be out of sync with the world we currently live in, and in tune with ourselves.
We want to create spaces that make people feel.
We’ve been conditioned.
I’ve spent my entire career looking at the ways we perform cultural expectations. The ways we bend and bow and squeeze into some idea of who we are supposed to be and what it takes to defy that. I spent five years documenting women boxers who were unapologetic and who defied cultural expectations to become the first women to box in the Olympics. And then I turned the lens of myself wondering how I have been conditioned, what have I been wanting to say and don’t have permission to say. What do I desire when I don’t even remember what desire means?
What do you desire?
I’ve been on a wild ride, unlearning and rediscovering my own relationship to pleasure. Along the way, I have interviewed tantra teachers, a 104-year-old sex therapist, a former political prisoner, an ecstatic birth doula, a young Mormon bride, widows, power brokers and community organizers. I’ve studied attention, power and money with a former Taoist nun and dominatrix. I’ve learned about orgasmic meditation and conscious capitalism. I’ve done plant medicine with Shamans, plunged into freezing cold water and hit heavy bags. I’ve screamed with 2000 women and danced in the streets.
The personal is the political.
I’ve learned that pleasure is a stance, one that requires a leap of faith, a rewriting of our narratives, a willingness to say yes to what is happening in the moment. I have learned that how we do one thing is how we do everything. There is pleasure in saying no, setting firm boundaries, and telling the truth. There is no greater pleasure than truth unadorned, unfiltered, unapologetic.
I would love to share with you what I’ve been learning… for all of us to share what WE have been learning.
Combing science, philosophy and a lot of storytelling, The Pleasure Report is an interactive experience. You’ll find interviews, research findings, reviews of books and online offerings and prompts for mapping of our personal and collective vision for what is possible.
I’ll be sending out The Pleasure Report every Friday. We’ll be talking openly and honestly about sex, drugs, religion, money, pain, death and the erotics of equality and so much more.
Are you in?
I invite you to join me here:
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In the meantime, tell your friends!