IWD 2021: Planet Pleasure

This year, our theme for International Women’s Day is pleasure. We welcome you to Planet Pleasure — a place to revel in what we enjoy, explore new potential sources of pleasure, and share what we know and love.

10am – Pleasure Poetics (collaborative poetry) with Brendane Tynes
11am – Practicing Pleasure (theater exercises) with Paula Hamilton-Smith
Noon – On the Mend (DIY clothing repair and refresh) with Hermie Escamilla
1pm – Gardening with Allicia Rolle / Pleasure card-making with Zearier Munroe
2pm – Contemporary Movement (dance) with Shauné Culmer
3pm – Yoga and Yoni Meditation with Mykah Smith

This is not only for heart, mind, and body, but for our feminist politic. It is directly related to the conversation about marital rape (we talk about consent, but what about women’s right to sexual pleasure?). It is also critical to the conversation about women’s unpaid labor and the burden of care, which are barriers to leisure and pleasure. It is a necessary component of our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Pleasure cannot be separated from our lives and what we need to sustain ourselves.

We lean on the wisdom of queer Black feminist women and challenge ourselves to not only demand pleasure, but to give ourselves permission to create and experience it for ourselves.

From Audre Lorde, “The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.”

From Adrienne Maree Brown: “[…] begin to understand the liberation possible when we collectively orient around pleasure and longing.”

Watch the replay of the event below.