Sacred Intimacy & Pleasure Activism

“For many years I have worked as a sacred intimate - offering my caring presence and my touch to clients, creating erotic rituals with them. The term ‘sacred intimate’ draws on the history of holy whoredom, as practiced in many different cultures around the world. It was coined by Joseph Kramer in the 1980’s as he guided gay men in offering sexual pleasure and erotic ritual to other gay men, and cultivating erotic energy in groups, in the midst of the grief and the fear of the AIDS epidemic. This was the original manifestation of a training that later morphed into Sexological Bodywork and then Somatic Sex Education. My own practice through all these iterations has stayed grounded in the holy resonance and queer roots of sacred intimacy.”

-Caffyn Jesse, Elements of Intimacy

This history is important in speaking to what arrives with me as I work, my feeling of the salience of this work in the COVID era, and the personal importance of honouring all of the sacred intimates who have come before me. I feel the work of sacred intimacy is peace and liberation work.

“Pleasure activists believe that by tapping into the potential goodness in each of us we can generate justice and liberation, growing a healing abundance where we have been socialized to believe only scarcity exists.”

-adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism

The question of ‘how do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience’ sits at the centre of my own personal inquiries, and of the work I do in the world. It feels important that changing the world should be fun, sexy, erotic, playful, and restful if it’s going to be sustainable, and if it’s going to result in a world that we actually want to live in. I deeply celebrate adrienne maree brown’s writing via Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism.