Female pleasure as a political act
Women's right, what does it mean? How do we feel free to express ourselves?Do we still have taboos? Here we analyze one of it: female pleasure.
My generation owes a lot to Erasmus plus.
All the times we wanted to discover more about a country, to challenge ourselves or improve a language, to meet Europeans or to feel Europeans, when we wanted to study abroad, when we wanted a first touch to a job opportunity.
Every time Erasmus plus answered: with a youth exchange, a training or a seminar, with a semester abroad in a University hosting us, with an EVS or ESC.
In the last seven years (and for those who are of my age also before with Youth in Action) we developed many skills and met opportunities
Every projects responds to a need Europe and Europeans have. In the last year the whole world and Europe faced a hard challenge, that has changed the way we are now living, from how we do things to the way we feel issues.
The last November the 25th we celebrated the international day for the prevention of violence against women and we all know that the way to go is still long. In the last months, in Italy, a teacher (a woman) was victim of an act of revenge porn.
Italian newspapers talked a lot about it and more and more people have fought against the sexist mentality, by posting on social networks many interesting initiatives, by supporting the victim and sharing past similar stories.
The web was really active and this is a supportive attitude toward a victim of violence against women. The most silent part of it, the psychological one.
Recently, I found in the web another interesting initiative, organized by Beyond what they sell, an Italian informal group, active in the field of discrimination.
I interviewed Veronica, one of the members.
Her words can describe the innovative initiative better than I could ever do.
Hi Veronica, who are you?
Ciao, I am an Italian 24 years old girl currently living in Germany. Here, since October, I am part of the European Solidarity Corps project. I am working in a multigenerational house and youth centre in Magdeburg. I coordinate activities of the national and international groups we host, I also do (home) office and handy work and I manage the social media. I have recently joined the Youth Ambassadors, we do monthly meetings with fun and informal educational activities online (hopefully soon also offline) with youngsters from all over Europe.
Can you tell us something about the project “female pleasure in 2020”?
In parallel with my ESC in Germany I am collaborating with “Beyond what they sell” that is a group of young people active with youth work.
Me together with Eugénie, a French friend that I met during an short term ESC in Umbria last summer, are making videos about violence against women and now also about female pleasure. We personally think that it is still a taboo so we wanted to talk about it in a funny but also serious way. That is why, developing the idea for the video, we thought about doing a questionnaire and we asked women about their most intimate moment: masturbation.
We get a big number of replies and now we created a video with female pleasure as the main topic. You can find it on the Facebook, Instagram and Youtube channel “Beyond What They Sell”.
How did you develop the idea? Why do you think we need to talk about it?
I care a lot about this topic because I come from a really small village in Italy and I noticed that talking about masturbation with my friends has always been complicated and embarrassing. So I talked with Eugénie about it and she liked the idea, we worked together, remotely, me in Germany and her in France, to build the video we created.
We need to talk about it because in 2020, and now in 2021, it is still a taboo and it shouldn’t be. Pleasure is important for mental health and masturbation has zero negative effects on our body and especially our mind so what stops us to do it?
Can we contribute somehow?
Yes, it will be great to support our work on Facebook, Instagram and especially in our little newborn Youtube channel, watch our videos, follow our blog and tell us what we can do better or what you want that we should bring online :)
How will the project develop?
After this first video we would like to make a series of videos about this topic and with the replies of the questionnaire we will write some posts about it on social media. You can continue to reply to our questionnaire to have more interesting material to work with. Thank you.
Here you can find the Video about Female Pleasure
Italien