Anne Philpott

Abstract

“Telling people about this work can be like ‘coming out’”, says Anne Philpott. “That I've been a safe sex adviser on erotic films unsettles some people, but then they think ‘health advice, that's ok’. But if I add that I've just been to the Erotic Awards then they get uneasy. At the same time, though, they're fascinated—what I call ‘scandelighted’.” Philpott is not referring to her day job (health adviser on the AIDS team of the UK's Department for International Development), but to her work on The Pleasure Project (http://www.the-pleasure-project.org). Launched at the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok last year, the project's aim is to put “the sexy back into safer sex”. I meet Philpott on Friday night (yes, it is in fact “Dinner with The Lancet”) in the Soho Hotel, smack in the middle of London's red light district: the perfect location to discuss sexuality and safe sex. The absolute opposite of seedy, the hotel restaurant is an oasis of calm from the hectic Friday night streets. I suggest that erotica and UN global health conferences seem to be, well, unusual bedfellows. “Yes, in fact, the project launch was the first time that issues of pleasure and desire had been the focus of an international AIDS conference session”, says Philpott. “People were very nervous. We were showing Modern Loving—an erotic guide to having better, and safer, sex for couples—and people were saying ‘Make sure you lock the doors’. At AIDS conferences it is as if everyone is talking about an airborne disease, the sex is so stripped out of the agenda—to the extent that people won't even use the words penis and vagina—I've been at talks where the terms ‘insertive probe’ and ‘receptive cavity’ were used instead.” Such prudishness may be surprising, but I am still uncertain as to how promoting pleasure leads to safer sex. Philpott explains that “people get turned on watching couples having safe sex and want to try it out themselves. Using condoms stops being an ‘bought’ and just looks like something exciting and fun to do.” Philpott's vision for the future includes increasing the links between the sex and health industries—getting both to learn from one another. The Pleasure Project website will soon include a global mapping of projects that use pleasure and desire in some aspect of their safer sex work, as well as a toolkit that sexual health professionals can use to help them discuss pleasure and desire in relation to sex. “The ultimate goal of the Pleasure Project is to reduce sexually transmitted infections, but by improving people's sex lives”, Philpott says, as we get ready to leave. “How can you have safe sex if you can't have good sex?”