{"id":7582,"date":"2016-03-06T10:53:56","date_gmt":"2016-03-06T05:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=7582"},"modified":"2016-03-06T10:53:56","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T05:23:56","slug":"what-running-a-business-around-pleasure-taught-me-about-sexuality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=7582","title":{"rendered":"What Running a Business around Pleasure Taught me about Sexuality"},"content":{"rendered":"\nT<\/span>he Covid-19 pandemic was life-altering for most of us. Other than changing my outlook of life, these years would also change my career, the one I had worked on for a decade. \u2018Sangya Project\u2019<\/a> began as a sex-ed page on Instagram by my two partners and I, during the peak of the pandemic. A project that was born out of frustration for the lack of sex education in this country, soon turned into a space where people could share perspectives and insights on all things related to sex and sexuality. The project, unexpectedly gained a decent amount of popularity over a period of one year, at which point we decided to take this a step further, and turn it into a business around pleasure. Aside from initiating difficult conversations around sex, we also provided people with the tools necessary for exploring their own sexuality – such as toys, lubricants and kink-wear. A year on, though, as we close our very first round of funding, much has changed. More so in the things I\u2019ve learned about sexuality by running a business around pleasure.\n\nGrowing up in India means growing up in the absence of sex education and in abundance of sanctimony. Where saving face takes precedence over all else, including personal beliefs and individual happiness. It\u2019s hardly surprising then that there is reluctance to explore our sexuality. For that would mean to be in touch with ourselves and to put aside decades of conditioning that we have undergone.\u00a0 Like most of my peers, I was taught and conditioned to believe that enjoying sex is but for the morally depraved, coded by the usage of the words like \u201cslut\u201d for every woman who did enjoy it. While theoretically I was aware of how flawed that outlook was, the realisation was still riddled with shame, mostly due to my own perception of how sex was viewed by my contemporaries.\n\n

A project that was born out of frustration for the lack of sex education in this country, soon turned into a space where people could share perspectives and insights on all things related to sex and sexuality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nPeople who engage with our business bring to it their own unique perspectives \u2013 from how sex helped them handle grief to how comfortable their partners made them feel during their first threesome to how oral sex helped them feel liberated. What has struck me through all these tales, is the level of comfort that each of these individuals exhibited. Comfort not just in terms of being vulnerable to sharing their most intimate moments but in their individual sexuality. These were people who, through their own experiences, good and bad, came to be in touch with themselves enough to understand their own sexuality and in turn, came to own it. For the first time I truly understood the meaning of the term \u2018owning your sexuality\u2019.\n\nA similar realisation hit me when we began selling pleasure products. We would often see partners buying products for each other. While on one hand I have encountered people making statements to the effect that sex toys stand to obliterate marriage and relationships as we know them, on the other hand, in our customers, I have seen a level of security that enabled them to safely explore bits of their own sexuality with the kind of gentleness and care that I did not expect to see. While a lot of men would find partners using sex toys a threat, I have sat and watched this landscape change little by little as I see more people becoming comfortable with themselves and their relationships to view these products as they are; as an addition to their lives and not as a replacement of a human being.\n\n

I have sat and watched this landscape change little by little as I see more people becoming comfortable with themselves and their relationships to view these products as they are; as an addition to their lives and not as a replacement of a human being.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nWhile observing these things individually may not amount to much, having a macroscopic view of these instances has made me realise how love, sex and sexuality are not little parts to be fit into prearranged grooves but more akin to a stream, the ebb and flow of which is to be observed more than to be controlled. It\u2019s something I\u2019m learning to do as well, especially the part where I let go of everything to it can come together organically, in the absence of any preconceived notions and the thing that we\u2019ve all been taught to associate with it – shame.\u00a0The beauty of this realisation is that you needn\u2019t be an owner of a sexual wellness brand. This is simply the result of observing a space where people were allowed to express themselves and be there authentic selves. It\u2019s simply a result of having ignited conversations.\u00a0Conversations that most of us believe are impossible to have.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pandemic brought change in the way we talked intimacy and sex. But it was when I decided to turn pleasure into a business, that I really learned about sexuality, in the most organic ways possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[4219,2259,224,4932,408,11829,2262],"class_list":["post-7582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pov","tag-education","tag-female-sexuality","tag-love","tag-pov","tag-sex","tag-sexed","tag-sexuality"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Running a Business around Pleasure Taught me about Sexuality<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The pandemic brought change in the way we talked intimacy and sex. 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