Pleasure and Childbirth (2 CE Hours)
$80.00
Presented by: Suzannah Weiss, CSE
2 CE Hours
Sunday, July 20, 2025| 11am – 1pm EST
Live via Webinar (Zoom) or Available on demand via Rrecording
AASECT Category: Human Sexuality Education, Section H
Course Description:
Due to a centuries-old madonna/whore dichotomy that falsely divides mothers from sexual women, pleasure and childbirth are rarely spoken about together. This course explores where the two intersect, covering sexuality during pregnancy and postpartum as well as pleasure-based tools to improve childbirth.
Changes in sexual functioning before and after childbirth are common and can be both welcome and unwelcome. For some, alterations in hormones or positioning of sexual organs can create new pathways to pleasure. Others complain of problems like reduced desire or pain during sex. Survivors of sexual trauma may feel triggered by the pregnancy or birthing process. I will describe how to address these issues through education, counseling, and resources like pelvic floor physical therapy.
Views of childbirth as an inherently negative experience — combined with hospital environments that prioritize efficiency and caution — often prevent the exploration of pleasure to improve pregnancy and labor. However, some parents report pleasurable or orgasmic births resulting from soothing and pleasant environments, minimal interventions, and help from sex-positive professionals. Masturbation, vibrators, and BDSM concepts like code words and impact can provide a sense of safety along with physical sensations that improve the birthing experience.
After presenting these ideas, I will share fictional case studies with participants and lead a group discussion around approaches to various cases involving parents’ sexuality.
Learning Objectives:
• Discuss where childbirth and pleasure (both sexual and sensual) intersect
• Discuss cultural notions of the childbirth process as unpleasurable
Presenter Bio:
Suzannah Weiss, CSE, is a multi-certified sex educator, sex/love coach, sexual assault counselor, and sex/relationship writer with work published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more. Diagnosed with autism at age 31, she works with people on the autism spectrum to bring their authentic selves to their relationships and sex lives.
Subjectified: Becoming a Sexual Subject
Subjectified is a book about subjects, objects, and verbs. It is also a book about clothing-optional resorts, masturbation circles, and sex parties.
Suzannah Weiss takes the reader through her adventures as a sex and relationship writer to explore how we can create a world with less objectification and more subjectification – placing women and other marginalized groups in the subject role of sentences and actions. Offering a deeply personal critique of sexual empowerment movements, Weiss presents a way forward that focuses on what women desire, not what men desire from them. Subjectified calls for women everywhere to inhabit their bodies and hearts – to look through their own eyes and speak as “I.”
The book is for everybody wanting to understand themselves as subjects. Wholeheartedly, the author invites you to follow her search for subjecthood and, should you desire, forge your own path out of objecthood.
