The New Post Office opened the 2022/2023 season with a project exploring sexual pleasure as the basic sexual right in the framework of human rights. The creators researched topics such as painful intercourse and vaginismus,* consent, sexual pleasure of women with disability, alternative sexual practices, and the history of sex education in Yugoslavia. The series of lectures-performances was connected and developed in a full-day event in October 2023.
“Sexual pleasure is the physical and/or psychological satisfaction and enjoyment derived from shared or solitary erotic experiences, including thoughts, fantasies, dreams, emotions, and feelings. […] Sexual pleasure is a fundamental part of sexual rights as a matter of human rights.” (From the Declaration on Sexual Pleasure) Our interpersonal relationships and also our sexuality are (still) marked by patriarchal relationships. Numerous testimonies about sexual violence indicate how deeply rooted misogyny still is in our society. At the same time, there is a lack of structures that would recognise sexual pleasure as an important source of comfort, satisfaction and empowerment, while prioritising persons, repressed in the society, in the process. Through collecting personal stories and collaboration with experts, the project will give space to sexual pleasure of women* and shed light on it from different points of view. A series of lecture-performances will inform the audience, and at the same time tackle the topics of sexual pleasure with different performing practices and strategies.
*Vaginismus is considered the most difficult sexual dysfunction in women. Vaginismus causes the pelvic floor muscles to spasm, which completely disables vaginal penetration even when a woman desires it.
The fifth and final part of the series of lecture-performances reconstructs the struggle for reproductive rights in Yugoslavia, which touched upon sexual rights only implicitly, but paved the way for the right to sexual pleasure to be spoken of today. The struggle goes back to the time during and after the Second World War, when the so-called epidemic of (unprofessional) abortions claimed the lives of many women. At that time, abortion was illegal and punishable by imprisonment, and the concept of marital rape did not exist in legal terms. The biographies of Vida Tomšič, a partisan and important Yugoslav politician, and Dr Franco Novak-Luka, a partisan, important gynaecologist and Vida Tomšič’s second husband, outline the development of a progressive policy for the time: the development of the idea of family planning as a human right, and of the right to sex education, which goes beyond the biologist conception of sexuality and places the so-called humane relations between the sexes at the centre of the issue. At a time when society is being re-traditionalised and policies are re-questioning the right to safe abortion and contraception, it seems that, far from women’s bodies belonging to them alone being taken for granted, this is something that must be fought for again and again.
Written and directed by Tjaša Črnigoj
Author and performer: Sendi Bakotić
Author and performer: Vanda Velagić
Writer, set and costume designer: Tijana Todorović
Author and set designer: Lene Lekše
Expert collaborator: dr. Maja Vehar, Živa Novak
Vida Tomšič’s voice: Draga Potočnjak
Frantz Novak’s voice: Matej Recer
Grandmother’s voice: Nina Skrbinšek
Narrator’s voice: Sara Horžen
Music selection: by the author of the lecture-performance
Language consultant: Mateja Dermelj
Editing and sound editing: Jure Vlahovič, Silvo Zupančič
Web editor: Tery Žeželj
Producer: Tina Dobnik
Photographer: Nada Žgank
Video editor and cameraman: Hana Vodeb
Technical directors of the show: Manca Vukelič, Igor Remeta
Lighting designers: Tjaša Črnigoj, Igor Remeta, Manca Vukelič, Tijana Todorović, Lene Lekše, Demijan Pintarič
Public relations: Urska Comino (Maska), Helena Grahek (Mladinsko)
Graphic Designer: Mina Fina – grupa Ee
Production: Nova pošta (Maska Ljubljana in Slovensko mladinsko gledališče)
Co-production: City of Women
Partnership: Kolektiv Igralke
Premiere: 1. 6. 2023
Thanks: Ivan Bernik, Urška Brodar, Tina Dobnik, Urška Henigman, Interdisciplinary Research Group On Feminist Pleasure, Alja Lobnik, Blaž Šef, Draga Potočnjak, Matej Recer, Nina Skrbinšek, Sara Horžen, Lene Lekše, Tery Žeželj, Tajda Novšak, Tjaša Juhart, Dušan Kohek, Goran Injac, Tina Malič, Mateja Dermelj, Tibor Mihelič Syed, Sisterhood of the Proud Dolphin, Anja Sabol, Ana Marija Brđanović, dr. Aleksandar Štulhofer, Dr. Jasenka Grujić, Darja Urbanc, dr. Bojana Pinter, Archive of Radio and Television of Montenegro (RTCG), Andreja Dugandžić – Crvena Association for Culture and Arts and Archive of the Anti-Fascist Struggle of the Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia, Dr. Jelena Simić – Museum of Science and Technology (Museum of Serbian Medicine of the Serbian Medical Association), Dr. Tea Dakić, Museum of Women of Montenegro, Archive of Yugoslavia Belgrade, Croatian State Archives, prof. Laze Tripkov, Marcella Lagalante, German Hygiene Museum in Dresden, Aleksandra Vujović, Urška Jež, Dr. Gabrijela Simetinger, Vitomir Obal, Boris Kuselj, Nina Škvarč, Mojca Dobnikar, Vlasta Jalušič, Maca Maček, Tanja Rener, Katarina Jurjavčič, Ministry of Justice, Leonišče, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, HNK Ivan pl. Maja Vehar, Žiga Hren
The project is part of a series of lecture-performances in which Nika Rozman and Lina Akif participate as authors and performers, and Alja Lobnik and Dr Gabrijela Simetinger as expert collaborators. The lecture-performance uses archival materials from the Museum of Contemporary and Contemporary History of Slovenia, the archives of RTV Slovenia, the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia and Živa Novak’s personal archive.
The starting point for the lecture-performance was Maja Vehar’s doctoral dissertation Sex Education in Slovenia from the Change of the Social and Political System after the Second World War to the End of the 1960s (Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana, 2021). In addition, we used quotations from the works: Woman, Work, Family, Society (Vida Tomšič, Komunist, Ljubljana, 1978), Loyalty to Hippocrates (Zora Konjajev, Institute for the History of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Ljubljana, 1999), Youth and Gender Relations (Franc Novak, Coordination Committee for Family Planning of Slovenia and Republican Committee of the Red Cross of Slovenia, Ljubljana, 1970), Schools for Life and Education of Growing Youth (Proceedings, Union of Labour and People’s Universities of Slovenia, Ljubljana, 1961), Sexual Repulsion (Marijan Košiček, Epoha, Zagreb, 1963), We Are Not to Blame. How a Nation Lives (Nada Sremec, Gospodarska sloga, Zagreb, 1940) and Vida Tomšič and Family Planning (Nežka Brglez, thesis, Faculty of Arts, UL, 2005).