It’s noon and I’m in the middle of telling a room of complete strangers things about my sex life that not even my boyfriend knows. All around me are women doing the same thing, airing their deepest desires and eliciting sympathetic nods. To my right, our instructor — a sex, love and relationship coach — is letting out orgasmic sighs that punctuate the chatter like air horns. To round things off, we finish the session by engaging in some “sex magic”. That is, sensual meditation that involves “connecting to the flow of energy” in our clitoris. Just your average Sunday.
The pursuit of pleasure in London has become big business. Everything from female-centric masturbation workshops to spanking classes — and even clitoris-focused book festivals — command high prices and draw dedicated followings. At the London Edition, sex columnist and broadcaster Emma-Louise Boynton regularly sells out her Sex Talks (an event series where alongside expert speakers she covers once-taboo subjects like self-pleasure and the orgasm gap).
The workshop that I attended is run by She’s Lost Control, a Hackney-based lifestyle brand which takes pleasure as a central principle of holistic wellbeing. One Hundred Shoreditch’s current pop-up, titled No Ordinary Love, offers attendees masturbation classes (alongside more prosaic pursuits like flower crown making), while companies like Studio Sexus host workshops where women can decorate and fire their own ceramic dildos.
For the more adventurous there are things like Liquid Love — semi-regular group events where the organisers pour warm olive oil over participants’ semi-clothed or naked bodies (yes, really) and invite them to explore the “world of touch”, often blindfolded.
Worldwide, the sex toy industry is expected to be valued at £14.5 billion by 2025, while the sexual wellness industry is growing by 4.8 per cent year on year — and it’s a trend that an increasing number of sex-savvy businesses and influencers are starting to capitalise on.
What’s behind our growing desire for more pleasure? According to Lucy Litwack, CEO of luxury lingerie brand Coco de Mer, we have the pandemic to thank. “It highlighted to me something that I always believed anyway, which was the importance of pleasure [and] self-love to a happy life… in that first lockdown, for instance, we saw this huge increase in the purchase of sex toys; it felt like people were finally finding the time to explore their desires,” says Litwack.
Sex Talks host Emma-Louise Boynton agrees: “Suddenly, we were talking a bit more openly about the difficulties that people were facing in not being able to have sex,” she says. “Everyone was talking about it online — ‘I’ve bought a dildo! I’ve bought this!’. It kind of normalised that a little bit, and I don’t think that has dissipated ever since.” Boynton is (like many) a relative newcomer to the pleasure scene, having started sex therapy over lockdown and launching Sex Talks shortly after.
A lot of people exploring self-intimacy and pleasure for the first time are women in their 20s and early 30s, she says. Indeed, the sold-out Sex Magic workshop I attended was almost exclusively populated by female first-timers, many of whom looked distinctly nervous — but who left after two hours feeling pretty empowered. “I feel like there’s a real onus on [taking] control of your pleasure,” Boynton says. “Your pleasure is your responsibility. The idea is that you shouldn’t be delegating responsibility for your pleasure to somebody else. It’s up to you to know your own body.”
Many of the newer events popping up around London cater to women. Mental health organisation Self Space runsconfidence, relationships and pleasure workshops, often in collaboration with fitness studios like Frame. “I think we became more connected to the idea of how important joy is and we value it more [than we did before the pandemic],” Jodie Cariss, Self Space’s founder, says.
“Before, I think we felt like change was really difficult and scary — maybe I’ll just brush it aside and keep being busy. Because I think we had to adapt to so many changes during Covid, we’ve emerged from it going ‘all right, I can handle change’.”
Still, don’t mistake this for a distinctly vanilla trend. Yes, there’s more mainstream acceptance around sensuality and pleasure-seeking than there used to be — as well as more choice than ever before — but kinkier classes teaching Shibari and spanking (yes, there are beginners’ classes) are also seeing a huge surge in popularity.
“London is the greatest playground in the world. And particularly when it comes to this world, the only other city in the West that rivals it is Berlin,” Eyal Shaphyr says. A veteran of the pleasure industry, he’s been hosting Liquid Love events for nine years.
“In terms of the events where you can explore your sensual self and your sexual self, London is like a big ice cream shop, with tonnes of different flavours,” Shaphyr adds. “You can go in and just lick all the flavours and see which ones you like and which ones you don’t.”
Penetration is strictly forbidden at Liquid Love, though the heightened experience is clearly its own kind of turn-on. When I ask if women orgasm during his classes, he’s frank. “Definitely.” Alongside them are men with backgrounds in tantric sex, or yoga. “We call them the tantric tigers,” he says. “They come in and make very entertaining noises. And you see beautiful things like that, but also people who come for healing: people who have had really unpleasant relationships with touch in the past, or body image. You also see incredible breakthroughs.”
While many of these more ‘out-there’ classes are mixed, many organisers do still seem aware that there is work to be done, specifically in encouraging men to engage with the topic of embracing pleasure and understanding the nuances of female pleasure.
“I do think it’s really important that this is a conversation that we’re all having together, because I do think we’re seeing demonstrations of really toxic masculinity in the press,” Boynton shares. “But what we’ve been very bad at is presenting a more kind of compelling narrative for what modern manhood actually looks like.”
That said, many men are also seizing the chance for healing and connection offered by these workshops. Litwack tells me that the erotic salons that Coco de Mer hosted in the past (they’re currently in the process of relocating) have played host to couples, women and even older gentlemen, one of whom came to a bondage night. “He was just like, ‘You know, it’s the first time I’ve been out since I lost my wife’ — he had been married for 50 years — ‘and it just feels so amazing to be with people.’”
With more sex-centric workshops opening in London every month, don’t think this trend is going away any time soon.
As Litwack says, these workshops are only the beginning in what she sees as a “sea change” in the way we see and enjoy sex: that is, by learning to embrace it wholeheartedly.
“I think that technology and eroticism have the potential to tie much more closely together,” Litwack says. “You can see it happening with couples using smart sex toys. You’ve got sex dolls becoming more sophisticated. You’ve got sex-specific [dating] apps… there’s so much opening up.” She pauses, and laughs. “I’m just hoping that the sexual revolution will just be much more pleasurable for women than the one in the Sixties was — which I think was very much a free love [situation], but I’m not sure how much real pleasure there was for women necessarily.”
Pleasure seeking? Book now
Anatomie Thursday Rope Jam and Beginner’s Evening: February 23, 6.30pm, £10; anatomiestudio.com
Clit Fest: The literary festival celebrating sex and pleasure: March 8, 5.30pm; eventbrite.co.uk, £20-25
Burn the House Down: March 23, 2pm, £35; sheslostcontrol.co.uk
The Liquid Love Experience: April 2, at 5pm, £163; eventbrite.co.uk
Pleasure Island: April 7, 2023, 8.30pm; eventbrite.co.uk, £173
Smut, Saucers & Spanking Experience: March 12, 3.30pm, £175; adelebrydges.com
