September letter 2025

We are in a month of change. Green turns to almost all colors of the rainbow. The maple tree in our garden is like a bouquet of exploding shades of red, yellow, orange and green.

Multiple mushroom of multiple colors shoot out from the forest beds. We all know that this celebration of natural color diversity will come to an end in not so long, and then gradually renew itself as spring takes over.

The seeds are in the soil.

All Nature possess an ever changing sameness, all the time being there, all the time presenting and representing in such a myriade of ways.

Like Nature itself, sexology is a science of many shades and rich diversities, encompassing all that is linked to sexuality, sexuality function, gender, expressions and attractions. When we take a wide look that includes sexual health, sexual rights, sexual justice and not least sexual pleasure, we see that our field engange people on a very wide spectrum of professions and interests.

We have the sexological organizations like ours, the EFS.

We have the field of sexual medicine which on the European level, is represented by the European Society for Sexual Medicine (ESSM). We in EFS have had and will have fruitful cooperations with the ESSM.

Then we have the professional gender organizations like the European Professional Association for Transgender health (EPATH) that focus on gender variations – and rights and justice.

Many sexologists have professional and/or personal interests in all these fields of sexology.

In addition, there are all organizations that primarily focus on sexual rights and sexual health. SRHR networks are all over the world, as are many NGOs that focus on all sexual health, rights and justice or on more specified parts of these complexities.

Unesco, the UN itself, WHO all have professional organizations that also work with sexual health, sexual rights and justice.

On September 5th 2025, just about all this pletora of perspectives, insights and opinions sat together by the same table at the University of Porto.

We had a common goal:

To align all good forces that celebrate  sexuality, sexual diversity, gender diversity, sexual health, rights, justice and pleasure. We came together ignited as we were by the forces that celebrates none om the above mentioned.

The primary initiative was taken by good people in the World Association for Sexual Health, the WAS. We owe them a significant amount of thanks!

It was like a bouquet of inspired minds that managed to constitute a multicolored unity:

THE PORTO PROCLAMATION.

https://www.worldsexualhealth.net/post/inaugural-meeting-of-the-world-sexual-health-assembly

This declaration stands out as an example that we as human beings can rise above minor differences, that we can unite perspectives, that we can listen to, and understand the opinions of others, without losing our own.

The shared creativity, the openness, the warmth, the love of sexuality and the comradeship we all experienced together, was of a character that can carry us on, even when cold forces stand against us.

I am both happy and thankful for having been part of this fabulous endeavor.

When people of influence lift together, the sky will lift above us.

It is my realistic hope that this meeting will assist human culture all over the world to see the richness of all shades of sexuality and gender.

The seeds are in the soil, spring will come.

Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad

President of the EFS

I cordially invite everyone to our conference in Lisbon 2026: https://europeansexologycongress.org/