Life is hard right now, especially for the queer community, but one intimacy coach has a unique solution: lots of orgasms.
At a time when everyone is struggling with stress and burnout, LGBTQ+ sex and intimacy coach Annette Benedetti is trying to change the world by getting people to tap into pleasure.
Benedetti calls stress a “libido killer” and tells PRIDE that people who are “chronically stressed, emotionally taxed, or constantly bracing” are much less likely to feel desire at all, and this can be even more dramatic for LGBTQ+ people.
“When you are fighting to be seen as human, and when your rights, safety, or legitimacy are constantly under debate, your body stays in survival mode,” Benedetti explains. “That kind of fight does not create erotic energy. It drains it. It is not a fight for desire; it is a fight to exist. And it is very hard to feel sexy when your nervous system is focused on staying safe.”
Since it’s impossible to remove stress, especially with the current administration attacking LGBTQ+ rights at every opportunity, Benedetti created a program called 365 Days of Orgasm to help people use the benefits of having an orgasm to combat the burnout we’re all feeling these days. And you don't have to be one of her private clients to participate because she has a podcast, too.
“Amid activism, stress, and the constant fight to be seen, choosing daily pleasure is a way of saying that you can fight and still feel,” she says. “You can care deeply about the world and still allow your body to experience moments of kindness, beauty, and sensation. That reminder alone can be profoundly grounding.”
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Orgasms are amazing because not only do they feel great, but they also offer real physiological benefits, including lowering cortisol levels, releasing oxytocin and dopamine, improving sleep, and helping regulate the nervous system. This is why Benedetti has become an orgasm evangelist and now uses her 365 Days of Orgasm program to help her clients, though she warns that orgasms aren’t the goal; reconnecting with your body and reclaiming pleasure are.
“For queer people especially, pleasure has often been framed as dangerous, excessive, or conditional,” she says. “Choosing pleasure anyway is a refusal to disappear. It is an act of agency. It is saying that your body belongs to you and that your joy is not negotiable. Pleasure reconnects us to aliveness and humanity in systems that often rely on disconnection and shame.”
Through her private practice and her Talk Sex With Annette podcast, Benedetti provides daily prompts and weekly themes “focused on sensation, nervous system safety, embodiment, and self-trust.”
While you and your partner can participate in her program together, Benedetti says that it was originally designed primarily for single people or for people to work on solo. “Pleasure should not be dependent on access to another person," she says. "This work is about rebuilding a relationship with yourself first. If you have a partner, great! They can absolutely be integrated. But the foundation of this practice is self-connection. When pleasure is reclaimed on your own terms, intimacy with others becomes less pressured and more authentic.”
And if you can’t orgasm easily, don’t worry, because Benedetti will help you reconnect with your own pleasure, but she also calls orgasms a “doorway” and not the end goal. “This is not about having more orgasms,” she says. “It is about restoring self-trust, embodiment, and the ability to feel again, especially for people who are burned out, politicized, or disconnected from their bodies.”
