Our Purpose
Empowering All to Thrive
The Center for Pleasure Equity is a collaborative community of independently contracted clinicians and professional contributors who share a commitment to providing compassionate, trauma-informed, and evidence-based resources and care. Each provider brings their own expertise while contributing to the Center's shared mission of promoting emotional, relational, and sexual wellbeing.
Contributors
Teresa Johnson, PhD CST
Licensed Psychologist NC4778 HSP-P
Counseling Psychology PhD
AASECT Certified Sex Therapist
ASPPB Credentialed PSYPACT
ABS Certified Clinical Sexologist
Therapy for clients in 40+ US states
Karren Barcita
Reproductive Justice Advocate
Certified Sexology Facilitator & Educator, Unprude Sexology
Volunteer, Center for Positive Sexuality
Peer Support Facilitator, Calm Collective Asia
Experience Designer, Kaospilot
Lexi Inks, ABS
ABS Certified Sexologist
Sex & Relationships Journalist
Host of "Lex Be Real" Podcast
Sex Ed Content Creator
Founder & Creative Director of The Clique Collective
Our mission is to support our clients in cultivating emotional, relational, and sexual wellbeing through care that emphasizes healing, self-compassion, and authentic connection.
Values
Personal Empowerment
We believe each person has the capacity to understand themselves, make values-aligned choices, and take an active role in their own wellbeing.
Respect for Self and Others
We honor the inherent dignity, autonomy, and humanity of every person. Respect means recognizing that each person has the right to their own needs, desires, boundaries, and choices. We believe that healthy relationships are built on mutual respect, personal responsibility, and freely given care and connection rather than obligation, entitlement, or control.
Integrity
We strive to live and relate in ways that are congruent with our values, intentions, and commitments. Integrity fosters trust, accountability, and meaningful connection.
Compassion
We approach ourselves and others with kindness, curiosity, and understanding, especially during times of challenge, healing, and growth.
Healthy Boundaries
We believe boundaries are essential to wellbeing and authentic relationships. By clearly communicating and respecting boundaries, we create space for choice, consent, emotional safety, and genuine connection.
Consent and Mutuality
Meaningful relationships and shared experiences are built on willingness, choice, and mutual desire. We value collaboration, reciprocity, and enthusiastic consent in all forms of human connection.
Equity and Access
We believe every person deserves access to resources that support health and wellbeing, including healthcare, mental healthcare, education, community, and opportunities for growth.
Thriving and Whole-Person Wellbeing
We believe people deserve more than survival. We support the pursuit of meaningful and fulfilling lives characterized by connection, authenticity, pleasure, purpose, resilience, and growth.
Philosophy
We believe that human beings are wired for both autonomy and connection, and that wellbeing depends on the ability to hold both with integrity.
We believe that every person deserves the opportunity to experience joy, connection, pleasure, and wellbeing, and that these experiences are most sustainable when they are grounded in choice rather than obligation.
Pleasure equity reflects a relational worldview in which each person is responsible for their own emotions, boundaries, and wellbeing, while also respecting that same responsibility in others. Care, support, and connection are deeply meaningful, and they cannot be required, assumed, or extracted without consent. They are most nourishing when they are freely offered and freely received.
We understand boundaries, consent, and mutuality not as restrictions on connection, but as the conditions that make authentic connection possible. When people are able to clearly express and respect limits, desires, and capacity, relationships become safer, more honest, and more sustainable.
We also recognize that individual wellbeing is shaped within broader systems. Access to healthcare, mental healthcare, education, and community resources plays a central role in whether people are able to move from surviving toward thriving.
Our work is grounded in the belief that healing and growth are ongoing processes, and that a life shaped by authenticity, care, and meaningful connection is possible for everyone.