The Right to Play, The Right to Pleasure

Abstract

This paper explores how pleasure in and through games becomes a political terrain in contemporary Italy, where moral panic, demographic anxiety, and hetero- cisnormative discourses restrict non-normative desires. Drawing on feminist, queer, and transfeminist theory, it introduces the concept of intersectional pleasure as a collective, embodied practice shaped by regimes of normativity yet capable of resisting them. The paper examines IN/VISIBIL3, a grassroots transfeminist and queer convention, showing how its 2025 edition—centred on Bodies, Sex, and Consent— aims to reimagine play as a relational, accessible, and community-based practice grounded in care and iterative consent. The paper argues that intersectionality is a precondition for shared pleasure and proposes that designing for collective pleasure constitutes a form of cultural and political emancipation.