How Do You Define “Sex-Positive”?
A friend asked me what “sex-positive” actually means, and why we use it to describe the work we’re doing with THE LINE. I had one of those New York bubble moments, where you assume everyone gets your terminology and uses it in the same way. I immediately texted my sister, my trusty litmus test for all things suburban-American/open minded/fairly mainstream. She’d never heard of it, but guessed that it combined sex + positive attitude. I googled and found your basic Wikipedia definition, this members-only site called Blackbox Republic, a documentary that I need to see and the Center for Sex Positive Culture.
I put the question out to the great Facebook oracle and here’s what we got:
knowing how to enjoy and how to control.
consenting
attitude: not seeing sex as a taboo subject, but rather as something that is healthy, enjoyable, and a commonality among all peoples that can and should be discussed. Seeing as something that is different for each person, and knowing that this is acceptable. When used with “education” as in, “sex positive education” it means the teaching of the proper use of contraceptives, how to safely engage in sexual acitivity (if the program is really good, it will teach about anal and oral sex, as well as mutual masturbation and outer course), and teaches the importance of yearly testing.
honouring the life force, from procreation to healing
my understanding is that we as human beings are sexual, and to respect that. Sex is not a bad or wrong thing if both parties consent. We all have different ways of expressing our sexual selves and we should honour rather than suppress or feel shameful for it.
a lot of sex between consenting adults? (I laughed that she put “a lot” and she replied:) it must be a lot otherwise it’d be called sad yearly sex between bored consenting adults. can you tell that i’m still crazy about my boo in spite of all the years that have gone by? in my opinion, if a romantic relationship were based on a lot of mutual respect but no sex it’d make no sense whatsoever to me. i don’t understand the intricacies of surrender when i hear of young couples that barely have sex. what made them give up this basic need? maybe they never liked each other that way… hmmm… personally, i’d rather adopt a cat…
One way to look at it: Wingnut values = guns good, sex bad. Sex-positive values = sex good, guns bad. (But seriously, I’ve used “sex-positive” when pitching a story about a superhero named Captain O…I think you can guess what the O stands for.)
we need a comic book with captain o as the hero! that would be pretty sex-positive. captain o could teach young women how to figure themselves out, and young men how to be respectful while still being able to “help” women in the quest of self discovery, etc. though i can also foresee how this comic book could easily turn into porn…
I then posed the question to Friday night’s rollicking panel at Blue Stockings about Men & Feminism, and the overall theme from the panelists was that of pleasure, and the inclusion of pleasure in the dialogue with human and gender rights, no judgment, and space for many types of sexual expressions within feminsm.
Anything to add?
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