In contemporary feminist circles, the notion of sex positivity has become a prevailing ideology around which many young women focus their activism. As it implies, sex positivity is a movement that both welcomes and encourages open sexuality, emphasizing consent and safe sex (x). Sexologist Carol Queen claims that sex positivity “allows for and in fact celebrates sexual diversity, differing desires and relationship structures, and individual choices based on consent.”
The sex positive movement hinges on the notion that freedom of sexuality is central to women’s freedom. But this, as well as many of the movement’s focal ideas, are fraught with issues that serve to be incredibly counterproductive to intersectional feminism as a whole.
In The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities, Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy write, “A slut is a person of any gender who has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you.” But as Lisa, author the blog A Radical TransFeminist points out, this conception creates space “for every sexual possibility except for one: the possibility to consider whether sex may not be nice” (x).
This continual separation of sex and non-consensual sexual practices is one of the foremost issues with the sex-positive movement:
“This separation […] is beneficial in that it allows feminists to conceive of the kind of sex we would like ourselves and others to have the opportunity to have. The cost of thinking in that way is that we can forget how, out in the real world, rape, power and sex are experienced at best on a continuum and at worst helplessly intermingled” (x).
Sex-negative feminism is a movement that exists within the same realm of discourse that poses an alternative to the problematic notion of sex positivity.
Sex negativity is often conflated with sexual moralism, a more ‘traditional’ view of sexuality that is altogether more conservative and rather anti-sexual. (In the ideal state of sex moralism, Lisa writes, “all visible, primarily-white women are virgins or mothers to most men and sluts and mothers to the man who selected them, and the prostituted class is invisible” (x).)
But sex negative feminism does not strive to oppose sex positive feminism, nor does it shame or police women by nature of sexual moralism. Sex negative feminism does not believe in a moral criticism of sexual desire but promotes a political critique of sex and the culture surrounding it, one that allows and advocates the notion that sex is not inherently nice for a lot of people.
“’Sex is nice and pleasure is good for you’ is a powerful motto for those for whom sex has been nice, or for those who would like to experience it as nice. It is less encouraging to those who have experienced sex as violating and/or unwanted […] We need to be able to admit that what perpetrators do is what the world calls sex, and that it is not nice, and that it is not the fault of survivors and its other casualties for not finding it nice but is in fact due to the nature of sex under patriarchy” (x).
Sex positive feminism is also, whether intentionally or otherwise, often a proponent of the idea of “compulsory sexuality,” or the institutions which “enforce the belief that everyone should have or want to have frequent sex (of a socially approved kind)” (x). Compulsory sexuality insists that sexuality is the universal default, but this completely ignores asexuality and effectively diminishes the people who identify as such.
It is perhaps not that surprising to also consider that the sex positive feminist movement originated in the Feminist Sex Wars in direct opposition to anti-pornography feminists. While it is important that we as people do not shame sex workers themselves for their line of work, this completely ignores many of the issues pervasive in the industry.
Rachel Lloyd, a survivor of serious abuse within the commercial sex industry, writes about this in her memoir Girls Like Us. She comments that when people view the sex industry as one that isn’t harmful and is enjoyed by the women involved, that men are a necessary involvement in the industry, we excuse and even rationalize the treatment of women and girls as objects to be bought and sold.
“ Just because an individual experience has not been painful or disempowering doesn’t make it true for millions of women and children around the world. The sex industry isn’t about choice, it’s about lack of choices. It’s critical for children and youth, and even many adult women within the sex industry that we use language that frames it accurately.”
Perhaps one of the biggest issues with the sex-positive movement is its manifestation as a pocket of solely white feminism. The idea that all women, in order to be completely free, must express their sexuality in a candid manner is not one that can extend to women of color, who are continuously hypersexualized (Moynihan Report, anyone?) and eroticized:
A blogger named Brianna also called attention to this issue:
“Sex-positive feminists seem to think we operate in a world where women are just told not to be sexual but in reality we also operate in a world where women are hypersexualized, especially women of color. How do you expect to challenge hypersexualization and fetishization of women that contributes rape culture, sexual violence, economic exploitation, etc. when your solution is just to tell women to embrace it? (x) […] White women can embrace being ‘sluts’ without any repercussions, but for black women that shit has historically been a key aspect of our oppression” (x).
The point of all of this is that while on the surface, sex positivity might seem great and fun and good, it’s supporting a number of ideologies rooted in institutional oppression, from rape culture to racism and everything in between. We need to recontextualize our conversations about sex as feminists in a way that isn’t exclusionary or harmful in nature.
I’ll end on a quote from blogger Rowen Paloma:
“Some people don’t like sex. Some people are afraid of sex. Some people are survivors. Some people don’t want to share their sex lives with others and consider it private. Some people can’t perform their sexuality in ways that others can due to where they stand with regards to privileges or for a myriad of other reasons. So when we base an entire culture off of sex, it’s alienating people and that is not okay.”