Some Musings On Sex-Positivity As A Neutral Stance
Interesting. The term "sex negative" refers to the philosophy that sex is bad, dirty, dangerous, or wrong, unless it occurs within a very narrow range of circumstances (i.e. within a marriage for procreation). "Sex negative" is pretty much what it sounds like - that sex is a negative thing, possibly with some exceptions.
But "sex positive" doesn't mean the opposite. "Sex positive" does not mean that all sex is good (with maybe some exceptions), it just means that sex isn't *inherently* bad.
So "sex negative" means that sex is actively bad, but "sex positive" means an absence of an active descriptor about sex.
It seems that, because of the way our society chooses one particular thing to herald, not just as "normal" but as "the One True Way", most of my own philosophies have to do with saying "well, I'm not for OR against it, I'm just absent a positive affirmation in this thing that everyone else is saying."
I'm atheist, which doesn't necessarily mean "there are no gods", it just means an absence of belief in gods. I'm non-monogamous, which doesn't necessarily mean that I'm opposed to monogamy, just that I don't do it, even when I only have one partner at a time.
I'm sex-positive, which doesn't mean that I think all sex is good or that people should be having all the sex all the time, just that I don't think that sex is, by it's very nature, bad, and you can have it or not as you see fit. And there was that meme a while back about "I'm not liberal, I just think the earth is more than 6,000 years old but I can see how you'd think that's liberal by comparison". When extremism reigns supreme, even a middle ground can seem extremist next to it.
No point here, it just came to my awareness that a lot of subcultures exist because we don't have any other way to say "well, but I'm not THAT." And that's a big enough deal to have its own subcultures, labels, and ideologies around it.
This is also a reminder that "sex positive" doesn't mean "all the sex, all the time, for all the people". Some assholes get all offended when we don't make space for their desires because they feel entitled to expressing their "sexuality" (psst ... being a rapist isn't your "orientation" or your "sexuality, just sayin'). Just because you have feelz, it doesn't mean you're entitled to a platform to express them at others.
"Sex positive" just means that *if* consenting people like doing sexyfuntimes together, that's cool, but if not, that's cool too.
But sex-negativity is such a strongly enforced worldview that we have to add "positive" to the other descriptor just to indicate what really is more of a neutral position, because "neutral" is a subversive, radical act in a culture that swings way too far to the "negative" side.
This post was originally posted at https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/372955.html.
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