skwrk:
sex positive paradigm: “everyone wants to have sex, but society tells us it’s bad. uh, does it hurt anyone? no! so where’s the logic in that? if everyone just had more sex, everyone would be happier. there’s nothing wrong with casual sex, it’s fun! it’s not any different from any other activity.”
ozymandias271:
I also have… major issues with the description of the sex-positive paradigm, the point is NOT that everyone wants sex or that everyone should have lots of sex, it is that your sex life is none of anybody else’s business whether you are celibate or having orgies swinging from the chandelier
So sex-positive people tend to be adamant that the movement is not about “casual sex is great,” and other people seem to interpret it that way nonetheless. Because the thing is that these spokespeople for sex positivity (who are the central examples of sex-positive people? Ozy? Cliff Pervocracy? Dan Savage?) are always on the “orgies swinging from the chandelier” side of the spectrum.
This isn’t surprising given
- people who have more sex and more interesting kinds of sex with more different people have a lot more interesting things to write about
- they’re more qualified to give opinions and advice
- they’re probably less likely to care about privacy/decorum
And I don’t know how other people’s brains process social norms, but mine very much focuses on what people do rather than what they say. If I’m surrounded by feminists who work outside the home saying “being a stay at home mom is a great personal choice!” I will interpret that as “being a stay at home mom is shameful and low-status.” If I’m surrounded by poly people saying “monogamy is a totally valid alternate lifestyle!” I will interpret that as “monogamy is weird and selfish and evil.” And I suspect the same sort of thing goes on with the sex-positive movement.
And having a norm of “sex is shameful and we don’t talk about it” has … problems but at least it avoids having the social defaults be too skewed solely by selection effects of who talks about things.