Sex-positivity healed me, but people use it to hurt me.
And even so, sex-positivity is worth the risk
Sex-positivity changed my life for the better.
I was an anxious teen growing up on the buckle of the Bible Belt, and sex-negativity was about as common in Knoxville, Tennessee, as orange T-shirts on game days.*
*Editor’s note for non-sports-fans: very common
The harmful messages started early and came from a variety of sources. At school, we saw the worst symptoms of STI’s projected onto the Smart Board. We were herded into the auditorium to listen to a straight, white couple talk about the benefits of waiting until marriage. They seemed to float somewhere above reality, failing to notice the very pregnant teenager in the second row and skirting around questions about condoms and birth control. Abstinence was presented as the choice, not a choice.
I didn’t get much help at home either. My conservative, immigrant dad was opposed to the very idea of me talking to boys, and he found the idea of sex education laughable. He once told me, “Cows don’t need education to figure out how to do it, so why should we?” As for my mom, I don’t think she quite knew how to talk to me about sex or set reasonable limits on my behavior. I now believe she held back to prevent me from becoming as promiscuous as she was in her younger days (spoiler: it didn’t work!) She frowned on me having physical contact with boys in her house, and so I sought alternatives in cars, parks and other places that could have gotten me in a lot of trouble (spoiler: didn’t!).
Although I can now be open with my mom about all-things-sex, being the eldest child left me a scared, metaphorical guinea pig with a lot of unanswered questions. I let the inexperienced boys take the lead, and I was pressured into doing uncomfortable, sometimes even painful, things. I felt sexual desire, and I searched for erotica on the slow internet browser of my dumbphone. But it took me until I was 18, after I had long been sexually active, to find my clitoris, have an orgasm and view sex as more than just a tiresome burden.
Sex-positivity is what allowed me to heal from the harmful messages of my past and build a sexually healthy life. My freshman year of college, I joined a group of wonderful students who were passionate about bringing comprehensive sex education to our campus. We were driven by our common frustrations that stemmed from growing up in an abstinence-only state. We wanted to know more about our bodies, our relationships and ourselves, and we wanted other students to have the same opportunity. We didn’t just want an anatomy class; we wanted pleasure, passion and politics. Identifying what we needed and creating it was an empowering tool for collective healing.
Because sex-positivity has done so much for me, I want to share it with others. I want to be the person I needed when I was younger, and I want to be a resource for both my friends and the clients I serve professionally. This leads me to talk about sex more than your average person; although I don’t want to cross any lines in professional environments, I do want people to know that I am knowledgeable about sex and sexuality and open to sharing my (s)expertise with others. I want people to know that their thoughts, questions and fantasies are valid and that there are places to get answers. I want people to feel less alone. And so I share. And the sharing is what gets me into trouble.
Back when I was on Tinder frequently, I used it as a platform to spread the good word about sexual health. I was open on my profile about being a feminist and a sex educator. I initiated sex and discussions of boundaries, and I asked potential partners about their most recent STI test. I knew Tinder’s reputation as a hookup app, and I was unashamed to use it for that very purpose. I felt empowered, and I was having fun. But the negative consequences of being a sex-positive woman did not take long to catch up with me.
It started with the hookups, themselves. Men on Tinder assumed that, because I was sex-positive, I was up for anything. It became my job to help them live out their unconventional fantasies and fetishes. Some guys became irritated with me if I didn’t respond to their requests for sex at all hours of the night. If I turned down a particular guy, I was a liar, a fraud, or a fake feminist. I was expected to send pictures and talk dirty on demand. It was assumed that I was open to having sex with women even when I hadn’t disclosed my sexuality. I felt less like a sex educator and more like a sex doll.
My sex-positivity started to affect other areas of my life besides sex. I discussed with my coworkers the sexual health events I was organizing, and I occasionally spouted off a fact about STI’s or condoms. Soon, a woman I worked with every day started touching my breasts without permission or tossing things down my shirt. I asked her to stop several times, each time more firmly than the last. On one occasion she said, “but you let your boyfriend do it.” She eventually became so offended by my asking her to stop that she stopped speaking to me. Months after I left that job, however, she messaged me on Snapchat to ask me what rimming is.
My next job would not bring relief from this phenomenon. When I started talking about an upcoming sex-education conference, an older, male employee commented that he welcomed any opportunity to talk about sex. And he continued to create those opportunities: he made inappropriate comments about my appearance and told me he had been sharing my Facebook posts about sexual pleasure with his wife. He mixed the personal and professional in a way that I believe would not have happened without my unabashed sex-positivity.
I love my relationship with sex. I have a partner I can be open with. I have knowledge, resources and a supportive community of sex-positive people. I get to write for this awesome blog, and share my love of sexual health with all of you! But in our patriarchal society, in which women are still expected to be passive, docile and relatively nonsexual, my sex-positivity is a risk. Sex-positivity means vulnerability. It means being seen as an object or as a means to an end. Sex-positive can easily become synonymous with slutty or loose. It can invite unwanted aggression, shaming and harassment.
But despite all the negatives, I believe in sex-positivity. I believe in what it has done for me and what it can do for others. I believe in using it to uplift sexual minorities, to prevent sexual violence, and even just to help people fuck better.
I believe that sex-positivity is worth the risk.
Editor’s note: what about you? How has sex-positivity enriched your life, and how has it been used against you? Tell us your story with a response.
