sex positivity has turned into teaching girls to ridicule other girls for preferring missionary or “vanilla” sex as if it’s supposed to be a competition as to who can withstand the most violent sex and who can endure the most abuse from men veiled as a kink
Update: When I was young I got trolled and gaslighted by the same kind of mostly men (mostly but not exclusively men) running the same shit @dovepisces talks about getting hit with – only then the buzzword back then was “sexual liberation.”
I’m still really angry about it and frustrated that, years later, when a new generation adopted “sex-positive” as a… well… more positive phrase, a whole a new generation of younger men and women ended up getting gaslighted by… exactly the same kind of predatory, abusive (mostly) men.
In my initial post (below) I focused my frustration so narrowly on how yet another phrase got run into the dirt I didn’t consider, let alone acknowledge, how badly hurt people have been when they’ve been exploited and abused by people who use those phrases.
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Well. This is technically true. But only in the sense that trolls and predators have always used any inch towards social progress to shame, lever, or gaslight others into letting them be exploited.
But, really, actual sex-positivity totally embraces those who prefer missionary or “vanilla” sex… or no sex at all!
Mitch McConnel calling what he’s doing “democracy,” or Kelly Anne Conway calling what she does “empowering women,” or Jerry Fallwell, Jr. calling what he does “Christianity” doesn’t make them true.
Same for any dickwad doodle-dom who tells you it’s “sex-positive” that he doesn’t want to use a safeword or get you off.
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But you know what? Mitch McConnell really is helping make “democracy” a term of suspicion. Falwell and his “conservative Christian” coven have literally made “Christianity” a synonym for racism, intolerance, homophobia, and blunt, unmitigated cruelty! And the same goes for the phrase “sex-positive,” which, for too many people, is now a synonym for gaslighting and abuse.
I’m sorry. I might not like it. It wasn’t always like that. But that’s the way it is now.
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Final note: The term we’re probably more comfortable with today is “kink.” Don’t even get me started on what I think about the “cool” misogyny-bros at kink.com have done to gaslight the word “kink.” :(
