Thank you so much for this. I feel increasingly alienated by the "sex positive" movement, especially the normalisation of pain etc (often accompanied by a lack of interest in the female orgasm!).
In fact, many women experience pain during sex at some point in their lives, but instead of raising awareness of how to handle this or when to …
Thank you so much for this. I feel increasingly alienated by the "sex positive" movement, especially the normalisation of pain etc (often accompanied by a lack of interest in the female orgasm!).
In fact, many women experience pain during sex at some point in their lives, but instead of raising awareness of how to handle this or when to see a doctor, we seem to have moved in the opposite direction and are further eroticising women's pain. If pain is supposed to be sexy, when do you know if something is wrong? This is especially true for younger women (and men!), who might not know what's normal and what isn't.
Also, since these trends are presented as "sex positivity", we're at a linguistic disadvantage in tackling them - no one wants to announce to a hot date "I'm sex negative"! But it's so important to talk about the impact of these trends, challenge our current ideas of "sex positivity" and normalise asking for what we want. We can bring intimacy back, but we can only do this by talking about it and being honest about what we want.
Hi Leo, thanks so much for reading and for your response. As you suggest, the reality of pain is often deeply, deeply unsexy and is therefore rendered invisible since, eg, shooting pains in your groin don't fit this narrative. You're bang on, as it were, about sex pos vs sex neg. I think it would be great to simply announce sex negativity and see what happened! However I'm also a bit uneasy about the sheer amount of talking that is also expected of us as sexual beings....Foucault and many recent sociologists good on this...
Thank you so much for this. I feel increasingly alienated by the "sex positive" movement, especially the normalisation of pain etc (often accompanied by a lack of interest in the female orgasm!).
In fact, many women experience pain during sex at some point in their lives, but instead of raising awareness of how to handle this or when to see a doctor, we seem to have moved in the opposite direction and are further eroticising women's pain. If pain is supposed to be sexy, when do you know if something is wrong? This is especially true for younger women (and men!), who might not know what's normal and what isn't.
Also, since these trends are presented as "sex positivity", we're at a linguistic disadvantage in tackling them - no one wants to announce to a hot date "I'm sex negative"! But it's so important to talk about the impact of these trends, challenge our current ideas of "sex positivity" and normalise asking for what we want. We can bring intimacy back, but we can only do this by talking about it and being honest about what we want.
Hi Leo, thanks so much for reading and for your response. As you suggest, the reality of pain is often deeply, deeply unsexy and is therefore rendered invisible since, eg, shooting pains in your groin don't fit this narrative. You're bang on, as it were, about sex pos vs sex neg. I think it would be great to simply announce sex negativity and see what happened! However I'm also a bit uneasy about the sheer amount of talking that is also expected of us as sexual beings....Foucault and many recent sociologists good on this...