I am going to try to say all this with as much sensitivity as possible, and I can speak here only about culture in the United States. Also, I am looking to discuss sex negativity in society and what can be done about it, not get into a left vs. right political debate. First, I (31f) am cis/het and consider myself both a progressive and a feminist. I came of age in the 2000s, a weird time when popular culture was saturated with sex but also with a deeply problematic strain of purity culture. It was a confusing time, and I felt even more confused when I couldn’t understand why my sexual fantasies didn’t always look like the archetypal Hollywood love scene and why I couldn’t stop feeling horny. Those feelings largely continued into adulthood, but I learned how to have healthier attitudes about them and better accept myself. And I will add that while I am a very sexual person, my actual sex life is pretty conservative and boring. I have to have a very high level of trust in someone to be intimate with them, and I am actually waiting for marriage to have intercourse from a combination of pregnancy fears and trust issues. But the past few years sometimes have me feeling like a confused teen again. I am used to the intolerance of the Christian conservative right in the U.S. and am fortunate to live in a progressive but part of the country. What I wasn’t prepared for was sex negativity coming from the left. It seems to have really ramped up since #MeToo and other movements against sexual misconduct started. I want to be extremely clear: I support #MeToo 100%. It’s a movement that is badly needed and long overdue. But the issue of sexual violence and misconduct is extremely complicated. At the end of the day, it comes down to abuse of power. It involves the intersection of race, gender, and economic injustices and power imbalances that underlie American society. And addressing those injustices on their deepest level is extremely uncomfortable and challenging work that requires unlearning much of what society has programmed into us. Most people don’t want to do that work. Rather than view sex as a tool through which abuse and injustice can be perpetuated, it’s a lot easier to just see sex as the problem itself and say, “well, let’s just get rid of sex.” And this seems to be a growing view, especially among white, cis/het feminists. And now acknowledging any interest in anything remotely sexual seems to get one labeled as an awful person. I don’t mean imposing one’s sex life on others; that would be very wrong. I mean things as simple as acknowledging one’s self as a sexual being or refusing to be offended by every least little sexual thing. I had a falling out with my best friend last year over this very issue, and it was shocking and heartbreaking because she had always been very tolerant. And now it seems that every day, the expectation on social media is to get offended over anything that is the least bit sexual, and if you aren’t sufficiently upset or even dare to defend the content in question, you get labeled a horrible person. Just yesterday in another sub, someone was offended by another person’s line drawing that showed a man’s bare legs and then started calling me names when I tried to defend the drawing. Now, I certainly don’t put much stock in Internet trolls LOL, but I know that these attitudes exist very much in the real world, not just online. Is anyone else feeling the same, or is this somehow just my old insecurities coming back out? And what do people think is this best way to navigate these kinds of beliefs?
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There is a definitive rise in the “return of taboo” and sexual activities “need to remain behind closed doors” attitude. Having a partner that grew up religious that never had “the talk” finds it taboo just talking about sex. On top of that they are terrified of being judged for liking the same sex and having 3somes. So I believe there is a definitive rise for sure and a lot of it has to do with how we were raised as an entire generation. Access to the internet and free porn definitely hasn’t helped. And i don’t mean that in a “porn is bad” kind of way. Its allowed us to explore our desires and kinks anonymously and thats created its own stigma.
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I guess I don’t really experience this in real life. But then I don’t have white, cis het feminist friends really. And I’m a little confused about how this happens in real life? How did your friend and you have a fallout due to this?
Maybe it’s a social circle thing? Bunch of uptight people befriending each other?
Also I really think making paragraphs will help people read your post.
I’ve noticed this too lately, and as a very sexual polyamorous person, the trend does alarm and sadden me to some extent. You can certainly connect it to Me Too and related movements—there has been a long-overdue awakening in society to the fact that ingrained sexism and gender power imbalances always made “free love” an inherently unequal, male-centered affair. I also think it has a lot to do with the rise of social media. Young people, who always drive the cultural zeitgeist around things like this, are increasingly turning away from sex (and really all in-person interaction, period) in favor of relationships that exist entirely or primarily online. There is a lot of stigma regurgitation and misinformation on social media about STDs and reproductive health overall, and combined with the stunted social lives of kids today, the pandemic, outrage at daily headlines about sexual violence, the sense among many that the world is doomed… it’s not a great recipe for a sex-positive society, to be sure.
That being said: there are still plenty of people out there who love and value sex and sexuality. The statistics clearly support the idea that kids today are having significantly less sex and fewer sexual partners than their forebears did at the same age, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve all become asexual. I’m a younger millennial myself, and I just make it a point to hang out mostly with sex-positive people in sex-positive spaces (the poly community is generally pretty good for this). Both of my current partners *love* sex, and are happy to oblige me almost any time I want it. We go to scene parties and frequent spaces where swingers and other poly people congregate, and I can tell you: sex is far from dead or dying. Society is just undergoing a lot of necessary but painful change right now, and I think everyone’s just doing our best to adjust to that ever-shifting new normal.