How sex positivity became cringe
Its meaning has been distorted; has it therefore ceased to be useful?
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Welcome to March’s Big Think, a long-form piece, in which I examine an aspect of sexual activity, culture, or behaviour in more depth. Got a suggestion for something you think I should cover? Let me know!
How sex positivity became cringe
Does your dating profile describe you as “sex positive”? I don’t think mine does, although I had to double check, because there was once a time when that was something I might have said about myself. It was something that felt important to own. These days it feels unnecessary, in the same way that writing “no Tories” feels unnecessary. If our political views are incompatible, I think we’ll pick that up pretty quickly, don’t you?
I was interested, therefore, to hear that dating app Bumble has added “sex positivity” to the list of hobbies and interests users can display on their profiles. So someone’s bio might now read: cooking 🍳| travel ✈️| festivals 🎪| bouldering 🪨| sex positivity 🌶️(yes, complete with a chilli emoji).
Despite being at least twenty years (if not thirty… forty!) years late to the party, Bumble has decided that sex positivity is enough of a Thing to let people wear it on their sleeve. But it hasn’t gone down all that well. It turns out that, for a lot of women looking for straight men on the app, professing an interest in sex positivity isn’t so much a red hot pepper as a red flag.
One woman wrote that she would never put “sex positive” on her profile “because I know 99% of men will interpret it as ‘easy’ or looking for NSA.” It’s “definitely code,” agreed another. “Pretty sure most of them use it to mean ‘I want you to be up for anything I want.’” It’s a shame, pointed out a third, because “if it said ‘consent positive, anti-body-shaming and pro-women’s pleasure’ as an option, then that would be a great button to tick. But guys just want to say ‘Sex? Yes please!’”
These reactions were brought to my attention by Aileen Barratt who runs the Tinder Translators account on Instagram. The responses to her post and the subsequent conversations I’ve had with other people about it have raised an interesting question: Has “sex positivity” run its course? Has it now been so heavily coopted, its meaning warped, that it has ceased to be useful as a term, identity, or ideology? Should… should sex positivity be cancelled?
I first encountered the term sex-positive online in my 20s. I was desperately questioning everything surrounding sex at that time, what I’d been taught about it, what I saw reflected in my culture, the attitudes of my peers, what I actually liked and wanted and whether those things were okay, and, of course, my orientation. Happily it was the mid-00s and The Blogosphere was in full bloom so it didn’t take long for me to find answers, or, at least, more interesting questions. I embraced the label wholeheartedly. Yes! This was me! Finally I’d found my identity. I was a sex-positive feminist!
Here in 2024, however, writing such a sentence feels a little bit cringe. So what’s changed?