Sex-positive

What is sex-positive?

Sex-positive is an attitude that sees sex as an ordinary and healthy part of life, as long as everything happens with mutual consent. Someone who is sex-positive looks without judgment at another person’s preferences, and at their own. You don’t have to want anything for yourself: having little or no desire fits just as well.

How a sex-positive attitude shows in practice

You don’t notice it in what someone does, but in how someone talks about it. A sex-positive attitude asks without judging, and tells without apologizing. Take a woman who, after a long relationship, wants for the first time to speak a fantasy out loud that she kept to herself for years. In a sex-positive conversation the first reaction is curiosity, not a raised eyebrow. The question is not “is this normal”, but “do you want this, and shall we agree together on how”. According to the Sexual Medicine Society of North America, sex positivity is about treating sex as a normal and healthy part of life, not as a taboo or something to be ashamed of.

Where the term comes from

The attitude is older than the word. The Sexual Medicine Society of North America traces the early ideas back to Sigmund Freud in the late 1920s, and sees the sexual revolution of the 1960s as the moment sexual liberation gained broad ground. The term sex-positive itself only became common late last century, as a friendlier word for that same movement. In the Netherlands the approach has trickled into healthcare. Soa Aids Nederland trains professionals in a sex-positive approach, in which pleasure and well-being count just as seriously as preventing STIs.

What a sex-positive attitude gives you

The biggest gain is that shame gets smaller. According to the Cleveland Clinic, a sex-positive attitude can reduce the shame people feel, and so even help against low mood. For you that means room: you dare to ask for what you want, and you dare to say no without feeling small. In a meeting you notice it on both sides, because someone who listens without judgment makes it easier to be honest about what is and isn’t allowed. What it does not do: it doesn’t resolve a difference in desire on its own, and it is no license to ignore another person’s boundaries. Without consent there is nothing positive about it.

How people do it in practice

Usually it starts small. Talking about sex without whispering, naming a preference instead of hoping the other guesses it, hearing someone else’s no as information and not as rejection. Some read up on it, others learn it mostly by practicing with one trusted person. The thread is always the same: curiosity over judgment, and agreements over assumptions.

What sex-positive is not

“Sex-positive means you have to have a lot of, or wild, sex.” That’s not right. The Cleveland Clinic states explicitly that you don’t have to have sex to be sex-positive. It’s about the attitude, not the amount.

“Anything goes.” Also no. Consent is the hard boundary. A sex-positive attitude doesn’t judge what two adults agree on together, but it stops where that agreement stops.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, and most of the women who come to me bring up a wish almost in a whisper. As if they first need permission to be allowed to want something ordinary. What I see time and again: the moment that judgment falls away, a weight falls away too. Not because the desire is suddenly more exciting, but because it no longer has to stay hidden. A sex-positive attitude often makes the conversation before the date more important than the date itself. I’m not a therapist, but the room to ask without shame, that is something I offer on purpose.

Further reading

• Consent explains why consent is the floor a sex-positive attitude rests on.
• Sexual shame describes exactly what sex positivity tries to make smaller.
• What It Really Means to Be Sex Positive from the Cleveland Clinic lays out the attitude in plain language.

Where this fits on this site

I don’t sell an attitude, and I don’t give a lesson. What I do is work in a way where you can say without judgment what you want and where your boundary lies. Curious how such a meeting goes and what gets agreed beforehand? Then take a look at my services. A message beforehand is always fine. You’re not committed to anything.

Sources

• The Sex-Positivity Movement: What it Means to Be Sex-Positive. Sexual Medicine Society of North America, 2021. Provides the core of the definition, and the origin via Freud in the late 1920s and the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
• What It Really Means to Be Sex Positive. Cleveland Clinic, 2023. Provides that you don’t have to have sex to be sex-positive, and that the attitude can reduce shame.
• A sex-positive approach. Soa Aids Nederland. Provides that the sex-positive approach in Dutch sexual healthcare takes pleasure and well-being as seriously as preventing STIs.

Related terms

• Consent. The hard floor of every sex-positive attitude: everything happens voluntarily and with mutual consent.
• Sexual response cycle. Understanding how arousal works helps you look at your own body without judgment.
• Kink. Sex positivity is exactly the attitude that makes kink discussable without shame.
• Sexual acts. The overview of what people do together, approached without judgment.