How to practice sex positivity

[mika.m]

Hi people
It's a little hard to me to be sex positive. don't get me wrong that I'm a fully sex negative, so I know that being queer is normal, having fetish is natural and etc. but it's a little bit annoying to me that when I realized that there are many prostitutes, unique fetishes and people who have many sexual partners also sometimes they are so disappointing to me. I know that these are don't have any problem but they give me bad feelings. Is there any way to practice sex positivity?

[Sam W]

Hi Mika,

So, I think it's a good thing that you're recognizing your reaction to things like sex work (that's the preferred term) are more about your own feelings than they are anything to do with those activities being bad or wrong. If you're looking for some starting places on learning how to adopt a sex positive mind-set, thisis a good one. I also recommend checking out the work of Carol Queen who is one of, it not the, person who brought sex positivity into the world as a concept.

Too, something that can really help when learning to practice sex positivity is to learn to separate "that's not for me/that makes me feel bad or weird" from "that is an objectively bad thing." Human sexual behavior is so incredibly varied, so of course there are going to be people whose sexual behavior is the complete opposite of what you want for yourself. But that's not a sign of people doing anything wrong, it's just a sign of people being different. Does that make sense?

[mika.m]

What do you mean by separate those things?

[Sam W]

So, a lot of sex-negative thinking comes from "I think this is gross/weird/etc, which means it is objectively bad." But the reality is, the majority of the time, what that reaction is telling us is that a given sexual thing isn't something we want for ourselves. So it's important to separate out "I think this is gross" from "this is objectively gross." Does that make more sense?

Too, sex positivity is built on the principle of "you do your thing, and I do mine." Because ultimately, what other people choose to do in their sexual interactions has zero effect on us.

[Heather]

I also just want to put in a reminder here that sex work is real work, and the chosen work of many real people. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that you find the fact that there are prostitutes disappointing, but when you talk about sex workers here, please try and do so in the respectful way you'd talk about workers in any other chosen profession.

[mika.m]

Sorry for calling prostitute, I didn't find a better term for this.

Also Yeah that makes sense