Madame Thursday

Sex positivity and other lies on Tumblr

I remember my first encounters with the sex positivity/sex positive movement, especially through the internet. I remember loving the basic principle of the thing: “Sex is awesome! No one should be ashamed of their sexuality or wanting sex! Let’s bring it out into the open so we can all enjoy a healthy, happy relationship with sex!”

I can get with that, really. 

But there was this lie in the whole thing, and the lie was told by blog after blog, webpage after webpage that talked a great game about how we can be open about sex, but seemed to equate sex with the nude bodies of thin, conventionally attractive, blonde white women in male-gaze centric pornography, as though if I really pushed myself to enjoy such titles as Biker Bitches 5 and clinically lit photoshoots of a woman with her legs in improbably acrobatic positions, I’d be making the world a better place. Because that’s what the world needed, more people to applaud the open display of sculpted bodies as though somehow, that would liberate my fat, pansexual ass from the confines of sexual oppression. As though the ways in which society has pushed at me and pushed at me, telling me to keep my fat ass covered and my queer thoughts to myself is the same as what society tells a 5’8, 110 lbs,  straight, white woman with no disabilities. Because it isn’t. 

People have been celebrating the sexualities of attractive white people for centuries. In fact, I’d say if there were ever a time when people’s discomfort towards sex dissipates and they’re willing to accept, tolerate, and engage with sexual content is WHEN it comes in the form of these bodies, these pre-approved forms. 

We actually accept a lot of sex in our society. We accept Victoria’s Secret ads and commercials, we don’t mind Calvin Klein giving us artsy black and white shots of picturesque, perfectly chiseled men in their underwear. Hell, we’ll even let those kinds of things get away with some homoerotic subtext. If two underwear models should be embracing themselves in their latest Victoria’s bra-and-panty set, we’re sort of okay with this. We accept movie after movie that might as well be porn without the money shot because the White Ingenue and White Hero Du Jour are in it. 

To pretend that the level or type of repression of sex is the same across the board, or that conventionally attractive, thin, able, cis, straight white people need the same amount of liberation as others is a lie and a slap in the face to those who know differently. 

I mean, just look at the shit the Lane Bryant ad got for something that Victoria’s Secret would’ve gotten no comment for. And can you imagine if they’d dared to use a dark-skinned model for that commercial, a fat Black woman or a fat Southeast Asian woman, or a fat transgendered non-white model? They probably wouldn’t have aired it at all. 

When’s the last time you saw anyone advertising non-GLBT products with obviously, openly GLBT models and themes? When’s the last time you saw a butch lesbian selling you toothpaste or a transman hocking insurance or a disabled person shilling laundry detergent? 

So when I take these things into account, I think of my experience with going through these “sex positivity” sites. 

I looked and looked in those sex positivity blogs and sites, in their pictures and stories and I didn’t find a lot of fat people (male or female), people of color, queer people. I have yet to find a mainstream sex positivity site (yes, this movement has a mainstream) that features transgendered people in all their beauty. Forget seeing disabled people displaying their various modes of sexuality. Forget seeing their bodies displayed as revolutionary and world-changing and an example of how sex is really, really awesome. 

I learned soon enough that most sex positivity is actually White Straight Thin Able Cisgendered Cissexual Positivity. 

And the world is already positive enough on those traits, thank you very much. 

I see so many blogs that are about how great sex is, showing sex, getting the great nudes and erotica and porn out there to the masses, showing it openly. 

But outside of blogs dedicated specifically to certain subsets of people (for instance, the fabulous fuckyeahblackdykes Tumblr or fuckyeahcurvygirls feed), the mainstream sex blogs are doing what mainstream sex blogs have always done. Teaching us that beautiful sex = white, thin, straight people. 

Worse yet, so many queer oriented blogs are so white, able, and cis that it hurts. I’m a pansexual/cisgender/cissexual person, and when I see these blogs I see the white, Western version of queerdom splattered across the screen. Occasionally I’ll see a white person with a partner who is non-white, but it’s rare. The usual ratio seems to be one to every fifty or so posts. Shots and stories and displays of people of color together, with no white persons involved, are limited to specialty feeds. 

And I have yet to see these sorts of “Fuckyeah[insert thing]” feeds focusing on disabled, queer people of color. I wouldn’t begin to hope to see disabled, queer PoC held up on the mainstream blogs and sites or even thought of. 

Why do I go on about all this? As though those who are aware don’t already know it and those who aren’t aware don’t want to deny it?

Because I’m tired of people defending porn, acting as though somehow I’m a sex negative person and a traitor to sexual liberties if I disdain and actively hate the U.S. porn industry that holds up “feminist” porn, or porn directed by a few women who have been trained in the male gaze as though it will appease me. As though women haven’t been repeating the sexist, male-centered messages we’re fed all our lives, as though most of these feminist directors aren’t white, able, cisgendered women who come with loads of their own prejudices. Women can oppress other women. And indeed, much of misogyny and rape culture in the U.S. is transmitted from woman to woman, from mother to daughter, friend to friend, sister to sister. So don’t tell me that because the person behind the camera has a vagina and ID’s as female that I should be impressed by a product that looks and feels exactly like what men put out. 

Because, honestly, it’s like telling me I should feel liberated as a pansexual woman because so many men enjoy seeing two women kiss each other for their pleasure and “lesbian” (ie - female-on-female for male pleasure) porn is popular . No, thanks. That’s not liberation, that’s control by other means. 

I’m tired of the lies. 

If you’re sex positive and you’re not making an active effort to include and celebrate all kinds of sexuality from all kinds of people? You’re a fucking liar. There it is. You’re a liar. 

Because sex positivity and body positivity and anti-racism and fat acceptance and the disability movement and queer positivity and womanism are part of the same thing. 

Same with any movement. Fat acceptance? If you’re only showing fat white people or fat able people or fat straight people, then you’re not fat accepting, you’re just white supremacy enforcing and trying to bring chubby people under that umbrella of dominance. 

I’m tired of the people who put up some Tumblr blogs and showcase the same old, same old and act like they’re part of a revolution. They’re not. They’re part of making sure that lots of other people know exactly who’s sex is celebrated and who’s isn’t.

So I say FUCK sex positivity. I want sex inclusivity.