Dr. Crazy of Reassigned Time, in an excellent post about her ambivalence to the term “sex-positive feminist”
I’m positive about sex, and I’m a feminist, but I’m not uncritical about sex, nor do I think that the label “sex-positive feminist” is one that is altogether positive.
She makes the point that such usage quickly rolls back down into the same trough as other virgin/whore, good-girl/bad-girl binaries. And while we’re talking about those binaries, in her own comments Dr. Crazy adds (italics mine)
Actually, I just thought of something else, and I think this gets to the heart of why I resist the “sex-positive feminist” terminology: it effectively reinscribes the link between gender and sexuality, i.e., as soon as you tack the “feminist” onto the “sex-positive” you’re talking about a particularly female subject position. We don’t talk about “sex-positive men” for example. So a term that perhaps is intended to distinguish between gender oppression and oppression based on sexuality ultimately works further to entrench the link between sexuality and gender for women, not to disrupt it.
Yeah, um, how often do we hear about “sex positive” men? Or, for that matter, how often to we expect, let alone request, let alone demand, sex positivity from men? And is asking men for sexual positivity an act of feminism? And if so wouldn’t it be perceived as sex negativity? (Never mind that not asking men to be sex positive would also be sex negative.)
I dunno. To me the question of whether or which schools of feminism should or shouldn’t be nominated sex positive is sort of beside the point. A more useful question would be…
Can there be such a thing as a sex-positive anti-feminist? Of any gender? I’d say highly unlikely.