What Does "Sex Positive" Mean?

Sex Positivity promotes and embraces sexuality with few limits beyond an emphasis on safe sex and the importance of consent. Sex positivity is "an attitude towards human sexuality that regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable, and encourages sexual pleasure and experimentation. The sex-positive movement is a social and philosophical movement that advocates these attitudes. The sex-positive movement advocates sex education and risk reduction as part of its campaign." The movement generally makes no moral distinctions among types of sexual activities, regarding these choices as matters of personal preference.

• Harm Reduction: A model of Public Health which encourages awareness of and decisions about risk as a continuum. Harm reduction is an alternative to largely unsuccessful attempts to prohibit certain lifestyle choices

• Consent: An agreement to engage in a specific activity, including: the ability to refuse, a clear understanding of the behavior and possible consequences. All sexual activities based in consent are “good”.

• “Normal”: many people are concerned if their sex life is “normal” or falls with a “normal” range of behavior and it is important to address these comments or concerns.

• “Some”, “Many”, “Most”: Often a more general framework will work just as well. A useful way to generalize the amount of people who do a certain activity, identify a certain way, etc. Often used to help normalize sexual variation.

• Outlier: A rare case brought up to challenge an over-generalization (“All americans are puritanical”) or to acknowledge the complexity of human behavior.

• Corner Case: Bringing up an Outlier in an attempt to invalidate the general rule

Inclusive Language Vocabulary:

• Sex: Biological “Male” & “Female”

• Male Bodied (Primary Sex Characteristics: has penis and no breasts)

• The updated term is often to just say the body part you mean to discuss. Ex: “Penis Haver”

• Female Bodied (Primary Sex Characteristics: has vagina and breasts)

• The updated term is often to just say the body part you mean to discuss. Ex: “Vagina Haver”

• Gender: Social “Man” & “Woman”

• Often focused on Secondary Sexual Characteristics, Symbols and Acts

• Some cultures have more than 2

• Trans Vs Cis Gendered

• Gender Roles

• Social expectational/“norms”

• Creating an identity

• Sexuality

• Who you identity as having sex with (Straight, Gay, Bisexual, Asexual)

• Sexual Acts may occur outside of this identity and the Sexuality remains

• Sexual Identity: How you have sex (ex: Kinky, Vanilla, Furry, etc)

• For some people these change in different Stages of Life

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