Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Policed by Positivity: The Problem with the “Sex-Positive” Label

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

The term sex positive is everywhere—on social media, in classrooms, even in dating profiles. But is it as inclusive and liberating as it claims to be?In this episode, we dig into the unintended consequences of a term that's often used as a shorthand for open-mindedness, but can actually create new forms of judgment and exclusion. We share personal stories and lived experiences that reveal how the label can oversimplify complex truths, alienate those who’ve experienced harm, and silence voices that don’t fit a certain narrative. What happens when a term meant to fight shame ends up reinforcing it? And what if a better framework is sexual freedom—a more nuanced, inclusive way to talk about consent, pleasure, boundaries, and autonomy without expecting everyone to perform sexuality a certain way?This is a conversation for anyone who's ever felt out of place in “sex positive” spaces, questioned what empowerment really means, or wondered whether it's time to rethink the words we use and the assumptions we make about what being open about sex should look like.If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestionsTo read Dr. Sue’s take on sex positivity check out this Medium article

Hey everyone, welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to dive into the topics of sex and sexuality that you might be curious about, but don't always feel comfortable talking about. No judgment, just open, honest conversations. So zip down and let's get candid. Today, we realized it had been a minute since we had done an episode of phrases in sex and sexuality that Dr. Sue hates. And so here we are. We're going to be exploring the term. That's not really. I'm just sitting here letting you tell the story like It's true. That's not really how this happened, but go ahead. You do your thing.

We're going to be focusing on the term sex positive and all the way. So you do hate it. I do hate it. Because you just made a throw up sound. I do hate it. It doesn't, that's not how this conversation came to be. Anyway, do your thing. No, now I just want you to introduce yourself cold. Go for it. Before we get into our topic, hey, Dr. Sue, how are you?

Oh, this is going to be an episode. I'm excited about this episode, Charlie. Good. So would you like to tell our audience a little bit about yourself? So what do we need to know for this one? So for those of you who are joining us for the first time, I try to tailor my bio to what we're talking about and I think it's all kind of relevant um so I'm going to do a little bit more in depth as soon as I finish laughing um so from like the academic my background I

have a I have a PhD in human sexuality education and I primarily work in academia and have been for a very long time um but I also work outside of academia and I have my own consulting firm and I do a lot of work with basically I think the youngest I've worked with in the community is like 13 14 because I did some stuff on like puberty that was too late to have the conversation about puberty um I think my oldest was mid-80s so I do do work um across the lifespan uh providing education having open honest conversation and I think I'm still technically an ambassador for the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. So a lot of my thoughts about what we're going to talk about isn't shaped by the foundation. Like I started working with them because their work

really kind of goes into what I believe. So I don't want people being like, oh, you say that because of your work with the foundation. And now my belief system was way set before that. So it was just more of an alignment. Yeah, that's the word I've been struggling for. Thank you. Making sentences. So I used to be a lot more active, but I think I am still still technically an ambassador. And if you don't know the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, feel free to Google Woodhull Freedom Foundation named after Victoria Woodhull. But that's me and apparently Woodhull. I think people need to know you, Charlie. So for those of you who don't know Charlie, Charlie is the co-host of this fantastic podcast who is always ready to explore the ins and outs of all those taboo topics that we so rarely talk about, including this horrible concept. i have strong opinions on this one folks um but before i keep editorializing charlie tell us more about you well uh i'm charlie dr sue and i have been friends for many many years and uh from the start of our friendship we had many a candid conversation um and And this platform just allows me and Dr. Sue to have these kinds of chats to share.

And then I personally am someone who's just generally always enjoyed challenging taboos and societal expectations. Many of you who listen know that I say this every episode, societal expectations, especially of me as a woman in society and the things that i'm allowed to feel um be judged by all of those things i have always inherently felt a draw to challenge those things and just be seen as a human and then a woman but anyway that's another that's another kind of platform another uh yeah um and so i think yeah i just i have a general fascination with the way we're conditioning we're conditioned um to move about society and unpacking some of those things that we are

conditioned to um because they cause harm to ourselves and others either mentally socially physically all of those things so sex positive i will not do that every sorry for those of you who are like hate sound i will not do that every time the word is said yeah um where i'd like to start with this is what i see as just a general what can generally be problematic about trying to tie a movement or um an attitude towards sex into one tiny little packaged up catchphrase with a nice neat little bow um because with many of those types of attempts to come up with a a key word that encapsulates a movement um again or an attitude towards a certain taboo topic or marginalized topic, it tends to get very,

very boiled down the more it catches on. And there's only components or very micro pieces of those things that it was intended to empower by giving language around it and giving it like kind of a North Star phrase. It, it'll get boiled down and minimize the more and more it's used misinterpreted, misappropriated, or appropriated. Is there is misappropriated word? Sure. Okay. We can, whatever, we can make up words. Appropriated. And, and, and that that tends to silence the very thing it was trying to remedy and empower specifically with this phrase sex positive I think many if not all of us learned if there's a positive there's a negative so it already creates a polarization around sex and sexuality which quite frankly didn't need help

there was enough polarization yeah it didn't need another thing to enable polarization around sex and sexuality so and and with that kind of um when you have positive and negative that also implies judgment and um regulation and um kind of a judiciousness around around these attitudes and around what people are supposed to think feel it and how they're supposed to engage with sex et cetera. So just from the get, having the word positive already creates a problem because for all those reasons I just listed, and it minimizes or negates anything it was trying to empower and make more acceptable and kind of help remove some of that judgment around sex and sexuality. Agreed. Now you know how I feel sometimes when you just nail it and you're like,

do you have anything to add? So the teacher part of me wants to define the word. Like that's the teacher in me is like we're using a term and we're not defining it. But we'll already have a problem the second we try to do that because there is no one definition for this term. So before we continue talking about the many, many problems of this, and I want to note that you've said it multiple times i've not made that noise i feel like yay yay you um i feel like maybe we should try to define the term as someone who doesn't use the term though it's really hard for me to do well yeah sorry go ahead no i feel like we should try to and i i do want to just say that i know i mentioned at the beginning that i am an ambassador for woodhull freedom foundation i just want it

made known that i am not speaking on their behalf or in that role in any way shape or form so yeah just want to use that out good good thing um i think though is it really what do we really need to define it because our definition is from the lens of we don't really buy into that phrase and it has it has been appropriated segmented in so many different ways could there be just to your point a common definition so i don't think there is i think it pays to because i know i've used that term with with people who are not in this field and they're like what does that even mean so i think we are making an assumption that people have either heard the phrase or understand what it's air quote it was intended yeah so i don't know if we want it is hard because i know

when we were kind of getting ready for this to record and you're like maybe we should have a definition i'm like i don't have a definition um but i think maybe we take a stab at it just for funsies well yeah and i think yeah i maybe a general definition and maybe um some some of our our understanding of what it was intended for um just so people know kind of what our what we're referring to throughout this episode what our definition of it is yeah because i think it's definitely one of those phrases that some people have never heard and and so i don't i feel like before we start ripping it apart over and over and over over and over we should we should maybe define it um but it is hard to do we should have asked we should have asked chat gpt to do

for us um i i was so i'm incredibly biased because the first time it was really used against me it was used as a weapon um so i don't even know if i can attempt to and and for me the problem is that what people who are sex positive claim because so many times it's it's things that they claim but they don't actually live it in their real lives um is to be open and accepting i think that's that's a central tenant that most people would say about sex positivity is that people are open and accepting. Yeah. And you can't see my face. But the icky face I'm making is that the people that, not all the people, many of the people I know who use that term are actually not accepting of all diversity. They'll accept like, yeah, you know, people who are like all sorts of,

And I don't mean diversity here just in terms of orientation and gender. It's also about sexual ideology and it's also about sexual practices. So a lot of the folks that I've met are like, yeah, super sex positive, you know, and to them they're conflating it with being kinky. And that's how I've heard it and seen it used. But they're not accepting of people who are a little more vanilla, for lack of a better term. So like they claim to be open and accepting of all people. But really, they want people to accept them while they shame people who aren't as open to exploration as they are. So I know I said we were going to define it.

And now the first thing I'm doing is ripping into it. But I think I think that is a central tenet. I think part of it is this idea that it's supposed to be accepting of all the things and not just gender identity and sexual orientation, but also behavior and experiences. And again, from some of the people I've spoken to who use who say that they're sex positive, they do shame people who don't have a wide array of sexual experiences. It's like, oh, you've only like done these few things. That's not very like anytime you're shaming someone that doesn't seem very positive to me. But I'm going to stop for a second because I feel like. All right. Well, here here maybe I can help.

okay so the oxford dictionary oh better than chat gpt um define sex positive as an adjective in having or promoting an open tolerant or progressive attitude towards sex and sexuality love it not how i've seen it used not how i i've seen it used or yeah or practiced um generally And so getting into picking this apart, not the definition, but the way this term has been appropriated in different areas, what you were just talking about is that there are people who will use this term and say they're sex positive because they engage in non-mainstream, I suppose, or what is seen as non-mainstream. I will not qualify it as non-mainstream, but what is seen by society as non-mainstream

or communities as non-mainstream, they will tend to use this, as you just said, to either shame or um judge people who maybe didn't really care about what they were doing but now that they're coming at them saying why why aren't you curious about this why aren't you trying it um why are you just staying where in in the vanilla world for lack of a better term um i think is one of the ways that this certainly gets weaponized um what comes to mind with this is over the last several years i think we have all witnessed the um the frequency with which the term narcissist is used oh geez now yeah and people being called narcissists or self-identifying

as narcissists. And really what people are referring to when they say that is this kind of what I deem the social media description of narcissism. And a lot of people use that without really understanding that that is a clinical diagnosis. And just because someone, this is a different episode, but I'm going to carry this example through. Just because someone may seem self-centered to you does not mean narcissism right just because someone doesn't engage in maybe the same relationship construct that is outside of monogamy as you does not mean they are not sex positive yep so so what dr sue did you have anything to add to that no and i think that's a really good point i know that for a lot of us in education we are trying

to combat these ideas that some of our students have about like what they've learned from social media just because you just because i don't agree with you doesn't mean i'm gaslighting you just because i challenge your challenge you to think about what you think and why does not mean i've traumatized you and and i do think that we use some of those terms and i know that we'll be oh we've never done like a we'll be doing this episode i know we'll be doing an episode at some point on whether or not sex addiction is a thing there's there's these the problem is people kind of absorb these terms from the world around them and this happened way before social media like i don't i don't want to pin it on all social media for as long as we've had communication we have

just kind of latched on to terms that we do not fully understand and just repeat them um but i think yeah i think that's part of the issue is that people are just like oh well i like sex that makes me sex positive and it's it's not as simple as that it's part of it like enjoying sex and feeling shame-free about it is part of it, but that's not it. So I think people don't understand there's more to it. And I think that's one of the problems with it. I agree. And I think another problem with it is it's used many times, similar to the phrase of, I just tell it like it is. Oh my God. Right? I just tell the truth. I just tell it like it is. Well, are you just being an asshole right maybe so um so i think it it can be used as a shield for those again as i

said on the out on the outside of what is has been determined to be seen as mainstream to and in in a way i think it's it could be them trying to self-advocate but at the same time they're shutting people down who may have had no thoughts about it at all, but now you have represented your, um, yourself and the, and what you are engaging in. Now you've created an impression of that whole community based off of trying to, I don't want to say bulldoze, but maybe bulldoze yeah into someone else's space who is like look I didn't give a shit either way but now that you're being such an asshole about this such an aggressive jerk about it yeah now now I'm going to think every time someone who is associated with that same thing is going to

come at me the same way yeah can I talk a little bit about that post that I had shared with you that I written years ago please yeah and I think we're gonna put a link to this in the bio yes Hold on as I write note to self, put link in bio. Not in bio, in the description. Sorry, I've been doing a lot of writing on social media there. Link in bio, link in description. So way back when, in what feels like another lifetime, my sister, my sister, the easiest part of this, man, she would just watch Bravo TV, like Little Housewives and I don't know, other things. i didn't really keep on i don't know she kept trying to make me watch the episodes and i'm like

just tell me what you want me to talk about so she would watch bravo tv and then she would like send me a question about sex because there was so much stuff about sex in these um in these in these tv shows and then i would post about it on medium and she was watching one of the real house wives of somewhere and someone was at a party and they were openly talking about these sexual concepts very loudly and the people there were apparently like hey let's chill with that we're not so comfortable with either the terms or how you're using them and she responded with i'm sex positive sex positive is not a shield it doesn't it doesn't take away your responsibility and and that to me was incredibly not sex positive and i do want to own i never watched the episode so i

i'm going off just what my sister was saying but i think there's a piece of that that this idea that being sex positive means that there are no ramifications for your behavior in this case you are absolutely not respecting people's boundaries if someone is saying i am not comfortable with either the language you are using the place that you are using it or the fact that you're being so goddamn loud that everyone's like looking at us that is someone saying these are my boundaries i do not have give consent to have this conversation in this manner and if you bulldoze over them I don't see how that's positive in any way shape or form because for me being positive means respecting boundaries even if you don't like them so it's that tolerant piece right

tolerant piece the tolerance goes both ways right it's just because you're not like you were saying just because I may not have ever thought that I don't want you screaming the word dildo at the top of your lungs in a restaurant now we're outside the episode just yeah this has happened And to me, after conferences that I've been to where we'll go out to local restaurants and there's, you know, the people I'm trying not to alienate everyone in my field. But there are people who are being super loud and out there and, you know, screaming about dildos that were being given away and raffle. I don't I didn't I don't want to hear that at dinner. And I work in this field like I just wanted to go have dinner, man. I don't want to continue talking about work.

And I don't need that. that whole focus pulled to that and and nobody in that space really wants to hear anyone else's conversation like it wasn't even about what they're talking about it's about the fact that you're being so loud that you're dominating space an entire restaurant like tone it down like being sex positive doesn't mean that you that you have permission to be the star of the show it doesn't mean that everyone needs to know everything about your life if they don't know you and don't care to know you it and that's the way i've seen it i've seen it used as a shield i've seen it used as an excuse it does not make you it does not make you non-accountable for the things that you're

doing and if anything i feel like people who use that term sex positive should be better at respecting boundaries they should be demonstrating how to do that and instead what i've seen is mostly the opposite yeah yeah and there was something that we were talking about as well is that um being provocative about sex and sexuality is not does not inherently equal a sex positive attitude or belief system saying it just for the shock value yep that's not that's just that's being provocative that's being a jerk and and not leading with empathy and i think the intent of some a phrase like sex positive was meant to encompass empathy for all experiences but again going back to when you introduce a word a word like positive that also implies that

there's no room for negative experiences or or that there is a negative right yes there's anger sorry yeah there was a little grr yeah i don't dr sue just made sometimes i'm glad we don't do video many times although we may be changing that yeah things to think about um can i i don't usually share my like i share a lot of my professional experiences i don't usually share my own personal experiences may i wander down this path a little bit as long as you're comfortable with it can we handle this no I'm not that angry anymore because I don't those people don't have power um so when I was in grad school getting my PhD and I need people to understand that when I was going for my PhD

I wasn't one of those people who just like started my bachelor's and just kept going until the end of school and was just a student like they took time between my master's and my PhD I was actively working both as an educator in schools and as an educator in reproductive health clinics you know I was boots on the ground doing work. And I had been a trained educator. Like I was trained with my bachelor's to teach K through 12. Anyone who knows me knows why that's hysterical. The idea of me working with like K through five is just an amusing idea. But I was actually qualified to teach K through 12 in New York to teach health. So I was a trained educator. And I will say that many of the people in my program were not. And so I was coming into it with very different

background i was working with a population that was incredibly diverse at the time i was working with a population that i would say in a lot of ways really did represent i mean i don't have data to support this but i think it was representative for the country as a whole these were kids i use the term kid if you're in my class i call you kids sorry even if you're like my age it's just a thing um i was working i'll be more professional i was working with students who were dealing with things like STIs from partners who hadn't told them. I was dealing with people who had been cheated on by their partner. I was dealing with folks who had unintended pregnancies. I was dealing with folks who had been raped and abused. I was dealing with

people who had lived what I would think are not atypical sexual lives. Not that I ever want people to go through those things, but they're common. And so I was in my PhD program and I'm writing a curriculum and I was focusing on like harm reduction because that's the population I was working with. They were living through these things with, you know, they were making, they were making sexual decisions without the information that I think they, they needed. And I think they had a human right to have, but that's a whole nother, that's another of why our, our education system sucks so bad. So I wrote this curriculum that was, it wasn't just about harm reduction, But it was about, hey, here's what STIs are and here's how you can prevent them.

And here's when you can actually get pregnant or get someone pregnant in their cycle. And here's how to prevent it. And here's how to set boundaries. And here's what a healthy relationship looks like. And then sprinkled in was like the concept of pleasure, which is very much what I think positive folks would be encouraging you to do is to talk about pleasure. and i was nailed with the term sex negative because i had written a curriculum that i believed would serve the needs of the populations i was working with and that it was based in reality and i i had never heard the

term sex positive before that and all of a sudden i'm hearing you're not sex positive you're sex negative and i was just like what the actual fuck is happening right now like yeah this is grounded in best practices it was grounded in science it was grounded in years of education and educational theory and it was grounded in the needs of my power of my population but because it wasn't like everyone should have sex all the time and there are no why are you focusing on all the bad things a i wasn't focusing on just the bad things i was focusing on how to protect yourself and pleasure and healthy relationships um but it was like i was i was labeled with this sex negative and it automatically created a me versus them right that label followed

me for years and i actually wore it proudly and every once in a while someone called me sex navigate negative i'd be like excuse me i think you mean realist because this is what the lives of the populations i was working with um but then that took away their power so they like no no no No, I've us versus them because the opposite of realism is what? Fantasy. Right. So if I call myself a sex realist and now we're putting, you know, two different camps, now you're either working in fiction or fantasy. But we were attacking, they were attacking someone in the community doing the work.

Right. Because I wasn't sitting there being like, everyone should have whatever sex whenever they want. It comes with consequences. and it was like no one as soon as i want to talk about any form of consequences and some of the consequences could be good like oh shit i caught feelings for this person and now i want to be in a long relationship with them and i don't know how to do that like the the fact that they equated consequences with negative and that consequences should never be discussed made the whole thing for me, just a joke. Yeah. Which is a therapy session. Of course. Quick check in. How are you

feeling? I'm feeling relieved. I'm very warm now. That adrenaline started coming back. I know you can see my very red face right now. Do you want to take a quick break? I'm good. You were going to say something. Well, it's just the irony, right? Of these people who were who were advocating sex positivity exercising judgment and intolerance for facts and work and all of those things like the incredible irony of that and the complete lack of understanding of the irony of the situation on the awareness yeah the self-awareness of it all yeah it's just mind-boggling yep and so now like when I have people who I run into whether it's in my classroom and and part of what I do in my classroom is try

to get you to think and I always tell my students like unless what you're doing is non-consensual or illegal although I use that term illegal and really loose phrases because we're making things illegal right now that i don't really think should be illegal regulation is subjective right so so i usually just say you know as long as it's consensual as long as everyone is consenting like that's the big thing for me so i never tell you not to do it unless there's high risk of something like autorotic asphyxiation which like i pretty much tell them not to do that but i tell them my goal in my class is to get you to think and if you walked in with value a and you sat through my class and you're like huh value b looks really kind of interesting

then I did my job if you walked in thinking value a and you walked out hardly thinking you know even more so dug in right value a worked for you that's great and if you walked in with no value and was like huh I don't know anything about this and I don't care I still did my job like my job is never to convince you one thing or the other my job is to get you to think about what you think and whether or not it fits the situation and where it came from which I think is a lot of what we do on the podcast like where the hell did these concepts come from and whenever someone goes oh but i'm sex positive and i go really can you explain to everyone in the class what that means i have yet to have a student be able to define what this label is that

they very quickly put on and and that's fine this is they're learning this is what they're supposed to be doing right the fact that they're using this this title and again it's being used as either a weapon or a shield if you are about diversity and accepting diversity say that about accepting diversity like why are you using this label and you can't even define it that's problematic for me yeah absolutely well and it goes to that that point that we were talking about a little bit earlier about how this gets parsed and just so chopped down to serve the person who's speaking And then it becomes, that becomes the common application and definition in, in the world or in, in your society, wherever you are.

Um, that's how it gets applied and kind of used in, in just the everyday language. And it gets so, it's, it gets so reduced. And then the con, yeah. And then the common perception is these people who want us to be tolerant are intolerant of us because we don't not because we don't agree. We just don't want to. Right. Right. Being accepting of everyone means accepting the person who is with one partner that they met in high school and is their only sexual partner.

And they engage in the same sexual behavior X number of times a week. And that's it. And that's OK for them. if you can't accept that then you're not positive so I'm kind of right now I'm picturing maybe a listener who is like well aren't you it aren't you isn't that what you guys are doing right now about people who use sex positive you're being intolerant about them identifying that way those that identify that way can engage in again what Saidi deems is non-mainstream and so they're just standing up for themselves what what would you say to that it's a great question

because my answer is you're not listening to the conversation my my thing is not about accepting everyone my thing is about accepting everyone and but those people have to respect others as well so accepting people where they're at accepting people where they're at and not thinking i'm not i'm not well i have baggage with the term sex positive obviously though i've stopped making the gagging noise um but for me it's not about it's not about getting angry at people or not accepting people who are sex positive it's about making sure they understand what those are and holding them accountable for their behavior so if you think that that's me judging them and shaming them i don't think we're having the same conversation

yeah i think you're hearing one i think i don't think you're i'm not i am judging them that's actually bullshit i am judging them i'm judging the fact that they're not taking accountability And for me, that's part of being in a healthy relationship with people is to take accountability. And whether that healthy relationship is a passing relationship or a real like longstanding relationship is about taking accountability. So I guess I am judging them, which means our whole intro of the show is just out the window right now. I do. I think that it's I think that it's important that people take responsibility for their actions and don't let you can't use a phrase as a shield or a weapon. and then wash your hands of it. So I guess I am doing to them. Maybe. But I think also what we may be hoping, or at least what I'm hoping, I don't want to

put thoughts in your head, so I'll give you a chance to agree or disagree. But what I'm hoping with this conversation is that those who do use that term frequently, or that label frequently dig into what it is because just as you as you pointed out when you have students who say I am this and you say okay what is that and they don't know before before you start self-labeling dig into what what the definition is I mean look it up in the dictionary if it's an entry in the dictionary and see if that's something that really applies to you or Are you are you identifying with that term because you have been judged for for your sexual proclivities, any sex play that you've done? And so you are trying to signal that you are not going to give the judgment that you've received.

And if that's the case, maybe there's a better way to phrase this label. Dr. Sue, what do you think? I think there's a lot to that. I don't, I mean, I'd love to just get rid of the idea of labels because, and I know now that's not realistic, but to me, it's less about what terms you use to describe yourself and more about how you live your life. And if you have to put on this term, and I understand, like sometimes we're asked to identify ourselves and our belief system, but I don't see people doing it that way.

Like for a lot of folks that I know who think of themselves as sex positive, it's like they have to tell people that, well, I'm sex positive. Well, wouldn't I get that from your actions and the way you talk about people and to people and how you don't judge other people? Yeah. And then the way you make people feel around you. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm wondering, like, why the need for the label? And I understand labels are important, especially with working with folks who come from a variety of different gender identities and sexual orientations. Like finding that label sometimes is like, oh, yeah, because sometimes it introduces a whole world of language that you didn't know existed. Right. And community. Yeah. You know, I'm sure there are folks who who learn the term sex positive and they feel like it resonates with them and they go searching for folks and they find them because you can find anything on the Internet.

There's a rule. That's a rule that you can find anything on the Internet anyway. So I think that the labels can be important. But when you use that labels, you're only defining thing and you're not living what the label means. That's where I start to have those problems. Right. Can I do another example? Yes. That's not.

Yeah. Is that OK? so I had students in my class who labeled themselves as sex positive and I don't prejudge you like well a little bit probably given my history um and I also had a student in my class who was a vet and where I was this is when I was teaching in the DC area Washington DC area I had a lot of veterans in my classes so as an older student who had very much been brought up in a very to me archaic way of looking at gender and orientation and we were having conversation as a class we were doing some kind of discussion or brainstorm i don't remember what it was

and the student used a term that was outdated and really not welcoming and i was like oh oh no no no hold on we don't use that term and he said oh i'm sorry first words out of his mouth i'm sorry what can i use that's more appropriate like this is what you want people to do fantastic so i we talked about what what you know what words might be more appropriate and what felt comfortable for him to say because i can say words all day that some people are like oh i don't like saying that word out loud um but what would happen is as we were continuing conversation he would slip back into the old term and then he would do it and he would he would catch himself it was amazing amount of effort that this he was in his late 20s that this late 20 year old man who had

been raised in one very specific value system was really trying to work through like if you were to just look at this you'd be like this is amazing and my sex positive folks my little group of three sex positive folks were sitting in the back of the room making fun of him every time he slept up so you have someone who is actively trying to embrace the values you actually believe or claim to or claim to believe and you are mocking him because he is reverting to language that he's had for almost three decades but then quickly catching it and trying to incorporate this brand new term like that to me was being a complete antithesis of being positive in any not even sex positive just positive just in any way yeah yeah you can't be a positive human if you're mocking someone for

learning and trying to undo a value system that they've held dear to them for decades right and so I think that's my biggest issue is like I see these I see these people using this term and again I've never phrased it this way but I really kind of like it they use it as a weapon or a shield you don't get to use your values as a weapon or a shield even though we're doing that right now as a country but on a personal level that's yeah that's my issue with it yeah this this conversation i know i alluded to the phrase um earlier if i just tell it like it is and i always one of my favorite quotes in a in a recent movie um for any knives out fans um in in the sea in the second one the glass onion there's an exchange that um that daniel craig's character

benoit has with kate hudson's character and her character was very much written of that well i just tell it like it is and i think she winds up saying that quote verbatim and i love his retort it's a dangerous thing to have mistaken speaking without thought for speaking the truth and i think that's a lot of yeah i that the the first time i heard that quote and that the first time i saw that movie i was like oh my gosh that that is everything i've ever thought when i hear that kind of phrase or this kind of general, I'm going to, I'm going to say lazy application of some of these terms, because again, you're not really applying it to yourself with a full understanding of the intent of why it was created, what the tenants of it are, and if it's something

that truly aligns with you and your personal belief and character. So is there a phrase, Dr. Sue that you think is would be more um that that would capture some of the things that you and I have talked about the tolerance the um the inclusion for for anything for anyone's experience in sex and sex health and sexuality I think I'd probably go with and this is this goes back to i work with woodhull and one of the reasons that i was working with woodhull um is the idea of sexual freedom and i like the term sexual freedom because it's a it applies a lot of the concepts it's about things like i'm gonna get some of these wrong i'm not gonna i'm they're not gonna be wrong there's this is not an inclusive list you can google all this um for me the concept

of sexual freedom is about respecting others where they are even if their opinions or their lived experiences are different from ours. It's about right to privacy, which I think is an incredibly important right. It's about right to education, which is the foundation of my entire career. It's about the right to control my body. It's about the right to create kind of this respect for humans. It's about the right to seek pleasure in a way that doesn't harm others. um but for me it's about freedom and and i feel like i'm like waving a flag now because that's what the word freedom and um means for me but i think one of the other reasons that i like the term sexual freedom or the phrase sexual freedom is that sorry i'm trying to i'm trying to get

this like you surprise me with the question um so when we say sex positive we talked about the fact that that means there's already a sex negative it's created in us versus them if i say i believe in sexual freedom there the opposite of there really is no opposite of that i mean what's the opposite of freedom fiction fantasy like no it doesn't create an us versus them as much as that term sex positive does and so for me it's the tenets of sexual freedom it's it's the tenets of being able to live my life in a way that feels like i am being my authentic self um whatever that may mean. And for me, that also includes educating others, which it doesn't mean for everybody. And so I think, I think I like that kind of idea better. Do you have a phrase or a term that you

prefer? Put me on the spot now. I am with you on the on the sex freedom, because I think what that does freedom is always an aspirational, a word that encapsulates or implies aspiration. So always moving forward to an evolving freedom. And I think freedom gives the space for all kinds of sexual experiences and the compassion and the empathy for it and for all sexualities. You know, to me, sex positive becomes very exclusionary outside of just the positive negative it becomes exclusionary because here with sexual freedom we're talking sexual sexuality sex positive has an implicit immediate association to the act of sex

and again does not make room for people who have had less than desirable pleasurable have had violent experiences negative experiences there there's no if you have to work hard that hard to say no we include you in this too then it's not the right wording whereas freedom is inviting it's aspirational it's something that continues to evolve and so I I buy into that term as well woohoo yay one person yeah and i think it's i think it is important to focus to keep in mind the huge variation of values that exist when it comes to this and sorry like what you just said just popped another example for me this idea of being sex positive and i have seen folks who wear that hat i don't want to mock is to make fun of however we want to phrase it folks who are

saving themselves for marriage and this comes up a lot when we talk about things like soaking and i know we've done that in another episode so if you don't know what that is google it and then if you want to know more send us a show suggestion yes send us a question um but when people talk about soaking or waiting until marriage it's always like oh those people like they're so there's a judgment that comes after it they're so stupid they're so dumb that's so ignorant like they're just shutting their eyes to these things without respecting the values those people are living by um yeah people i mean look at tim tebow when he came into the nfl and the focus on on his i think it was tebow um there was an nfl player i'll just say that it was an nfl player

um who was very open about his values and wanting to wait till marriage and all of those things and he became a punchline yeah yeah whereas if we're supposed to be open and accepting we have to be open to and accepting people's religious values and how that dictates their life decisions as long as it's not impacting ours right as long as they're not trying to do what we're talking about sex positive people doing right like i can have different values than someone else down the street who's got a different religion as long as we're not trying to shove our values on every on each other like we can coexist right but the lack of tolerance that i see for folks who say that they were raised in a purity culture and i know we have thoughts about purity culture i know that's

come up in a couple episodes um or this idea of waiting to be married i had a student when i was teaching in the south who would not kiss someone until they were married and i remember telling that story now that i'm back in the northeast i was telling that story like oh what do you know what a prude and like whoa like what's what the name calling this person has a value system and they're sticking to it do they know what they're missing no is that their choice yes it's the same choices of when you want to go out and get all fucked up and hook up with some random stranger Like, these are choices and values. Like, I'm not mocking you for yours, you don't get to mock them for theirs. And so there's, there's just this lack of acceptance of this idea of like, I can be positive and hold to my values. And they're just different from your values, especially around sex. And that's, yeah, that's really the big thing for me. yeah that's an interesting example to bring up i uh i am watching a current reality

competition show centered around finding love and there is a contestant on there there is a contest the one you made me watch i don't know that did i make you watch one yeah you did oh maybe it's a new episode so it's the current season but there's a contestant on there who in like the first challenge it was a kissing challenge and so all the contestants go in and kiss all the other contestants and this this cast member chose to kiss when when it was her turn to kiss them on the cheek right because she didn't because she had a certain value set and then this is the same series yes because the body count episode happened and her body count was one oh i was gonna guess zero was one but what was interesting

was the mocking and the way that the men were talking well she's only been with one person but had she there was another contestant that had a high body count and so anyway we have a body count episode go listen to that um but then in a later episode there is another challenge where she um goes through and engages in kissing with contestants that she chose and she she decides okay i'm gonna kiss the boys and all of the uh her female uh co-castmates contestants are like i love this version of her blah blah blah blah but there was nothing celebrating her holding in that first episode her holding her values her holding her values yeah so so that all that to say that it's still out there like they were accepting of the

the sexual freedom expression to do whoever whenever right but they weren't necessarily as celebratory when she was staying uh presumably true to her core beliefs so sexual freedom yeah much better term yeah really just don't be a dick and shove your sexual values down anyone else's throat oh there's a whole lot of things about shoving um but really it's just that phrasing for the story of our show yeah yeah i think really if if you have been using the term sex positive just understand that if if what you mean when you use that phrase is that you support not just your autonomy but everybody else's autonomy when they engage in their sexuality um consent

equality privacy and expression if that's what you mean then maybe sexual freedom is a better term to use because i think as i said at the top of the show terms like sex positive get so segmented and so fragmented well segmented fragmented redundant um but it becomes a way to create other othering and and pushes us further apart from each other than creating a common space to understand lead with empathy give people space to live their lives and and to coexist with each other any other final thoughts dr sue are you good i i just i think there's a lot of that this is one of those yes ands that you always do to me um yes and um if if you're living your life the way it's reflecting your values again i'm not always so sure we need the label

but if you are going to fight for others and their rights and their sexual freedoms please make sure it's inclusive of everybody including the people who don't subscribe to your belief system if we're really fighting for for sexual freedom we're fighting for sexual freedom for everyone. All right. Well, thank you everyone for joining us on today's episode of Unzipping Taboos. We really hope today's episode sparked maybe some new thoughts, challenged some existing thoughts that you might have, and will open up conversations worth having. Remember that your curiosity is the key to breaking down these barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. If you enjoyed the show, if you have any thoughts about what we

talked about today, please subscribe and leave us a comment, leave a review, share it with someone who you think might need to hear this. And if you've got a question or a topic you want us to dive into, reach out to us via the link in the episode description. We want to give a very special shout out to Ali O'Brien for incredible theme music. Thank you, Ali. And until next time, keep the conversation going, keep unzipping those taboos, and everyone, take care. © transcript Emily Beynon