I’m a part of Gen Z, a generation growing up in the age of the internet, in which childhood innocence is impossible and we are taught that empowerment is gained simply from showing more skin.
It’s a confusing time to grow up. Many female pop stars and rappers tell us that desirability to men equates to power over them. Intentionally or not, we are taught that what past generations of feminists would call dangerous—hooking up with strangers for example—is actually empowering. We are taught that we have suppressed our sexuality because we’ve internalized misogyny. We are taught this narrative is called sex positivity and we are taught this is feminism.
Like most movements, there is crucial history behind the call for sex positivity. Since Adam and Eve, sex has been synonymous with guilt, wrongdoing and shame. This stigma has suffocated generations, especially women, queer people, and those raised in religious communities. On anything ranging from STIs to sexual assault, to abortion, it has attempted to silence them.
The sex positivity movement seeks to counter the inherent negative connotation sex has had throughout history, but what it fails to recognize is that the antidote to “none” is “some,” not “all.” Like most movements, the push for sex positivity has overcompensated, substituting a stigma around sex with a stigma around the lack thereof. Due to this, the sex positivity has left behind many who would benefit from it. Among those: me, an asexual teen.
Asexuality, as opposed to allosexuality, is generally defined as the lack or scarcity of sexual attraction to any gender. More detailed information on asexuality in all its forms and variations can be found on the website of the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), but for now let it suffice to say: asexuality is not an illness, a phase, nor a tragedy. Repeat after me: asexuality is not a tragedy.
By depicting sexuality as a beautiful, innate part of everyone and its emergence as inevitable, the current mainstream sex positivity movement in effect suggests the contrary. What is meant to be empowering only awards the select few that truly find joy in today’s hook-up culture and power in appealing to the male gaze.
Anyone who diverges from this expectation is often regarded as boring or even anti-feminist.
Inclusive and sustainable sex positivity doesn’t operate in terms of allosexuality or asexuality or anywhere inbetween. The real positivity can be found by striving to have the relationship you want to sex, rather than want the relationship that you already have. True sex positivity should be about making our (a)sexuality about us, for us.
It can be powerful, revolutionary even, to find joy in our relationship to sex. And joy, we should know by now, isn’t found the same way for all of us. It is time we stopped politicizing individual joy as embracing or rejecting feminism and started fighting for it.
Sex positivity, as I wish it to be, gives us the power to question, explore, and find what’s right for us. It gives us the power to talk about sex and the power to live accordingly, regardless of stigma. Sex positivity, as I wish it to be, serves us all.