Sex-Positive Feminism
Sex-positive feminism – also referred to as pro-sex feminism or sex-liberal feminism – is a feminist movement that took shape in the early 1980s and advocates women’s sexual liberation as a necessary element of emancipation.
Supporters of sex-positive feminism regard women’s sexual freedom as a fundamental and inseparable component of women’s freedom as a whole. On this basis, sex-positive feminism opposes attempts by the state, society, or any institution to control or restrict consensual sexual activity between adults, regardless of whether such attempts are made by the state, other feminists, opponents of feminism, or any other social authority.
Sex-positive feminists generally support sexual minorities and emphasize the importance of building coalitions with groups whose rights and freedoms are restricted by negative attitudes toward sexuality.
Sex-positive feminism is a broad movement united by the idea of liberating women’s sexuality. It includes anti-censorship activists, LGBTQ+ activists, feminists, scholars, sexual radicals, producers of pornography and erotica, and many others. Sex-positive feminists reject the denigration of male sexuality that they attribute to some forms of radical feminism, and instead affirm the diversity of human sexuality.
They argue that patriarchy restricts people’s sexual self-expression and that the goal should be to expand sexual possibilities for people regardless of gender, rather than to restrict pornography. Sex-positive feminists maintain that access to pornography may be important for women as well as for men, and that pornography as such is not necessarily degrading to women.
Anti-pornography feminists disagree with this position. They argue that pornography may reproduce the objectification of women, normalize sexual inequality, and contribute to cultural attitudes that trivialize coercion, violence, and exploitation.
The main representatives of sex-positive feminism include Wendy McElroy, Kathy Acker, Gayle Rubin, Susie Bright, Avedon Carol, Betty Dodson, Patrick Califia, Ellen Willis, Tristan Taormino, and others.
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