Hello readers, and welcome back to getting down with the Dirty Bird. Regular readers may have already noticed Alex Tucker isn’t writing this column; she is currently taking a semester leave and handed over the duties of writing the Dirty Bird to me. Like Alex, I am a peer-to-peer sexual health educator at UW-Madison. I look forward to writing the Dirty Bird this semester. Hopefully I can fill the big shoes left for me. As always, the Dirty Bird is here to titillate, educate and open our minds to the wonderful world of sex.
I’m going to take a bit of liberty and forego answering a question for the first article and go over some basic sexual health mumbo jumbo… or, one bit of mumbo jumbo: sex positivity.
Sex positivity is the key to my approach to sexual health and sexual health education. It’s a broad term, which generally describes taking an open-minded and respectful view of people’s individual sexualities and desires.
It celebrates a healthy diversity of sexualities and sexual desires, as well as relationship structures and personal choices so long as they are based on consent. Although the precise definition of sex positivity can change over time and place, consensual sex must remain a constant.
Sometimes this term is misconstrued with being the same as other theories on sexuality like free love. Sex positivity stands apart based on its open acceptance of all combinations of sexual behavior, assuming they are consensual.
Concepts similar to sex positivity show up in some unexpected places. The World Health Organization has a specific definition of “healthy sexuality” that embraces an inherent belief in pleasure as being an important and perhaps essential part of healthy sexuality. The WHO defines healthy sexuality as being “a state of physical, emotional, and social well-being in relation to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease … Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relations as well as the possibility of having pleasurable … sexual experiences.”
This definition includes the lack of coercion or violence (i.e. sexual assault) and discrimination. These are “sexual rights” as described by WHO and almost perfectly align with the definition of sex positivity. The potential for pleasure, the inclusion of consent, the lack of violence or discrimination and the equal access to all these things to all people are important factors in my approach to sexual health.
Remaining sex positive isn’t always the easiest thing though, even for the best of us. It certainly isn’t something we are taught in school and has to be learned. Or rather, the types of sexual aversions often taught in school, at home or by the media need to be unlearned to achieve sex positivity.
That’s not to say we should embrace all sexual behavior and relationship types like they’re our favorite things in the world. Sex positivity is about being open to people’s individual choices if they don’t have an adverse effect on their health, the health of their partners or the people around them. We might not be into having threesomes with our best friends for example, but just because somebody we know is, doesn’t mean we can’t still respect them and they can’t respect us.
This concept and sex positivity can be succinctly summed up in this simple phrase: Don’t yuck somebody’s yum and don’t yum somebody’s yuck. We can all like and enjoy different things in a very healthy and pleasurable way, but we don’t need to force those pleasures and desires onto other people in the same way we wouldn’t want others’ desires forced onto us.
We certainly can talk about all those desires in an open and fun way though! That’s what I want to do this semester. I want to talk about sex and all the diverse experiences one can have with it.
So, let’s have a fun semester and learn a whole bunch of new sexy things.
Give Michael a Dirty Bird welcome and ask him any questions you have about sex positivity by emailing him at mpodgers@wisc.edu.
