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What's the difference between sex-positive, sex-negative, and sex-repulsed?


Symbolon

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I've read the FAQs on the main site and haven't found much that talks about this in any depth; I barely caught it when it was mentioned.

While I'm curious about the question itself, I'm more personally concerned about how to tell what I am. I enjoy written and drawn porn, but not live videos, and the idea of touching someone sexually or being touched sexually makes me highly uncomfortable unless it's so incredibly hypothetical I know it will never happen. I imagine if those hypotheticals came to be reality, I'd find myself uncomfortable and anxious again.

For the sake of my partner, I'm trying to get a better handle on what I identify as so he knows what he's dealing with (and so I do, too).

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To the best of my understanding:

Sex-positive means that, so long as it is between consenting adults, you don't think sex is an inherently bad thing for individual people and society in general, and might even be beneficial.
Sex-negative means that you believe that sex is an inherently negative thing for people and society that causes way more social ills than benefits.

Sex-favorable means that you find sex a pleasant/favorable activity even if you don't have any desire for it.

Sex-neutral/indifferent means you are apathetic to the act of sex.

*sex-averse means that you personally dislike sex or find the idea of you having sex revolting. You can talk about sex, and maybe see erotic images of sex acts; but the idea of YOU doing those things makes you ill.
*sex-repulsed means the very thought or sight of sex makes you physically ill. Merely talking about it can bring on these feelings of disgust. A more extreme version of sex-averse

Sex-positive/negative is more political and about whether you think sex is a good thing for society or not.
Sex favorable/neutral/averse/repulsed are more personal and about your own physical reactions to sex.

I personally identify as sex-averse and it sounds like your attitude toward sex are very similar to my own.

*I am very very unsure of these definitions myself.

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EggplantWitch
  • A sex-positive person: Someone who believes that people should have as much or as little safe, consensual sex as they want. Sex is not a plague on society, it is part of it no matter what.
  • A sex-negative person: Someone who believes that people shouldn't have sex, that it should be highly limited and removed from society as much as possible or even entirely.
  • A sex-repulsed person: Someone who is repulsed or disgusted by the idea of themselves having sex or being in a sexual situation. A sex-repulsed person could be either of the above as well. Unlike others, I tend to see -repulsed and -averse as being interchangable, though perhaps I do so wrongly...

So, to put it into context, I call myself sex-positive and sex-repulsed because I don't have an issue with people having sex, I just don't want it happening to me specifically. And regarding about how to tell your partner what you are, the label 'autochorissexual' might fit you (as much of a mouthful as it is) - from what I've seen it means someone who is attracted to sexual situations so long as they themselves aren't actually in the situation. It could be worth doing some research into, at any rate!

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To the best of my understanding:

Sex-positive means that, so long as it is between consenting adults, you don't think sex is an inherently bad thing for individual people and society in general, and might even be beneficial.

Sex-negative means that you believe that sex is an inherently negative thing for people and society that causes way more social ills than benefits.

Sex-favorable means that you find sex a pleasant/favorable activity even if you don't have any desire for it.

Sex-neutral means you are apathetic to the act of sex.

*sex-averse means that you personally dislike sex or find the idea of you having sex revolting. You can talk about sex, and maybe see erotic images of sex acts; but the idea of YOU doing those things makes you ill.

*sex-repulsed means the very thought or sight of sex makes you physically ill. Merely talking about it can bring on these feelings of disgust. A more extreme version of sex-averse

*I am very very unsure of these definitions myself.

So positive and negative regard other people, while favorable, neutral, averse, and repulsed regard you personally?

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To the best of my understanding:

Sex-positive means that, so long as it is between consenting adults, you don't think sex is an inherently bad thing for individual people and society in general, and might even be beneficial.

Sex-negative means that you believe that sex is an inherently negative thing for people and society that causes way more social ills than benefits.

Sex-favorable means that you find sex a pleasant/favorable activity even if you don't have any desire for it.

Sex-neutral means you are apathetic to the act of sex.

*sex-averse means that you personally dislike sex or find the idea of you having sex revolting. You can talk about sex, and maybe see erotic images of sex acts; but the idea of YOU doing those things makes you ill.

*sex-repulsed means the very thought or sight of sex makes you physically ill. Merely talking about it can bring on these feelings of disgust. A more extreme version of sex-averse

*I am very very unsure of these definitions myself.

So positive and negative regard other people, while favorable, neutral, averse, and repulsed regard you personally?

Pretty much. As I edited into my other post I view sex negative/positive more as political positions, while the others are more about your own reaction to sex.

I personally identify as a (sex-positive) sex-averse asexual and it sounds like your attitude toward sex are very similar to my own.

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Ace of Cakes

To the best of my understanding:

Sex-positive means that, so long as it is between consenting adults, you don't think sex is an inherently bad thing for individual people and society in general, and might even be beneficial.

Sex-negative means that you believe that sex is an inherently negative thing for people and society that causes way more social ills than benefits.

Sex-favorable means that you find sex a pleasant/favorable activity even if you don't have any desire for it.

Sex-neutral means you are apathetic to the act of sex.

*sex-averse means that you personally dislike sex or find the idea of you having sex revolting. You can talk about sex, and maybe see erotic images of sex acts; but the idea of YOU doing those things makes you ill.

*sex-repulsed means the very thought or sight of sex makes you physically ill. Merely talking about it can bring on these feelings of disgust. A more extreme version of sex-averse

*I am very very unsure of these definitions myself.

So positive and negative regard other people, while favorable, neutral, averse, and repulsed regard you personally?

Yeah, I would agree that this pretty much sums it up, but I think that some people who are sex repulsed may feel repulsed at the thought of other people having sex, but still be sex positive in the sense that they are okay with those other people doing it as long as they don't have to see/hear/think about it happening.

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nerdperson777

Well these definitions will confuse my current understanding of them. I am definitely sex-negative, though other people doing it is not my problem. I might also be borderline adverse and repulsed. I might get curious about things and get sucked into looking at erotic images for my own knowledge. But one time my friend said she did it with her girlfriend and I started freaking out for an entire day, only having 2 hours of sleep the night she told me. So maybe in the public eye I'm repulsed, but I can look at things in private.

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I am both sex repulsed and sex positive. The idea of myself having sex is repulsive and off-putting to me, but what two or more consenting adults do is fine with me.

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scarletlatitude

Remember too that people in real life don't always fit neat definitions. If you don't fit these words exactly, you may be something in between, and that's okay too. :)

Thanks for the info, Lost and Eggplant! :cake:

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Well, I agree that sex is a good thing (which makes me "sex-positive"), but only because it's necessary for reproduction and without that, none of us would be here and the human race would be extinct. However, as far as that goes, I don't think anyone can argue the biological benefits of it. Therefore, these terms seem to refer specifically to sex as it is on our modern culture.

In that regard, I tend to think more about other topics in media and culture and don't have an opinion one way or another, unlike what "sex-positive" would imply. That being said, I do agree that we need another label, unless of course we can just choose to identify with neither, which seems to have been my course of action. :)

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fish of hearts

Because I first heard about sex positivity from people like Laci Green, the definition in my head is more of sex-education reform than a mere political or social view. Sex positivity is about communication, education, consent, and removing shaming and labels.

It also helps that Laci has been open and vocal about her support of the entire LGBT+ and GSM spectrums, including asexuality. Her brand of sex positivity is something I want to get behind and wish I'd had when I was younger.

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I've read the FAQs on the main site and haven't found much that talks about this in any depth; I barely caught it when it was mentioned.

While I'm curious about the question itself, I'm more personally concerned about how to tell what I am. I enjoy written and drawn porn, but not live videos, and the idea of touching someone sexually or being touched sexually makes me highly uncomfortable unless it's so incredibly hypothetical I know it will never happen. I imagine if those hypotheticals came to be reality, I'd find myself uncomfortable and anxious again.

For the sake of my partner, I'm trying to get a better handle on what I identify as so he knows what he's dealing with (and so I do, too).

Still relatively new terms. So they probably get used differently by different people in different contexts. By and large the USA is as a whole, a sex-negative country. Most Europeans countries, would be accurately characterized as sex-positive. Sex-repulsed is new to me and while you mgith think the Muslim world, they actually love sex if their porn is any indication (even ObL had a big porn stash.) :)

Sexuality is perhaps ebst thought of as a spectrum, not a binary either/or state. Your sexuality may simply be towards the lower end of 'how sexual are you?' Rather than trying to match it up to a word, just treat it as however it feels at a given moment. Can feel significantly different another day making any term you used prior less-accurate.

Using myself as an example, when I first wake up in the mornings I'm hypersexual (in large part due to training myself that if I get up and out of bed I get to masturbate and enjoy an orgasm.) :) But once I've gotten off I have zero interest in sex until typically later that evening before bed when I masturbate again. But if I used a term to define my sexuality when I'm horny, it wouldn't apply for the majority of my life because I'm only horny when rising, and before retiring. Yet at he same time defininig myself when not horny is just as inaccurate.

My sexuality then is just 'sexual' or 'not sexual' depending on time of day :)

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Sex-negative is when you have a moral objection to sex, or to most forms of sexuality. If you're sex-repulsed, you're not necessarily morally offended by sex, but you just wouldn't do it yourself because it grosses you out. It's analogous to being a vegetarian because you're an animal rights activist vs. being a vegetarian because you just don't like the taste of meat.

Wouoda said vegan. Having been vegan myself vegetarians eat flesh they're just hypocritical about it. :)

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Wouoda said vegan. Having been vegan myself vegetarians eat flesh they're just hypocritical about it. :)

Actually, I'm pretty sure vegetarians don't eat flesh. The difference lies with things like milk. Vegans eat nothing that has anything to do with animals - no milk, no cheese, no eggs, ect. For vegetarians, no animals were harmed when the milk was gathered or the cheese was made and the eggs were not fertilized, so would never have turned into an animal anyway, so there is no real hypocracy in eating them. If you are a vegetarian that occassionally has a burger, then you are not a vegetarian, or in case someone is offended by that, you are a part-time vegetarian (which in my opinion is not a vegetarian at all - that just means you don't eat meat very often).

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Wouoda said vegan. Having been vegan myself vegetarians eat flesh they're just hypocritical about it. :)

Actually, I'm pretty sure vegetarians don't eat flesh. The difference lies with things like milk. Vegans eat nothing that has anything to do with animals - no milk, no cheese, no eggs, ect. For vegetarians, no animals were harmed when the milk was gathered or the cheese was made and the eggs were not fertilized, so would never have turned into an animal anyway, so there is no real hypocracy in eating them. If you are a vegetarian that occassionally has a burger, then you are not a vegetarian, or in case someone is offended by that, you are a part-time vegetarian (which in my opinion is not a vegetarian at all - that just means you don't eat meat very often).

At the risk of reverting to vegan thinking, they do suffer having their milk extracted. Will leave it at that. :) Plus, more to what I was thinking, they may eat fish or seafood like clams which are very much alive. Or were until harvested.

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Wouoda said vegan. Having been vegan myself vegetarians eat flesh they're just hypocritical about it. :)

Actually, I'm pretty sure vegetarians don't eat flesh. The difference lies with things like milk. Vegans eat nothing that has anything to do with animals - no milk, no cheese, no eggs, ect. For vegetarians, no animals were harmed when the milk was gathered or the cheese was made and the eggs were not fertilized, so would never have turned into an animal anyway, so there is no real hypocracy in eating them. If you are a vegetarian that occassionally has a burger, then you are not a vegetarian, or in case someone is offended by that, you are a part-time vegetarian (which in my opinion is not a vegetarian at all - that just means you don't eat meat very often).

At the risk of reverting to vegan thinking, they do suffer having their milk extracted. Will leave it at that. :) Plus, more to what I was thinking, they may eat fish or seafood like clams which are very much alive. Or were until harvested.

Oh yeah? I didn't know that. Thank you for the information. ^^

Yeah, my family teases me for being a vegetarian because I don't like meat (it's not the taste so much as the texture) and only eat it once a week or so. I get so irritated, because if I eat meat at all (and I do like the meat sauce on spaghetti, as well as stuffed peppers!) then I am not a vegetarian. I wish they would stop labelling me when they have no idea what they are talking about. Needless to say, it was a similar thing when I tried to tell them that I was ase - they told me that it was a phase and I would grow out of it when I finally got a boyfriend. Nevermind I was 20 years old and had already had a couple boyfriends... When I brought this up, my dad told me that they just weren't the right ones and my stepmom told me that maybe I should try girls. Thanks for the support, guys! You've been great...

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Wouoda said vegan. Having been vegan myself vegetarians eat flesh they're just hypocritical about it. :)

Actually, I'm pretty sure vegetarians don't eat flesh. The difference lies with things like milk. Vegans eat nothing that has anything to do with animals - no milk, no cheese, no eggs, ect. For vegetarians, no animals were harmed when the milk was gathered or the cheese was made and the eggs were not fertilized, so would never have turned into an animal anyway, so there is no real hypocracy in eating them. If you are a vegetarian that occassionally has a burger, then you are not a vegetarian, or in case someone is offended by that, you are a part-time vegetarian (which in my opinion is not a vegetarian at all - that just means you don't eat meat very often).
At the risk of reverting to vegan thinking, they do suffer having their milk extracted. Will leave it at that. :) Plus, more to what I was thinking, they may eat fish or seafood like clams which are very much alive. Or were until harvested.

Oh yeah? I didn't know that. Thank you for the information. ^^

Yeah, my family teases me for being a vegetarian because I don't like meat (it's not the taste so much as the texture) and only eat it once a week or so. I get so irritated, because if I eat meat at all (and I do like the meat sauce on spaghetti, as well as stuffed peppers!) then I am not a vegetarian. I wish they would stop labelling me when they have no idea what they are talking about. Needless to say, it was a similar thing when I tried to tell them that I was ase - they told me that it was a phase and I would grow out of it when I finally got a boyfriend. Nevermind I was 20 years old and had already had a couple boyfriends... When I brought this up, my dad told me that they just weren't the right ones and my stepmom told me that maybe I should try girls. Thanks for the support, guys! You've been great...

I was an abused child - my father being a butcher. I thus had no chance of growing up without becomming addicted to flesh. My vegan time was a daily struggle, made all the harder catching flack from my Mom about how much longer shopping took as I read ingrediant labels. :) I WISH I could stick to it, but for the initial major gas issue because of all the fiber I did feel better. And I know it's healthier. As it stands I eat meat much less than I did before the vegan diet. Can't get into tofu though, as with your aversion to meat, tofu's texture at least with the hotdogs is disgusting. :)

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Wouoda said vegan. Having been vegan myself vegetarians eat flesh they're just hypocritical about it. :)

Actually, I'm pretty sure vegetarians don't eat flesh. The difference lies with things like milk. Vegans eat nothing that has anything to do with animals - no milk, no cheese, no eggs, ect. For vegetarians, no animals were harmed when the milk was gathered or the cheese was made and the eggs were not fertilized, so would never have turned into an animal anyway, so there is no real hypocracy in eating them. If you are a vegetarian that occassionally has a burger, then you are not a vegetarian, or in case someone is offended by that, you are a part-time vegetarian (which in my opinion is not a vegetarian at all - that just means you don't eat meat very often).

At the risk of reverting to vegan thinking, they do suffer having their milk extracted. Will leave it at that. :) Plus, more to what I was thinking, they may eat fish or seafood like clams which are very much alive. Or were until harvested.

I think you are referring to pescatarianism as opposed to vegetarianism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescetarianism

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Wouoda said vegan. Having been vegan myself vegetarians eat flesh they're just hypocritical about it. :)

Actually, I'm pretty sure vegetarians don't eat flesh. The difference lies with things like milk. Vegans eat nothing that has anything to do with animals - no milk, no cheese, no eggs, ect. For vegetarians, no animals were harmed when the milk was gathered or the cheese was made and the eggs were not fertilized, so would never have turned into an animal anyway, so there is no real hypocracy in eating them. If you are a vegetarian that occassionally has a burger, then you are not a vegetarian, or in case someone is offended by that, you are a part-time vegetarian (which in my opinion is not a vegetarian at all - that just means you don't eat meat very often).
At the risk of reverting to vegan thinking, they do suffer having their milk extracted. Will leave it at that. :) Plus, more to what I was thinking, they may eat fish or seafood like clams which are very much alive. Or were until harvested.
I think you are referring to pescatarianism as opposed to vegetarianism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescetarianism

(THUD THUD THUD!)

Oh sorry, was just banging my head into the desk to make sure I'm not dreaming. Another label? Oh goody. :)

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scarletlatitude

It's a human quality to want to label and name things. ;)

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WünderBâhr

Pescatarian has been around for awhile. Just like there's a difference between omnivore, carnivore and so on, having a name to explain that fish/seafood on the menu is acceptable vs other animal meats/products seems practical. Unless it affects the way you eat, how someone else explains their diet seems pretty tame for an issue.

Now, if it's academic discussion over ethics and other food-related concerns/debates, I could understand being frustrated. But meh.. it's just a name. Use it or don't, is really the only question there.

Anyway, enough derailing with diet things. :p back to discussion at hand, if the label accurately represents what you feel/experience under sexuality/sex-related subjects, it makes sense that people use what they feel suits them. Are there waaaay more labels than what may be necessary for general or introductory discussion? Possibly. But if it works, it works.

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scarletlatitude

Yes, please remember to stay on topic. The OP was questioning certain words and we have strayed a lot. Thanks. :)

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demiandproud

While I'm curious about the question itself, I'm more personally concerned about how to tell what I am. I enjoy written and drawn porn, but not live videos, and the idea of touching someone sexually or being touched sexually makes me highly uncomfortable unless it's so incredibly hypothetical I know it will never happen. I imagine if those hypotheticals came to be reality, I'd find myself uncomfortable and anxious again.

For the sake of my partner, I'm trying to get a better handle on what I identify as so he knows what he's dealing with (and so I do, too).

To get back to the original question... I'd say you're okay with sexual fantasy in textual form or as still images... but sexual acts, even the idea of doing it yourself, is rather less comfortable? Short answer: it sounds like you're mildly sex-averse.

Long answer: there's several levels: sex in fictional context, sex in fantasy that doesn't contain you, sex in fantasy that does contain you, sex in hypothetical situations that are about you and a theoretical partner, sex in hypothetical situations that contain you and your current partner, discussion about sex, actually acting out sex.

And in the context of you and your partner, there's aesthetic appreciation, thinking they look nice, sensual appreciation, thinking touching them feels nice, sexual appreciation, thinking you wish to have sex at some level, whether kisses, stroking or something more...

Being ace, it's good to figure our what exactly you're comfortable with on each level, because by definition you're not the all-in type package an allosexual person is, you've got a custom-installation type sexuality.

Hope that helps a little!

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