Sex Neutral

Many if not most people who oppose laws against private, consensual, sexual behavior describe themselves as “sex-positive”; I am not among them.  You may find this surprising, given that I had an essentially-uncountable number of sex partners even before I started making my living from sex more than 20 years ago.  But it isn’t necessary to imagine sex as a positive good in order to oppose its violent suppression by “authorities”, nor to oppose those who consider it an evil to be controlled, nor to make a living from it; in fact, I think the naive and idealistic idea of sex as an actual good is just as harmful, and causes nearly as much societal ill, as the primitive and warped notion that it’s an active evil.  Manichean dualities don’t really exist outside of fantasy and religious literature and the guts of computers; in the real world, most natural behaviors are neither good nor evil in and of themselves, and only become so when used to create weal or woe.  Lighting a fire is a morally neutral act; it becomes good if done to cook food or protect people from the cold, and evil when it’s done to destroy another person’s property (or even one’s own, if followed by insurance fraud).  Similarly, sex is a morally neutral act which becomes good when used to create good feelings, bond people, or make money; it becomes evil when it’s inflicted on a non-consenting partner or used to lure someone to their doom.  This should be obvious, but some people are so locked into black and white thinking that they prefer to cling to the ludicrous notion that rape isn’t sex (despite involving exactly the same actions) than admit that “good” sex can be used to harm someone.  Similarly, is it really so much of a stretch from “sex is an actual good” to “sex is sacred”?  And yet the latter statement has often been used to stigmatize, demonize and even criminalize casual sex, ethical non-monogamy, sex work, kink, homosexuality and a number of other consensual behaviors, and I don’t just mean by traditional religions; feminists and even soi-disant sex positive folk use very similar sentiments to argue that while amateur sex is good, sex work is bad because it contaminates the magical rainbow rays emanating from “mutual” sex.   Similar arguments are used to argue for the repugnant and deeply-flawed concept of “enthusiastic consent“, and to pretend that sexual crimes are so uniquely destructive that nobody can ever recover from them, and that those convicted of them should be ostracized from society forever.  Moral judgments smeared upon morally-neutral acts help nobody; all they do is set up an arbitrary standard to which self-appointed “authorities” feel justified in comparing other people’s consensual sex, and inflicting penalties upon those they find wanting.