So, why the PSA about Valerie Solanas? It’s not just a bunch of weird prudes extending their prudishness to other people because they somehow missed the memo that other people wanted sex. Why is it appropriate to talk about Valerie Solanas’ crimes against sex positivity (and also Andy Warhol) without a single mention of the crimes committed against Valerie Solanas? Sex-critical feminism comes up because people have harmful experiences with sex. Modern sex-critical feminism, including sex-critical feminism that seeks to coexist with sex-positive feminism, still exists because people have harmful experiences with sex.

These ideas weren’t just popular (for a given value of popularity) with some wlw because they weren’t that sexual, is what I’m saying.

The second wave had a lot to do with that – a direct, harsh retaliation to the shittiness of life under patriarchy. It’s not just the bad, unsexy days of yore. If we’re going to talk about the second wave, let’s talk about the second wave! It was a backlash to women being sexualized by men. A lot of third-wave feminism is the backlash to the backlash – that resisting sexualization doesn’t need to mean resisting sexuality – and sex-positivity is absolutely valuable and important and good! But when we only discuss the second wave as something being reacted to, rather than itself a reaction, we lose historical context and we shift the blame somewhere it doesn’t belong.

Anyway. These people aren’t brought up because people could potentially agree with them. They’re brought up because they’re the weird views of the past that are Obviously Wrong, and linking people who personally don’t want to have more sex with people who thought having sex at all was bad for everyone (without addressing why they thought having sex at all was bad for everyone) is… okay, for some reason? Can we at least try to consider that compulsory sexuality exists and is bad?

Alice, I love a lot of the points that you raise here (especially how the amount of sex in man/woman couples often stems from ingrained sexism in the relationship), including this:

“The question shouldn’t be “why aren’t you having enough sex?”. It should be “how much sex do you want to be having?” or Etkili baДџlantД± “how much sex do you think you’d want to be having if nobody judged you for it or expected anything of you either way?””

But it isn’t something that can be understood in a soundbite or reduced to sex-negativity without context

Which are very true. But I’d also add that we should talk about the quality as well as the quantity of sex: what kind of sex you want to have, what makes it pleasurable, how much your satisfaction is tied to your own body experiences and how much to your partner’s, etc etc etc.

Wow the libido types are wonderful and are inclusive of fetishists, asexual people, people who have anxiety or trauma or depression or who are tops or bottoms or are cool with everything. I think I switch around, especially at different times of the month.

My big takeaway is that communication is 100% the most important part of both people enjoying sexytimes. I once had a weekend fling with a girl, and it was clearly just a hookup but we talked for 7 hours before we actually hooked up; it was perfect. That’s what I need.

When my wife and I first got together we had sex every day for over a month… then it dropped to a couple times a week… and now, 2 years on, we’re down to a couple times a month.