There is truth, and love is real.

Here’s my take: when you teach adults and children sex-negative messages, sex becomes an undifferentiated mass of “wrong.” If all sex is wrong, then why try to tease out good from bad, pleasurable from painful? When students are taught not to think about sex, they aren’t going to spend any time determining what they do and don’t want, or what they might be interested in. Of course, they’re going to have sex eventually, but when it happens will they be able to communicate at all through the veil of guilt, shame, and self-loathing that sex negativity encourage?

Sex-negative messages don’t keep people from having sex. They keep people from having good sex. They keep people from having pride in their sexuality, from sexual self-awareness. They keep people from asking questions about sex, and communicating with their partners. They discourage experimentation. They blur the lines between consensual sex and rape by framing all sex as an undifferentiated mass of “bad.” They combine victim-blaming with generalized guilt about sex, so that perpetrator and survivor are equally culpable.