Balancing Sex Positivity and Sexual Addiction

It isn’t surprising that in the sometimes troubling quest to understand sexual addiction, there exists a radical polemic, much as there exists in any other controversial area of our culture—two sides, split and warring, convinced the other is wrong, wrong, wrong. For those who believe absolutely in sexual addiction and worry about its consequences—the devastation to lives, the damage done to individuals—and the methods currently used and being newly created in order to treat it, a lack of restraint around sexual ideas or behaviors can seem not only daunting and irresponsible, but sometimes just plain immoral.

For those who hang out in the sex positive camp (a belief system which effectively states that anything consenting adults choose to do sexually is not only OK, but good), believers in sexual addiction can appear anywhere along a spectrum between simply deluded to downright suppressive. Liberal-leaning sex positive activists have been known to suggest that sex addiction as a potential diagnosis was invented purely by the psycho-medical establishment in order to shame peoples’ sexual desires and to control their personal choices. In other words, concepts such as “sex addiction” are viewed by some in this group as representative of a “sex-negative culture,” repressive and suppressive and just plain old unhealthy.