For a large number of people, a society in which violence is not suppressed is not conducive to the most basic viable human concerns: a comfortable death, and before that, optimal sex.
In the economics of optimal sex and a comfortable death, a high level of societal violence is a significant cost factor. Even before strategies can be pursued to optimize sex, strategies are needed to avoid violent disturbance. Strategies to avoid violent disturbance cost time and economic resources.
The ultimate need a human naturally seeks to satisfy is sexual. However, to make it sensibly possible, a range of logistical needs must be met first. These logistical needs are both economic and social. They range from nutrition, an economic need, to safety, which is a social need. Humans need allies and a society to meet their need for protection from adverse forces.
In very poor societies, many individuals are so preoccupied with logistical economic needs that they only occasionally progress to sexual needs, even though the fulfillment of sexual needs is more sense-giving.
Likewise, in societies with a high level of inherent violence, people are so concerned with the logistical need of escaping danger that they, too, only occasionally progress to sexual needs.
Emotional needs are an overlap zone of social needs and sexual needs. On the one hand, the fulfillment of the emotional need for love optimizes the sense-giving fulfillment of sexual needs. On the other hand, the concern with the emotional need for love correlates with the social, logistical need of mutual support for safety or caregiving in the case of health problems.
The final stage is always optimized sex; all other needs are merely logistical, indeed.
Widespread violence has a grave impact on sexual economics. Because logistical needs are harder to manage, people choose lifestyles of reduced sexual activity, such as lasting monogamous relationships.
Violent societies are especially detrimental to women. Women can only optimize their sexual experiences if they do not feel threatened.
Critics argue that certain sex-negative campaigners have historically prioritized restricting sexual behavior over other public health or safety measures, as both the threat of disease and the threat of violence can be used to shape human behavior in a manner that aligns with an agenda promoting lifelong heterosexual monogamy.
While sexual reactionaries may have an intrinsic interest in maintaining a high level of societal control, they present themselves as anti-violence when it fits a sex-negative agenda.
The statutes regarding minors are an example. Through these laws, sexual conduct involving individuals below the legal age of consent is classified as a crime, regardless of whether physical force is used, because the law holds that minors lack the legal capacity to consent.
The great emphasis sex-negative feminists place on verbal sexual harassment is another indicator. They make a major issue out of the alleged violence contained in statements like, “Looking at you gives me an erection.” The alleged psychological trauma of having to hear such remarks is often equated to physical trauma.
Another invented form of “violence,” according to these critics, is exposure to sexually explicit material, for example, on the Internet. Yet, the same people who claim that seeing images of two adults engaging in consensual intimacy is a form of violence often have no problem with Hollywood productions in which throats are cut, human bodies are disemboweled, or people are sadistically assaulted with electric drills, surgical equipment, or live wires.
Yes, there is such a thing as psychological violence. US law enforcement and intelligence agencies have faced severe criticism for using psychological pressure, sometimes euphemistically termed “enhanced interrogation,” which international bodies have classified as torture.
Critics argue that sex-negative campaigners have long used the concept of psychological violence in an inflationary manner in the prosecution of male sexual behavior.
Furthermore, critics of the legal system point out that it can create perverse incentives, where minors involved in the sex trade might be coached to emphasize "terrible psychological trauma" in court to secure financial damages, regardless of the actual severity of the incident.
In the legal arena, sex-negative activism is often viewed by its critics as being all about creating cases.
And about blurring terms.