Dan Savage talks about kink often being the adult version of playing Cops & Robbers. He goes so far as to say we are often coping with our fears in a safe way. If you’re afraid of authority, you might incorporate police uniforms in your kink play.
I can’t say that the background notion of sex being hidden, forbidden, or shameful adds any sort of spice to my sex life.
Sex under certain circumstances with limitations makes things interesting – sex through a hole in a sheet, or other barrier. Sex in a semi-public place with the thrill of being caught. Things like that. But embarassment or challenge isn’t the same as “dirty”
I would shy away from “dirty” because of the connotations and lean more into “taboo”. Things you’re not supposed to do, things you’re not supposed to like. Casting off those constraints feels absolutely liberating and self-validating just on one’s own individual terms. If you’re doing it with someone else, then you’re creating a shared space between you where anything goes, which is incredibly intimate, even if what you’re doing is mostly vanilla.
For two people (or I guess also more than two people) to lower their defenses and share their entire selves without fear or shame or hesitation, that’s an incredibly powerful thing. Compelling, intoxicating, comforting. So you can see why some feel compelled to diminish it as “dirty”.
I’m big on romance, myself, but I think it can vary depending on one’s mood.
Makes sense. I actually do consider some kink romantic, such as the enormous amount of trust required for BDSM.
I don’t think I ever felt ashamed of sex. But I did feel not in control of what was happening, for decades. And I did feel ashamed of how that impacted my relationship. It’s not that way any more. I found healing.
I wrote a romance novel about this (trauma + BDSM relationship) but I was stuck in the manuscript for so many years because I was still stuck in trauma myself, and then once I found healing I was like, “Oh. I know exactly how to write this book now. I understand what this story is about.” I finished it pretty quickly and I don’t think I need to write that story again.
But I learned from that experience sometimes you just have to lean into your natural inclinations, whether that involves leveraging shame or whatever else. I mean shame is part of the kink for a lot of people. Rather than trying to reprogram ourselves maybe we just should run with it. I don’t think we can reprogram ourselves.
I voted “depends,” because sometimes it is, and sometimes it is not. And, I’m not sure what is meant by “dirty.”
In the OP “dirty” seems to be defined as pretty much any sex - maybe necessary, but not something to be enjoyed. Since I’ve never thought that, and was not brought up that way, that implies sex is better when you aren’t ashamed of doing it. Well, maybe. I did grow up in the '50s where sex was hidden.
But is a kink dirty? Not when you both agree on it. Lots of “normal” stuff today might have been kinky100 years ago. (A glimpse of stocking.)
There are plenty of people out there doing stuff we’re not interested in, but I don’t call it dirty and I am not offended they do it. And vice versa, I’m sure. Still, our society is not very sane about sex. I invented an alien world where they were not hung up, and where sex ed in schools was like drivers ed - they get to practice.
But now, God knows, anything goes
I worked & was friends with a young, married, Catholic guy. They were having problems conceiving; off to the doctor & the obvious tests to see which one (or both) of them might be the issue. On his side that meant a sample was necessary. He told me he went to confession afterwards. Ummm, no, in my mind he was doing that for medical reasons, not for pleasure so there would be nothing to confess even if one was the confessing type.
He was not only doing it for medical reasons, but in an attempt to conceive.
Out of this same paranoia is borne the notion that masturbation is infidelity. I’ve seen more than one case of women acting like their man has broken his marriage vows every time he watches porn.
Like, there’s such a thing as too much porn, and if you’re doing it in a way that distances yourself from your partner, maybe take a look at that. Okay? But otherwise people need to chill out.
I remember when I was a tween reading some Christian book about sex (full of misinformation, which I happily propagated in a presentation about abstinence in the 9th grade - yes, I was wildly popular in high school) but anyway even the explicitly Christian book said on the subject of masturbation “don’t do it too much” which is really not unreasonable. Though “too much” is obviously subjective. I assume that advice was for the boys, I don’t think it ever crossed their minds that girls did it too.
A professor I knew (who taught a very popular course on literature and sexuality) once mentioned a conservative Christian friend of his who said masturbation was an inherently homosexual act because “you have a man’s penis in your hand.” To which the prof replied “well, you have a man’s tongue in your mouth…”
When I was growing up, Mormonism was definitely going all out on teaching the evils of sexuality.
The prophet that I grew up with wrote a book in which he linked masturbation to homosexuality. First, you touch yourself, then you touch another guy, and then you’ve caught the gay.
First, you touch yourself, then you touch another guy, and then you’ve caught the gay.
Even now, the thought is that any guy that watches porn, even occasionally, addicted to porn.
The girls would have lessons in church in which they would be given some gum, and told to chew it. And this is what happened after they had sex before marriage. They became chewed gum.
Same! 
Oh, what a tangled ethos we weave
When first we practice to conceive.
I’ve heard that before. Ghastly.
Looking at the OP again:
As the Mormon teachings cause actual shame, then I can’t comment on the premise.
I suppose if something is seen as forbidden but without the baggage it could add to the excitement, but I had to overcome the shame by rejecting the notion that sex is dirty.
Is sex better when it’s dirty? No.