What is the point of taking out anything just because it can be taken out? As long as it gives pleasure to the reader, let it stay.
The point of taking out a scene, in one viewpoint, is that every scene must develop character, setting, or plot - the three basic ingredients of every story.
It's a very utilitarian view. Putting in stuff just because it gives pleasure is BAD. Many will label a sex scene - OR ANY SCENE - that has no other purpose than pleasure as "gratuitous" - "being without apparent reason, cause, or justification" according to dictionaries.
That's fine for the taker-outers. Every artist must decide what standards they choose for creating their art. But I see the utilitarian view as almost Puritanical. A judgment that sex for pleasure's sake is somehow bad. As is a fight scene just because our readers will enjoy it, enjoy the grim art of the violence, or enjoy the triumph over an enemy. As is a description of a lyrically lovely forest, or dank back alley full of shadows and menace.
Another view is that just-for-fun scenes take away from the flow of the story from beginning to end. In this view there's only so much text available to tell a story, and it's wasteful to spend that text on gratuitous sex or violence or touristy lingering on setting. Including "gratuitous" scenes risks alienating the readers who want a quick read that sweeps them toward a resolution.
I take another view, developed over all-too-many decades of reading many, many books which were financially and critically successful - and included gratuitous scenes which I could not for the life of me see as serving any purpose but fun. There's nothing wrong with such scenes. In fact, they may be a big part of making the books successful.
Whether you lean toward the utilitarian or the hedonist view you may want to follow a practice a famous author once suggested. In the first draft put any damned thing you want, every inspiration that occurs to you, every incidental scrap that comes to mind, whether you see a use for it or not. Then do a rewrite in which you evaluate each scene for whether it should be changed or deleted.
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