Naughty

Naughty? or Nice? These are value judgments based on a set of cultural morals. Each culture has very different morals. For example sex and public nudity are pretty widely accepted in the German culture whereas in the US’s deep south there are few things that are less acceptable. These rules of acceptability are the morals which are programmed into the children of each culture.

As adults, do we have to live with these rules? Yes and no. As they are programmed in at a very early age, they are pretty strong ‘habits’. However, once a person realizes that they exist, they can choose to accept them or not. To live by them or not, is part of being an adult and making your own decisions about how you are going to live your life. What is acceptable to you and what is not. We can set our own rules for what we want in our lives. We can decide for ourselves if sex is naughty or nice.

One of the biggest challenges for people with alternative sexual and gender identities is cultural acceptance. This is especially prevalent in those born in the US before 1980. This lead to an entire class of people who were not accepted by their culture and therefore had real issues with self acceptance. The amount of self hate, and even suicides, that situation caused was shocking.

Thankfully, most worked their way through to a level of self acceptance. For some, even a level of self love. Having said that, there many who still have significant issues in this area. Surprisingly, Those born before 1975 are more prone these issues.

Today our culture and legal system have changed so much that the issue of one’s sexual and gender identity is not a major obstacle to most young people’s development. Even with the modern trend towards tolerance, there are still places in the US in which sex of any kind is bad, regardless of sexual and gender identity.

There is a lot of discussion today about the concept of permission or Consent in regards to sex. This concept is to give your partner(s) verbal permission to have sex before a session begins. For those who have been raised in particularly oppressive cultural environments (or had bad early sexual experiences), we need to take this concept one step further: You need to give yourself permission to enjoy having sex.

How you can reprogram yourself