Sexual Rights – How to Use Your Sexual Rights #1-#6 For Sexual Health & to Enhance Your Sexuality!

DECLARATION OF SEXUAL RIGHTS: Rights #1 – #6 —

The Declaration of Sexual Rights was adopted in the summer 1999 at the 14th World Congress of Sexology. This declaration stated the following about sexuality:

“Sexuality is an integral part of the personality of every human being. Its full development depends upon the satisfaction of basic human needs such as the desire for contact, intimacy, emotional expression, pleasure, tenderness and love. Since health is a fundamental human right, so must sexual health be a basic human right. In order to assure that human beings and societies develop healthy sexuality, the following sexual rights must be recognized, promoted, respected and defended by all societies through all means.”

In other words, the 14th World Congress of Sexology declared that Sexual Health is a Basic Human Right. The participants of the Congress adopted eleven (11) basic Sexual Rights to assure that Healthy Sexuality is developed by human beings and societies. Sexual Rights #1 – #6 adopted by the 14th World Congress of Sexology are presented below:

1. The right to sexual freedom: Sexual freedom encompasses the possibility for individuals to express their full potential. includes the right to each adult person to express himself/herself freely and fully, in the ways that best fit for him/her to be whole and complete sexually. This right to sexual freedom excludes and makes unacceptable ALL forms of sexual coercion, exploitation and abuse.

2. The right to sexual autonomy, sexual integrity and the safety of the sexual body: This right allows each person to make autonomous decisions about his/her own sexual life. These decisions are based on that person’s personal and social ethics. This autonomy is in accord with the sexual body being healthy and safe.

3. The right to sexual privacy: This statement provides each person the right to their own privacy sexually. Hence, it infers that one person’s privacy does not intrude on the sexual rights of others to privacy.

4. The right to sexual equity: This right refers to freedom from all forms of discrimination. Such nondiscrimination extends — but is not limited — to sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, race, social class, religion or physical and emotional disability.

5. The right to sexual pleasure: This sexual pleasure serves as a source of physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual well being.

6. The right to emotional sexual expression: This Right is more than erotic pleasure of sexual acts. It includes the fact that individuals have a right to express their sexuality through communication, touch, emotional expression and love.

Honoring and expressing your own sexual rights is your gift to yourself. Doing so, supports you in building your own healthy sexual self!

I encourage you to USE these rights over and over as solid expressions of your own healthy sexuality! I further invite you to find new ways to extend these rights in your life, so as to intensify the healthy elements that the pleasure and satisfaction of loving sexuality add to your life and that of your partner.