Rethinking Sexual Shame: Why We Need More Honest Conversations About Intimacy
The Forbidden Fruit We're Still Not Allowed to Discuss
Sex. Sexuality. Naked bodies. Eroticism. These words still make many of us uncomfortable, and that discomfort reveals something profound about how we've been conditioned to view one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence.
For generations, sexuality has occupied a strange space in our cultural consciousness—simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, essential yet forbidden, natural yet shameful. It's the thing we must do to create life, yet the thing we're taught never to discuss openly.
Growing up in a religious household, I learned early that sexuality existed in a category all its own: something dangerous, something dirty, something reserved only for marriage and even then, shrouded in secrecy. The message was clear—don't do it, don't think about it, don't watch it, don't read about it, don't even sing about it.
But here's what that approach actually created: curiosity fueled by shame.
I remember my mother fast-forwarding through intimate scenes in movies, as if shielding our eyes would somehow make us unaware of what was happening. That very act of hiding, of treating sexuality as forbidden knowledge, made it infinitely more fascinating. I found myself home alone, rewinding VHS tapes to those censored moments, squinting through scrambled premium cable channels, wandering to certain sections of bookstores—all in search of understanding something that felt simultaneously wrong and deeply important.
The forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter precisely because it's forbidden.
I've come to believe we've approached this entirely wrong. What if, instead of shame and secrecy, we introduced sexuality as simply another dimension of human experience?
Imagine if parents spoke to their children—at age-appropriate stages—about intimacy with the same matter-of-fact tone they use to discuss other aspects of life: