Sexuality foundations glossary

Explore each term in this topic, then open its full explanation for context, sources and related reading.

Arousal
A psychological and/or physiological response associated with sexual attention, meaning or stimulation. Subjective excitement and genital or other bodily responses may align imperfectly, and neither proves desire, pleasure or consent.
Arousal non-concordance
A difference between a person's reported experience of arousal and genital or other bodily responses. A bodily response cannot establish desire, enjoyment, identity or consent.
Bodily autonomy
The principle that a person should direct decisions about their own body, health and sexuality, within the law and with equal respect for every other person's rights and autonomy.
Internalised stigma
A process in which negative social messages about an identity, body, health status, relationship or interest are absorbed and directed towards oneself.
Sex
A term used technically for biological characteristics and, in everyday language, for sexual activity. Because those meanings are different, careful education states which one is intended and does not treat bodies as two perfectly uniform sets.
Sexual agency
A person's capacity and practical freedom to make and act on informed choices about sexuality—including yes, no, not now, asking for change, seeking pleasure or choosing not to participate.
Sexual desire and libido
Interest, motivation or wanting related to sexual experience. Desire varies across people, relationships and time and may be influenced by meaning, opportunity, health, stress, medication, hormones, safety and relationship context.
Sexual fantasy
Imagined sexual or erotic material. A fantasy can be curious, symbolic, intrusive or arousing without being a wish, plan, identity, preference or consent to enact it.
Sexual pleasure
Positive physical, emotional, cognitive or relational experiences associated with sexuality. Pleasure is individual, contextual and compatible with many forms of intimacy—or with choosing not to participate.
Sexual rights
The application of recognised human rights to sexuality and sexual health, including equality, privacy, health, information, education and freedom from coercion, discrimination and violence.
Sexual script
A learned set of expectations about how sexuality, intimacy or relationships are supposed to unfold. Scripts can operate culturally, between people and within a person's own imagination, and they can be questioned or revised.
Sexual shame
Painful self-judgement in which a person experiences their sexuality, body, desires, history or identity as evidence that they are bad, defective or unworthy.
Sexual wellbeing
A person's physical, emotional, mental and social wellbeing in relation to sexuality, including autonomy, safety, comfort, pleasure, identity, relationships and access to appropriate information and care.
Sexuality
A broad aspect of human life encompassing sex, bodies, gender, orientation, attraction, pleasure, intimacy, fantasy, values, behaviour, relationships and reproduction. A person may experience or express some of these dimensions and not others.
Spontaneous and responsive desire
Descriptive ideas distinguishing desire that appears before sexual engagement from desire that develops after a welcome context, closeness or stimulation begins. People may experience either, both or neither.