It’s Time to Stop Slut-Shaming Yourself for Good

Become one with your feelings about sex and the reasons you think your perma-shame exists. “Some women come from families or communities where any sexual exploration or feeling is punished,” says Queen. “These tend to be cultures where ideas about sexuality and gender roles are rigid.” When you grow up in an uber-strict environment where feeling shame is par for the course, it’s pretty much a given that this feeling will follow you (into the bedroom) as an adult.

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Even if your parents weren’t super strict or religious, they may have had an underlying discomfort with sex that rubbed off on you, says clinical sexologist Dawn Michael, Ph.D. Maybe it was a topic they kept hush-hush so you felt you had to hide your sexual curiosity, or their unspoken negativity toward sex pressured you into a similar line of thinking.

“Reframing our idea of sex is important for moving towards having a healthy sex life,” says Michael. For every belief that’s making your sex life more difficult, create a new belief that you’d like to internalize instead. Any time your old beliefs start interrupting sexy time (“good girls don’t get horny”), repeat the new mantra you want to replace it with (“if I wasn’t supposed to get turned on, then I wouldn’t have been given a clitoris”). Your sexual urges aren’t dirty: They’re human.