Celebrate ALL Our Freedoms This Holiday!

A happy Fourth of July to all of you! In America, we set aside this date to celebrate our freedoms and those who were brave enough to envision what this country could be under democracy.

But while we celebrate freedom, we should pause to remember that not everybody enjoys the freedoms we do, especially sexual freedom. We still live in a time when women are sexually abused and their abusers face no consequences; when genital mutilation is routinely practiced, a surgery that the World Health Organization calls “a violation of the human rights of girls and women;” when women are stoned to death because they were accused of adultery.

The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) includes sexual freedom in its statements of value and vision, stating that all individuals are entitled to enjoy:

  • Freedom of their sexual thoughts, feelings and fantasies.
  • Freedom to engage in healthy modes of sexual activity, including both self-pleasuring and consensually shared-pleasuring.
  • Freedom to exercise behavioral, emotional, economic, and social responsibility for their bodily functioning, their sexual liaisons, and their chosen mode of loving, working, and playing.
  • AASECT believes that these rights pertain to all peoples whatever their age, family structure, backgrounds, beliefs, and circumstances, including those who are disadvantaged, specially challenged, ill or impaired.

The group also emphasizes sex education, saying “AASECT recognizes that there is an urgent need for comprehensive education about sexual health to be made available to all peoples, and advocates for social, cultural, political, and economic change to expand, and extend the availability of quality education in sexual health.”

We continue to educate others about their sexual health, as well as their sexual freedom. It’s one of our rights as we celebrate the Fourth of July.

Want to read the entire AASECT statement? Visit https://www.aasect.org/vision-sexual-health for more.

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