Sex and culture: how the world shapes what turns you on

Biology gives you the capacity to get turned on. Culture grabs the steering wheel. It shapes who you're told to want, which bodies count as hot, which acts are normal, and how much you're allowed to talk about any of it. Understanding sex and culture is really about understanding why you feel the way you feel in bed.

Most of this happens quietly. You soak it up from family, religion, school, friends, films, porn and social media. By adulthood, plenty of your feelings about sex seem natural when they were actually taught to you, one raised eyebrow at a time.

Even attraction is shaped this way. Beauty ideals for weight, body hair, skin, height and age have swung wildly across centuries and continents. What one era found irresistible, another found odd. There's no single universal sexy body, and that's good news for yours.

Culture even shapes what counts as sex. For some people only penetration counts; for others, oral sex, grinding, mutual masturbation or a long make-out session absolutely do. Those definitions affect how people judge their own experience, what they call losing their virginity and whether they feel their sex life is good enough. Widening the definition usually means more pleasure and less pressure.

Plenty of cultures have treated sex as close to holy. Ancient Mesopotamian and Greek religions honoured goddesses of love, and fertility was celebrated in festivals, art and temple life. Desire was something to honour, not hide.

In India, the Kama Sutra presented pleasure, or kama, as one of the legitimate aims of a good life, alongside duty and prosperity. It's famous as a positions manual, but much of it is about flirting, courtship, etiquette and keeping a lover happy.

Chinese Taoist writings described sex as a way to balance energy and support long life. In Edo-period Japan, erotic woodblock prints called shunga were widely enjoyed, often playful and wonderfully frank. Across many traditional societies, sex was woven into ceremony, community and the seasons rather than shut away behind closed doors.

Tantra gets thrown around in Western bedrooms as code for long, slow, mind-blowing sex. The original tantric traditions of India and Tibet were complex religious and philosophical systems, and sex played only a small part in most of them.

What many people now call tantric sex is largely a modern Western remix. It borrows ideas like slowing down, breathing together, staying present and focusing on sensation instead of racing to come. It's a reinterpretation, not an ancient secret handed down unchanged.

That doesn't mean it isn't hot. Try it tonight: sit facing each other, sync your breathing, hold eye contact for a few minutes, then take turns touching each other with no goal at all. Take orgasm off the agenda for one evening and watch how turned on you both get when nobody's in a hurry.

Other traditions viewed sex with far more suspicion. In parts of medieval Christian Europe, sex was often acceptable mainly inside marriage and for making babies, while pleasure for its own sake was linked with sin.

The Victorians are famous for public modesty, strict rules for women and doctors who panicked about masturbation. Meanwhile there was a busy private trade in erotica and plenty of hypocrisy about who was allowed to do what.

Many people still carry echoes of this sexual shame, even with no religion at all. Guilt after masturbating, embarrassment about being horny, or freezing up when you want to ask for something specific often has roots centuries deep. And shame has never been shared out fairly. Women, queer people, disabled people and minority communities have often faced harsher judgement for the very same desires.

Shame also has a sneaky physical effect. When you feel guilty or anxious during sex, your body can stay on alert, which makes it harder to get wet, stay hard or reach orgasm. That's why so many people find their sex lives improve once the shame starts to lift, without changing anything else.

The 20th century brought the sexual revolution, in waves. Kinsey's surveys in the 1940s and 50s showed people's real sex lives were far more varied than public morality admitted. Masters and Johnson then studied arousal and orgasm directly, helping make sex a respectable subject for medicine.

The contraceptive pill arrived in the early 1960s and gave many women more control over pregnancy, and with it more freedom to have sex on their own terms. Feminist movements pushed for bodily autonomy and pleasure, not just duty. In England and Wales, sex between men was partly decriminalised in 1967.

The HIV crisis of the 1980s brought fear and stigma, but also frank safer-sex education. Every step forward triggered backlash too, and arguments over contraception, abortion, sex education and LGBTQ+ rights continue today. Sexual culture doesn't march in a straight line towards openness; it swings back and forth with politics and religion.

The internet changed sex and culture all over again. You can now find information, community and partners in ways your grandparents couldn't imagine. For queer, kinky, asexual and questioning people, online spaces have often been a genuine lifeline.

There's a flip side. Porn is everywhere, and it can quietly set expectations about bodies, stamina, how wet or hard people get and what sex should look like. Dating apps make meeting people easier but can also feel transactional and exhausting.

• Easier access to sex education and support
• More visibility for different identities and relationships
• Porn-driven expectations that don't match real life
• Body image pressure from filtered images
• New conversations about consent and privacy

The trick is to treat porn as entertainment, not education. Real bodies come in every shape, most women need clit stimulation to come, erections come and go, and great sex is often messy, giggly and full of pauses. When the online version of sex and culture starts making you feel inadequate, close the tab and go back to what actually feels good for you and your partner.

One of the strongest ways sex and culture interact is through gender scripts, the unwritten rules about how men and women are supposed to behave. Many cultures have taught that men should always be up for it and women should be the gatekeepers, wanted but not wanting.

Those scripts hurt everyone. Men can feel broken if they're not horny on demand or can't get hard, and they may struggle to admit wanting tenderness. Women can feel slutty for having a high sex drive, or guilty for asking for what makes them come. Non-binary and trans people often find no script that fits them at all.

Try spotting the script next time you hesitate in bed. Would you feel the same about asking to be pinned down, or asking to go slower, if your gender were different? Once you notice the rule, you can choose to ignore it. Plenty of couples find their sex life gets hotter when either partner can take the lead.

Attitudes still vary hugely between countries, faiths, families and generations. Ideas about virginity, marriage, same-sex relationships, gender roles and sex education can differ even between two people raised in the same city.

Countries that offer comprehensive, honest sex education, such as the Netherlands, are often held up as examples of how open conversation tends to go with good sexual health outcomes for young people. Silence rarely protects anyone.

If you're with someone from a different background, be curious rather than judgemental. In some families affection is loud and physical, in others quiet and private. Your partner may not be cold; they may simply never have learned to talk about sex out loud. Gently swapping stories about what you each grew up with can bring you much closer.

Language matters here too. Some people grew up with no words for their genitals beyond childish nicknames, while others swore freely. Agreeing on words you both like, whether that's clit and penis or something sillier, can make talking dirty, or simply asking for what you want, feel far less awkward.

Being sex positive doesn't mean wanting loads of sex or saying yes to everything. It means seeing consensual sex as a healthy, normal part of life and respecting other people's choices, including the choice to have little or no sex at all.

A sex positive attitude puts consent, honesty, pleasure and safety at the centre. It treats questions with curiosity rather than disgust, and it accepts that kinks, fantasies, orientations and libidos vary enormously between perfectly healthy adults.

It also doesn't mean throwing away your values. Plenty of people keep their faith, traditions or boundaries and still enjoy a happy, guilt-free sex life. The goal is choice, not pressure in a new direction.

Sex and culture don't have to be at war. Many faith communities and traditional cultures now have voices talking openly about pleasure within their own values, and finding those voices can make a big difference if you've felt torn between your background and your body.

Spotting that a feeling was taught to you is the first big step. Once you see a rule as cultural rather than fixed, you get to decide whether it still fits who you are and how you want to have sex.

• Notice where a flash of guilt or disgust comes from
• Read or listen to sex positive, evidence-based sources
• Talk honestly with a partner or trusted friend
• Be patient, because old messages take time to fade
• See a sex therapist if shame feels heavy

Then make it practical. Tonight, ask your partner what messages each of you heard about sex growing up, and which you'd like to ditch. Then tell them one thing you'd love to try, however small. Sex and culture may have written your first script, but you're allowed to rewrite it, as long as it's consensual, respectful, safe and genuinely enjoyable for everyone involved.