Human sexuality

Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually.

Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality.

This involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors.

Eroticism (from the Greek ἔρως, eros—"desire") is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love.

Some cultures have been described as sexually repressive.

Sexual repression is a state in which a person is prevented from expressing their own sexuality.

Sociocultural aspects of sexuality include historical developments and religious beliefs.

Each major religion has developed a moral code covering issues of sexuality, morality, ethics etc. These moral codes seek to regulate the situations that can give rise to sexual interest and to influence people's sexual activities and practices.

This involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors.

Most people partake in physical intimacy, which is a natural part of interpersonal relationships and human sexuality, and research has shown it has health benefits.

The clitoris is developed from the same embryonic tissue as the penis; it or its glans alone consists of as many (or more in some cases) nerve endings as the human penis or glans penis, making it extremely sensitive to touch.

The clitoris is the human female's most sensitive erogenous zone and generally the primary anatomical source of human female sexual pleasure.

Other aspects of human sexuality, such as sexual satisfaction, incidence of oral sex, and attitudes toward homosexuality and masturbation, show little to no observed difference between males and females.

The sexual stimulation of one's own genitals has been interpreted variously by different religions, the subject of legislation, social controversy, activism, as well as intellectual study in sexology.

The breasts are the subcutaneous tissues on the front thorax of the female body.

A number of cultures associate breasts with sexuality and tend to regard bare breasts in public as immodest or indecent.

Someone's sexual orientation is their pattern of sexual interest in the opposite or same sex.

In 2012, the Pan American Health Organization (the North and South American branch of the World Health Organization) released a statement cautioning against services that purport to "cure" people with non-heterosexual sexual orientations as they lack medical justification and represent a serious threat to the health and well-being of affected people, and noted that the global scientific and professional consensus is that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation of human sexuality and cannot be regarded as a pathological condition.

In the resolution phase, the male is now in an unaroused state consisting of a refactory (rest) period before the cycle can begin.

In human sexuality, the refractory period is usually the recovery phase after orgasm during which it is physiologically impossible for a man to have additional orgasms.

This model was created by William Masters and Virginia Johnson.

Virginia E. Johnson, born Mary Virginia Eshelman (February 11, 1925 – July 24, 2013), was an American sexologist, best known as a member of the Masters and Johnson sexuality research team.

Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex, same sex, or both sexes.

Sexual attractiveness or sex appeal is an individual's ability to attract the sexual or erotic interests of other people, and is a factor in sexual selection or mate choice.

Alfred Kinsey also examined child sexuality in his Kinsey Reports.

Kinsey's research on human sexuality, foundational to the field of sexology, provoked controversy in the 1940s and 1950s.

Although Islamic sexuality is restrained via Islamic sexual jurisprudence, it emphasizes sexual pleasure within marriage.

Islamic sexual jurisprudence is a part of Islamic family jurisprudence that concerns the Islamic laws of sexuality in Islam, as largely predicated on the Qur'an, the sayings of Muhammad (hadith) and the rulings of religious leaders' (fatwa) confining sexual activity to marital relationships between men and women.

Alfred Kinsey also examined child sexuality in his Kinsey Reports.

The findings caused shock and outrage, both because they challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and because they discussed subjects that had previously been taboo.

Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud adopted more accepting stances toward homosexuality; Ellis said homosexuality was inborn and therefore not immoral, not a disease, and that many homosexuals made significant contributions to society.

Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939), was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality.

This concept is a modern one, and remains controversial since it deals, directly and indirectly, with issues such as contraception, LGBT rights, abortion, sex education, freedom to choose a partner, freedom to decide whether to be sexually active or not, right to bodily integrity, freedom to decide whether or not, and when, to have children.

Sex education is the instruction of issues relating to human sexuality, including emotional relations and responsibilities, human sexual anatomy, sexual activity, sexual reproduction, age of consent, reproductive health, reproductive rights, safe sex, birth control and sexual abstinence.

With the domestication of animals, new opportunities for bestiality arose.

Zoophilia has been partly discussed by several sciences: Psychology (the study of the human mind), sexology (a relatively new discipline primarily studying human sexuality), ethology (the study of animal behavior), and anthrozoology (the study of human-animal interactions and bonds).

The vagina is normally collapsed, but during sexual arousal it opens, lengthens, and produces lubrication to allow the insertion of the penis.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson conducted many important studies into human sexuality.

In America, there are 155 native tribes that are recorded to have embraced two-spirit people within their tribes, but the total number of tribes could be greater than what is documented.

Some who enthusiastically took up the term and used it in the media said that this new, English-language term carried on the full meaning and implications of the Indigenous-language terms used in-community for the specific traditional, ceremonial roles that the anthropologists had referred to - emphasizing the role of the Elders in recognizing a two-spirit person, stressing that "Two Spirit" is not interchangeable with "LGBT Native American" or "Gay Indian"; and that the title differs from most western, mainstream definitions of sexuality and gender identity in that it is not a modern, self-chosen term of personal sexual or gender "identity", but is a sacred, spiritual and ceremonial role that is recognized and confirmed by the Elders of the Two Spirit's ceremonial community.

Gender identity is a person's sense of their own gender, whether male, female, or non-binary.

Sometimes Gender studies is offered together with Study of Sexuality.

Sexual attraction is attraction on the basis of sexual desire or the quality of arousing such interest.

Sexual desire is an aspect of a person's sexuality, which varies significantly from one person to another, and also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time.

Other aspects of human sexuality, such as sexual satisfaction, incidence of oral sex, and attitudes toward homosexuality and masturbation, show little to no observed difference between males and females.

While some people believe that homosexual activity is unnatural, scientific research shows that homosexuality is a normal and natural variation in human sexuality and is not in and of itself a source of negative psychological effects.

The ability of a person's physical and other qualities to create a sexual interest in others is the basis of their use in advertising, music video, pornography, film, and other visual media, as well as in modeling, sex work and other occupations.

Sex in film is the presence of sexuality in a film.

In contrast, comprehensive sex education aims to encourage students to take charge of their own sexuality and know how to have safe, healthy, and pleasurable sex if and when they choose to do so.

In 2013, How to Lose Your Virginity was released, a documentary that questioned the effectiveness of the abstinence-only sex education movement and observed how sexuality continues to define a young woman's morality and self-worth.