Understanding sexuality

What to know before anything else: what consent is and what the law says about it, what is actually established about sexual orientation, how sexuality changes with age, and the vocabulary to talk about it.

Consent and age of consent

Two questions run side by side: from what age a person can consent, and how the law decides whether consent was given at all.

Sexual orientation

What the research establishes, how to talk about it, and a legal landscape that differs radically between countries.

Sex and ageing

Desire has no expiry date. What changes with the years is pace and repertoire — rarely the wish itself.

Common questions

This page gathers the questions most often asked about sex and answers them factually, plainly and without judgement.

A glossary of sexuality

Fifty-odd words you read everywhere and cannot always bring yourself to ask about — defined plainly, without prudishness and without vagueness.

Pornography and the couple

What research says about its effects on the couple, the line with compulsion, how to talk about it as a couple, and with teenagers.

Consent, and what the law makes of it

This is the most important page in this group, and the only one whose content changes completely from one country to the next. The age from which sex is lawful, the legal definition of rape, whether the absence of consent has to be proved or its presence: all of it varies, sometimes between regions of the same state. The country pages under consent have the detail.

What is established, and what only seems to be

The page on sexual orientation sticks to what is established and says plainly what is not — which, on this subject, covers a good deal of what circulates.

The page on sexuality at different ages answers a very common worry that is rarely said out loud: is what I am experiencing normal for my age? The answer rarely fits in a number, but the order of magnitude is usually reassuring.

And if a word escapes you while reading another page, the glossary defines it without circling around it.

Page checked in September 2026. The instruments cited can change: if in doubt, confirm with the official source given.

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