You think your sexual desires are your own. You think your turn-ons, your boundaries, and the way you approach sex come from personal experience, your biology, your “type.”

4 min read5 days ago

Think again.

What if I told you that most of what you believe about sex — what’s normal, what’s taboo, what’s allowed — wasn’t actually chosen by you? That, instead, your sexual framework was programmed into you by a system designed to keep you in line?

What Is Cultural Hegemony?

Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci coined the term cultural hegemony to describe the way ruling groups maintain power — not through force, but through ideas.

It works like this:

A dominant ideology is spread so widely that people assume it’s just “the way things are.”
Alternative ways of thinking (or fucking) are labeled deviant, shameful, or dangerous.
People police themselves, enforcing the rules without even realizing they were manufactured.

Now apply this to sex.

Most people believe that what turns them on, what they’re willing to try, and what they reject sexually are natural — when in reality, these preferences are deeply conditioned by cultural hegemony.

The Subconscious Sex Laws You’ve Been Trained to Follow

Without realizing it, you’ve been programmed to internalize certain “rules” about sex that dictate what is acceptable and what is off-limits.

Here are a few you probably never questioned:

1. Heterosexuality as the Default

From childhood, girls are told they’ll “someday meet a nice boy.”
Any deviation (bisexuality, queerness, asexuality) is seen as an exception, a phase, or a rebellion.
The idea that a woman might not genuinely want men is so disruptive that society literally pretends it doesn’t exist.

📖 Source: Adrienne Rich’s Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence explains how women are systematically funneled into relationships with men, whether they desire them or not.

2. Sex as a Performance for the Male Gaze

Women are trained to experience their sexuality through men’s eyes.
Your orgasm is important only if it enhances a man’s ego.
“Hot” sex isn’t necessarily what feels good — it’s what looks good in porn, pop culture, and media.

📖 Source: Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) breaks down how mainstream media trains women to see themselves as objects of male desire, rather than active participants in their own pleasure.

3. Monogamy as the “Right” Way to Love

Love stories always end with one person. Multiple partners? That’s instability, selfishness, or perversion.
Most people never question monogamy — even though its modern form is less than 300 years old.
Jealousy isn’t seen as a cultural construct; it’s treated as biological inevitability.

📖 Source: Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s Sex at Dawn (2010) explores how monogamy is a social inventionrather than an innate human trait.

4. Male Pleasure as the Priority

We talk about sex like it ends when a man orgasms.
Women are expected to enjoy penetration — even when statistically, it doesn’t get them off.
Women are more likely to fake orgasms than admit they aren’t enjoying sex.

📖 Source: Dr. Laurie Mintz’s Becoming Cliterate (2017) exposes how women are systematically trained to deprioritize their own sexual pleasure in favor of men’s.

5. Kink and Power Play as Taboo

Dominance and submission are fine in theory — but if you like it too much? You’re broken.
Kink is pathologized, labeled as deviant, or treated as a sign of trauma, rather than just another form of pleasure.
Meanwhile, vanilla sex is positioned as the mature, healthy default — despite the fact that most people fantasizeabout some level of dominance and control.

📖 Source: Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality (1976) discusses how power structures dictate what is considered acceptable or deviant in human sexuality.

How These Rules Are Enforced Without You Even Realizing It

The beauty (or horror) of cultural hegemony is that it doesn’t feel like control.

You don’t need the government or the church to tell you what’s okay — you’ll do it yourself.

Shame: Feel aroused by something you “shouldn’t”? You suppress it. You pretend it doesn’t exist.
Social Pressure: Your friends, family, and media all reinforce the dominant rules. You fall in line.
Internalized Norms: Eventually, these beliefs don’t feel imposed. They feel like your own preferences.

But what if they’re not?

Breaking Free: Deprogramming Your Sexuality

If your sexuality has been shaped by cultural forces… does that mean it’s fake? No. But it means you owe it to yourself to question everything.

Would you still want men if heterosexuality wasn’t the expected default?
Would you still prefer monogamy if you were never told it was the “mature” way to love?
Would your turn-ons be different if you’d never been exposed to porn, media, or cultural expectations?

Final Thought: Who Are You When No One’s Watching?

Cultural hegemony thrives in silence. It works because people don’t realize it’s happening.

So next time you think “I’m just not into that” or “This is just what I like” — ask yourself:

Do I really believe this? Or was I trained to?

And if the answer makes you uncomfortable, good. That’s where real sexual freedom begins.

Now ask yourself: What’s really you… and what’s just the system talking?