Early trauma may hinder the ability to communicate sexual needs and boundaries in adulthood

A new study published in the International Journal of Sexual Health provides evidence that experiencing sexual abuse during childhood is consistently associated with lower levels of sexual assertiveness in adulthood. This pattern appears to hold true across various cultures and gender identities. The findings suggest that early traumatic experiences may fundamentally alter an individual’s ability to communicate sexual needs and boundaries later in life.

Scientific investigations into the relationship between sexual victimization and assertiveness have historically focused on specific demographic groups. Most existing data comes from studies involving cisgender women in Western nations, such as the United States. Additionally, earlier work often narrowed the definition of sexual assertiveness to the ability to refuse unwanted sexual activity. This limited scope left a gap in understanding how these dynamics play out for men and gender-diverse individuals.

The current inquiry aimed to broaden this understanding by examining initiation and risk negotiation alongside refusal skills. The researchers sought to determine if the link between victimization and assertiveness varies based on gender or cultural context. They also aimed to distinguish between the impacts of childhood sexual abuse and sexual assault experienced during adolescence or adulthood.

“There is extensive theoretical work suggesting that sexual boundary violations in childhood can undermine a person’s sense of sexual agency and assertiveness in adulthood. However, we lacked robust empirical evidence—especially evidence that includes people from diverse demographic backgrounds,” said study author Léna Nagy, a PhD candidate and assistant lecturer at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University.

“We also wanted to examine whether victimization at different developmental stages (childhood vs. adolescence/adulthood) relates differently to sexual assertiveness, and whether these associations vary across cultural or gender contexts. Ultimately, both sexual trauma and sexual assertiveness are shaped by gender norms and the cultural environments in which those norms operate, and our study sought to capture this complexity.”

To achieve a diverse global perspective, the researchers utilized data from the International Sex Survey. This massive cross-sectional project involved a final analytic sample of 64,486 participants. The respondents represented 42 different countries, including nations in Europe, Asia, South America, and North America.

Participants completed an anonymous online survey that took approximately 25 to 45 minutes to finish. Recruitment occurred through news media appearances, research panels, and advertisements on social media platforms. The study team used a standardized translation protocol to ensure the survey was accessible in 26 different languages.

The researchers assessed sexual assertiveness using the Short Sexual Assertiveness Questionnaire. This nine-item scale measured three specific competencies regarding sexual interactions. The first competency was the ability to initiate desired sex and communicate preferences.

The second competency involved the ability to refuse unwanted sexual acts. The third aspect focused on the negotiation of sexual risk and safety, such as asking about a partner’s sexual health history. Participants rated their agreement with statements regarding these behaviors on a seven-point scale.

To measure victimization history, the team used the Sexual Abuse History Questionnaire. This tool asks participants to report unwanted sexual experiences occurring during childhood. Childhood was defined as age 13 and younger for the purposes of this study.

The questionnaire also assessed victimization during adolescence or adulthood, defined as age 14 and older. Participants indicated whether specific types of abuse had happened to them during these life stages. The researchers then categorized participants based on whether they experienced abuse only in childhood, only in adulthood, or during both periods.

The researchers found that childhood sexual abuse was associated with lower levels of sexual assertiveness for all gender identities. This negative association remained significant across the different cultural contexts included in the survey. The data indicates that early trauma may universally hinder the development of skills needed to navigate adult sexual interactions.

“Most people who have experienced sexual victimization—especially in childhood—tend to feel less able to communicate their sexual needs, refuse unwanted sexual activity, or negotiate sexual safety in their adult relationships,” Nagy told PsyPost. “This pattern appeared across many countries and across genders, suggesting that sexual abuse can have lasting effects on a person’s sense of agency in intimate situations.”

The researchers reference the Traumagenic Model to explain this consistent finding. This theoretical framework suggests that abuse creates dynamics of powerlessness and stigmatization. These feelings can distort a survivor’s sense of self and their perceived right to set boundaries.

For women, the results showed a consistent negative link between sexual victimization and assertiveness regardless of when the abuse occurred. Women who experienced abuse in childhood, adulthood, or both reported lower capacities for sexual communication compared to those without such histories. This trend appeared across all 34 countries where sufficient data for women was available.

The analysis indicated that women who experienced revictimization faced the most significant challenges. Those who were abused in both childhood and adulthood reported the lowest levels of sexual assertiveness. This suggests a cumulative effect of trauma on a woman’s sense of sexual agency.

The patterns observed among men differed from those seen in women. While childhood abuse was linked to reduced assertiveness, experiencing sexual assault during adolescence or adulthood did not show a consistent negative association for men. This finding was consistent across most countries included in the analysis.

“For women, any form of sexual victimization (childhood, adolescence/adulthood, or both) was consistently linked to lower sexual assertiveness in adulthood, regardless of their cultural background,” Nagy explained. “For men, lower assertiveness was most clearly linked to childhood sexual abuse specifically.”

In some specific nations, such as Israel, North Macedonia, and the United Kingdom, men who reported adult victimization actually displayed higher levels of sexual assertiveness. The researchers propose that cultural narratives around masculinity might influence this outcome. Men might adopt hyper-assertive behaviors as a coping mechanism to mask feelings of vulnerability associated with victimization.

“This cross-cultural pattern was surprising and suggests that the social meaning of male victimization, and the ways men cope with or respond to it, may differ substantially across cultural contexts,” Nagy said. “These nuances highlight how gendered expectations and cultural scripts shape both the experience of sexual trauma and its aftermath. But these results had very small effect sizes, and much more research with more nuanced examinations of the underlying processes is needed to establish them. This is especially true for men’s sexual assault experiences, which remain extremely under-researched and a social taboo.”

Overall, the associations between sexual victimization and lower sexual assertiveness were statistically significant but relatively small. In other words, abuse history explains only a small part of why some people are less assertive than others, indicating that a person’s ability to communicate sexually is shaped by a much broader range of life experiences.

“Although the associations in our study were small, this is typical in psychological research examining links between childhood trauma and adult sexual behavior,” Nagy explained. “Small effects are especially common in this area because sexual assertiveness develops under the influence of many interpersonal, psychological, and cultural factors. In large samples like ours, however, even small effects can point to meaningful real-world patterns—particularly when they emerge consistently across genders, cultures, and different forms of sexual victimization.”

“The practical takeaway is not that sexual trauma determines a person’s sexual assertiveness, but that it can subtly influence how confident or comfortable someone feels asserting their needs and boundaries. Nevertheless, we warrant our readers and researchers to interpret small effect sizes with caution and view our interpretations in the discussion as primarily hypothesis-generating.”

There are a few other caveats to mention as well. The study relies on a cross-sectional design, which means it cannot prove that victimization causes lower assertiveness. It is possible that the relationship is influenced by other unmeasured factors. The reliance on self-reported data also introduces the possibility of memory bias regarding past events.

“One important caveat is that our findings should not be interpreted as suggesting that people become sexually victimized because they are less assertive, or that survivors are in any way responsible for the harm they experienced,” Nagy told PsyPost. “We wish to emphasize that sexual violence is never the victim’s fault, regardless of their level of assertiveness, or any other behavioral characteristics.”

“Legal and moral responsibility for sexual violence lies solely with perpetrators who violate others’ autonomy and consent. Our findings show how individuals’ sexual assertiveness in adulthood varies depending on their histories of sexual victimization, gender and cultural context.”

“In our publication we also highlighted some of the systemic contributors to vulnerability—such as gendered socialization, discrimination against gender minorities, and cultural norms differentially constraining women’s sexual agency—that are beyond victims’ control and must be addressed through societal and systemic change rather than individual-level attributions.”

“Our next steps focus on conducting longitudinal studies, which are essential for understanding the direction of these associations and whether a negative cascade may unfold from early victimization into later sexual experiences,” Nagy added. “We also aim to identify the underlying psychological and relational mechanisms that explain why and how sexual victimization and sexual assertiveness are connected. Ultimately, our goal is to build a clearer, mechanism-focused understanding that can inform interventions supporting survivors’ and vulnerable populations’ sexual agency.”

The study, “Sexual Assertiveness and Sexual Victimization Across Different Life Stages: Examining Gender-Related and Cultural Differences,” was authored by Léna Nagy, Ateret Gewirtz-Meydan, Marie-Pier Vaillancourt-Morel, Sophie Bergeron, Verena Klein, Mónika Koós, Shane W. Kraus, Marc N. Potenza, Zsolt Demetrovics, Rafael Ballester-Arnal, Dominik Batthyány, Joël Billieux, Peer Briken, Julius Burkauskas, Georgina Cárdenas-López, Joana Carvalho, Jesús Castro-Calvo, Lijun Chen, Giacomo Ciocca, Ornella Corazza, Rita I. Csako, David P. Fernandez, Hironobu Fujiwara, Elaine F. Fernandez, Johannes Fuss, Roman Gabrhelík, Biljana Gjoneska, Mateusz Gola, Joshua B. Grubbs, Hashim T. Hashim, Md. Saiful Islam, Mustafa Ismail, Martha C. Jiménez-Martínez, Tanja Jurin, Ondrej Kalina, András Költő, Sang-Kyu Lee, Karol Lewczuk, Chung-Ying Lin, Christine Lochner, Silvia López-Alvarado, Kateřina Lukavská, Percy Mayta-Tristán, Dan J. Miller, Oľga Orosová, Gábor Orosz, Sungkyunkwan University’s Research Team, Fernando P. Ponce, Gonzalo R. Quintana, Gabriel C. Quintero Garzola, Jano Ramos-Diaz, Kévin Rigaud, Ann Rousseau, Marco De Tubino Scanavino, Marion K. Schulmeyer, Pratap Sharan, Mami Shibata, Sheikh Shoib, Vera Sigre-Leirós, Luke Sniewski, Ognen Spasovski, Vesta Steibliene, Dan J. Stein, Julian Strizek, Aleksandar Štulhofer, Banu C. Ünsal, Marie Claire Van Hout, and Beáta Bőthe.