Respect, rights & responsibilities

How well do you know the 3R’s? Rights, Responsibilities and Respect – the 3R’s. You might see a lot about the 3R’s on this site and there’s good reason for that. It doesn’t matter who they are and if you like them or not, every person has rights and responsibilities around sexual respect.

Respect is about treating people with dignityDignity
Treating everyone with respect., fairnessFairness
Treating people in a way that is just and as equal as possible; thinking about the other person’s wants and needs, balancing these with your own, and compromising as you need to. and care. It’s your right to be treated with respect, and in turn, it’s your responsibility to treat others with respect.

Did you know?

One NZ study said 13.1% of students said in the last 12 months they’d received unwanted sexual messages.

At the moment, in lots of places – at school, at home and in our wider communities, it can be seen as normal to disrespect others. This means you can protect them and get the information you need to make good choices.

On this page:Know Your Responsibilities

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Know Your Responsibilities

Your responsibilities are just as important as your rights because when you are doing sexual stuff with someone else, you’ve gotta remember, they have the same rights that you do.

The table below outlines your sexual rights and responsibilities. Remember, these rights and responsibilities apply to you (and to others) in all sexual situations.

Sexual rights	Sexual responsiblities
To only do sexual stuff that you want to do	To listen to and respect people when they don’t want to do sexual stuff
To be treated fairly and with respect	To treat others fairly and with respect
To ask for or let others know what you want and don’t want in a sexual experience or relationship	To the best of your ability tell or indicate to others what you do and don’t want in a sexual experience or relationship (we do know that it is really common for your brain and voice to freeze up in stressful sexual situations – this is normal and it is NEVER someone’s fault if they weren’t able to say “no” to sexual stuff)
To be protected from sexual bullying, harassment and violence	To not misuse your power by being sexually bullying, harassing or violent towards others
To be treated by others in a way doesn’t break the law about sexual stuff	To abide by what the law says about sexual stuff
To have people you’re doing sexual stuff with do what they can to keep you healthy and safe – learn more about how to keep yourself and others you want to do sexual stuff with healthy and safe.	To do what you can to keep you and people you’re doing sexual stuff with healthy and safe
To have others Step Up and Speak Out for you if you’re in a situation where someone is sexually disrespecting or harming you	To Step Up and Speak Out if you see disrespectful or harmful sexual stuff happening to others

As outlined in Unicef’s Voices of Youth, the International Human Rights Declaration supports the ideas of all of these rights and responsibilities. Find out more about Human Rights.

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Respect, rights & responsibilities

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Know Your Responsibilities

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