Sexual script theory
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The idea of sexual script brings a new metaphor and imagery for understanding human sexual activity as social and learned interactions. The concept was introduced by sociologists John H. Gagnon and William Simon in their 1973 book Sexual Conduct. The idea highlights three levels of scripting: cultural/historical, social/interactive and personal/intrapsychic. It draws from a range of theories including symbolic interactionism, discourse theory and feminism. The theory of sexual scripting brings sociological, cultural, anthropological, historical and social psychological tools to the study of human sexualities. Whereas human sexuality is usually seen as the province of the biologist and the clinician, scripting helps research and analysis to understand sexualities as less biological and more cultural, historical and social.
Sexual script
Sexual scripts are guidelines for appropriate sexual behavior and sexual encounters. Sexual behavior and encounters become behavior which is learned as well as instinctive. Each partner in consensual encounters acts as if they are an actor in a play or film following a script, rather than acting on impulse alone. Research on sexual scripts and sexual script theory have concluded that sexual scripts are gendered. Thus, sexual scripts have been described by researchers as a form of social construction. Sexual Script Theory (SST) and its application in clinical practice are founded on the idea that the subjective understandings of each person about his or her sexuality (and called a sexual script) substantively determine that person's choice of sexual actions and the subsequent qualitative experiencing of those sexual acts. Scripts refer to social functions. They dictate what one should be doing at a particular time and in a particular place if one is to play the role characteristically associated with that script. There may be several people involved in the same situation, but they may differ in the roles that they have been given or have chosen to enact.
Sexual scripting suggests the importance of meanings and symbols in human sexuality. According to Gagnon and Simon, scripts can be layered through three dimensions: 'cultural scenarios', 'interpersonal scenarios', and 'intrapsychic scenarios'. Sexual feeling does not simply happen from within the body, but needs meanings and symbols which provide cues and clues to enable sexualities to develop. Cultural scenarios are linked to different historical periods and social change; scripts can be shown to change with the arrival of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, for example (Epstein, Lauman ...). Interpersonal scenarios are linked to encounters and interactions (for example in rape, as illustrated in the early work of Stevi Jackson). And intra-psychic scenarios indicate the ways in which personal sexual 'turn ons' and imageries grow. Sexual scripts can be seen as providing guidelines for appropriate sexual behaviour and sexual encounters, as sexual behaviour and encounters are learned through culture and others in interactions. It can be linked to theories of sexual desire but is critical of the tendency to stress the purely biological aspects of desire.
