Sexual Behaviour

In the opening scenes of Shortbus (Director). (2006), after a shot of the Statue of Liberty, the camera moves the viewer across a seemingly toy-like cityscape of New York, and then cuts between shots of explicit images and sounds including a dominatrix and her young client, a man and woman copulating and seemingly rehearsing all the positions of the Kama Sutra, and a young man recording himself on a digital camera as he masturbates in the bathtub. Then, moving into the living room, he engages in sexual acrobatics before finally ejaculating into his own face, whilst a young male voyeur watches him through the window with a telephoto lens. The film’s seven primary figures stand in for a variety of sexual identities and modalities that at moments become stereotypes of affluent, well-educated, fashionable, and sophisticated inhabitants of the cosmopolitan space with which the audience, or at least I, could readily identify. Certainly, the film affirms queer sex and even the straight-coded couples are situated non-hierarchically amid a broad continuum of erotic agents and modes (Tinkcom, 2011). This movie is explicit in the depiction of sexual behaviour, whilst exploring the intricacies of heterosexual and homosexual relationships and sexual satisfaction.

One key protagonist is a non-orgasmic sex therapist/counsellor, against which the other characters tease out the complexity of their sex lives. I use this film as an example of the variety of sexual behaviours: solo, coupled, ménage à trois, orgies, sadomasochism. These behaviours are set in the context of examining the characters’ varying abilities and competencies in enacting appropriate sexual scripts for the differing situations they encounter, and their ability to learn and shape alternative scripts. Sexual behaviour is learned behaviour, informed from observation, experience and imagination (Kahr, 2008) as Shortbus explicitly demonstrates.

Over their life span, humans develop sexual preferences, desires, fantasies, and memories of sexual performances that shape future sexual behaviour (Bradford & Meston, 2007). Sexuality then is an all-encompassing term to describe any number of practices, beliefs, and feelings associated with sexual arousal and behaviour (Parker, 2007). Sexuality can encompass sexual feelings and sexual activity that can comprise a range of behaviours, from solo masturbation, mutual masturbation, penetrative vaginal intercourse, penetrative anal intercourse, oral-genital and oral-anal stimulation (cunnilingus, fellatio, anilingus), as well as more esoteric behaviours as in sadomasochism, clothing fetishes (such as leather and rubber clothing), transvestism (cross-dressing for sexual pleasure) (Geer et al., 1984), urolagnia or “watersports” (the act of urination on another person as a form of sexual pleasure), “fisting” (insertion of the fist into the rectum of another as a means of sexual stimulation) (Halkitis et al., 2005, p. 707), and more extreme behaviours such as coprophilia (the playing with faeces) and bestiality (Sandnabba et al., 2002). Such activities are the content of sexual encounters, whereas sexual scripts formulate and guide the who, what, why, where, when, and how of pleasure and desire (Plante, 2007).

Bradford, A., & Meston, C. (2007). The role of the brain and nervous systems. In A. F. Owens & M. S. Tepper (Eds.), Sexual Health, Vol 2: Physical foundations (pp. 17-41). Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.

Kahr, B. (2008). Who's been sleeping in your head? The secret world of sexual fantasies. New York: Basic Books.

Parker, B. A. (2007). Orientations: GLBTQ. In M. Tepper & A. F. Owens (Eds.), Sexual health: Volume 1, Psychological foundations (pp. 231-262). Westport: Praeger Publishers.

Plante, R. F. (2007). In search of sexual subjectivities: Exploring the sociological construction of sexual selves. In M. S. Francoismel (Ed.), The sexual self: The construction of sexual scripts (pp. 31-48). Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.