Sexual Scripting - Part 1

Two different films The 40-Year Old Virgin (Apatow, 2005), and Intimacy (Chéreau, 2001), stimulated my deeper thinking about sexual scripts. In The 40-Year Old Virgin, a man has his fortieth birthday without having being exposed to the cultural scripts of courting and sexual encounters. His friends find out and they seek to remedy the situation. Although a comedy, which lampoons any ignorance of sex, this movie highlights the expectation that somehow a man should know what to do sexually – as if it is innate (Abramson & Pinkerton, 1995; Buss, 2003). Nevertheless, a sexual script still needs to be learned and refined, and this is the rationale of the movie. A more explicit sexual script is portrayed in the film Intimacy, but this is a sexual script without dialogue. Jay lives in a derelict house and one day Claire arrives at his door, and there is an immediate attraction followed by overwhelming desire. The bodies, the use of setting, the props (mattress, condoms), the timing (Wednesday afternoons), and sexual chemistry provide the stage on which the sex is realistically performed. What struck me most was the condom was produced by the man and put on without a word; a safe sex script handled without fuss or negotiation. How did this come about in this film? Obviously, the condom was well entrenched into each individuals’ personal sexual script.

Risky sex was an issue that John had to confront in his own sexual life and in the work he was doing as a trainer in HIV prevention. He pushed for men to be tested for HIV; to learn to use condoms effectively and protect oneself from picking up or passing on the virus. This rational thinking underpinned his work and his sexual life. However, it appeared that other men acted differently evidenced by the dramatic spread of HIV around the world. For John this was an issue about sexual scripting, and that a script for the use of condoms could be learnt and enacted if the people involved had perfected the skills to use them correctly and if condoms were available at the time of the sexual episode. Sexual scripting became the framework that John used to teach about safe sex.

So what is sexual scripting? Following Burke (1968), sexual scripting theory uses the metaphor of drama to capture the means by which individuals enact and experience their sexuality. Elements of the theatre, such as the stage, scene, props, script, audience response, and the actors’ performances are important to the vibrant construction of competent sexual interactions (Whittier & Melendez, 2007). Humans are motivated by social and cultural forces just as much as by physical influences and are also in the constant process of producing society and sexuality. Even the script is interpreted and enacted differently by actors depending on their unique life histories, experiences and background.

Sexual scripting helps to understand the plot that guides an individual’s sexual expression. Script theory distinguishes three dimensions of a sexual script:

the intrapsychic - the motivational elements that produce arousal;

the interpersonal – the script as the organisation of mutually shared conventions;

and cultural scenarios, which provide general socio-cultural regulations and guidelines for roles in all aspects of sexual behaviour (Dworkin & O'Sullivan, 2005; Gagnon, 1973, 1990; Simon & Gagnon, 1984, 1986, 1987, 2003), including the influence of constructions of masculinity and gender (Connell, 1995, 2002a).

For a sexual transaction to happen, essential elements need to be present – a situation, actors, a plot; as well as more intrinsic elements such as desire, opportunity, space, and another person. And to ensure that something sexual actually happens, one or both of the actors need to organise behaviours into an appropriate script. Sexual script theory, therefore, provides a dramaturgical metaphor to frame sexual expression and behaviour, and to provide meaning and referential elements (Dworkin & O'Sullivan, 2005), which can be analysed and reworked according to new situations and experiences. Plummer (1982) argues against applying cultural stereotypes to sexual scripts, rather focus on the interaction between culture, interpersonal encounters and the individual. As he argues:

In the hands of some researchers, [the script] has become a wooden mechanical tool for identifying uniformities in sexual conduct – the script determines activity rather than emerging through activity: what is actually required is to show the nature of the sexual scripts as they emerge in encounters (Plummer, 1982, p. 228).

With my interest in LGBTQ psychology and my goal to enter private Queer counselling, I wanted to understand this subjective cognitive sexual experience in the context of emotionality (Carr, 1999). In a 2005 workshop on the emotional brain (Crowe, 2005), it was made clear that although there are many psychophysiology and functioning similarities between the female brain and the male brain there are differences as well (Baron-Cohen, 2003; Brizendine, 2006). This at first affirmed my thinking, but however interesting this was, it did not address how emotions and sexual scripts were connected or address issues of alternative sexual and gender identities and expressions of sexualities. This seemed to me to require further exploration into the links between sociological explanations of emotions and sexuality. So I set out to explore other men’s sexual scripts and the emotions that sexual encounters engendered.

Plummer, K. (1982). Symbolic interactionism and sexual conduct: An emergent perspective. In M. Brake (Ed.), Human sexual relations:Towards a redefinition of sexual politics (pp. 223-244). New York:Pantheon.