Social Scripts and Sexual Agency

Social scripts specify the normal way for people to interact in certain situations. For example, a social script for a restaurant conversation explains why the world over, these conversations take a similar form. I develop an account of how social scripts can structure people’s sexual agency—sometimes, for the worse. I show how people’s sexual agency can be constrained by the presence of a linear social script for heteronormative sexual encounters that escalate in intimacy and terminate in male orgasm. By marking off certain sexual options as deviant, as breaches of social obligations, or as sanctionable, this script can combine with certain motivations and circumstances to explain why people voluntarily take part in sexual encounters that they would ideally like to avoid. I discuss how this situation could be ameliorated by alternative social scripts. For example, in conjunction with changes to ancillary social norms, people would be more empowered if they had social scripts for using safe words to end sexual encounters.