All the bedrooms a stage: Reconceptualizing sex as “performance” to sex as “rehearsal”

Abstract In the United States, sex is often spoken about in terms of performance, and naturally invokes language of theatricality. Sexual performance has been used as an umbrella term to refer to sexual satisfaction, behavior, embodiment, and also pathology in terms of conditions such as erectile dysfunction. The word “performance” is also loaded with cultural assumptions that link sexual interactions to something final, rigid, or that has a “correct” way of being done. But what would it mean to name the unfinished, imperfect, and nonlinear rehearsal process that goes into satisfying sexual interactions? There already exist communities that embrace these aspects of sexual encounters, like the BDSM (Bondage, Discipline/Dominance, Submission/Sadism, Masochism) and kink community, through liberatory frameworks that emphasize consent, communication, safety, and satisfaction. In conversation with these frameworks, this research aims to understand how women/fem identifying people conceptualize their sexual experiences throughout their lifetime, how they came to a place where they feel confident and satisfied in those experiences, and presents a necessary theoretical provocation that argues, it is more productive to think of sex as a rehearsal; where consent, planning, communication, playing, and stopping if something doesn't work is encouraged versus the notion of a final performance that does not provide these same affordances. This shift in language may lead to increased positive outcomes for young women in their sexual lives and allow them to lead more satisfying, confident, safe, and autonomous sexual lives at earlier stages in their sexual lifetime.