“There is Some Negotiation That Might Occur”: Sexual Scripts, Relationship History, & Perceptions of Consent

Sexual and gender-based violence remains a prevalent and persistent issue on university and college campuses both in Canada and abroad. Using latent thematic analysis on partcipants qualitative responses to vignettes, this research seeks to understand how perceptions of consent are informed by sexual scripts through the lens of social learning theory. Though the vignettes all feature nonconsensual interactions, participants frequently used sexual scripts to neutralize or justify perpetrator actions, including engagement with victim-blaming rhetoric. The degree of resistance and the assumed dynamics of a relationship appear to be key indicators for participants about how consent in sexual encounters is “negotiated”.