Sexual script theory

This image depicts some particular issues that can arise within a romantic relationship. It also portrays how certain tones of a relationship can change. Sometimes this is the unspoken language between a man and a woman. This photo relates to the common stereotypes that can be seen in relationships.

Sexual script theory (SST) is a sociological theory that states that all social behavior, including sexual behavior, is socially scripted, meaning that humans follow approved norms about how individuals in a relationship may embrace one another, embody, and react to each other via the process of socialization.^[1]

Sexual script theory was introduced by sociologists John H. Gagnon and William Simon in their 1973 book Sexual Conduct.^[2] According to Gagnon and Simon, sexual scripts are guidelines for appropriate sexual behavior and sexual encounters. Sexual behavior and encounters become behavior that is learned as well as instinctive.^[2] Each partner in a consensual sexual encounter behaves as if they were an actor following a script, rather than acting on impulse alone.^[1] Therefore, people in a relationship may draw upon this idea when thinking about their own sexual experiences or when participating in sexual acts themselves.^[1]

Overview

Scripts are social functions that guide individuals' actions and perceptions regarding appropriate behavior.^[3]^[4] The script is a cognitive schema that instructs people how to understand and act in sexual situations. There may be several people in the same situation, but they may differ in the roles that they have been given or have chosen to enact.^[3] Sexual scripts dictate what one should be doing at a particular time and in a particular place, if one is to play the role characteristically associated with that script.^[3]^[4] Sexual script theory is founded on the idea that the subjective understandings of each person about their own sexuality substantively determine that person's choice of sexual actions and their subsequent qualitative experience of those sexual acts.^[3]

Sexual script theory is based in social constructionism, which posits that "the interpretation of reality, including human behavior, is derived from shared beliefs within a particular social group".^[2]^[3] Human sexual behavior and the meanings attached to those behaviors, including what makes them "sexual" behaviors, derives from metaphorical scripts individuals have learned and incorporated as a function of their involvement in the social group.^[2]

American sociologists John Gagnon and William Simon state that, "for behavior to occur, something resembling scripting must occur on three distinct levels: cultural scenarios, interpersonal scripts, and intrapsychic scripts."^[2] Cultural scenarios, shaped by cultural institutions, provide context for roles.^[2] Interpersonal scripts "rest on the roles and general circumstances provided by cultural scenarios"; individuals' interpersonal scripts are created by adapting general cultural guidelines.^[2] Intrapsychic scripts "may entail specific plans or strategies for carrying out interpersonal scripts", including "fantasies, memories, and mental rehearsals".^[2]

Major cultural scenarios tend to be almost exclusively related to adolescence and early adulthood. Common scripts relate to and may vary by age, with adolescence and early adulthood being the stages in which "individuals develop and refine their interpersonal and intrapsychic sexual scripts".^[2] Fewer sexual scripts are associated with other life stages; "sexually significant events" are rarely associated with those in the childhood ("presexual") or old-age ("postsexual") stages.^[2]

Research on sexual scripts and sexual script theory has concluded that sexual scripts are gendered.^[4] In most Western cultures, the structure and rules of a society shape how people act.^[4] Marriage laws and vows, as well as laws against certain sexual behaviors or relationships, influence people's behavior.^[4] For example, in heterosexual relationships, it is customary for the male to present greater initial enthusiasm for sex.^[4] Due to social norms, as well as stereotypes about male sexuality, a man may fear that his masculinity, sexual prowess, and fertility may be questioned if he does not exhibit sexual passion early in the relationship.^[4] On the other hand, a woman may be cautious about expressing sexual enthusiasm early in a relationship due to related social norms and stereotypes about female sexuality.^[4]

History

While Simon's and Gagnon's sexual script theory is novel and has been withstood since its release, they were not the first to suggest that society influences human behavior and human sexual behavior.^[2] According to author Micheal Wiederman, "sexual script theory is a logical extension of symbolic interactionism, a term coined by Herbert Blumer in the 1930s. Blumer was influenced by the work of his mentor, George Herbert Mead who stated, "Symbolic interactionism focuses on how meaning is created, modified, and put into action by individuals in the process of social interaction."^[2] At the time of its creation Simon and Gagnon noted that, "their perspective was a reaction to the dominant theoretical views of human sexuality at the time: psychoanalytic and biological."^[2] In addition, Simon and Gagnon were not the first to employ the script metaphor to social interactions. Sociologist Erving Goffman had previously presented dramaturgy as a sociological perspective, likening human social interaction to the performance of assumed roles in a theatrical production.^[2]

Before Simon and Gagon's theory, the dominant perspectives of sexual behavior had already been determined, by instincts or drives, inherently tied to human biology.^[2] Sigmund Freud had established his psychoanalytic theory towards life and procreation called Libido, which may find natural and healthy expression or may be distorted into psychopathology.^[2] Freudian psychoanalytic perspectives on sexuality continued to hold influence even as biological perspectives rose to attention.^[2] Other prominent researchers such as Alfred Kinsey, and Willam Masters and Virginia Johnson, had published articles on human behavior and sexual behavior long before Simon and Gagnon.^[2] Kinsey cataloged the sexual behaviors of respondents and plotted them against such variables as age, sex, and social class.^[2] While Masters and Johnson focused their research and therapy on bodily responses to sexual stimuli; work is based on the assumption that there is universal, and therefore natural, sexual functioning.^[2]

Simon and Gagnon's sexual script theory seemed to have come at a time when several researchers in the 1960s and 1970s were appealed by the social constructionism approach because many cultural events during that time, called into question essentialist perspectives that had been taken for granted previously.^[2] In addition, Simon and Gagnon considered sexual scripts as explicitly interwoven with gender scripts, and feminist movements at the time were calling into question assumptions about male and female, and the extent to which these assumptions were inevitable versus products of culture and socialization.^[2] Their theory came at a significant time in history with vast cultural changes in the United States.^[2]

Social constructionism

The theory is linked to the wider development of social constructionism. Social construction determines what acts are deemed appropriate. For example, sexual acts should happen in private.^[5] This is an important term for sexual scripts because these scripts can be exposed to children at a young age due to exposure to media and social norms.^[5] In other words, women are to be subjected to male gaze to be a part of the social construction system and maintain the social norms of a long-living society.^[5] This term not only determines how women view men, but also how they view themselves. When a man looks at a woman, the woman focuses on herself being looked at.^[5] She starts to view herself from another person's point of view and makes perspective her focal point whenever she sees herself in a mirror.^[5]

The social construction of sexuality can be traced back to the Middle Ages through art.^[5] The presentation of the female body in art changes over time based on the time and the cultural changes.^[5] The opinion of society changes what the idea of women should look like.^[5] Currently, in society we see art and the media portray females as slim with exaggerated features.^[5] Women construct their physical features to attract to the male gaze.^[5] This has remained prevalent in our media throughout history.^[5]

Developments

Research on sexual scripts and sexual script theory has concluded that sexual scripts are organized through gender, class, ethnicity, and other social vectors.^[6]

Drawing upon conversation analysis, Hannah Frith and Celia Kitzinger write that sexual encounters are considered to be scripted if the parties involved use any of these five linguistic devices: references to predictable stages, references to common knowledge, production of consensus through seamless turn-taking and collaborative talk, use of hypothetical and general instances, or active voicing.^[6]

Sexual media, such as pornography, influences scripts as it can "provide consumers with scripts they were unaware of (acquisition), prime scripts they were already aware of (activation) and encourage the utilization of scripts by portraying particular sexual behaviors or general patterns of sexual behavior as normative, appropriate, and rewarding (application)."^[7]

Criticism

American writer Rictor Norton writes that sexual script theory an "inadequate tool for understanding sexuality", as he believes society is not the driving the force in understanding sexuality, and that sexuality comes from an individual's own desires and morals.^[8] Norton writes, "this behaviorist model is even more determinist than the biological model, which suggests that erotic desire is a powerful motive force arising from within, which has the capacity of resisting the social forces that would attempt to restrain or redirect it."^[8]

Legal scholar David Gurnham writes that the traditional heterosexual sexual script limits a woman's agency.^[9] He states that "consent-giving according to the traditional script presupposes a more passive role for women, with the consequent implication that males may feel that their scripted role entitles them to use deceptive or coercive means", and that this issue renders consent "invalid or at the very least severely compromised".^[9]

Relation to various behaviors

Sexual norms

Traditional gender stereotypes, which inform sexual scripts, "associate maleness and masculinity with assertiveness, aggressiveness, sexual adventurism, and emotional restraint, and femaleness and femininity with docility, passivity, sexual modesty, and emotional intimacy".^[10] Sex and gender stereotypical norms can have negative impacts on a couples, sexual, emotional, psychological aspects of a relationship.^[10]

Gender

Gender scripts, under gender schema theory, "possess a gender-role component defining which sex typically performs [an event sequence]".^[11] Children tend to have a better understanding of their own sex's scripts and characteristics than those of another sex.^[11] From an early age, men are often raised to embrace their sexuality, while women are usually encouraged to suppress it.^[12] While young boys are taught to hold their penis to urinate and to handle it for purposes of washing, girls are taught not to touch their clitoris.^[4]

A double standard exists in the traditional heterosexual sexual script. It endorses different sexual behavior for women and men in which women are expected to confine sexual behavior to the context of a committed relationship, and men are expected to engage in sexual behavior in all kinds of relationships.^[4] "Young adult men who have not realized that their female peers hold a different set of sexual scripts are often perplexed."^[4]

Kennair et al. (2023) found no signs of a sexual double standard in short-term or long-term mating contexts, nor in choosing a friend, except that women's self-stimulation was more acceptable than men's.^[13]

Ellen van Oost uses the concept of the gender script "to illustrate the ways that the design of technological artifacts are affected by the gender assumptions held about their 'envisioned users'.^[14] " Drawing from Akrich's argument that "like a film script, technical objects define a framework of action together with the actors and the space in which they are supposed to act," van Oost extends the script approach to include the gender aspects of technological innovation.^[14] van Oost looks at the ways electric shavers are gendered for men and women starting in the late 1920s, including the "cigar" model for men and the "lipstick model for women."^[15] Van Oost also argues that the development of the electric razor systematically constructs a gender script of technological incompetence as feminine, and "inhibits the ability of women to see themselves as interested in technology and as technologically competent, whereas the gender script of [electric razors "for men"] invites men to see themselves that way.^[15] In other words: [electric razors] not only [produce] razors but also gender."^[15]

Sexual health

Sexual scripts influence sexual health decisions, such as the use of condoms.^[16] Women who abide by sexual scripts that promote women's submission may "lack the assertiveness skills needed to initiate purchasing condoms, providing condoms, and enforcing condom use".^[16] In heterosexual encounters, a prominent script dictates that men are responsible for the provision of condoms.^[16] This script, in addition to one that dictates that "women who suggest or carry condoms are promiscuous", discourages women from carrying or suggesting condoms.^[16] However, women are not necessarily evaluated more harshly than men when enforcing condom use.^[17]

Among men who have sex with men, there are sexual scripts regarding gender roles for tops and bottoms. Tops (those penetrating) are stereotypically associated with masculinity, while bottoms (those receiving penetration) are stereotypically associated with femininity.^[18] Issues with condom negotiation are related to unequal gendered power dynamics, with tops being more likely to dictate condom usage.^[18] Among young Black men in the Deep South of the United States, a sexual script assigns trade men ("typically masculine-looking men who have sex with both men and women") as more "risky" regarding HIV transmission, as they may avoid safe sex practices such as condom use.^[18]

Media

Sexual scripts in media have a great influence on young people and adolescents.^[19] According to researcher Rebecca Ortiz, "Greater exposure to sexual media content has been associated with stronger endorsement of recreational attitudes toward sex, increased intentions to have sex, earlier sexual initiation and even increased likelihood of adolescent pregnancy."^[19] Because a majority of young and adolescent people lack sexual experience, they seek out media outlets to form their expectations and ideas about sexuality and sexual behavior.^[19]

However, according to Ortiz, "less is known about how, why, and which sexual portrayals affect young viewers.^[19] The proliferation of stereotypically-gendered sexual messages in the media is of particular concern because constant exposure may lead to reinforcement of such stereotypes by viewers and could negatively affect their sexual well-being."^[19] These stereotypes typically aim to push further the narrative and traditional sexual scripts of "Women being submissive to men" and "men as dominating".^[19] According to Ortiz, this is called the Heterosexual Script, "The heterosexual script includes depictions of gender inequality between heterosexual partners, where male characters are often portrayed as sexual initiators and aggressors, while female characters are passive recipients and sexual gatekeepers who prefer love and affection over sex."^[19]

Sexual scripts have distinct gender role differences and play a huge role in how people view and express themselves sexually.^[19] The female script looking typically for love and affection and waits for the man to make the first move.^[19] While the male script is looking for multiple sexual partners and praise for their sexual endeavors. According to Ortiz, this leads to the sexual double standard, "Such gender differences have been called the sexual double standard, such that men and women are subject to different "rules" of sexual behavior."^[19] Agreeing with this double standard can negatively impact both men and women. Women may learn to suppress their sexual desires and begin viewing themselves as sexual objects.^[19] Men who agree with this double standard are more likely to agree with rape myths and find them justifiable as well in the objectification of women.^[19] They are also more likely to believe in "token resistance", which states that women who say "no", really mean "yes".^[19]^[20]

These gendered sexual scripts are exhibited heavily in mainstream media.^[21] There is a clear indication that people with excessive use of mainstream media who support these gendered sexual scripts are more linked to "greater psychological distress, diminished sexual agency, and more dysfunctional beliefs about relationships", this is especially true in young adults and adolescents, who have been linked to struggle individually and within their relationships.^[21]

Rape script is also very prevalent in the media.^[22] It is defined as the stereotypes or false beliefs about rape, its victims, and rapists.^[22] These stereotypes are heavily influenced by religion, law, and the media.^[22] Rape scripts are the beliefs of the nature of rape, the roles of genders as well as domination and vulnerability are a large part of these beliefs.^[22] Many victims of rape look to the real rape script to determine whether they experienced rape.^[22] The real rape script describes the stereotypical story of the woman walking alone late at night when a man comes up behind her and proceeds to act violently and rape her.^[22] Many women do not believe they've been raped when comparing their experience to the real rape script due to the lack of violence as well as many other factors.^[22] The rape script is used in many ways, in movies, on the news, and on social media.^[22] Due to this, many victims end up getting blamed for their actions.^[23] As a result of victim blaming, many victims are afraid to come forward because they are afraid no one will believe them.^[23]

Men and pornography

Men's sexual scripts and pornography often correlate because they tend to legitimize gendered script stereotypes.^[24] Studies have found that pornography consumptions lead to a more sexual open-mindedness and non-judgmental outlook on sexual behavior, such as premarital sex, one-night stands, having multiple sex partners, and casual sex.^[24] This is especially true in male pornographic consumers, according to scholar Paul J. Wright.^[24]

"...two recent national longitudinal studies of adults aged 45 years on average found that present pornography consumption predicted subsequent permissive sexual attitudes and casual sex behavior.^[24] Even more relevant is an experimental study that found that showing males pornography led to more support for "the view that parties should be free to form and discontinue intimate relationships without regulations by any government".^[24] Second, there is evidence that pornography activates sexual scripts supportive of traditional masculinity.^[24] Interrogations of pornography carried out by humanistic scholars find that pornography portrays men as sexually powerful, controlling, aggressive, and dominant."^[24]

The sexual scripts created and enforced in pornographic content create sexually expressive and open-minded views on sexual behavior, but they reinforce potentially harmful male sexual scripts.^[25] Research also suggests that sexual behavior found in pornographic content forms "how people are expected to perform and react when engaging in sex."^[25]

According to scholar Farnosh Mazandarani, on-screen interactions in pornographic content are often studied and examined by scholars. Still, she argues that physical representations in pornographic content are vastly overlooked and a major factor in establishing sexual scripts.^[25] Mazandarani found that women in pornography are "four times more likely to be physically represented within a scene than men.^[25] When on-screen, male performers are more likely to have cameras actively move to cut them out of the shot (29% of the time) than females (4% of the time)."^[25] In fact, the framing of men's faces is sometimes entirely cut out of scenes or made silent.^[25]

These differences in physical representations can majorly impact sexual scripts and sexual expectations.^[25] According to Mazandarani, "pornography is thought to provide a common script, or formula, for (1) what constitutes a sexual encounter, (2) what types of people should participate in a sexual encounter, (3) what events should or should not occur during a sexual encounter, (4) what verbal and nonverbal responses may be expected during an encounter, and (5) what possible consequences may occur when engaging in particular sexual scenarios."^[25] For many, pornography is viewed as a driving force to creating male and female sexual scripts.^[25]

References

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^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w Wiederman MW (2015). "Sexual Script Theory: Past, Present, and Future". In DeLamater J, Plante R (eds.). Handbook of the Sociology of Sexualities. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 7–22. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-17341-2_2. ISBN 978-3-319-17340-5. S2CID 141789857.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Masters NT, Casey E, Wells EA, Morrison DM (2013-07-01). "Sexual scripts among young heterosexually active men and women: continuity and change". Journal of Sex Research. 50 (5): 409–420. doi:10.1080/00224499.2012.661102. PMC 3515716. PMID 22489683.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k Wiederman M (2005). "The Gendered Nature of Sexual Scripts". The Family Journal. 496 (13): 496–502. doi:10.1177/1066480705278729. Retrieved 17 April 2024.
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^ ^a ^b Frith H, Kitzinger C (April 2001). "Reformulating sexual script theory: Developing a discursive psychology of sexual negotiation". Theory & Psychology. 11 (2): 209–232. doi:10.1177/09593543011120 (inactive 12 July 2025).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)
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^ ^a ^b Gurnham D (2016-05-01). "A Critique of Carceral Feminist Arguments on Rape Myths and Sexual Scripts". New Criminal Law Review. 19 (2): 141–170. doi:10.1525/nclr.2016.19.2.141. ISSN 1933-4192.
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^ Machette AT, Montgomery-Vestecka G (2023-05-04). "Applying Sexual Scripts Theory to Sexual Communication Discrepancies". Communication Reports. 36 (2): 123–135. doi:10.1080/08934215.2023.2175004. ISSN 0893-4215.
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^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Mazandarani F (2021-03-24). "Between a Camera and a Hard Place: A Content Analysis of Performer Representation in Heterosexual Pornographic Content". Journal of Sex Research. 58 (3): 305–313. doi:10.1080/00224499.2020.1754747. PMID 32348164. S2CID 217549708.