Identifying the Impact of Sexual Scripts on Consent Negotiations

ABSTRACT

In light of research that shows the importance of effective sexual communication for healthier sexual relationships, less unwanted sexual activity, and less sexual violence, this article explores how both dominant and alternative sexual scripts influence sexual communication. Drawing on 51 in-depth interviews with adults in heterosexual, queer, non-monogamous, and kink sex communities about their actual communication and consent practices in sexual interactions, we asked 1) In what ways do dominant sexual scripts affect communication and consent in sexual interactions? 2) What factors encourage people to diverge from these dominant scripts? and 3) How do alternative scripts produce new forms of communication and consent? We found that traditional scripts remain common, especially among those with less sexual experience, and that adherence to these scripts is more likely to correspond to coercive or unwanted sex. Conversely, exposure to alternative sexual scripts via sexual experience, education, or communities often encourages sexual agency and communication. We conclude by discussing the implications of these insights about communicative consent negotiations for sexual violence prevention.

Acknowledgments

Stef Shuster.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ It is worth emphasizing here that our focus is on the social factors that discourage participants’ capacity to ask for, give, or retract consent. These problems with sexual communication are in no way the fault of the victim of sexual violence.

² The influence of age and experience are difficult to parse out among those we interviewed because those who described their sexual communication changing because of maturity also reported more sexual partners and sexual experience on average.

³ Related to this, some of our interviews also suggested that experience within a relationship is also an important factor in open sexual communication. Normative scripts seem to hold more strongly at the outset of relationships or during short-term (i.e., one night) encounters. Not having a history of sexual experience with a particular person seems to exacerbate the tendency to fall back on traditional scripts, especially for those without a lot of previous sexual experience.

⁴ It is important to emphasize here that we are not implying that violence can be attributed to traditional scripts alone. Sexual violence also occurs in alternative sex communities where these scripts have less influence on individual behavior. It is a mistake to assume that because a person complies with sexual norms that their experiences are inherently coercive, or that eliminating traditional scripts will eliminate violence. However, there is evidence to suggest – and our findings provide additional support for this claim – that communicative sexuality increases the likelihood that consent is successfully negotiated and respected.