Young People, Gender and (Hetero)Sexuality

Question 1

Define/explain: sexual scripts

Answer 1

• influence our approaches toward sexual encounters
• they teach us our role in a sexual encounter and influence our expectations of our partners
• each individual is shaped and moulded by their social experiences
• exist as part of the social structure

Question 2

3 Levels of Scripting

Answer 2

1. Intra-psychic: personal level
   - nothing is sexual and anything can be sexualized
   - desires / fantasies become socially constructed because they are articulated by visual signs
   - meanings are appropriated: we take nonsexual things and make them sexual
2. Cultural scenarios
   - instructional guides existing at the level of collective social life
   - change historically and with issues around social change
3. Interpersonal
   - transforms the social actor into a scriptwriter, adapting and shaping the materials of the cultural scenario into scripts for behaviour in specific contexts

Question 3

Define/explain: Heterosexual Scripts

Answer 3

-deeply embedded within patriarchal language and meaning
-what you learn about your gender transfers into how you learn your sexual script
Boys/Men – linked to initiation and dominance
-boys learn the point of heterosexual sex revolves around their body
Girls/Women – linked to passiveness and docility, reacting to male sexuality, gatekeeper
-female desire is stifled, lack of positive female sexuality
-tension around power dynamics because males are empowered, not females
-girls rarely get positive messages about their sexuality – media, parents, peer culture
-Boys sexual appetites considered ‘natural, girls ‘dangerous’

Question 4

Gendered languages of love

Answer 4

• Boys access a language of instrumental sexuality

* Girls access a respectable language of romance