“Was It Good For You?”/Is It Good For Us?: Implications of Sexual Scripting for

Pleasure and Violence

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Emma Marie Carroll

Graduate Program in Sociology

The Ohio State University

2019

Dissertation Committee

Korie Edwards, Advisor

Steven Lopez

Kristi Williams

1

Copyrighted by

Emma Marie Carroll

2019

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Abstract

Quantitative research on sexuality suggests that sexual satisfaction is important for physical health, mental health, and relationship outcomes, but most of this research fails to capture the subjective ways that sexual satisfaction is perceived and achieved. In this study I employ in-depth qualitative interviews to explore the ways that women and men understand both “good” and “bad” sex. I employ sexual script theory as a framework to explain the ways that sexual expectations and behaviors are patterned in reference to cultural, interpersonal, and intrapsychic understandings of sex. In the first chapter I explore the role of novelty as a factor in “good” sex and the tensions that exist between the predictable and the unfamiliar. In the second chapter I delve into the role that gender plays in constructing perceptions of sexual satisfaction and the ways that the narratives of men and women converge and differ. Finally, in the third chapter I address the prevalence of sexual violence reported by the women in my sample and explain how this is a product of the gendered norms embedded in cultural-level sexual scripts. Overall, my research suggests that women and men have similar expectations for what makes sex “good,” but dominant norms surrounding sexuality disproportionately place women in subordinate roles, and therefore greater risk of violence, during sex.

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Dedication

For everyone who has supported me throughout graduate school. This would not have been possible without the support of my wonderful community.

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Acknowledgments

I would not have been able to complete a project of this magnitude without extensive support from my community. First, I would like to acknowledge all 70 people that participated in an interview. Thank you for being so open and vulnerable and for giving me insight into some of the most private aspects of social life.

My partner Brian has been an incredible source of support throughout this entire process. We met during my first semester of grad school and he has stuck by me during all the challenges I’ve experienced. Thank you for celebrating my successes, boosting me up after failures, and picking up the slack at home when I’ve been overwhelmed by work.

Overall, my experiences in grad school have been positive and this can largely be credited to my amazing advisor Dr. Korie Edwards. She is someone I can look up to not only professionally, but personally as well. Thank you for consistently giving me incisive feedback and supporting the decisions I made about my research and my life without reservation.

I greatly appreciate the members of my committee, Dr. Kristi Williams and Dr.

Steve Lopez from the sociology department, as well as my graduate faculty representative Dr. Julia Jorati from the philosophy department. They sacrificed a lot of time and energy to facilitate my dissertation defense and I am so grateful. Thank you for your time, your advice, your feedback, and the valuable perspectives you brought to my iv project. Special thank you also to Dr. Corinne Reczek, who despite not being able to serve on my committee was willing to offer her insight on my dissertation proposal and made sure I started this endeavor with a clear sense of direction. The feedback you gave me on my proposal helped shape my entire project in a positive way and I thought about your comments the entire time I was writing, thank you.

The most bittersweet part of finishing my dissertation is no longer working among the wonderful friends I have made in the sociology department. It’s been a joy to meet so many thoughtful, compassionate, and supportive people and build relationships with people who can directly relate to the challenges I’ve faced. Thank you for listening to my grievances, sharing your own, and drinking with me for the last seven years.

A huge part of why I wanted to come to Ohio State for grad school was the existing network of friends I already had in Columbus. I’m happy to say that at the end of this process those relationships are still just as significant as they were when I made that decision, and they were instrumental in supporting me. To all my friends both here in

Columbus and elsewhere thank you so much for being who you are, for being in my life, and for helping me emotionally through this process. I love you so much.

Finally, the biggest thank you to my parents who are at the root of everything good in my life. Thank you for reading to me every day, for helping me make lifelong friends, and for loving and supporting me unconditionally always.

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Vita

2012…………………………………….B.A. Sociology, Ithaca College

2014…………………………………….M.A. Sociology, The Ohio State University

2014-2019……………………………...Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of

Sociology, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Sociology

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Dedication ...... iii Acknowledgments...... iv Vita ...... vi List of Tables ...... viii Chapter 1. Introduction ...... 1 Chapter 2. Novelty ...... 38 Chapter 3. Gender ...... 65 Chapter 4. The Scripting of Rape and Sexual Assault ...... 94 Chapter 5. Conclusion ...... 118 Bibliography ...... 133 Appendix A. Methodology ...... 141 Appendix B. Complete List of Respondents...... 154 Appendix C. Interview Guide ...... 157

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Sample Demographics………………………………………………………...29

Table 2.1 Novel Locations……………………………………………………………… 50

Table 2.2 Novel Behaviors………………………………………………………………52

Table 2.3 Frequency of Pornography Use……………………………………………….56

Table 3.1 Factors of “Good” Sex………………………………………………………...66

Table 3.2 Perceived Impact of Gender…………………………………………………..84

Table 4.1 Non-Consensual Sexual Encounters…………………………………………..99

Table 5.1 Relationship Status…………………………………………………………..119

Table A.1 Sample Demographics……………………………………………………....146

Table B.1 List of Respondents Part 1………………………………………...…...……155

Table B.2 List of Respondents Part 2…………………………………...……………...156

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Chapter 1. Introduction

Sex has always been inherently interesting to me. It is at once ubiquitous and taboo; almost universally acknowledged as important but simultaneously an inappropriate topic of conversation in polite company. This is what initially attracted me to the study of sexuality- I don’t like being told what to talk about and if something is socially significant I’m going to discuss it regardless of if I’m deemed profane, prurient, or unfeminine. The same drive for intellectual and social rebellion is what led me to employment in an adult bookstore during my undergraduate years. Shortly after being doubly engrossed in sexuality within academia and employment my interest deepened. It became clear through my studies that sex was a powerful and under-researched social experience, and the conversations I had at and about my job reinforced that people cared about sex but were often unclear about how to contextualize what felt like deeply personal and individualized experiences. Because I worked in the sex industry I was identified by friends and acquaintances as someone who was open to talking about sex, and during the course of my employment people would often ask me, seeking reassurance, “is this normal?” Is it normal that I experience anxiety surrounding sex? Is it normal that I like this? Is it normal that my partner said that? The answer is, of course, if something is consensual and experienced positively that normalcy is irrelevant, but there

1 are clear patterns in how people experience sexuality both from an anecdotal and sociological perspective.

I put these issues aside for a few years, but while I was working on other projects

I kept coming back to sexuality and the conversations that I had while in undergrad. As I was talking to men and women about sex I noticed that their experiences seemed patterned, very much shaped by their gender identity and socialization. Sex is something experienced on the most personal level, but how it is performed and perceived is influenced greatly by culture. We look to popular media including movies, books, and television, to religion, to pornography, and sometimes to the people around us to evaluate when we should have sex, who we should have it with, and what makes it pleasurable.

These sources frame sex differently for men and women.

When people have sex it’s a reasonable assumption that they want it to be “good.”

A quick scan of Cosmopolitan’s article database reveals a clear market for content that explores this issue. What “good sex” means can be highly ambiguous and possibly dictated by individualized psychological and even biological processes. However, I believe that the foremost strategy we should use to understand what makes sex “good” is to explore the way cultural messages about sex are embodied in peoples’ sexual encounters. In my research I set out to speak with as many people as possible about their experiences with sex to understand the common threads that run through their narratives.

These connections, of which there are many, provide a link to the larger social forces that shape their experiences. Starting with these individual accounts we can begin to construct a larger picture of sex that is much bigger than the individual. My research suggests that

2 people share a cultural frame of reference for what is expected during sex and how to achieve sexual satisfaction that has been shaped by their previous sexual experiences, their family and friends, and especially media including pornography.

So what does it mean for sex to be “good?” For some people, the assertion of having “good sex” or being “good in bed” is used as currency, a way to promote one’s relational value and desirability over others (Beggan, Vencill, and Garos 2013).

Similarly, attaching the stigma of being “bad in bed” to a former sex partner can be an effective shaming strategy that furthers illustrates one’s own sexual awareness and prowess. The normative use of this terminology suggests the centrality of technical sexual skills in determining the quality of sexual encounters, but common sense as well as previous research indicates that we need a more nuanced interpretation of what makes sex “good” or “bad.” The limited scientific knowledge we have on this topic suggests that the fulfillment of emotional needs, for example the desire for appreciation and intimacy, also plays a significant role. This contributes to a more complex picture of having good sex that goes deeper than simply honing the skills to stimulate yourself and another person to orgasm. Current research on sexual satisfaction, a close synonym for the phenomenon of “good” sex, is largely quantitative and relies on Likert scale measurements to assess attitudes (Haavio-Mannila and Kontula 1997; Waite and Joyner

2001; Peter and Valkenburg 2009; Stephenson and Meston 2010). What we are left with is a vague framework for how people interpret the quality of their sexual encounters, as first defined and hypothesized by researchers, but the interpersonal and intrapsychic processes where good sex is constructed is still obscured. Sexual pleasure is in part a

3 social construct that is socially mediated by the messages we receive about what is good and desirable (Jackson and Scott 2002). My research explores more thoroughly the interpretive strategies that people use to determine sexual satisfaction, or what makes sex

“good,” and link these interpretations to larger gender norms that shape our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. How do people evaluate the quality of a sexual encounter? Do men and women perceive “good” and “bad” sex differently? What does any difference tell us about gender at this cultural and historical moment?

Although my research focuses specifically around experiences of sexuality it has the potential to illuminate facets of the current gender regime (Connell 1987). A gender regime is composed of the norms attached to masculine and feminine gender identities within institutions. These norms dictate how gender is performed both individually and within interactions with others. Although like sex, gender may be experienced as intensely personal but it is not an unalienable product of our biology. The consistent patterns that emerge in the performance of gender require an examination of larger social structures to understand how our expectations for gendered behavior are set. Connell argues that gender is, “A process rather than a thing… It is about the linking of other fields of social practice to the nodal practices of engendering, childbirth and parenting”

(1987 p. 140). The way that we do gender ultimately references understandings of difference in regard to reproductive expectations, which implicates sexuality in a particularly meaningful way as a site where gender differences are manifested and naturalized. “Sexuality” refers to, “all erotically significant aspects of social life and social being, such as desires, practices, relationships, and identities” (Jackson 2006, p.

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106). It includes physical acts but goes deeper than that, encompassing both what people do and how they see themselves as sexual beings. If gender regimes are centered around differential reproductive expectations, then sexual ideologies provide a unique window into the current gender regime as it plays out on the individual level.

Talking to both men and women reveals many similarities in what we’re looking for from sex. This is not a clear-cut instance of “men are from Mars, women are from

Venus.” When people have heterosexual sex they aren’t attempting to cross a broad chasm of differential expectations. Women and men are both seeking an interplay of physical pleasure and interpersonal connection that can easily be mutually compatible.

What is significant is that they are entering sexual encounters with different culturally proscribed gendered roles and power levels. These differences become clearest when examining sex that is had out of obligation, because interpersonal and dominant sexual scripts suggest that sex should be happening despite individual desire.

Literature Review Sexual Script Theory

Sexuality, comprised of a person's sexual orientation, sexual beliefs, desires, and experiences, is performed on an individual and interpersonal basis. Consequently, it can seem like a deeply personal phenomenon. Although the intimate nature of its enactment is undeniable, the construction of sexual identity and beliefs is greatly influenced by broader cultural factors. To focus on sexuality as an individual phenomenon is to obscure the significant role that social structure plays in its development (Esacove 2013). Gagnon and Simon's sexual script theory provides a useful framework to understand the multiple 5 social levels where sexuality is constructed. It helps us understand the who, what, where, when, and why of sex. The key idea underlying sexual script theory is that sexual encounters are patterned, following a relatively consistent and predictable flow of action.

People do not enter sexual encounters as blank slates with off-the-cuff sexual expression flowing freely out of them. Rather, people enter every sexual interaction with preconceived notions of what will take place and the social significance that underlies their actions (Simon and Gagnon 1986). It's no coincidence that a majority of heterosexual people identify the progression of a sexual encounter as kissing followed by manual stimulation of the breasts followed by manual genital stimulation followed by oral sex followed by penetrative vaginal intercourse (Jackson and Scott 2002; DeLamater and Hyde 2004). This linear escalation was learned from previous sexual interactions, friends, family, and mass media (2004). For many people this has been internalized as normal, but this is a product of socialization and is not an inherently natural sequence.

My research highlights the scripts that people are drawing from to define “good” sex, and the way that these scripts are gendered.

The first level of sexual scripting is cultural, and this is the broad framework that guides sexual behavior and attitudes. Cultural sexual scripting is largely presented by the media but extends beyond this one institution. It is our collective understanding of what normal sex looks like, how it is performed and what it means for the participants involved. This is the guiding script which all sexual performances reference, whether it be through adherence or deviance. There are dominant sexual scripts that pertain to an entire society, for example the United States as a whole, as well as subcultural scripts that

6 are only relevant to specific groups, for example college students, but all of these scripts exist independent from individual actors within the system (Simon and Gagnon 1986;

Carpenter 2010). Dominant sexual scripts are those which are given the largest share of representation in major institutions and are generally accepted as normal and appropriate.

Media representation is of particular salience in shaping cultural scripts, but media depictions of sexuality are linked with the sexual scripts presented by other institutions such as religion. Our understandings of good and bad sex are first and foremost a product of cultural scripting. We look to broad representations of sexuality such as those in popular movies or pornography to form conceptions of what is pleasurable and attainable.

Cultural scripting has a profound influence on the second level of scripting, the interpersonal level. The interpersonal level of sexual scripting relates to the guidelines that individuals construct with others when engaging sexually. Sexual actors use a broad cultural understanding of what sex looks like and means to determine the exact shape of each interaction. There is agency here in that everyone has the potential to evaluate dominant cultural scripts and modify them as they see fit, although we are constrained by cultural expectations and fear of social sanctions. Partners can decide together what works for them, but it is important to remember that they are not doing this in a vacuum

(Simon and Gagnon 1986; Carpenter 2010). Cultural scripting trickles down and influences interpersonal scripts, as evidenced by the normative progression of heterosexual encounters (Jackson and Scott 2002; DeLamater and Hyde 2004). It is on this level that partners determine what “good” sex means for them as a unit. For most people, when describing “good” sex there is another person involved in the narrative, and

7 past experiences with sexual partners are likely an important component of sexual quality evaluation.

The final level of scripting is intrapsychic. This is the most personal level, where individuals take what they have learned from culture and partnered interactions to construct their own understandings of the who, what, where, when, and why of sex. This is the psychological level where we see individuals making decisions about their sexuality and its performance. These decisions are personal, to be sure, but again they are greatly influenced by social structure, making it impossible to separate the psychological from the sociological (Simon and Gagnon 1986; Carpenter 2010). The intrapsychic level of scripting is the easiest to tap into empirically by talking to people about how they understand sex, but it is informed by cultural and interpersonal scripting and needs to be understood as such. By talking to people one-on-one I explored individual-level desires but also probed into the sources of those desires, asking questions about reference points for sexual behavior, history with other partners, and media consumption patterns.

Individual-level data collected via interview about what constitutes quality sex is a product of all three levels of scripting, particularly the “why” component. Gender is undoubtedly a guiding principle used to define what behaviors and beliefs are appropriate as it is a force that permeates all arenas of social life. To be clear, although sexual scripting is essential for how sex is enacted and understood, this is not something that people are necessarily doing consciously. Patterned sexual behaviors and interpretations are deeply embedded on the intrapsychic level so that sex can feel natural, spontaneous,

8 and authentic. It is so powerful that people can be following normative scripts to a tee without needing to explicitly reference them (Simon and Gagnon 1986; Carpenter 2010).

West and Zimmerman’s articulation of how we “do” gender is an important elaboration on the dramaturgical framework to sexuality that speaks more clearly to how gender is both performed and embodied in sexual encounters. If we focused just on sexual scripting, particularly the interpersonal level, it would seem that the gendered processes surrounding sexuality are purely interactional, and that gender is an optional display that can be put on when called for by context. However, gender is deeper than that, it is, “an ongoing activity embedded in everyday interaction” (West and

Zimmerman, 1987 p. 131). Gender is something that is performed so consistently that it becomes embodied, feeling so normal and natural that most people do not need to consciously project it. It is not something that is worn only for certain types of interactions, but something that is omnipresent and important for both identity and defining situations (1987). Only by talking to individuals and analyzing dominant messages about sexuality do scripts become apparent, and these scripts can help speak to larger issues of how gender is defined culturally and embodied within sexual encounters.

The naturalization of “doing gender” helps to reinforce power differences between men and women (1987) which may play out during sex but also have implications for every other area of social life.

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Gender

One of the most salient factors that shapes sexual scripts is gender, particularly in regard to heterosexuals (Oliver and Hyde 1993; Carpenter 2010). Women and men receive different cultural messages about what it means to be a sexual person, and this impacts the intrapsychic scripts they develop for themselves as well as the roles they take in sexual encounters. There are gendered double standards when it comes to sexuality, where men and women are judged differently for exhibiting the same behavior and attitudes. Men are encouraged to be more openly sexual and pursue multiple sexual partners, while women run the risk of being judged as “sluts” for doing to same (Bordini and Sperb 2013). Men's sexuality is constructed as being based on strong biological drives that cannot be ignored, while women are expected to take a more relational approach (Roberts et al. 2005). Men are given more freedom to pursue multiple casual partners and women are encouraged to connect sexual behavior with a monogamous romantic relationship. The anxiety that some women in my sample expressed when asked about their number of sexual partners clearly reflects this double standard. This is striking considering that the women I was talking to were, due to their willingness to speak to a stranger about their sex lives, inherently the most likely to be open and comfortable with their sexuality! These gendered cultural sexual scripts inform belief and practice, creating different normative interpersonal and intrapsychic sexual scripts for men and women.

Studies show this dynamic played out in men's and women's experiences of sexuality. Carpenter's qualitative research on virginity loss suggests that double standards influence the way this sexual transition is perceived. Men are more likely to see virginity

10 as a burden they are happy to shed in the facilitation of developing an appropriately masculine sexual identity. Women are more likely to view virginity as a gift to be preserved until they meet a worthy partner. Giving it too freely does not conform with the dominant construction of feminine sexuality (2010). Oliver and Hyde's survey research reveals that men tend to report more sexual partners and have an understanding of their role as being open and active regarding sexuality. Conversely, women to report anxiety, guilt and fear surrounding sex as well as lower rates of masturbation. Additionally, the salience of gender differences in sexuality vary according to the strength of sexual double standards that individuals have internalized (1993). The more people accept the idea that it is appropriate for men to be openly sexual the more they gender their sexual scripts.

Sexual double standards also influence the way that sexual pleasure- the physical, mental, and emotional enjoyment one gets out of sex- is perceived and expressed in gendered terms. For men, experiencing sexual pleasure seems to be taken for granted and therefore unproblematic, but for women the connection between sex and pleasure can be more complicated (Carpenter 1998). Sexual pleasure has not been culturally naturalized for women in the same way that it has for men, and women are encouraged to see their role in a sexual interaction as pleasing their male partner. Consequently, Jackson and

Scott argue that there may be a disconnect between women's performance of sexual desirability and actual sexual desire and pleasure. These authors talk about the difference between an objectified body that is oriented towards pleasing a partner and an experiencing body that is reaping the full benefits of sexual pleasure. When this happens sex becomes a gendered performance, where “Men make a mess; women make a noise”

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(2002 p.107). The physiological process of ejaculation makes men's pleasure a clearly visible part of sexual scripts, while women are expected to make a convincing performance of pleasure that may or may not reflect their actual experience.

The research done by Roberts and colleagues on female orgasm further illustrates this disconnect. These Women’s Studies scholars interviewed men and women about sex and orgasm and found that while faking orgasm is a foreign concept for most men it is a common practice that women engage in. In fact, the majority of women in their sample reported faking an orgasm on at least one occasion, with motivations including making their partner feel sexually competent and desiring to conclude a sexual encounter. They also frequently reported engaging in exaggerated moaning and providing untrue affirmations of orgasm when asked directly by their partner if they came. Ironically, the men who were interviewed rarely reported knowledge of ever having a partner who faked an orgasm (2005). This research is a powerful indication that sexual scripts surrounding the experience of sexual pleasure are gendered.

Women do not accept sexual double standards uncritically, even though they are often acutely aware of them. In one of the few studies that directly tackles the meaning of

“good” sex Elmersteig and colleagues interviewed teenage women about their sexual desires and found that their expectations for “good” sex challenged the dominant script they were presented with. They desired sexual situations where both power and pleasure were shared equally. “Bad” sex was with men who thought that the woman's role was to satisfy the man, an idea that they rejected personally. However, they still believed that sexual double standards influenced their experiences of sexuality and implicated

12 pornography as a key socializing agent that sent the wrong message about gendered sexual roles (2012). Mainstream pornography is a place where men's sexual agency and pleasure is prioritized with women being presented as a vehicle for masculine sexual expression. This cultural-level sexual script provides a framework of inequality within sexual encounters that privileges the pleasure and subjectivity of men.

Pornography

Why does the sexual messaging in pornography matter? Do people really internalize the content of pornography or are we able to leave it in a separate fantasy realm? There has been ample research conducted on the impact of pornography viewing.

The advent of the internet and the associated ease of access to pornographic materials means that there has been an increase in adolescent exposure to sexually explicit material

(Doring 2009; Peter and Valkenburg 2009). Peter and Valkenburg's review of the data on the impact of sexual media suggests that it reduces sexual satisfaction, specifically regarding how sexual partners are received. Viewing pornography can result in reduced satisfaction with a partner's appearance and perceived levels of affection, sexual curiosity, and performance (2009). Their own experimental work confirms this (2009), and suggests that viewing pornography is associated with an increase in recreational attitudes towards sex when the sex seen is viewed as realistic (2006). If participants thought they were seeing a believable portrayal of sexuality they saw sex as more of a vehicle for pleasure than an inherently relational act. Significantly, the impact of pornography viewing did not seem to differ by gender (2006). This is not to say that pornography is

13 gender-neutral in its' sexual messaging, rather that men and women are both susceptible to it. The role of pornography as a source of cultural level sexual scripting is significant, and must be examined when exploring how people construct their ideas of good sex.

Pornography was indeed an important socializing agent for the people in my sample, although men were more likely to include pornography as a frequent component of their sexuality.

Sexual Satisfaction

Given the prevalence of sexual double standards that shape sexual scripts on the cultural, interpersonal, and intrapsychic levels it is reasonable to hypothesize that women and men enter sexual encounters with different ideas about what makes sex “good.” Men appear to be more focused on instrumentality and technical sexual performance (Oliver and Hyde 1993; Le Gall, Mullet, and Shafighi 2002; Zubriggen and Yost 2004; Roberts et al. 2005). It is important for men to be able to physically please themselves and their partners, and their accounts of good sex often featured these elements. Women report a stronger focus on the meaning of sex for their relationships (Oliver and Hyde 1993;

Zubriggen and Yost 2004; Roberts et al. 2005). Their understandings of “good” sex did include a focus on what sex means for their interpersonal relationships more broadly, although this element was not absent from men’s narratives. These differences have significant implications for how gendered sexual scripts influence understandings of

“good” sex. Men and women are entering sexual encounters with slightly different understandings of what “good” sex means, and there is the potential for incompatibilities

14 that must be negotiated on the interpersonal level. These differences are visible within the specific domain of sexuality but reflect broader ways that women and men are dichotomized and stratified in regard to power.

The current research on sexual satisfaction leaves much to be desired when it comes to understanding how “good sex” is socially constructed and scripted. Men and women both tend to report high levels of sexual satisfaction, but why (Waite and Joyner

2001; Higgins et al. 2011)? Unfortunately, the quantitative methods employed by most researchers leaves us with a murky understanding of how sexual satisfaction is achieved.

Most studies of sexual satisfaction are examining this concept on a Likert scale that does not enable an in-depth analysis of the meanings that people construct around sexual behaviors (Haavio-Mannila and Kontula 1997; Waite and Joyner 2001; Peter and

Valkenburg 2009; Stephenson and Meston 2010). Similarly, research that does attempt to assess the factors that contribute to sexual satisfaction tends to use survey data that provides a broad overview of multiple variables but is not equipped to handle the nuance inherent in people's understandings of sexuality.

Sexual satisfaction is predicated on a combination of biological, individual, and social factors (Waite and Joyner 2001). Physical and psychological satisfaction are closely linked (Higgins et al. 2011), and it is unsurprising that much research on sexual satisfaction includes a focus on orgasm. Orgasms are easily quantifiable and thus easily researched, and studies consistently show that having at least one orgasm is connected with positive evaluations of a sexual experience (Hurlbert, Apt and Rabehl 1993, Haavio-

Mannila and Kontula 1997, Waite and Joyner 2001). Consistency is more important than

15 quantity, having an orgasm in most or all sexual encounters is more important than multiple orgasms in a single encounter (Hurlbert, Apt and Rabehl 1993; Haavio-Mannila and Kontula 1997). The connection between orgasm and quality of sex seems intuitive, but it is important that this has been confirmed empirically. Frequency of sexual activity is also consistently linked with evaluations of overall sex life quality. Having sex more often contributes to more positive evaluations of both emotional and physical pleasure

(Hurlbert, Apt and Rabehl 1993, Haavio-Mannila and Kontula 1997, Waite and Joyner

2001, McNulty and Fisher 2008). Frequency is another factor this is easy to measure and thus study, and may contribute to how individual sexual encounters are evaluated as well.

The significance of relationship status on sexual satisfaction has also been studied repeatedly. People in committed monogamous relationships tend to report the highest levels of physical and emotional satisfaction (Hurlbert, Apt and Rabehl 1993, Haavio-

Mannila and Kontula 1997, Waite and Joyner 2001, Stephenson, Ahrold, and Meston

2011). This is possibly due to the increased levels of communication and empowerment that are possible with a stable partner. Smith's research indicates that people who feel autonomous, competent, and emotionally connected report higher levels of satisfaction than those who do not (2007), and these may be factors that are easier to obtain with a committed partner. Similarly, Higgins and colleagues reported that people who claim to be always comfortable with their sexuality are 3.9 times more likely to be satisfied with their sex life (2007), which may or may not be connected to relationship status.

The aforementioned contributing factors to sexual quality are significant regardless of gender, but there are some variables that have a gendered influence.

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Stephenson, Ahrold, and Meston found that when women choose to engage sexually because they are seeking physical pleasure and self-expression they evaluate sex more positively. When women have sex to try and increase their sexual experience they were more likely to view those encounters negatively. Men did not appear to be subject to these same influences (2011). For men, considering sexuality important and using sexual materials such as pornography have a positive impact on sexual satisfaction, but these variables are not significant for women (Haavio-Mannila and Kontula 1997). Overall, there appears to be a discrepancy in the amount of sexual pleasure that women experience relative to men. Stephenson and Meston attribute this to a disparity in orgasm rate, with men reporting more frequent and consistent orgasms than women (2010). The women that I spoke to supported this idea, although they also suggested an acceptance of this imbalance and the possibility of satisfying sex without orgasm.

All of the preceding studies are making incredibly important contributions to our understanding of sexual satisfaction. Survey research is a valuable way to get a wide and generalizable view of sexuality. Broadly, we know that orgasm rates, frequency of intercourse, relationship status, comfort-level, and autonomy are all important contributors to overall sexual satisfaction. However, it is time to dig deeper and begin the work of parsing out the complexity surrounding “good” sexual encounters. Gender and sexuality are often framed in binary terms- man/woman, straight/gay, good/bad- but lived experiences are more complicated than this. People take in cultural messages about sex and then interpret and apply them, allowing room for variation. Qualitative work has the

17 potential to illuminate the nuance surrounding the complex interplay between gender and sexuality.

Going beyond the quantitative, Beggan, Vencill, and Garos (2013) conducted valuable experimental research on how college students create identities of being “good in bed.” As a part of their experiment they asked participants to list qualities that make someone good in bed. The lists they compiled referenced behaviors such as exhibiting a willingness to try new things, making a partner feel good, feeling sexy yourself, allowing roughness, communicating desires, practicing safe sex, passionate kissing, promoting foreplay, and knowing how to turn someone on. The correlating list of behaviors that make someone bad in bed included being too quiet, being too rough, being too drunk, focusing solely on one's own pleasure, and being self-conscious. Ultimately, the goal of this research was to understand how people rate their own sexual skills relative to other, and Beggan, Vencill, and Garos found that people tend to see themselves as better in bed than others, and this effect is stronger for men than women (2013).

I expand on this research with a stronger focus on the dynamics- the interplay between cultural, interpersonal, and intrapsychic factors- underlying “good” sex. I heard narrative accounts of what makes for quality sex, and not just itemized lists. Although lists are an excellent starting point they do not allow for a thorough exploration of why specific behavior are desirable or undesirable. For example, what does “a willingness to try new things entail? How are people doing this? Are some types of novel behaviors valued over others? Why do people say trying new things matters? In the answers to these questions lies a deeper understanding of sexuality as well as larger gender norms. I focus

18 on how social location, particularly gender, impacts assessments of desirable sexual encounters and try to locate the socializing agents that have helped to shape contemporary sexual scripts. What are the features of a sexual encounter that someone labels as “good,” as opposed to sex that is presented as “bad” and unsatisfying? How do people use their social environment to construct these definitions?

Recent research by Fahs and Plante (2017) begins to answer these questions. They interviewed 20 women about their understandings of satisfying sexual encounters and found that “good” sex can be contingent on physical pleasure, emotional connection, feelings of comfort, and having control over sexual scripts. The significance of physical pleasure affirms the importance of technical sexual skill and achieving orgasm for women’s enjoyment of sex, but for many women this was not the only criterion. Half the sample indicated that “good” sex facilitated a shared emotional experience with a partner and made them feel closer as a couple. Others believed that “good” sex was defined by feeling relaxed and comfortable with a partner such that the encounter felt natural and easy. Finally, over a quarter of interviewees valued the ability to control sexual scripts, either during sexual encounters or in the verbal sharing of their experiences. The latter refers to the pleasure that some women received from describing their sexual encounter to another person, they wanted an experience that made for a good story. These categories are not mutually exclusive, many participants reported factors extending across these categories that defined “good” sexual encounters (2017). I used their research as a starting point for further investigation. Most significantly, by including men in my research I am able to understand the extent to which “good” sex is a gendered

19 phenomenon and connect this to larger systems of gender and power. Fahs and Plante noted that in particular, “[The] emphasis on feeling natural, calm, relaxed and comfortable suggests that the power imbalances and patriarchal dynamics of ‘bodice- ripping sex’ do not always appear in women’s sexual happiness stories” (2017 p. 39).

Men also experience variation from this particular vision of sex, but there are other ways that patriarchy is manifested in both men and women’s narratives.

So What? Why Does Sex Matter?

Through sexuality gender differences are naturalized. Hegemonic patterns of sexuality assume sexual difference. Masculinity and femininity are constructed as binary opposites, and “opposites attract” (Connell 1987). On the cultural level of sexual scripting men and women are expected to bring different qualities to sexual interactions.

Where men are aggressive women are passive, where women are emotional men are stoic, where men are full of unbridled desire women are capable of temperance. This dichotomy impacts intrapsychic scripting as well, imbuing men and women with gendered expectations of what makes for a good sexual encounter. Unfortunately, this binary is not one of equal exchange. Differential expectations for sexual expression are indicative of social stratification, both within the domain of sexuality and within other institutions. Constructing masculine sexuality as aggressive attributes more agency to men and places women in the role of sex object. A sex object is desired but not desiring and thus is not granted the fullness of humanity that comes with being an agentic sexual being. Women’s expected temperance and role as sexual gatekeepers who put the brakes

20 on an imprudent sexual encounter subjects them to sexual double standards that ultimately give men power. Women are judged for expressing sexual desire and are thus inhibited, trying to balance cultural expectations of purity and their own subjectivity. Men are free to pursue heterosexual encounters with limited cultural restrictions, which gives them the power to shame their partner should she displease him. This can be a tool of control that extends beyond sex to include a woman’s perception in the other domains of her life such as the home, work, and school.

Although I set out to research sexual satisfaction, an attention to the inverse became immediately apparent. Our understandings of positive sexual experiences are mediated by our worst encounters. For women especially, rape and sexual assault often came to the forefront in our conversations as stark examples of the worst kind of sexual encounters. I conducted research at a time when the Me Too Movement was gaining traction and highlighting the personal depth and cultural scope of sexual violence.

However, the way this issue is addressed in the media is often at odds with the way it was experienced by the women in my sample. Harvey Weinstein’s case has become symbolic as a representation of men in power abusing their position and taking advantage of the women they have authority over. He is presented as a monster, an aberration of masculinity to be publicly vilified and removed from the system. In contrast, when

“Grace’s” account of her assault at the hands of Aziz Ansari was reported she was met with public skepticism about if this was even assault at all. She went on a date with the comedian, consuming an ample about of wine, before returning to his apartment and being repeatedly pressured for sex despite clearly expressing disinterest. Eventually, she

21 conceded and performed oral sex, stating “He sat back and pointed to his penis and motioned for me to go down on him. And I did. I think I just felt really pressured. It was literally the most unexpected thing I thought would happen at that moment because I told him I was uncomfortable.” (Way 2018). For his part, Ansari responded by saying, “We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual…upon further reflection, she felt uncomfortable.

It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned” (Thomas 2018).

Interpretation of this situation is murky. On the one hand, we have a woman who clearly felt violated, who wasn’t violently forced into a sexual situation but who found herself performing oral sex out of obligation without the enthusiastic consent being upheld by the Me Too movement as the definitive prerequisite standard for a healthy sexual encounter. On the other hand, we have Ansari, an active participant confused by how this interaction was perceived as non-consensual. He’s not easily written off as a monster, his public persona comes across as genuinely compassionate and concerned with the rights of others. What’s missing from this conversation is a serious look at how sexual exchanges like this are a normalized part of heterosexuality, how alcohol and the aggressive pursuit of sex on behalf of men are written into our dominant sexual script.

It’s hard for us to accept a problem with Ansari’s behavior because it is viewed as normal. I saw this in my conversations with women, some of whom had difficulty framing their non-consensual experiences as rape or sexual assault because they happened according to the rules of the sexual script. For some it was years after the fact

22 that they recognized that the sex they had after a party in college, when they were barely conscious and by definition unable to give clear consent, was a violation and not an indication of their own moral failing. It is our task to understand how the dominant sexual script encourages encounters like “Grace” and women in my sample have experienced.

Narratives about “good sex,” and its counterpart, “bad sex,” are not divorced from larger social structures, and are constructed with an awareness of dominant cultural sexual scripts. They have the potential to tell us how these scripts are embodied on a very personal level, shaping an individual’s experience of gender and desire. The differences in women and men’s experiences demonstrates larger inequalities within the gender regime. It is possible to link these different narratives to larger cultural forces that dictate how we do gender and perpetuate gender-based inequality. Although I set out to understand sexual pleasure, the differences in experiences with rape and sexual assault illuminate a pervasive and culturally supported source of gender inequality.

I am interested in exploring ideologies, but ideologies are not merely abstractions with no implications for lived experiences. As Connell writes, “discourse and symbolism are themselves practices, which are structurally connected with other practices… They too have to be analysed with attention to context, institutionalization, and group formation.” In other words, the expectations and idealizations that we develop surrounding sexuality are deeply connected to larger gender regimes which are played out in peoples’ lived experiences. If men and women have different expectations about what constitutes “good sex” and “bad sex” that will play out in their sexual interactions but also suggest something about how they position men and women relative to each other.

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The way a person frames their sexual desires and experiences speaks to their sexuality of course, but it also speaks to their experiences living in a gendered world and how they has come to understand femininity and masculinity as a whole. Sexuality is one arena where people “do gender,” but the gendered embodiment here is also manifested in other institutions such as politics, the economy, and education. All of these are locations where inequalities can develop and shape the life trajectories of men and women in stratified ways.

Methods and Sampling Strategy

To develop a more thorough understanding of how people construct ideas of “good” and “bad” sex I employed a qualitative strategy using in-depth one-one-one interviews. The essence of this research is an attempt at understanding how people are interpreting their sexual encounters and what is meant when labels of “good” or “bad” are attached to sexual experiences. I wanted to understand this on the individual level, with attention paid to how external influences such as friends, family, sexual partners, and the media contribute to narratives about sex. These types of questions require a depth of data that can only be accomplished through qualitative methods (DeLamater and Hyde 2004), but the deeply personal nature of sexuality complicated decisions regarding appropriate methodology. Sensitive questions such as those regarding sexuality raise concerns about disapproval or other negative consequences that will be a challenge when collecting data

(Tourangeau and Smith 1996). It’s important to balance the need for responsivity to the

24 experiences of respondents with an awareness that the presence of a researcher can have a profound impact on the way that sexuality is framed. The quality of Laura Carpenter’s data regarding virginity loss for both men and women suggested that this issue is not insurmountable (2001), but I believed that an added layer of anonymity may facilitate more open dialogue. To this end between July 2016 and April 2018 I conducted a series of in-depth interviews either over the phone or in person, interviewee’s preference, allowing me to follow conversational cues and explore relevant issues as they were raised by participants while hopefully removing some of the pressures of talking about sex to a stranger.

Of particular concern was my ability as a female researcher to make men feel comfortable sharing intimate details regarding their sexual lives. Indeed, I experienced differences when speaking with women as opposed to men. When I spoke to women the conversations flowed more smoothly. We shared an understanding of context that sometimes led me to nod my head in agreement at statements before checking myself and remembering that as a researcher just because I thought I understood what someone was saying I still needed to ask clarifying questions to make sure we were on the same wavelength. Some women told me after the interview that they were so comfortable they felt as if they were speaking to a friend and not a scientist. With men there was more of a barrier. I sensed more obvious discomfort and had moments when I had to assure them that it was safe to share their true experiences and feelings and that I would not take offense to anything they said. Although I experienced occasional reserve from both men

25 and women, it was more frequent that I had to pull answers out of men and ask them to tap into and expand on their feelings.

Gender was a key element in my sampling strategy, and my sample was also restricted by age. Often the groups that are a primary focus of sexuality research are adolescents and college students (DeLamater and Hyde 2004). College students are an easy group for academics to access, and they experience a unique sexual culture that is worthy of exploration. Hookups, or casual sexual encounters not predicated on a romantic relationship, dominate the college sexual landscape (Hamilton and Armstrong 2009).

This means that college students experience sexuality in a way that other sectors of the population do not. I want to develop our understanding of sexuality throughout the life- course by focusing on the cohort of people aged 23-36 (I did end up interviewing two 22- year-olds, but they were not college students). These are post-college adults in the

Millenial Generation, also referred to as Generation Y (Ng, Schweitzer, and Lyons 2010).

Although the boundaries between generations are debatable, academics generally agree that it begins with people born in 1980 and extends through the 1990s (2010).

The cultural environment that people born into each generational cohort share is key in shaping their sexual expectations (Carpenter 2010). For example, people in the previous generation, Generation X, grew up with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, increased

LGBTQ visibility, the resurgence of morally conservative sexual education, and backlash against 2nd wave feminism which created a unique set of tensions between sexual empowerment and caution (2010). For Millenials, developing a sexual identity in conjunction with the increasing availability of the internet means that they had the

26 potential to be exposed to a wide variety of sexual information and thus socialization that is unprecedented. My research confirmed that access to the internet is significant for this generation. Only 11 people reported learning about sex through the internet as a child and adolescent, but 46 said that the internet is the primary way that they gain information about sex as an adult, either through pornography consumption or concerted Google searches.

The Millenial cohort is also experiencing a new life stage, particularly those middle class or higher. For the first time in history there is a strong self-development imperative, where young people are encouraged to delay marriage and children to focus on themselves and their career (Hamilton and Armstrong 2009). This undoubtedly influences perceptions of sexual interactions as they are less likely to be in service of creating a long-term partnership and more likely to relate to self-actualization, especially for those at the lower end of the range. Now is the time to build our understanding of this phase of life and how it impacts sexuality for the Millenial generation.

I was interested in how relationship status plays a role in how one is evaluating

“good” sex considering the bearing it has on sexual satisfaction overall (Hurlbert, Apt and

Rabehl 1993, Haavio-Mannila and Kontula 1997, Waite and Joyner 2001, Stephenson,

Ahrold, and Meston 2011). Being in a relationship may shift sexual priorities to more partner-oriented goals and I wanted to see how relationship status impacts the types of sexual practices that are determined to be “good.” Relationship status category came from self-identification. If someone said that they were single they were coded as such, even if they were currently engaging in one or more dating/sexual relationships.

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Similarly, a relationship is what participants define it as, and there was some diversity in my sample regarding the importance of romantic and sexual monogamy. Ultimately, relationship status did not appear to be a significant determinant of how participants understood “good” sex, but it did have some bearing on how participants interjected novelty into their lives as I will discuss briefly in the next chapter.

I found my respondents using purposive snowball sampling. I initially wanted to utilize both my existing social network as well as external recruitment, specifically

Craigslist following the lead of Plante and Fahs (2017). Unfortunately, the latter strategy proved unfruitful. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people did not seem enthusiastic about reaching out to a stranger on the internet to discuss the most intimate aspects of their sex lives. I was only able to achieve success by asking people who already knew and trusted me to find participants, both by word of mouth and several Facebook posts. By starting with people I had network connections with I believe it was be easier to induce comfort with me as a researcher despite the personal nature of my line of questioning. From there,

I was able to start snowball chains where participants referred more people who were interested in being interviewed. The unfortunate consequence is that my final sample of

70 people is reflective of the people I surround myself with and is not as diverse racially, economically, and religiously as I would have liked (See Table 1.1 for complete demographic information). My interviewees range in age from 22-37 with a mean age of

28.3. The number of sexual partners they reported ranged from one to about 1100, with an average of 21.2 (I excluded the man with about 1100 partners for this calculation).

This is higher than the national average of 11.22 (Twenge, Sherman, and Wells 2015),

28 which may indicate that my sample has different attitudes about sex than the general population, but it comes with the advantage of my interviewees having varied experiences to pull from. My sample is disproportionately female, white, educated, and a- religious (some religious demographics are missing) limiting the extent to which my findings are generalizable.

Table 1.1 Sample Demographics Women Men Nonbinary Total Single 16 10 1 27 Partnered 27 13 1 41 Relationship Anarchist 0 2 0 2 Polyamorous 7 3 1 11 Race-White 37 20 2 59 Race-Black 1 2 0 3 Race-Latino/a 1 2 0 3 Race-Biracial 0 1 0 3 Straight 26 20 0 46 Gay/Lesbian 0 3 0 3 Bisexual/Pansexual/Queer 16 2 1 19 Education- High School 3 1 0 4 Education- Some College 9 4 0 13 Education- Associate's 2 0 0 2 Education- Bachelor's 20 12 2 24 Education- Master's + 9 8 0 17 Religion- Christian 6 3 0 9 Religion- Agnostic/Atheist/None 23 13 1 37 Religion- Other 5 0 1 6

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Interestingly, although 19 of my interviewees identified as bisexual or pansexual

(one woman identified as queer generally and one nonbinary respondent refused identification) the vast majority of the sexual experiences they related were with differently gendered people. This enables me to discuss the dynamics of heterosexual sex but prohibits me from making claims about LGBTQ sexual scripts. Fifteen of these people were in relationships, and with two exceptions all of them were partnered with a differently gendered partner. One exception was a woman who was in a polyamorous triadic relationship with both a man and a woman, and the other exception was nonbinary person who was in a relationship with a woman. The latter is a differently sexed relationship but it would be inaccurate to categorize their relationship in the same way as a relationship between a cisgender woman and a man. The trade-off in the homogeneity of my sample is that I believe I was able to get quality in-depth information that is generally kept private which establishes a foundational knowledge of how “good” and

“bad” sex are constructed which can be expanded on with future research.

A more coherent understanding of how “good” sex is constructed is important not just academically, but also socially and politically. We know that sexual satisfaction is correlated with general life satisfaction (Smith 2007, Peter and Valkenburg 2009), and a more complete understanding of the components of sexual satisfaction has the potential to help educate people about how to improve the quality of their lives through sexual intentionality. Additionally, contraceptives are a powerful tool for preventing STIs and unwanted pregnancy, but concern about their impact on sexual pleasure can be a barrier to use (Roberts et al. 2005, Esacove 2012, Fennell 2014). Research into how people are

30 framing “good sex” can help policy makers understand how to effectively present contraceptive options, as well as what kinds of advances in contraceptive technology would make their use more appealing.

The significance of this work does not end with sex. My research builds on past studies of sexual satisfaction to help us create a stronger understanding of what makes sex “good,” which ultimately has implications for domains outside of sexuality. The different expectations about sex that men and women embody are indicative of a larger gender regime that establishes divergent norms for men and women. The different roles that men and women are expected to take are not valued equally and result in stratification in the workforce, the education system, religious institutions, and the family

(Connell 1987, West and Zimmerman 1987). Sexual double standards that empower men to seek pleasure and shame women for doing so attribute power and agency to men that carries over into other areas of social life. Sex can be an intimate representation of larger inequalities, a snapshot of persistent differences in gender socialization that are meaningful in and of themselves but also speak to social stratification more broadly. My research peers into gendered sexuality on an individual level. When viewed collectively, individual narratives can coalesce into a story that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

They can tell us about the cultural-level sexual scripts that shape our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors and give us an image of current gender regimes and how they impact our lives on the most personal level.

In some ways, it’s unfortunate that my questions about sexual satisfaction led me down a path where I was forced to address sexual violence. Academic research, the Me

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Too Movement, the experiences of women I love, and my own personal experiences all suggest that this is a common occurrence, but it was always disheartening when conversations with women about pleasure would transition into explorations of deep personal pain. I know that this is normal, and I also know that this is wrong and an indication of a society where women have still not achieved full equality relative to men.

But it’s not all doom-and-gloom. With the understanding that sexual coercion and violence against women are a component of our dominant sexual script is the potential for a critical examination of that script and a movement towards change. Within my research is insight for how to improve the quality of sexual encounters and collectively increase the number of sexual experiences that both women and men deem to be “good.”

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Chapter 2. Novelty

Sexual script theory suggests that sexual interactions are patterned in predictable ways to make a socially risky act run smoother. Sex inherently comes with some vulnerability in the process of taking off your clothes and expressing intimate desires, and scripts increase the chances of mutually agreed upon actions. People reference cultural- level and interpersonal-level scripts to provide a shared baseline for what exactly is going to happen and how. When I asked my interviewees what made sex “good” for them, a fair number of people cited factors that are enabled by strong shared scripts. When people talked about wanting sex to feel comfortable or natural they were referencing a feeling that comes from knowing what to expect. It is possible for sex to flow in a comfortable and smooth way because of sexual scripts (Wiederman 2005). Without scripts sex would require continuous communication and potential interruption, the feeling of sex being

“natural” comes from an awareness of scripts. There is nothing inherently natural about the dominant cultural-level sexual script. It is not a biological imperative that sex entail kissing followed by manual stimulation followed by oral sex followed by penetration, but cultural-level scripts establish this as the proper protocol for intercourse (Jackson and

Scott 2002; DeLamater and Hyde 2004).. Cultural-level scripts are particularly important when partners are having sex for the first time, before interpersonal-level scripts can be established. For people that were in committed relationships, they sometimes talked

38 about their partner “knowing their body.” Over time, an awareness of an individual partner’s desires and physical responses can create interpersonal-level scripts whose adherence enhances sexual satisfaction. Following sexual scripts, whether they be cultural or interpersonal-level, can be a meaningful factor in sexual satisfaction.

Regardless of how important scripts are, novelty routinely emerged as an important component of sexual encounters that stood out as particularly “good” or “fun.”

Despite the need to rely on scripts to an extent to make sex go smoothly, my respondents seemed to value experiences where something happened that was outside of the norm.

While the benefit of scripts may be that they make sex comfortable, the cost is that they can make sex routine or monotonous. When I asked directly what makes sex “good” in the abstract novelty was mentioned only infrequently, but when asked about specific encounters that were remembered as “good” it was a common element. Sexual satisfaction requires breaking out of the script, at least occasionally, to keep sex fresh and interesting. However, what stood out to me was how even novelty itself is scripted to an extent. There was a significant amount of consistency in how people chose to break out of their sexual routines, generally either in different behaviors or locations. It appears that when deciding to try something new, people are looking to cultural-level sexual scripts to determine appropriate ways to spice up their sex lives.

Feeling “Natural” and “Comfortable”

When respondents discussed “good” sex feeling “natural” or “comfortable” they were referencing a feeling that comes from following shared sexual scripts. It’s possible

39 for sex to flow naturally or comfortably because both (or all) participants are on the same page about what is appropriate and comfortable. I had 25 interviewees explicitly reference these factors when describing what makes sex “good” for them. Eileen

(Woman, 31, Single, Straight) recounted the following feelings about a sexual encounter:

We got back to his house and he’s like… and then we were just kissing, and it kind of just, like we kind of got undressed on the couch and then he’s like okay let’s go upstairs, so we did, and it was just, I mean it was, to me it was natural progression, it wasn’t forced, it was just comfortable. She was talking about an encounter with a new partner that was particularly satisfying because it felt organic. They followed a familiar script where kissing is followed by undressing and sexual touching before moving to the location that cultural- level sexual level sexual script establishes as the appropriate location for sex: the bedroom. Her male partner followed normative gendered roles and took responsibility for escalating the encounter. Everything went as expected, and that in-and-of itself made the sex stand out as particularly positive. Luke (Man, 31, Partnered, Straight) also referenced the importance of feeling comfortable, and also the desire to not have to communicate excessively about how to achieve this:

I don’t think, like I guess that that’s maybe the best way about it, is we don’t have to have a lot of conversations about it, but we’re open about it, and everything feels compatible. Uh, preferences… just, everything about it is comfortable. Uh, but, in its being comfortable it makes it frequent.

Luke prioritizes comfort but appreciates when that feeling comes organically. He doesn’t want to “have a lot of conversations about it,” forcing that comfort to come from both partners having expectations that come from shared cultural-level scripts. If they were both figuring out how to engage sexually from scratch conversations would be

40 necessary to negotiate their individual desires. He doesn’t want to discuss personal preferences, necessitating that sexual desires are mutually rooted in shared scripts.

Cultural-level scripting helps ensure that both Luke and his partner have relatively similar expectations that don’t require extensive dialogue. For Luke and his girlfriend, this helps them have sex more frequently. Comfort can be particularly attainable within the context of a frequent sexual partner as Dan (Man, 27, Relationship Anarchist, Straight) relates:

I guess that's what's so great about having sex with people that I do know well, is that we both pretty much have like a very high, um, you know, I'm 95 percent sure that this is going to end well for both of us. When that number drops to like 50 or 60 percent, it's pretty, uh, pretty sketch. Not my cup of tea.

Dan is referencing the ability of interpersonal-level sexual scripts to make sex feel even more comfortable, and therefore pleasurable. If two people know each other well and have had sex before they have the benefit of pulling from both cultural-level sexual scripts and expectations for what happens during sex that have been built together based on past experiences. They’ve had time to develop an interpersonal-level script that incorporates both of their desires and allows for modifications of the cultural-level script.

Knowing what factors have contributed to “good” sex with a partner in the past increases the chances of future success. Dan even goes so far as to quantify this, saying that if he knows his partner his chances of having “good” sex increase by at least 35%. Carrie

(Woman, 29, Single, Bisexual) referenced a specific way that she and her partner have built a shared interpersonal-level sexual script:

If I wasn’t able to get off when we were having sex, he would just go down on me and I didn’t have to ask for it. He just kind of knew that was going to work.

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Carrie felt that sex with her current partner is particularly satisfying because their interpersonal-level script has included a way for her to consistently reach orgasm. Their script entails that if penetrative intercourse isn’t getting her there they switch gears and he performs oral sex. She appreciates that this is expected to the point that she doesn’t need to verbalize her desires in each separate encounter, their script is written so that her physical desires are automatically met. This is a similar narrative to the 10 participants that cited a “partner knowing their body” as a key component to experiencing “good” sex. Interviewees like Destiny (Woman, 25, Partnered, Bisexual) said things like:

Yeah, like, I think that, like [partner] can be really good in bed, but it’s because he knows my body, and he knows like how I’m responding to things, and he knows when things feel good for me, and when they don’t feel as good, you know, and I don’t know that that would like translate to another person.

Through repeated sexual encounters Destiny and her partner have been able to establish an interpersonal-level script that results in consistently satisfying sex for her.

Her partner is able to understand the idiosyncrasies of her body and provide her with more physical pleasure than a new partner would be able to without the benefit of those scripts created over time. She is able to focus more on experiencing pleasure because she doesn’t have to exert energy verbalizing her feelings and desires, her and her partner have already established a shared sexual language. For Destiny and other participants, “good” sex can be achieved through feelings of comfort, naturalness, and shared intimate knowledge that come with an element of scripted predictability.

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Importance of Novelty

When I was talking to people about what makes sex “good” for them I started to notice an interesting dynamic. Although comfort frequently emerged as an important component of sexual satisfaction, when interviewees talked about their “best” or “most fun” sexual encounters they often referenced experiences when cultural-level or interpersonal-level scripts were broken. It appears that there is a tension between wanting sex that feels comfortable, while also desiring an interjection of novelty. If sex follows sexual scripts too closely it can become mundane. Interestingly, novelty was cited relatively equally as an important factor regardless of relationship status, suggesting that this isn’t only a concern for people in long-term relationships looking to “spice things up.” Single people valued novelty as well, and could appreciate moments when sexual scripts were broken. For all participants, much of this emerged when citing specific encounters that stood out as particularly satisfying, but 22 people referenced novelty specifically when asked what makes sex “good,” such as Brittany (Woman, 32,

Partnered, Straight):

I think just feeling comfortable with that but also being pushed outside of my comfort zone.

Brittany’s quote in particular highlights the tension between comfort and novelty that I’m talking about. She wants to feel comfortable, which comes from relying on shared sexual scripts. At the same time she wants to be pushed outside of her comfort zone, to experience sex that is novel and goes beyond even her own intrapsychic-scripts.

In the inverse, Jeff (Man, 24, Partnered, Straight) talks about the power of novelty to keep sex from being “bad.” 43

If it feels routine, same position, same location, same everything… That could lead to it seeming like bad sex.

Jeff wants to break up the sexual script to keep sex feeling fresh and “good.” If the script is followed too closely, and he specifically highlights the same behaviors and locations, sex can be routine and therefore “bad.” Although scripts have an important function in helping sex run smoothly, an overreliance on scripts can also reduce sexual quality.

When asked directly about what makes sex “good” novelty wasn’t a dominant theme, but much of the importance of novelty became apparent when people were asked about particular encounters that stood out as especially “good” or fun”. When these cases are factored in 62 out of 70 respondents cited some form of novelty as a factor in satisfying sex. It’s entirely possible that these encounters were particularly memorable and therefore reported to me because their novelty helps them stand out in respondents’ memories, so although I can’t claim that novelty is more important than other considerations of satisfaction such as physical pleasure or connection it is clear that for some encounters to stand out as “good” it is an important element. There were two key ways that novelty was frequently reported, either in the form of different locations or behaviors. Cultural-level scripting establishes the who, what, where, when, and why of sex, and when these scripts are broken the “where” and “what” seem to be the most frequently interrupted elements. In regards to “who” that script was rarely broken. People frequently cited having sex with a new partner as being particularly exciting, but that partner was rarely outside of their script for what type of person they would generally have sex with, the exception being the two people who reported a satisfying encounter 44 with someone who was a different gender than they were normally attracted to and the one person who enjoyed sex with someone significantly older. The dominant sexual script establishes sex as something that happens at night, and only five respondents discussed a change in time of day as an important element in making a sexual encounter satisfying. In contrast, 43 people cited a change in location as an important factor in satisfaction, and 32 people referenced a new behavioral element being introduced.

Location

Outside the Bedroom

Bridget (Woman, 28, Partnered, Pansexual) was one respondent that referenced a change in location as an important factor in making a sexual encounter satisfying. She had recently started having sex with a co-worker and she said:

I have a huge office with couches and, like, all sorts of things. So it's, like, there's also this dynamic of it's really common to be behind closed doors with a coworker because we have confidential stuff all the time. So, like, him sitting in my office for twenty minutes with my door closed is, like, completely ordinary. So it just kind of lends itself. Sometimes we're the only two people, like, in the building, so it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun.

For Bridget, the novelty of having sex in her office, and feeling like she’s getting away with something, makes sex with her co-worker particularly “good.” Although they aren’t doing anything outside of their normal interpersonal-script, the fact that it’s happening in the office and not a bedroom increases the quality of those encounters. This is normally a space where they conduct business, and having sex there defies the proscribed purpose of her office. Additionally, the fact that she’s having sex with a co-

45 worker, someone who would normally just be a professional connection, makes these encounters unique and therefore satisfying. For Ethan (Man, 23, Partnered, Straight), a different location also made some encounters with his girlfriend stand out as especially satisfying:

I mean, we lived with roommates before we moved here, so the ones that were the most fun were when we could venture outside the bedroom because the other roommate wasn’t around for whatever reason that might be. I think being able to be a bit more adventurous as to where we had sex helped a lot with the fun factor of it.

Ethan and his girlfriend were keeping their interpersonal sexual script relatively consistent, they weren’t doing anything fundamentally different when they ventured into other areas of the house, but because those areas were typically off-limits it made otherwise routine sexual encounters feel “adventurous.” Their living situation dictated that spaces shared with roommates were generally inappropriate for sex, so the limited opportunities to have sex in rooms like the kitchen and living room were special and fun.

When this happened they were violating both household norms dictated by sharing space and cultural-level scripts that suggest sex is a bedroom-specific activity. Rian (Woman,

32, Partnered, Bisexual) also found leaving the bedroom to be enough novelty to make sex satisfying:

The night that my husband and I moved in together because we had sex all over our house and in every room. We didn't have roommates, so we spent the entire day and night naked just wandering around our house and randomly having sex in places.

Like Ethan, the absence of roommates freed Rian and her partner to have sex in different rooms of the house, making those encounters especially exciting. Their newfound privacy was an important factor in encouraging them to break dominant sexual scripts and 46 have sex in novel locations within their house. Having sex in an area of the house other than the bedroom was a common way to deviate from sexual scripts. In total, 13 of 54 cases of different locations (some respondents had multiple satisfying encounters in different locations) took place in the house but outside of the bedroom. This is a relatively low risk way to alter the “where” component of the sexual script and still benefit from novelty.

Hotels

Hotels were also a popular place to break up the script and have “good” sex.

Madison (Woman, 25, Partnered, Straight) had an especially satisfying encounter with her boyfriend after attending a wedding together:

He actually picked out my dress. We were both like really into each other that day. He looked really good and he thought I looked good but had the pride of picking my dress. Being around a lot of family and having fun and having a hotel room adds intrigue because it’s not the usual routine. It was just really connected and fun.

There were emotional components to her sexual satisfaction. Attending the wedding together reaffirmed their connection to each other and validated their identity as a couple to their loved ones. However, the element of having sex in a different location, a hotel room, was significant. That took their sex out of “the usual routine” and allowed them to experience the encounter differently than they would have otherwise. Nothing else happened that was outside of their norm, but being in a new location was exciting, as it was for Kelsey (Woman, 22, Single, Bisexual)

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It was one time closer to the end of our relationship that was good. I don't know what had changed. I think we were staying at a hotel and so we had a little more privacy. And I remember actually experiencing some level of pleasure for a few minutes.

Kelsey overall did not enjoy having sex with her ex-husband, but this break in script is what enabled her to enjoy that sexual encounter, to an extent. Although he was still not the attentive partner she desired, taking their overall unsatisfying sex to a different location, a hotel room, was sufficient to improve the quality of sex. For Kelsey, the novelty of a hotel room was particularly significant because it allowed for her and her husband to have sex in a private space, away from her parents with whom they lived.

Outside

The most significant way that that respondents broke the “where” component of the sexual script was by having sex outside. This was typically in areas where detection was unlikely, but the slight risk of getting caught when considered along with the novel location made these encounters particularly satisfying. Maya (Woman, 28, Partnered,

Straight) said:

We have also have had sex out in the woods and that's definitely fun as well, and that probably stand out more…I think it's just the thrill of it. I mean I love being outside so there's kind of like more peaceful tone to it or kind of just being one with nature it a different way but then there's a thrill of being out in the open and being exposed that makes it a little more exciting.

The change of location is key. The setting of the woods changes the tone of the encounter because it is both a place she enjoys being and an environment radically

48 different from where she is used to having sex. The potential of being caught adds to the excitement. She also feels engaged in a different way, both with her partner and with nature itself, a sensation not possible within the confines of her bedroom. A change in setting works to modify the tone of the sexual encounter. Stephanie (Woman, 29, Single,

Bisexual) is another respondent that enjoys changing location by being outside:

I like having sex outside, sometimes when I’m with a partner, we’ll go hiking or on a trail and sneak out and have sex, I also like to, you know- houses around construction, I like fun locations, strange locations, it’s just fun.

For Stephanie, having sex outside makes sex feel more fun and spontaneous. It’s removed from the norm and the change in location allows for what might be another routine sexual encounter with her partner feel fresh. Location change overall may be particularly common because it’s a way to shake up sexual scripts and interject novelty while maintaining all other familiar elements. By changing location it’s possible to keep the same expectations for behavior while still feeling the rush of something new different.

You can keep doing what you’ve been doing but now it’s in a hotel, or on the couch, and suddenly it feels new and fresh! There’s not much risk here (aside from detection if sex is happening in a semi-public place) because you don’t need to figure out how to understand desires that deviate from the norm and incorporate them into understandings of sexual preferences and identity. It’s particularly striking that there is so much consistency in where people are going to change the “where” component of the sexual script. Out of 54 reported locations for sex, 46 of them take place either outside, in the house but not the bedroom, in a hotel, or in a car (See Table 2.1). This consistency suggests that there is still some scripting at play. When people are seeking out novel 49

locations for sex these are still Table 2.1 Novel Locations referencing subcultural-level scripts Location Number Outside 15 regarding what different locations are House-Not Bedroom 13 Hotel 11 desirable. The outliers in my sample Car 7 demonstrate that it’s possible to have Work 3 Classroom 2 sex in many unique locales such as an Mini-Golf Course 1 Public Bathroom 1 amusement park, a public restroom, or Amusement Park 1 Total 54 a mini-golf course, but few people are

opting to utilize these spaces. Instead, there appear to be subcultural-level scripts regarding deviance that is paradoxically somewhat normal; ways to break cultural and interpersonal-level scripts while still staying within some boundaries of what is acceptable.

Behavior

BDSM

Although a change in location is the safest way to break up scripts and add sexual novelty, different behaviors were still relatively common, with 32 respondents enjoying altering scripts and trying something new. The normal “what” of sex includes kissing, fondling, manual sex, oral sex, and penetration, and there were a variety of other behaviors that people included in their encounters that made sex “good.” Aiden (Man, 30,

Partnered, Bisexual) said that his best sex included:

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Playing into kinks that I normally don’t get to play into, like really dirty, hot, primal sex. Aiden felt that in general, when he was having sex he was inhibited regarding what kinks he could express. He demonstrated an implicit awareness of sexual scripts and the way they can constrain behavior. He valued interactions when he could deviate from those scripts and incorporate more “kinky” elements. Carson (Nonbinary, 27, Partnered,

Bisexual) also found value in incorporating novel behavioral elements with their partner:

Well, I like trying new stuff and trying new stuff in the context of friendships or relationships where I feel really safe. I enjoy something like friendly bondage every now and again, and that is consistently fun and a good time. It's fun to do something new because there seems to always be this moment when you and your partner, or when I and my partner look at each other and we're like, "We're enjoying this so much," but then when you take a step back, it's just so silly. Sex is just really silly. When you have those moments of realizing how goofy it all is, it's really good.

For Carson, different behaviors such as light bondage helped remind them that sex can be silly and fun. It allowed for enhanced enjoyment of sex by experiencing something new together with a trusted partner. When trying something new, moments of connection opened up where they could share the excitement of novelty with their partner. It also provided an opportunity for reflection on sex, and how the boundaries of what is “normal” and what is “deviant” are established. Carson thinks that sex is sometimes taken too seriously, and novelty opens up space for fun. Bondage, and other behaviors within the

BDSM framework (bondage/domination, domination/submission, sadism/masochism)

(Barker 2013) was the most common way different behaviors were introduced. Out of 39 reports of novel behaviors that made sex enjoyable (some people reported multiple

51 different behaviors) 11 of them fell under the BDSM umbrella (See Table 2.2). Miray

(Woman, 26, Partnered, Queer) described one of her best sexual experiences:

What I liked about it, it was my first Table 2.2 experience being a little more rough, Novel Behaviors like they were really into scratching Behavior Number and biting, and I thought that was BDSM 11 really fun. Threesome/Group Sex 8 On the spectrum of BDSM what Anal Sex 3 she’s describing is relatively mild, and New Position 3 she enjoyed the experience of sex Toys 2 Drugs 2 having an element of aggression Role Playing 2 beyond the norm. She was used to Filming 2 having sex that was softer and less More Foreplay 2 Fisting 1 physically forceful, and having a Personal Orgasm 1 partner that scratched and bit her was perceived as novel in an enjoyable way. She felt like this behavior change opened her up to new and pleasurable physical sensations. Jen (Woman, 26, Single, Straight) was surprised by a partner with even more explicit domination: One time, he tied my hands and legs behind my back, like hog-tied me, and he put a blindfold over my eyes, and he put headphones over my ears, then he double penetrated me. He fucked me in the ass while he also penetrated me with a cucumber. It was fucking awesome, it was fucking great.

As I got more details about this encounter it was clear that none of this had been orchestrated beforehand, and she was caught off guard when her partner tied her up.

Although she communicated to her partner that she liked rougher sex, this particular manifestation of dominance was outside of their interpersonal-level script, and she perceived it as a welcome deviation. Part of her pleasure was rooted in the element of

52 surprise- sexual scripts encouraged her to expect gentler sex and it was exciting when those scripts were broken.

Threesomes/Group Sex

The second most common way that novel behaviors were introduced was through threesomes (or group sex more generally). Eight respondents reported having and enjoying multiple partner sex, from here on out referred to as “threesomes” for simplicity. This is the farthest deviation from the cultural-level sexual script that any respondents reported. Cultural-level scripting establishes the “who” of sex as one man and one woman, so there is a significant script alteration there. I decided to include this under different behaviors because for respondents the act of having a threesome was seen as a behavior different from their one-on-one sex. Kenneth (Man, 22, Relationship

Anarchist, Straight) highlighted a threesome as some of the best sex he’d had:

The first time I had a threesome which was with [partner] and a mutual friend. The mutual friend started masturbating in front of us and I remember a moment where [partner] was looking at me with a grin on her face. I remember thinking it was exactly the kind of thing that mystifies me about monogamy. When someone you love looks at you with a huge grin on their face to me is like be happy for them. In that moment, I remember thinking… There was vindication like this is the feeling that I’ve never experienced before. Philosophically, it was like that was the test. But that was an example of something that was fun. Usually, you don’t have a big grin on your face during sex. It’s a different kind of thing. The thing that makes threesomes fun is that you’re also co-conspirators.

Having a threesome was a different experience for Kenneth, and he was initially concerned about how he would feel. This behavior is so far outside of the norm that he was afraid it would be unsettling. It was possible that he would be overwhelmed with jealousy and have a hard time sharing his partner sexually. Instead, he found it validating, 53 and enjoyed the way it felt to be a “co-conspirator” in a delinquent sex act. He stepped outside of cultural-level scripts with his partner and a friend, and this shared act of deviance bonded them together. This was an encounter that was novel and immensely pleasurable because it included so many unique behavioral components. It was also pleasurable just for the sake of being deviant. The same was true for Naomi (Woman, 35,

Partnered, Straight):

Like actually, a couple times I had a group thing, a threesome, whatever you want to call it with a couple of friends, and then my husband and I went to a swinger party with our friends, and those have been super fun, like just really wild fun times, you have to have some expectations laid out, but at the same time have no expectations.

Attending a swinger party was a different behavior for Naomi and her husband, and it was rife with novelty. She enjoyed that although some boundary setting was necessary there was so much unpredictability. This was a space where she couldn’t rely on either cultural-level or interpersonal-level sexual scripts, and the unknown element made it particularly invigorating. Unlike her other sexual encounters with her husband she didn’t have a strong framework for what to expect, and the unpredictability of these encounters was invigorating. Like Kenneth, she also enjoyed a sense of shared deviance with her husband, a feeling like they were doing something transgressive together.

Notably, six of the people that reported threesomes also identified as polyamorous or relationship anarchist. Broadly, polyamory is a non-monogamous relationship perspective that allows for multiple romantic/sexual partners (Klesse 2006), while relationship anarchy completely rejects the primacy of romantic partners and the expectations that

54 come with different relationship labels (Nordgren 2006). This suggests that the threesome script variation more accessible within the polyamorous/relationship anarchy community.

Pornography

Overall, although there was not as much consistency in the different behaviors people utilized to alter the “what” component of sexual scripts, the overrepresentation of

BDSM and threesomes suggest that like location, behavior variations too have a scripted element. There are culturally established ways to have “deviant” sex that are likely heavily influenced by pornography. Bridges and colleagues conducted a content analysis of popular mainstream pornography and found evidence of pervasive violence. Of the

304 scenes they analyzed, 88.2% included physical violence, particularly spanking, gagging, and slapping. Typically, these acts were performed by a man on a woman, who appeared to respond either with pleasure or neutrally (2010). Additionally, BDSM has gained some traction recently with the commercial success of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise bringing the dominant/submissive relationship into the public eye with both books and movies (2013). Porn is an important sexual socializing agent, and 48 people in my sample reported viewing pornography at least once a month, with 30 reporting watching at least once a week (See Table 2.3). Due to the ubiquity of violence in pornography, BDSM is a particularly accessible variation from the cultural-level script.

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Table 2.3 Frequency of Pornography Use Women Nonbinary Pornography (43) Men (25) (2) Total (70) At Least Once a Month 26 21 1 48 At Least Once a Week 9 20 1 30

There is less available data regarding the prevalence of threesomes in

pornography, but there is some research linking the behavior with viewing threesome

porn. Morris, Chang, and Knox examined college students who reported having had a

threesome and found that over 2/3 of them had viewed pornography depicting a

threesome, suggesting a correlation between viewing porn featuring threesome and

engaging in one personally (2016). In my sample, when asked what kinds of porn the

respondent frequently viewed 20 people identified a pull to porn depicting threesomes.

Although more research is needed regarding the prevalence and impacts of threesomes in

pornography, it is a potential source of scripting for acceptable sexual behavior

variations.

Risks of Novelty

Script deviations paradoxically require some scripting, or culturally established

reference point, because any deviation from pre-established cultural-level and

interpersonal-level scripts comes with significant risk. If something is unexpected your

partner may not respond well to it, and the quality of the sexual encounter or even the

relationship may be threatened. By relying on relatively familiar ways to alter the

locations of sex and the behavior within it people are able to enjoy the benefits of novelty

56 while also being grounded in the (relatively) familiar, ensuring that both partners have a frame of reference to understand this new behavior. If one partner tries to push too far into unfamiliar territory it can undermine sexual satisfaction. To that point, 19 people in my sample referenced incidents where something novel happened that reduced or even eliminated the pleasure they experienced from sex. Sometimes the consequences of novel behavior were relatively minor, a learning moment about personal preferences. Tess

(Woman, 25, Partnered, Bisexual) learned that although BDSM is part of a familiar subcultural-level script she has personal limits for how rough she likes sex:

Yes. It was kind of my fault. In one of those periods where we wanted to do new things, we tried being tied up and blindfolded. I didn’t communicate what I was looking for out of that very well, so he took it in a rougher direction and I didn’t talk about it beforehand. It freaked me out. I got upset and then he felt really bad and apologized. It was dissatisfying. I wasn’t expecting it to get as rough as it did.

Tess and her husband wanted to deviate from their sexual routine and believed that bondage would be a way to do that. Without developed interpersonal-level scripts for how this should play out her partner overstepped boundaries and this stood out as a particularly negative sexual encounter. In retrospect, Tess felt that if they were going to try something so far outside of their comfort zones they needed to communicate more explicitly beforehand about what that mean for each of them. Sometimes, something unexpected happening contributed to my respondents experiencing enhanced pleasure, but in this case it backfired and “freaked [Tess] out.” Although she and her partner did not suffer long-lasting relational consequences, this example highlights the way that breaking sexual scripts comes with risk. In a casual or developing relationship breaking scripts may be particularly risky because there is not as strong of a relational foundation 57 to encourage partners to work through any discomfort that arises when novelty goes awry. For Jen (Woman, 26, Single, Straight) one unusual phrase was enough to terminate a casual relationship:

We were having sex and right before he came, he groaned, and he was just like, "I'm going to give you my cum." [laughs] It took everything in my power to not laugh out loud when he said that. it was the most awkward thing I have ever had a guy say to me. It was so fucking gross and awkward like, "Okay," and he came. I was like, "That's cool." Then he texted me like a week later…and I just ignored him. That was fucking weird. That was the number one most awkward, awkward thing I've ever experienced sexually.

Jen’s partner didn’t come out of left field with a completely unfamiliar sexual practice, the only variation from cultural and interpersonal-level sexual scripts was the phrase, “I’m going to give you my cum.” This break from the expected scripted dialogue was only momentary, but so significant that it turned Jen off to both sex in that moment and this man overall. She found this phrase to be so shocking that it was challenging getting her to stop laughing enough to share it during the interview. Just seven unexpected words was enough to embed the encounter and person in her memory as “fucking weird,” and,

“awkward.” Earlier, I referenced a sexual experience of Jen’s where she found novelty to be immensely pleasurable, but clearly this is not something that was consistently true for her. For Jen, like others, the connection between novelty and pleasure was contingent on the context and the specific script deviation. Breaking scripts comes with the risk that what you do or say will be met with rejection. A script transgression may be received positively and make an otherwise mundane sexual exchange memorable and exciting, or it can spoil an encounter and even a relationship. Betsy (Woman, 24, Single, Straight) experienced a

58 sexual encounter with her first boyfriend that was so far outside of familiar sexual scripts it was ultimately a factor in her ending the relationship:

I guess my angriest moment, and also probably slightly shameful too was my first boyfriend… he was very sexually explorative so you know he went online and bought all the toys and all the fun things and he always had new toys every month or whatever to try out and he was- I think he was bisexual and kind of like coming to terms with that and he wanted me to fuck him up the butt with a strap on... Yeah, that was just a really weird moment to me and then I was like, “You know what, I’ve been his girlfriend for two years I can do this one thing for him that’s fine.” So we went through with it and it hurt him a bit so he was like whimpering and it was ugh, it was so opposite what I’m attracted to that afterwards I was just pissed off that he would ever ask me to do something like that to him and at that point I knew our relationship was over. It was never ever going to be the same. That was a turning point for me and I was pissed off that he had ruined everything good in our relationship for me in like two minutes.

Pegging, where a woman penetrates a man anally with a strap-on dildo (Aguilar

2017), is not a part of cultural-level sexual scripts, nor was it a part of Betsy and her boyfriend’s interpersonal-level scripts. Betsy wasn’t personally interested in this particular form of sexual novelty, but she was open to it for the benefit of her partner.

The script change proved too much for her, and she struggled to come to terms with herself as the active penetrating partner and her boyfriend as the passive recipient. The experience was so profound that it caused her to question her boyfriend’s masculinity and her attraction to him. This particular reaction to novelty was unique in my sample, no one else reported a script deviation that resulted in the dissolution of a long-term partnership.

Notably, she was open to other interjections of novelty. Her boyfriend had a pattern of purchasing sex toys to use together, and up until the point that he bought a strap-on she

59 perceived these as “fun.” Again, she was open to novelty, but not in every aspect, reinforcing the risk of violating already agreed upon sexual scripts.

Role of Relationships

For the most part, it appeared that my respondents were introducing novelty, in the form of both different locations and behaviors, within the context of a romantic relationship as opposed to a casual partner. When recounting past experiences of script deviation, 38 out of 43 people who had sex in a novel location were in a romantic relationship with their partner at the time, as were 30 out of 32 people who discussed different behaviors. There are a couple reasonable explanations for this pattern. First, the longer a relationship goes on the more the novelty of having a new sexual partner wears off, requiring novelty elsewhere. The longer a couple is together the more firmly developed their interpersonal-level scripts are, an intimate knowledge which may come with the benefit of knowing how to physically satisfy a partner but that can also become predictable and monotonous. Having sex in a new location or incorporating new behaviors may be a strategy used by couples to mitigate the possibility of mundane sex.

The second explanation for why most people who reported novelty did so while they were in relationships is that an element of trust may be required when trying something new. Breaking the script by having sex outside or tying up your partner requires revealing personal desires that you might be reluctant to disclose to a casual partner. Within a relationship, alterations of the “where” and “what” components of sexual scripts may be

60 possible both because of the level of comfort between the partners and because of the desire to interject novelty as interpersonal-level scripts become more deeply entrenched.

Conclusion

Violating sexual scripts is not without risk. Discomfort may occur, as it did for

Tess. For Jen an emerging romantic and sexual connection was severed. Altering their sexual script with pegging caused Betsy to see her partner in a fundamentally different and unattractive light. This is an extreme manifestation of the risk inherent in breaking sexual scripts: it can potentially end even a long-term relationship. The stakes aren’t always this high, but deviating from what’s expected when it comes to sex can have mild to serious consequences. Sexual scripts exist to provide comfort and consistency. In a vulnerable moment people like to know what is expected of them, and the emphasis many of my interviewees placed on sex feeling “comfortable” and “natural” highlights the way that sexual scripting can enhance the potential for pleasure. However, following scripts too closely can lead to sex that feels routine or mundane. People often want sex to feel exciting and to occasionally break outside of their comfort zones. The challenge when it comes to introducing sexual novelty comes from the need to balance desires for comfort and familiarity with unpredictability and freshness. Novelty can be risky, but scripts can get stale, and “good” sex straddles this fine line. “Good” sex can be a product of partners successfully negotiating tensions between wanting sex that is comfortably predictable and wanting sex that feels fresh and exciting. Although there is clear utility in

61 cultural and interpersonal-level sexual scripts, both men and women valued script deviations with relative consistency, as long as those deviations were within acceptable parameters.

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Works Cited

Aguilar, Jade. 2017. “Pegging and the Heterosexualization of Anal Sex: An Analysis of

Savage Love advice.” Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture 2(3) 275-292.

Barker, Meg. 2013. “Consent is a Grey Area? A Comparison of Understandings of

Consent in Fifty Shades of Grey and on the BDSM Blogosphere.” Sexualities

16(8) 896-914).

Bridges, Ana J. Robert Wosnitzer, Erica Scharrer, Chyng Sun, and Rachael Liberman.

2010. “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A

Content Analysis Update.” Violence Against Women 16(10): 1065-1085.

DeLamater, John, and Janet Shibley Hyde. 2004. “Conceptual and Theoretical Issues in

Studying Sexuality in Close Relationships.” in The Handbook of Sexuality in

Close Relationships edited by John H. Harvey, Amy Wenzel, and Susan Sprecher.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc: Mahwah, New Jersey.

Jackson, Stevi and Sue Scott. 2002. “Embodying Orgasm: Gendered Power Relations and

Sexual Pleasure.” Women & Therapy 24(1-2): 99-110.

Klesse, Christian. 2006. “Polyamory and It’s ‘Others’: Contesting the Terms of Non-

Monogamy.” Sexualities 9(5): 565-583.

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Morris, Hannah, Joyce Chang, and David Knox. 2016. “Three’s a Crowd or Bonus?:

College Students’ Threesome Experiences.” Journal of Positive Sexuality 2: 62-

76.

Nordgren, Andie 2006. “The Short Instructional Manifesto for Relationship Anarchy.”

The Anarchist Library http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/andie-nordgren-the-

short-instructional-manifesto-for-relationship-anarchy.pdf

Weiderman, Michael W. 2005. “The Gendered Nature of Sexual Scripts.” The Family

Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families 13(4): 496-502.

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Chapter 3. Gender

I went into this project expecting pronounced gender differences in in how women and men evaluate “good” sex. We know that there are significant differences in how men and women are socialized surrounding sex (Oliver and Hyde 1993; Roberts et al. 1995; Jackson and Scott 2002; Le Gall, Mullet, and Shafighi 2002; Zubriggen and

Yost 2004; Carpenter 2010; Elmersteig et al. 2012), and I expected that this would significantly influence how sexual satisfaction is understood. If men are encouraged to embrace desire and pursue sex unfettered by social restraints and women are expected to be coy with their sexuality and confine sex within committed relationships it makes sense that these differing sexual narratives would result in different perceptions of what makes sex “good.” Specifically, I thought that women would prioritize emotional connection, while men would prioritize physical pleasure. Although there were subtle ways this dynamic manifested among my respondents, men and women appeared to value physical pleasure, emotional connection, and novelty in relatively equal proportions, extending some of Plante and Fah’s findings (2017) to men. However, they were acutely aware that gender is a factor that shapes their sexual experiences, with only one respondent denying the salience of gender in understanding their sexual history.

The largest gender differences pertained to experiences of “bad” sex, with men and women having different issues with partner engagement, feelings of obligation, and

65 consent. Men were more likely to report having a partner who was so physically disengaged it interfered with their personal pleasure, while women were more likely to report experiences where their partner was active but seemed to be unconcerned with satisfying them. Both men and women discussed a fair number of experiences with obligatory sex, but I believe the motivations behind acquiescing to a less-than-wanted encounter differ by gender. Finally, the biggest gulf in experience between men and women emerged in regards to rape and sexual assault, with women’s experiences of

“bad” sex more likely to be characterized by a lack of consent. In this chapter, I will discuss the ways that men and women share mutual understandings about the factors that make sex good. I’ll also begin to highlight how their negative experiences differ before directly addressing sexual violence in the following chapter.

Emotional Connection

As I discussed in the previous chapter, novelty was the most frequently occurring factor in descriptions of positive sexual encounters for both women and men, but it didn’t often come up when I asked directly, “what makes sex good?” When interviewees were thinking in the Table 3.1 abstract about how Factors of “Good” Sex "Good" Sex Women(43) Men (25) they evaluate sexual Novelty 38 (88.4%) 24 (96.0%) Emotional Connection 37 (86.4%) 21 (84.0%) quality the most Physical Pleasure 19 (44.2%) 15 (60.0%) frequently reported factor was a sense of emotional connection, followed by physical pleasure. Interestingly,

66 men and women were both likely to value emotional connection as a component of

“good” sex, despite gender stereotypes and roles that suggest this concern is in the feminine domain. 37/43 women said that emotional connection was important for sexual satisfaction, or 86.4%. Similarly, 21/24 men, or 83.3%, also said that emotional connection was sexually important to them (See Table 3.1). Maya (Woman, 28,

Partnered, Straight) describes why this is a significant factor for her:

I think a lot of it has to do with just emotional connectivity for me just feeling like I'm really wanted by somebody and that I want them too and that we can be with each other. I think it's a good way for people to connect and I mean there's always the physical act, it feels good, but I think for me a lot of it is just having undivided attention and devotion towards pleasing one another that I enjoy the most about it.

For Maya, there are the physical components of sex that she enjoys, but she’s also trying to use sex for social fulfillment. She values the reciprocity of sex, the feelings of both wanting and being wanted. It’s important for her to take time away from other distractions to focus completely on one person and put her relationship at the center of her attention. Relationships are often competing for attention with other life demands, and she sees sex as a moment where she can tune everything else out and completely engage in an emotional way. The concern with emotional connection wasn’t just relevant for people in relationships, some respondents like Audra (Woman, 29, Partnered,

Pansexual) acknowledged that emotional connection was important regardless of the relational context:

Just that connection with a partner, even if it’s not a love connection it can be a casual encounter we still have that connection and satisfaction.

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When interviewees talked about the importance of an emotional connection to a sex partner we would be remiss to assume that this is always occurring within a romantic relationship. It’s easy to assume that because there is no prior romantic relationship casual encounters are primarily about the physical aspects of sex, but my data suggests that this dynamic is more complicated. Audra is describing the possibility of experiencing a bounded emotional connection, where sex partners are sharing an emotional experience and present with their feelings in the moment, even though they may not transfer those feelings outside of sex. Regardless of the type of relationship sex partners have, sex can be a moment of interpersonal connection even if that connection is fleeting. Valuing an “emotional connection” is not necessarily the same as valuing romantic love as a component of “good” sex. Ben (Man, 29, Single, Straight) concurs:

I think just that [you connect] with somebody more when you’re in that space. I think that connection is more enjoyable with somebody you know.

Ben was my one interviewee who had never been in a romantic relationship, so when he’s describing sexual encounters they inherently do not include that component.

He thinks sex is always an emotionally intimate experience, and throughout the interview he expressed a lot of anxiety about this. He didn’t always feel comfortable with the vulnerability of having sex but felt much more at ease if he was having sex with someone familiar, like a friend. Even without a romantic relationship, he sought to connect emotionally with partners and sought out sexual encounters where he felt safe being vulnerable. His experience adds an important piece to the discussion of emotional connection. Although it is certainly possible outside of a committed romantic relationship, prior non-sexual experiences with a sex partner can help establish a context 68 where more emotional connection is possible. Connection during sex can be facilitated by a variety of factors: a romantic relationship, a pre-existing friendship, or the passion of a casual encounter, but regardless of gender it was a consistently important way that people were achieving sexual satisfaction.

Physical Pleasure

The second most frequent factor that emerged when asked what makes sex

“good” was physical pleasure. For women, 19/43 identified this as an important factor in a positive sexual encounter, or 44.2%. Men were a little bit more likely to state the importance of physical pleasure, with 15/25 men, or 60.0% implicating this as a factor in

“good” sex. Although these numbers are both relatively high, I have concerns that they may understate the importance of physical pleasure. It’s entirely possible that many people took it for granted that “good” sex feels good physically and did not feel that it was important to explicitly make this point. What my data tells us is that both men and women value physical pleasure in sex, and that men are slightly more likely to emphasize this. Sometimes when I asked what it means for sex to be “good” I got answers like

Paul’s (Man, 27, Partnered, Gay):

I mean, it just means that it like felt really good.

In his voice you could almost hear him saying, “Well, duh. What kind of question is that?” Obviously, “good” sex is sex that feels good physically. He had a hard time thinking about “good” sex in a deeper way because to him it was so clear-cut that sexual satisfaction and physical pleasure were inherently linked. This does seem intuitive, but

69 sometimes participants highlighted the surprise they felt with individual encounters that were satisfying for purely physical reasons. Heather (Woman, 26, Single, Straight) recounted an encounter where that was the primary source of satisfaction:

That one was really different in that he wasn’t very intellectual, so we didn’t connect on that level, but at the risk of sounding shallow, he had a good body and a big penis. We just had good sex, but there wasn’t anything emotional or special about that. He was very good at moving and had a really good rhythm.

At no point did Heather indicate that she thought “good” sex doesn’t have a physical element, but this narrative suggests that relying on physical pleasure alone to make sex “good” was an aberration in her experience. She was used to sexual satisfaction having an emotional component and was surprised that she could have such a positive sexual encounter without that. Overall, there isn’t anything earth-shattering about the finding that physical pleasure is an important component of sexual satisfaction, but it is significant that this was a pervasive finding for both men and women. Men were slightly more likely to emphasize this factor, which is in accordance with other research suggesting that women are not encouraged to embrace physical desire (Oliver and Hyde

1993; Roberts et al. 1995; Carpenter 1998; Jackson and Scott 2002).

Men were also more likely embrace a biological understanding of their sex drives, making claims about desiring sex being “natural” or “primal.” For example,

Xavier (Man, 31, Single, Straight) says that he has sex because:

It’s one of the core motives of being human beings so it’s like, it’s not quite as important as you know, breathing or water and food and all those things. But it is a drive.

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Xavier has an understanding of his sexuality that it rooted in assumptions about it being something that his body physically craves. Maybe not to the extent that he needs oxygen, food, and water, but worth mentioning in the same breath. It’s an urge that exists beyond control and drives a lot of his decision making. He believes he has sex because he is compelled by his physiology to do it. His sexuality is a force of nature he sees as outside his control. Dan (Man, 27, Relationship Anarchist, Straight) feels similarly:

Because it regularly provides me some of the heights of my human experience. Why? Because I'm human. I feel a great drive and desire to do so. And when I do it is gratifying. So the cycle repeats because other people want to have sex with me. There are many reasons. Yeah. I mean I guess I just don't really try to narrow that down too much. I'm totally happy with it being just this kind of biological black box because my humanity tells me to. And it's good when I do, um so I keep doing it. That's why.

Dan doesn’t feel compelled to explore too deeply why he’s motivated to have sex.

He takes it for granted that he pursues sex because of a biological imperative. Sex for him is normal and natural, a desire that is controlled by forces outside of his being. He enjoys the mystery that attributing sex drive to biological forces allows. This attitude was more common for men than for women. In total, 11 men, or 44.0%, explained their sexuality at least in part as a primal force outside of their control. Only five, or 11.6%, of women had a similar understanding. This gender difference is reflective of larger social trends that frame men’s sexual desire as somehow more innate than women’s, granting them more latitude to explore sexual urges (Carpenter 1998; Jackson and Scott 2002).

Understandings of sex as a biological imperative may shape men’s feelings about what

71 makes sex “good” in ways that I wasn’t able to fully unpack in this study, but this is worth taking into consideration.

The order that men and women mentioned emotional connection and physical pleasure is telling of some other subtle gender differences in how good sex is conceptualized. When asked what makes sex “good,” the first response is the most cognitively accessible and possibly the factor given the most priority in intra-psychic level scripting. As I was coding this data I excluded cases where respondents said something to the effect of “it feels good” without clarifying if they meant that in an emotional or physical sense. As gender norms would predict emotional connection was most likely to be mentioned first by women, with 13/43 women (30.2%) giving this as their first answer for what makes sex “good” compared with 4/25 men (16.0%). Physical pleasure was mentioned first by 10/25 men (40.0%) and 17/43 women (39.5%). The latter is hardly a meaningful difference, men and women were similarly likely to prioritize pleasure in their explanations of satisfying sex. However, women were more likely to mention the emotional components of sex, suggesting that women may be more invested in the emotional component of sex.

It’s possible to parse out subtle gender differences in how men and women conceptualize “good” sex, but the largest takeaway from my findings in this regard is that men and women have relatively similar goals for sexual satisfaction. The three most significant factors that emerged throughout my interviews were novelty, connection, and physical pleasure, and these were all reported with relatively high frequency among both men and women. When a woman and a man enter a sexual encounter together there is

72 solid potential for overlap in shared expectations for what will make that experience satisfying. The different socialization of men and women regarding sex has not manifested in incompatible or conflicting assessments of what makes sex “good.”

“Bad” Sex and Gender

The most striking gender differences emerged when interviewees discussed sexual experiences that were not satisfying. All participants had at least one sexual encounter that they classified as “bad.” Sexual scripts establish different roles for men and women, and when these scripts are functional the result is two people working towards a common goal of satisfaction in complementary ways. Sometimes those scripts fail to produce pleasure, however, and result in participants getting stuck in roles that are not conducive to mutual satisfaction. For women, this meant a partner that was in command of the sexual interaction but not concerned with the woman’s pleasure. For men, this meant a partner that embraced feminine norms of passivity so fully that they did not seem engaged.

Partner Doesn’t Care

Nineteen women and only two men referenced sexual interactions where a partner did not appear to be concerned with their pleasure. Julie (Woman, 28, Partnered,

Bisexual) had experiences with an ex-boyfriend where she felt like her presence was inconsequential:

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Yeah, I mean like he wasn’t trying. I think he was a very selfish lover. He was like a jackrabbit. I always felt like he was masturbating with my body. She had recurrent experiences with this boyfriend where she felt like her personhood didn’t matter. It felt as though he just wanted to get off and he was using her body as a vehicle for his self-satisfaction. His movements may have been satisfying for him but they failed to produce pleasure for her. This made her feel more like a sex toy than a valued partner, like he was just “masturbating with [her] body.” In this example her boyfriend is performing the masculine role of dominance dictated by cultural-level scripts. He was guiding the sexual interaction but in a way that didn’t accommodate for

Julie’s desires, and the power granted him by dominant sexual-scripts gives him the option of disregarding her satisfaction. Liz (Woman, 27, Single, Straight) had many experiences similar to this, to the extent that she developed an accommodation in her intrapsychic-level script for this behavior:

70% of the time I had sex with a guy, there was a point where I could go numb and lay flat and they’re just fucking me. It has nothing to do with me, so I’ll just let them finish and leave. It’s hard to have good sex with somebody who doesn’t care.

Liz felt that in a majority of her sexual experiences with men they were indifferent to her physical satisfaction. It’s very clear from her language that the men were taking active sexual roles. The phrase, “they’re just fucking me,” suggests agency on the part of her partners. They were active, they were doing the fucking and she was being fucked. She ultimately accommodated her intrapsychic scrips to prepare to physically and mentally disengage when she perceives this happening. Rather than communicating with her partner why she felt dissatisfied she found it easier to simply check out and wait for her partner to be finished. This is another example of when the 74 gender norms embedded within sexual scripts are dysfunctional. If the dominant partner decides to not put energy towards physically satisfying their partner their partner will not experience pleasure. As Liz says, “It’s hard to have good sex with somebody who doesn’t care.” For women having sex with men especially, the dominant role ascribed to their partners meant that if he was unconcerned with her enjoyment her desires would go unattended.

Partner Disengaged

Several of the men I spoke with experienced a similar problem, but the key difference was that during heterosexual sex when women had a disengaged partner the man was still physically active and focused on his pleasure, but when men had a disengaged partner he felt like the woman was completely checked out regarding both his pleasure and her own. In total, seven men expressed this concern, compared with only two women. Jack (Man, 30, Single, Straight) describes a situation that feels strikingly similar to the dynamic Julie and Liz were describing in that he felt as if he was masturbating as opposed to having sex with someone else:

Sometimes it’s just, like, “here I am.” And she’s just, like [pantomimes laying on bed]… Oh, basically, I'm pretty much using you to jack off right now. Like, it’s just, this is not sex.

Jack is describing a partner laying down (“here I am”) and then not actively participating in the sexual interaction. These experiences made him feel uncomfortable, and ultimately unsatisfied. He didn’t want to feel like he was masturbating any more than the women in my sample wanted to feel like they were being used for masturbation. For

75 him, this was so far outside of the social experience he was hoping to have that it doesn’t even feel like sex. He sees sex as a product of mutual engagement and required some level of activity and communication from his partner. He didn’t express any discomfort taking a dominant role during sex, but there was an extreme where the active/passive gender dynamic was taken too far and did not feel satisfying anymore. Robert (Man, 25,

Single, Straight) felt similarly, and had one sexual memory that stood out as especially unpleasant:

Laying there and not talking that will shut me all the way down and I will leave. That’s not for me. Like I said I'm kind of an empath which is weird for me because it's like, especially if there’s like no movement at all on the face it weirds me out. That's it. That's the specific cause I didn't- I was one that was almost like sex is like pizza you know even if it’s bad it's still pizza you know but really just an unenjoyable experience. No movement at all.

This was Robert’s worst sexual experience, and one that challenged his assumptions about sex. Prior to this encounter he thought that having sex was always better than not having sex, but his partner’s lack of engagement made this an experience that he would have rather avoided. He said that there was no movement in her body, she wasn’t open to trying positions other than missionary, and her face wasn’t even registering expression. The whole experience made him very uncomfortable, and he spent several minutes unpacking this encounter. At one point he referred to her as a “starfish,” passively splayed on the bed. Making one’s body sexual available for a partner’s gratification is embodying feminine gender norms, but such a strict interpretation of feminine passivity made this sex “bad” for Robert.

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Obligation

Another way that the experiences of men and women were gendered was in regards to obligatory sex, sex that is had because of internal or external pressure. Twenty- six women and ten men reported sexual encounters where they felt like they were “giving in” to some pressure, whether it be directly from their partner or from perceived cultural expectations that sex would happen. These are still cases where consent was given, but it did not come from a place of sincerely wanting to have sex. Although feeling obligated to have sex was a relatively common experience for both men and women, the texture of their narratives was very different. For women, the pressure came either directly from their partner or from an awareness that their role in sex and a relationship was to physically satisfy their partner. Emily (Woman, 27, Partnered, Straight) would sometimes have sex with her boyfriend when she wasn’t feeling well because she prioritized his pleasure:

I just push through for the other person, but it's not really for me. It's like, "Man, I know you want that or need that too. Let's do it." If I'm sick I'm usually like, "Come on. I don't really want to, but I'll do it because--" Just knowing that I'm not going to really get anything from it because I know I'm not going to get off from this because I don't feel 100%. I want to make you happy, so I'll do it because it makes me happy.

Emily described sexual encounters where she was not feeling motivated to have sex, she did not believe sex would be physically pleasurable for her, but she acquiesced anyway. She doesn’t feel violated by these experiences, she states that her partner feeling good makes her feel good emotionally. In these encounters she perceived her role in a feminine way, subservient to a man’s desires and putting his pleasure before hers. She’ll have sex when she’s sick and consequently physically disinterested because she senses an 77 obligation to tend to her partner’s sexual desires. She didn’t find these encounters to be physically pleasurable, but she still got enjoyment out of them from pleasing her partner.

In contrast, Payton (Woman, 23, Partnered, Pansexual) identified feelings of obligation as a primary cause for her unsatisfying sexual experiences:

Uh, a sense of obligation is one of the biggest reasons I’ve had bad sex. Uh, sex that necessarily I didn’t, wasn’t head over heels about having, but I felt obligated to…At one location I was not interested in having sex, but I was having fun, it was like a public place actually, fucking go figure, it was on top of a parking garage, and we started hooking up a little bit, and that was exciting, that was fun, and then we were gonna leave the parking garage and I asked him to drop me off at home, and he said that it was out of his way, which is total bullshit, “it was out of his way,” and that if I wanted a ride I would have to crash at his house, and I just, I kind of was like, protesting a little bit, but just kind of gave in, and then we ended up having sex on bleachers near his house, and it was just like cold, and gross, and I was uncomfortable.

Payton did not want to have penetrative sex with this particular partner, but she was having fun spending time with him and was open to some sexual interaction.

Eventually she reached a point where she was done engaging with him and wanted to go home, but he still wanted to have sex. She accommodated him because she felt like the wheels were already in motion and it was too difficult to stop the trajectory they were on.

They had already begun enacting cultural-level sexual scripts, engaging in traditional precursors to sex like kissing, and in her feminine role within this encounter she didn’t feel empowered to put on the brakes. She felt like she owed him sex because she had consented to other activities earlier in the evening. Her narrative makes it seem like the pressure was coming from her partner, but this interaction also took place with a cultural backdrop of women prioritizing men’s pleasure and acting appropriately coy when it

78 comes to sex, which makes it challenging to violate scripted gender norms and assert oneself. Her partner didn’t have to tell her that she was obligated to have sex with him, it was mutually understood that this was the expectation. Stephanie (Woman, 29, Single,

Bisexual) had the clearest understanding of the prevalence of sexual pressure from both interpersonal and cultural-level sexual scripts:

I felt an obligation to perform, I felt like I had a physical responsibility to my partner to fulfill that and kind of the social approval stigma thing like, it was worse earlier on. I felt like I had to for the person, the culture and the relationship. Like this is something that people in relationships do therefore, I need to be doing this thing and if I want to keep this person in my life I have to do things that I may be don’t want to do or I will learn to like it eventually. I did not but that’s what I felt like I had to do at the time.

Stephanie was discussing a relationship where she felt pushed sexually to engage in practices she was not comfortable with. She would often go along with her partner’s desires, even though they conflicted with her own. There was an interpersonal element where she cared about her partner and wanted to satisfy him, but she also felt bound by cultural expectations. She felt that, “this is something people in relationships do.” She was implicitly referencing cultural-level scripts about sex within romantic relationships and from those feeling pressure that extended beyond her specific partner. It was both the person and the culture that compelled her to have sex when and how she didn’t want to in a way that was particularly feminine. Her partner’s role as the man involved taking control and setting sexual expectations, and her role as a women involved going along with his desires for the sake of their relationship.

When men reported feeling an obligation to have sex it was rooted in different cultural expectations. They didn’t feel that they had to be sexually available to their 79 partner for the sake of their partner’s pleasure as much as for the sake of their masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity, the culturally elevated form of manhood at this specific cultural moment, is partially oriented around men being heterosexual and continuously desiring sex with women (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). To successfully perform masculinity a man must pursue sex and seize available opportunities to have it. The narratives of the ten men who reported having sex out of obligation had a different texture than the analogous narratives of women. They were borne out of a belief that as men they should be constantly pursuing sex as a component of masculine identity and status. Jeremiah (Man, 34, Single, Straight) talked about feeling obligated to constantly seek out sex partners, and consequently had experiences with women he found unsatisfying:

I certainly spend some, some percentage of my life on the prowl, and I will occasionally in those cases end up sleeping with somebody who I’m not particularly attracted to, someone who perhaps… I’d like to think there’s not much of this sort of uh, the manipulation that’s often associated with this, but you know, I’ve been aware that somebody is into me and I am not particularly into them, but I am into this happening tonight. Those are, those are experiences that I’ve left feeling guilty about.

Jeremiah felt social pressure to acquire sexual partners, to be “on the prowl,” and in the process had sex with women that left him feeling guilty rather than satisfied.

Although the woman was the one who was more interested in him sexually, he’s the one taking the reins and progressing their interaction to sex. Not because he wants to have sex with that person specifically, but because he wants to have sex that night and this is the person who’s available. He feels some concern about manipulating a woman into thinking he’s interested in her when in actuality he just wants sex from any willing

80 participant, but he wants to reject this possibility. This feeling of wanting to have sex for the sake of having sex is coming from a gendered place, with women reporting very different experiences surrounding the accumulation of partners. I asked all respondents how many people they had had sex with, and 8 expressed anxiety about that number being too high. All of these people were women, this did not seem to be an anxiety held by any of the men in my sample. Men seemed to benefit from asserting their masculinity and asexual prowess and masculinity by accumulating sexual partners.

Jack (Man, 30, Single, Straight) was another respondent who had an unsatisfying sexual encounter because he felt obligated to concede to sex. He was in college and met a woman one night at a party who was clearly interested in him. He was too intoxicated to perform sexually that night but he told her to come to his dorm the following morning.

The next day he’s sitting outside his dorm with his friend when:

All of a sudden we see this train wreck of a person. Like, makeup on from the night before, hair like- she looked like she slept on the floor and coming over to my dorm. Like, coming down the sidewalk, I was like, “oh my god, look at that girl. It’s looking pretty rough.” and then [my friend] was like, “I think that's the girl,” and I’m like, “no, no, no. It’s not.” And then, all of a sudden I get a text. She’s almost there, walking up, and I was like, “oh fuck, it is.” I was like, “what do I do”? And then he was like, “hurry, just run inside before - just say you can’t hang out.” And then I go to get up and she goes - and I go, “oh fuck, this is it, I’m trapped. Like, I can’t do it.” I don’t know what’s going on. Do I say no? I don’t know what to do right now. So [my friend] was like, “oh, well, have fun, buddy.” So, she comes up and obviously I’m not attracted to her whatsoever. I’m like, “fuck.” I was like, “damn it.”... And so we go back in the room and we start, like, having sex and this time I’m sober and I'm, like, I - I couldn't get hard just because, like, I was not into it.

Jack was not interested having sex with this woman, but was unsure about how to extract himself from the situation. He felt obligated to have sex with her since she was

81 there and they talked about it the night before. Even his friend’s response, “have fun, buddy,” suggests that sex is definitely going to happen. It’s as if politely declining is not an option. Hegemonic masculinity and cultural-level sexual scripts suggest that men be constantly available for sex, and this norm completely overrides his personal lack of sexual desire. He doesn’t really know this woman, he doesn’t feel a personal obligation to her, but an obligation to larger expectations. For him to maintain an erection and fulfill his perceived obligation he sprints down the hall of his dorm room to another friend’s dorm, where he watches pornography for a few minutes before returning and successfully performing penetrative sex to orgasm:

And I was like, “phew.” I didn’t want to, like, hurt her feelings. I should have been more up front and then she would’ve been, like, “whatever,” because then both parties would have been fine. She would’ve, like, been a little butt hurt for a second, then she would have been fine, but i guess she never knew, she was fine the whole time. It was just me that had the bad experience, I guess.

Jack was aware that as a man he was expected to want to have sex at any given opportunity, so he was concerned that rejecting this woman would deeply hurt her feelings. If he was to refuse sex when it is taken for granted that he is sexually available it would suggest that there was something fundamentally undesirable about her. This was an anxiety that the women I talked to were not reporting. When they gave in to sex they were maybe concerned about damaging their relationship by refusing, but they weren’t worried about bruising a male partner’s ego by saying no to sex. Women are seen as the gatekeepers to sex, setting the boundaries for when sex is available (Wiederman 2005).

Jack knew that this expectation was present when the woman he met the night before came back to his dorm. If he violated his role in the script, to be sexually available for 82 any willing woman, it would be clear that he found her unattractive. Considering the cultural emphasis placed on women’s beauty (Kim and Lee 2018) he knew this would be hurtful, and decided to have sex with her anyway even if he needed the stimulation of pornography to make that happen. By doing this, he was able to preserve both her ego and his own masculinity.

Both men and women reported having sex out of obligation, but they seemed to have very different motivations for giving in to an undesired sexual encounter due to the different roles that men and women play in traditional sexual scripts. When women had obligatory sex they were playing a passive role, going along with a man’s desires because of interpersonal and cultural expectations that they provide their partner sexual gratification, particularly if they’ve consented to commonly accepted precursors to sex.

For men, their obligation seemed to come from expectations that men always be sexually available, just waiting for a consenting partner. When sex was on the table they struggled to reconcile the cultural imperative that they constantly desire sex with their own lack of sexual interest. Both men and women were encountering moments where cultural and interpersonal-level sexual scripts suggest they should be having sex even though they personally were not interested, but the reasons why differed by gender.

An Awareness of Gender

In many ways men and women had similar narratives regarding what makes sex

“good.” They valued emotional connection, physical pleasures, and interjections of novelty in similar proportions. The largest differences were when they were describing

83 bad sex, particularly feeling like a partner was disengaged or like they were having sex out of obligation. Both of these were unpleasant experiences for men and women alike, but the ways they experienced these phenomena differed. This suggests that “good” sex requires an engaged partner and personal enthusiasm prior to having sex, but the obstacles to achieving these elements are conditioned by gender. The most salient gender difference I observed was the prevalence of rape and sexual assault for women but not for men. This is a product of the most extreme active man/passive woman dynamic embedded in sexual scripts that I will address in the next chapter.

Table 3.2 Perceived Impact of Gender Women Total (43) Men (25) (68) Man Dominant 15 12 27 Women Shame 17 3 20 Women danger 13 3 16 Biological Differences 4 5 9 Women Objectified 5 2 7 Men Less Emotional 3 2 5 More Consequences for Women 4 0 4 Men's Status 0 4 4 Men Seeming Predatory 0 2 2 Women Gatekeepers 1 0 1 Women Vocal 1 0 1 General 3 1 4 Total Believing Gender Was Salient 41 22 65

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Most of the gender differences regarding sexual attitudes and behaviors were subtle, but that doesn’t mean that gender isn’t relevant in shaping experiences of sex.

When I asked directly if gender impacts their sexuality 41 women, 22 men, and both nonbinary participants indicated that it does shape their sexuality in meaningful ways.

Collectively, they created an extensive list that included 11 ways that they perceived gender impacting sexuality (See Table 3.2).

Power Differentials

There were an additional four respondents who believed gender was salient but struggled to articulate how. The most frequently cited gender norm was the pressure placed on men by sexual scripts to take a dominant role in sex. In total, 28 participants believed this was an important way that men and women learn to have sex differently; 15 women, 12 men, and one non-binary person. Their descriptions looked like the following:

I guess in sex that the dominant and submissive kind of aspect typically the women are submissive, sometimes the men are, but typically women are and so then you kind of play that role. (Asia, Woman, 24, Single, Pansexual)

Well, like I said, given the heteronormative atmosphere that we operate, there’s certain roles that are granted to me or almost burdened to me that I need to do in order to initiate sex or seek sex or make sure sex is a positive experience for both parties. There’s certain things that come with that, being a man. (Forrest, Man, 27, Single, Straight)

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The kind of woman I am is a giver and nurturer in every other aspect, so during sex, I’m more of a taker. I feel like I shouldn’t do anything. I think you should do it all and I should just lay here and enjoy. I feel like men should take the lead in certain things and sex is one of them. (Lauryn, Woman, 27, Single, Straight)

I really don’t like that men hunt and women fish. This idea of men have to be the ones to go out and initiate. Nobody likes rejection but that’s hard to do. Part of the whole sexual experience is men having to take the lead and initiative and bear the brunt of rejection. All my opinion. (Jacob, Man, 36, Partnered, Straight)

It's hard for me to solidify a gender identity when the kind of sex that I have with this partner reaffirms the kind of, like, masculine dominance. (Morgan, Nonbinary, 30, Single, N/A)

When my respondents talked about the different power and agency attributed to men and women during sex they expressed varying perspectives about embodying those roles. Some people felt very comfortable with these norms, like Lauryn, and found cultural-level scripts regarding the relative agency of men and women during sex to be compatible with their desires. Following gendered roles during sex felt like a comfortable way to achieve sexual satisfaction. Others, like Asia and Forrest, seemed to accept this as the social reality of sex and shaped their expectations accordingly. They did not enthusiastically endorse the gendered elements of cultural-level sexual scripts but did not feel the need to actively resist them either. There was a tacit acceptance that this is how heterosexual sex works and they were willing to play their role. Jacob provided an example of dissatisfaction with the gender status quo and felt unduly burdened by the risk of rejection. He felt that men shouldn’t be solely responsible for initiating sex and wanted more opportunities to be pursued and not experience the vulnerability of being open with

86 his feelings and desires to a potentially unreceptive partner. Finally, for Morgan, as a nonbinary person who was assigned masculine as birth and is often taken for granted to be a man, the way that power during sex is gendered made it challenging to understand their own gender identity. They feel as if they exist in a gender that is neither masculine nor feminine, but because sexual scripting is so heavily influenced by gender

(Weiderman 2005) when they have sex with a woman they find themselves pushed into gender roles that feel inauthentic. They desire a more submissive role during sex, but the confines of gender often preclude that from happening.

Shame and Judgement

The second most frequently cited way that sexuality is influenced by gender was the prevalence of shame and perceived judgement surrounding women’s experiences with sex. Women were significantly more likely to discuss this dynamic, with 14 women and only three men discussing the ways that women are expected to be discreet about their desires or risk being labeled a “slut” either by themselves or others. Here are some examples of how they framed this dynamic:

There’s more shame around women having sex or being slutty. So, yeah, I feel like we’ve got a lot more to worry about and a lot more stigma around sex then men do in general. (Caitlin, Woman, 30, Single, Straight)

The social norm would be to like, hide your sexuality, and to be proper and quiet, and not talk about it. (Payton, Woman, 23, Partnered, Pansexual)

I guess I feel pretty comfortable being open about how much I want sex and not feeling any kind of shame in the sex I’ve had. (Cam, Man, 30, Single, Straight) 87

Caitlin and Payton’s quotes represent well the way that other women also discussed perceived sexual double standards. I didn’t speak with any women that thought it was fair or reasonable to expect women to be less sexual than men, and they all seemed uneasy with this aspect of femininity either explicitly or implicitly. There was a sense of injustice surroundings sexual double standards, and a desire to be able to make autonomous choices about their sexuality free from judgement. Cam was one of the few men who recognized that the absence of shame could be a product of gender socialization. Other men, if they were aware of the ways that they are granted more cultural freedom to pursue sexual encounters, did not explicitly state this.

Danger

The third most frequently mentioned way that men and women experience sex differently was in reference to the disproportionate danger that men and women are exposed to during a sexual encounter. Again, more women than men mentioned this, with

13 women stating that women have heightened safety concerns and only three men saying the same. These respondents felt like women were more likely than men to be in a position where they risked physical harm by having sex:

A lot of men aren’t going to be in constant fear of being hurt, raped, or maimed like a woman. They just don’t understand the danger that men are towards women. When most women are getting killed, it’s by men. They’re more dangerous to a woman than bears. Men don’t live in a society of bears, I guess. I just don’t think men have that knowledge, not because they’re worse or because they’re dumb, but they’re cultured into a society that never asks them to rise up and see that. They have a lot more issues with their gender; there are a lot of malignant masculinity ideas. But 88

definitely being a woman, I see how I’m more afraid than men because I see things that they don’t. (Abby, Woman, 26, Single, Straight) All of things I don’t have to think about as far as getting murdered on a date. I don’t have to think that through. The people I’m interested in do. (David, Man, 36, Partnered, Straight) Because there is a power differential between cisgender men and women, you’re going to experience sex a little differently. I don’t know a lot of cis dudes who are afraid- I mean, everybody is a little bit afraid of getting catfished or potentially meeting a serial killer on a date, but it’s not as apparent of a fear. Most dudes aren’t afraid of walking along the street alone at night, which translates to the bedroom. (Ellen, Woman, 26, Single, Pansexual)

Sixteen interviewees discussed the ways that women are more vulnerable to physical harm than women. Abby believed that because she’s a woman she has to be more vigilant about the possibility of being harmed. She’s living among, and having sex with, people who might want to hurt her, and she’s been socialized to look for cues that danger might be present in a way that men have not. She suggests that people generally recognize and acknowledge the dangers of wild animals (she lives in an area where this is a relevant concern), but feels that her identity as a woman means she is constantly surrounded by predators, albeit less toothy ones. David and Ellen both recognize that when heterosexual people go on dates or have sex men and women have different worst case scenarios. David doesn’t have to spend much time thinking about if his date will murder him, but the same can’t be said for women. Ellen attributes this to a power differential between men and women coming from both differences in physical strength and different agency in sexual scripts. Women are aware that they may be physically overpowered and that this is a relatively normative experience.

There were eight more ways that men and women experience sexuality differently that were highlighted by my respondents, although with less frequency than the former 89 three. Some people believed that (i) the different anatomy of cisgender men and women contributed to different experiences, (ii) that women are more likely to be objectified during sex, (iii) that men experience sex with less emotional reactivity, (iv) that women bear a disproportionate amount of consequences for sex, unintended pregnancy in particular, (v) that having sex can be a source of social status for men and not women,

(vi) that men have to be concerned with seeming predatory, (vii) that women are expected to act as gatekeepers and decide if and when sex happens, (viii) and that women are expected to give a more enthusiastic vocal performance than men. Overall, the picture this gives us is one where men and women do perceive gender to be a salient factor in a variety of ways regarding how they think about and experience sex. Their understandings of what makes sex “good” may be relatively similar, but the pathways they follow to get to satisfaction are profoundly shaped by gender. The different roles established by cultural-level sexual scripts mean that men and women have significant departures in how they come to understand their sexuality.

Conclusion

When cultural and interpersonal-level scripts that revolve around traditional gender roles work they really work. In their ideal form for heterosexual sex there is a woman and a man playing different but complimentary roles that feel comfortable and familiar and allow both partners to experience satisfaction, even if they are on different terms. Although most interviewees believed that gender was important in shaping their sexual beliefs and experiences there was a surprising amount of consistency in the ways

90 that men and women highlighted the importance of physical pleasure, emotional connection, and novelty. When the sexual script is functional these desires can be met for both participants. Men and women having sex with each other do not need to bridge a gap of radically different expectations, they likely have similar sexual goals and have the potential to utilize their different roles to mutually achieve them.

If the script dysfunctions the effects are felt differently by men and women.

Feelings of obligation can emerge and manifest differently by gender. When the traditional sexual script isn’t working for men they may encounter a partner that embraces passivity too thoroughly, appearing disengaged and providing no positive feedback. For women, with men acting as sexual aggressors and women taking a more passive role men have more power in determining the extent to which that encounter will be mutually satisfying. If he cares about his partner’s pleasure he can engage with his partner and guide sex in a direction that satisfies the woman as well. If not, he has the power as the primary actor in sex to focus solely on his own desires, which 19 women reported experiencing. The most extreme manifestation of this dynamic is in sexual assault or rape, which was relevant to a significant number of women I talked to. Sexual violence isn’t an aberration, it’s the most extreme way that gendered cultural-level scripts disfunction. The context for rape and sexual assault is embedded within the gendered roles that we establish for men and women in (hetero) sex, roles that my interviewees could readily identify.

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Chapter 4. The Scripting of Rape and Sexual Assault

The women and men that I talked to didn’t appear to have radical gendered differences in regard to what they thought was good sex. They wanted physical pleasure, emotional connection, and a moderate dose of novelty. This struck me as good news. If heterosexual men and women are entering sexual encounters with similar expectations for how to be satisfied it seems possible that both parties’ needs can be met in many situations. The most significant departures in experiences and expectations emerged when I started asking about their worst sexual experiences. This is the point that many men started talking about sexual encounters where they weren’t satisfied with their performance, where their partner was disengaged, or where their experience was simply flat, for a variety of reasons. For women, this was the point where many of my respondents started reporting rape and sexual assault.

I wasn’t shocked when this came up for the first time, although I was a little surprised that this became a relevant issue in the second interview I conducted. I know that sexual violence is a pervasive issue, and by the time I started my research the MeToo movement was in full swing, highlighting the need to address it on a cultural level. But I was surprised when it kept coming up. I learned to emotionally prepare myself for painful revelations when I started asking women about their negative sexual experiences. This was supposed to be a study of sexual pleasure, but I realized that my lens had to pivot to

94 address the intersections of pleasure and pain in women’s narratives. In total, I interviewed 43 women, and 31 of them reported at least one incident of sexual violence or abuse. Out of 25 men, only three reported an incident that could be categorized as such. This gulf in experience highlights the way that danger infuses itself into women’s understanding of sex; an awareness of the reality that the potential for sexual pleasure can come at a cost. It’s not possible to explore what pleasure means for women specifically without also addressing the fact that for many women their references for pleasure are in opposition to experiences of coercion and violence (Phillips 2000).

Non-Consensual Sex Identified as Rape

It’s not my goal to titillate readers with stories of violence. I don’t want to parade women’s most traumatic sexual experiences in an appeal to voyeuristic or prurient interests. However, their stories are important, and I’m going to share a few of their accounts with the intent of providing context for a large-scale social problem. Sexual violence is a social problem reflective of the continued subjugation of women, and it is also felt deeply on the individual level. Rape and assault don’t always follow the same narrative, and my interviews highlight this. Victims are frequently blamed for their assaults, in the public arena the types of sexual assault that are granted the most legitimacy are generally explicitly violent or committed against a child (Fleming 1998;

Frese, Moya & Megías 2004). Abby (Woman, 26, Single, Straight) recounts the former.

The first time I was actually raped, so that was really horrific. It happened when I was 20. It was in my church. I’m actually very comfortable talking about it because it became a police case, so I’ve had to talk about it many times over the years. I was in university and was salsa dancing then, so I 95

still don’t salsa dance. I would say that’s the one thing I haven’t really overcome. I came back from salsa dance. One of the dancers followed me into this church that I used to volunteer at and just took advantage of me there. I remember it being really terrible and I was really traumatized because one of the worst nurses I ever met in my life said it was only so traumatic because I was a virgin. I think if you’re raped, it’s traumatic whether you’re a virgin or not. That was my first experience and then I was numb for like a year. I at least had my senses about me to get a rape kit and file a police report. We kind of got the guy. I could only get a restraining order on him because they couldn’t prove it was nonconsensual, but they could prove that he broke into the church. If you break into a place to have sex with someone, I don’t know why that’s so hard to figure out… but that’s our court systems.

Abby’s account is one of clear violence, where someone used physical force as the primary mode of coercion. She experienced no ambivalence about her complete lack of culpability. Still, she experienced immediate questions about the legitimacy of her victimization, with the nurse responsible for her care suggesting that what happened wasn’t actually that bad, if only she hadn’t been a virgin. Abby perceived this as an attempt to minimize her pain, or suggest that in some way she was responsible for the intensity of her trauma. As if prior sexual experience would have minimized her rapist’s actions. The psychological consequences were so great that she abandoned a beloved hobby. She spent a year of her life dealing intensely with the emotional consequences of this violent attack, and it had a profound effect on her sexuality. The impact of this rape was clear throughout the rest of her interview. She is now cautious around men and makes a point to assert herself clearly at the first sign of an unwelcome advance. From this traumatic introduction to sex she has developed a strategy for engaging with men that she ultimately defines as empowering. Maryanne (Woman, 27, Partnered, Straight) is

96 another interviewee whose story of rape fits neatly into cultural ideas about a “deserving victim,” someone who is not culpable for their rape:

I was raped when I was 14 and I can’t get over it. I think… the scariest part was the advances had been made and I said no. I got roofied. I woke up and didn’t know where I was, but I knew what happened. I was scared. Maryanne was 14, well under the age of consent, and drugged to the point of incapacitation. This rape marred her adult experiences with sexuality. Although she did not feel responsible for her rape, she still experienced shame and secrecy, telling no one for years and continuing to keep it a secret from her family. She said that she is still in the process of finding pleasure from penetrative intercourse with the implicit reference to her trauma not too far from her mind. It was particularly unsettling that she clearly stated her lack of interest only to have her decision overridden. Her account fit neatly into the

“deserving victim” framework because of her age and her rapist’s use of drugs to incapacitate her, but not all of the women I talked to would likely have their experiences interpreted in such a clear-cut way, such as Asia (Woman, 24, Single, Pansexual)

There’s two instances where I was drunk, very drunk like blackout drunk, and--but during that I woke up and I was like having sex. And one of them knew I wasn’t for it, you know what I mean? I remember like the other situation, I woke up you know, having sex and I was like, “is this like...who is this” you know what I mean? In these accounts Asia was intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness and when she woke up she was being raped. She could definitionally not consent to that sex act and it’s incredibly unlikely that her rapist was unaware of her condition. The second time it happened she was so disoriented she was unaware of who was having sex with her. This is unconscionable behavior, but previous research suggests that she, like many of the

97 women I interviewed, would have blame attached to her if she went public with her account (Bell, Kuriloff, & Lottes 1993; Abrams et al. 2003; Frese, Moya & Megías

2004). Her alcohol consumption casts doubt over her victimhood status, which she herself internalized:

‘Cause the first time it happened was in high school and that was just like mortifying, I didn’t know who to tell, I tried telling my best friend and she was like well that’s not rape. And I was like… so then I just kept it to myself and it later came up in therapy, and I was like, “that is rape.” And then the second time I was like, how could I let that happen to me again! It’s like there’s no-- sometimes there’s just like, you can sit there and say that like, “oh you shouldn’t have drank that much,” but I was in my own home. Because her experience fell outside that of “deserving victims” it was not validated by a close friend and she actually felt embarrassment from the violence that had been inflicted on her. She also felt a sense of personal responsibility, this was something she “let happen” to herself. It wasn’t until years later that she attached the label of “rape” to her experience. Ultimately, she did identify her experience as rape, recognizing that her level of intoxication precluded her from being able to consent and that her rapist was in the wrong for abusing that situation. She feels that in principal she should be able to drink in her own home without risking victimization. Abby and Maryanne used the terminology of “rape” as well, as did 15 other women in my sample. Twenty-two did not

(nine women had multiple experience of sexual violence and explicitly named one but not another, See Table 4.1).

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Table 4.1 Non-Consensual Sexual Encounters Women (43) Men (25) Non-Binary (2) Non-Consensual- Rape 18 2 0 Non-Consensual- Not Rape 22 1 1 Total Reporting Non-Consensual Experiences 37 (72.1%) 3 (12.0%) 1 (50.0%)

Non-Consensual Sex Not Identified as Rape

Nina (Woman, 27, Single, Straight) described a sexual experience that in some ways parallels Asia’s, but she never defined it as rape or assault

There was this time when I spent a semester away. Me and this girl were with these guys who we were kind of sketched out about. I don’t know if I was roofied or blacked-out but they definitely took advantage of me sexually, so that wasn’t a great experience. She was describing a sexual encounter that, again, she was definitionally unable to consent to, but she did not name it as assault. Instead, she says it “wasn’t a great experience.” She believes that these men used drugs to sexually violate her, but doesn’t present this information within an assault framework. Similarly, Emily (Woman, 27,

Partnered, Straight) said,

The first time I've ever had sex, it was with a guy who knew that I had never had sex before. We were fooling around and everything and he just did it. I just remember thinking, "Oh my gosh, this is what it is. This is sex," and, "I do not want this," but I didn't really say anything or do anything. I just literally am shocked that, "Oh my gosh, this is really happening."…That felt 99

awful but I always felt like yes, we really messed around and doing stuff, that's not like I was completely innocent. Obviously, it was pretty easy for him to just jump on top and penetrate and everything. We were doing other stuff. It wasn't what I wanted to do. Yes, that didn't feel so good.

Emily is describing a situation that started as consensual but passed the point where she was comfortable or consenting. Her partner knew she had never had sex, and she had previously expressed reticence to take that step. She put the blame on herself because she agreed to other sexual acts, believing that her willingness to “fool around” with him makes her somewhat accountable for his actions. Despite her partner failing to obtain consent for penetration she does not frame this as a rape experience, rather one that, “did not feel so good.” Lauryn (Woman, 27, Single, Straight) is another woman who experienced a non- consensual sexual encounter, and not only did she not name it as rape she explicitly argued that it was not.

I was drunk at 18, having no business drinking, but I was drinking. I had a lot to drink that night. My friend- it was her party- or her brother and his friends were hanging around like, ‘Oh, young girls getting drunk’, so that’s how I lost my virginity: at a house party, drunk in the basement. I definitely wouldn’t have made that decision had I been sober, so that would probably be the worst experience for me…I wouldn’t call it rape. I vaguely remember entertaining this guy and I don’t remember much, but I had friends around who witnessed it and I don’t believe they would lie. If I was in a situation where I needed help, I believe they would have helped me, but they told me the day after like ‘you were doing this’ and ‘you were saying that’ and ‘we came out to get you and you were doing this and you wanted it’, so it was consensual I’m sure. But I was drunk. I believe it. I believe them. Because Lauryn was drunk she definitionally could not consent, but she clearly does not perceive this incident as rape. She was so intoxicated that she doesn’t remember the details of the encounter, but she takes her friends’ words for it that she was a consenting participant. Their accounts suggested that she was being flirtatious and 100 expressing sexual interest, and although she has no memory of this she takes their word for it and does not believe the man she had sex with did anything wrong. The fact that a man was having sex with her when she was blackout drunk must be fine, she believed if she was truly in trouble she would have yelled and fought and her friends would have intervened. For her, the absence of clear physical resistance is sufficient proof of her won consent. This was a negative experience for her, one that made her feel publicly humiliated, and she places the responsibility squarely on her own shoulders for drinking underage when she had “no business drinking.”

On the one hand, it’s not my responsibility to label my respondents’ experiences for them. They are the experts on their lives and it’s important to recognize their agency in defining their sexual encounters. On the other hand, it was troubling to me that Nina,

Emily, Lauryn, and 19 other women in my sample were experiencing what was clearly sex they did not consent to and were not using the language that would indicate they believed what happened to them was wrong. These weren’t simply cases of “bad sex,” these were examples of men clearly disrespecting and disregarding the bodily autonomy of women. Why was this happening? Why was there any ambiguity in defining these experiences, especially since advocacy groups often suggest that consent is a zero-sum game, where the absence of clear consent de facto indicates an assault (National Sexual

Violence Resource Center 2012; Project Consent 2016)?

One explanation may be that some women were reluctant to frame themselves as victims. To be a victim suggests a loss of agency and a trauma that needs to be worked through. This requires a reframing of personal identity, and it may be a concern that 101 being a “victim” could override other aspects of sexual identity such as being

“empowered,” “desiring/desired,” “passionate” etc. It may be easier to frame an encounter as “bad sex” as opposed to acknowledging an assault and figuring out how to incorporate that identifier into one’s self-image and sexual history. Payton (Woman, 23,

Partnered, Pansexual) described to me some sexual encounters that she did not want to happen but went along with and never explicitly said no. I asked her why she didn’t establish clear boundaries and she said,

Uhm, I don’t think that I’ve ever felt scared, or fearful during a sexual encounter. Uncomfortable, nauseated, I’ve never felt physically threatened, and I think a part of that is I’ve never backed down or pushed away so that’s maybe why I’ve never felt threatened, ‘cause I’ve just kind of let- gone with the flow instead of putting up any resistance, which is definitely I think part of why I haven’t put up any resistance, is the fear that things could escalate to a physical level.

Payton is saying that she would rather deal with ambiguity surrounding her sexual encounters than assert herself and risk having to acknowledge that this was truly not consensual. If she doesn’t clearly say no, even if she isn’t saying yes, she can maintain a sense of control over her sexuality. She expresses an awareness that even if she resists a sexual act her refusal may be overridden by an aggressive partner, and she would rather not experience the horror of experiencing an unequivocal rape. Other women may be ignoring signs that their experiences were indicative of rape or assault, or even avoiding drawing clear consent boundaries in the moment, because were they to do so it would mean something more serious. Either way, Payton is having sex, but by not saying no and putting her partner in a position where he has to decide if he will escalate to using force it isn’t rape, it’s just “bad sex.”

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All of the women I spoke with were reflecting on past experiences and had the benefit of time to cognitively explore what happened to them. Some women reported not seeing their experience as rape or assault initially but coming to an understanding of what those experiences were over time. Their experiences weren’t congruent with popular understandings of “deserving victims” and it took time to process and contextualize.

Hannah (Woman, 34, Partnered, Straight) described her challenges understanding that what happened to her was both rape and not her fault.

I really thought it was my fault and I shouldn't put myself in the situation, I should not have had all the alcohol drinks he was feeding me, whatever was in them. I really felt like it was all my fault. I'd say really it only changed in the past few years. I've been seeing a couple different therapists when I moved here about just life in general, and my family and stuff. That came up, and I don't think until I started talking about it in the context of abuse and power and all of that with a therapist, that I really realized that that was rape, and that I didn't-- That wasn't my fault. I think just the culture is changing in colleges and stuff too. When I was in college, it wasn't that way either. I think that just the national shift around that conversation has also helped make that awareness be more comfortable for people. Just knowing that it wasn't my fault and everything definitely took some time. Hannah had been drinking, and she thought that justified a man having sex with her while she was unconscious, especially because her friends saw this as more reflective of her sexual impropriety than her victimization. The man she was referring to was a friend of her boyfriend, and the next day her boyfriend berated her for letting that happen and they subsequently broke up. Both she, and her social network, believed that her intoxication was to blame for what she would later come to refer to as an assault. It was only with time and therapy that she began to understand that she did not consent and was therefore raped. Lucy (Woman, 27, Partnered, Straight) similarly took years to view an

103 experience as assault. She was in high school and pressured to perform oral sex, during which her partner took pictures that he shared with others in the school:

MeToo movement has come out I've been thinking back through my past and been like I never realized that that was like assault- because it kind of wasn't because I kind of gave into it, but I was pressured to do something just so I can get out of the situation. Although she still sees herself as having some agency in the situation, the national conversation surrounding sexual assault being driven by the MeToo movement helped her to understand the coercion involved in getting her to perform oral sex in the first place, and the explicit violation of consent that occurred when the image was shared. This suggests that the MeToo movement has made some headway in rewriting cultural-level sexual scripts. For Lucy and some others in my sample, at the time of their assault they did not have a reference point to understand that their experiences fit definitions of sexual violence. What happened to them was so much an extension of cultural-level scripts that although their consent was absent or questionable it was just seen as “bad,” but normal, sex. The MeToo movement has opened up space to define these experiences as rape or assault and to an extent it challenges the value of scripted power differentials between men and women during heterosexual sex. When the women I spoke with reframed previously unproblematized past experiences as sexual violence it speaks to the power of social forces in shaping sexual scripts and understandings of sexuality. Interpretations of sexual experiences are culturally and historically specific and thus subject to change, such as with the rise of the MeToo movement. Although definitions of sexual assault are being expanded to include coercion beyond physical violence, the continuing pervasive

104 belief that women are responsible for their own victimization may be a reason why so many of my respondents described rape without naming it as such.

Women may not be identifying their non-consensual experiences as rape because they want to avoid the label of “victim” or because they don’t see themselves as

“deserving victims,” but I believe the most compelling explanation for why so many women did not name their experiences as rape or sexual assault is because it happened in a context where sexual assault is normalized. As I discussed in the previous chapter, men and women experience sex using gendered sexual scripts. Men are expected to push for sex and overcome a partner’s (or their own) initial reluctance and women are expected to be demure about their desire. This sets the stage for sexual interactions where men push past the point where a woman is consenting but this isn’t immediately visible as assault because it’s normal. This behavior is embedded within dominant sexual scripts and both partners appear to be fulfilling their proscribed role. Morally, there is a clear difference between enacting this script in a way that allows for appropriately gendered sexual roles where both the man and the woman are comfortably guided by the familiar duality of passivity versus agency- and rape, but in practice this is less clearly distinguishable. Is he acting forcefully because he doesn’t respect his partner and her right to make choices about her body, or he doing what’s expected of him and would want to hear if he was crossing boundaries? Is she disengaged because she’s enacting the passivity of traditional femininity or is she disengaged because she doesn’t want that sexual interaction? This is not to say that women are responsible for their assaults because a sexual aggressor always has the obligation of ensuring consent, but it does mean that there is confusion

105 surrounding consent built into our sexual scripts that explains both the prevalence of sexual assault and the difficulty in naming it.

Alcohol

This confusion is compounded when alcohol is added to the mix. Alcohol simultaneously lowers inhibitions and eliminates the possibility for true consent, but it is also common in narratives about how sex, both “good” and “bad” is initiated. Hookup culture, frequently connected to undergraduates but also relevant to the older Millenials I interviewed, uses alcohol as a social lubricant for initiating sexual interactions (LaBrie et al. 2014). Indeed nine of my interviewees explicitly referenced alcohol as enhancing a sexual encounter without prompting. Alcohol can be a part of “good sex;” it can help initiate a liaison between two desiring partners and it can help people get out of their heads and into the moment, expressing passion in ways that are otherwise inhibited.

When someone initiates sex it can be a moment of vulnerability and opening oneself up to the possibility of rejection. Alcohol can be helpful in both overcoming fear and buffering against pain in the case of rejection. One can always say, “I only tried to have sex with that person because I was drunk, it isn’t representative of my true feelings and consequently this rejection isn’t as meaningful.” Once sex is happening, alcohol can help reduce anxiety and bring people out of their head and into the moment, less concerned with thinking and more concerned with feeling.

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Alcohol can also be a tool of rape or sexual assault, either intentionally or unintentionally. The disorientation created by alcohol consumption both makes it harder to read another person’s body language and makes it more difficult to articulate resistance to unwanted sexual advances. Because alcohol lowers inhibitions pushing for sex without concern for the other person’s feelings becomes easier. Alcohol consumption can also be a component of sexual scripts that signals sex is eminent, even if both participants are not enthusiastic. In my sample, 15 women cited alcohol as a factor in their non-consensual encounters, and ten of those did not identify their experiences as rape or sexual assault. I believe this is because the dominant sexual script provides two explanations for non-consensual sex that occurs while intoxicated. It could be rape, it could be sexual assault, or it could just be “bad sex,” a hookup gone wrong. You’re playing your role, going through the motions of what happens between heterosexual people in a party situation, and that time it didn’t work out. When a woman is raped while intoxicated there’s an available framework to explain that experience that doesn’t involve negotiating trauma, it’s just a hookup gone wrong. This framework may be particularly appealing if the woman was intoxicated and accesses narratives about truly

“deserving victims” to take some or all of the blame on herself for getting drunk in the first place. Unfortunately, the extent to which the gendered aggression/passivity binary is embedded in gendered sexual scripts makes assault frequent while also obscuring it as a social problem, especially in the context of alcohol consumption. Discussions surrounding consent often rightfully highlight the ways that alcohol consumption can undermine or eliminate the possibility of consent. However, the contributions to pleasure

107 that alcohol can make means that encouraging people to only have sex when they’re sober is unrealistic. A more helpful approach would highlight the positive contributions that alcohol consumption can make to sexual pleasure while also acknowledging the ways that it complicates consent and can serve to exacerbate pre-existing gendered power differentials.

The more I spoke with women about their sexual experiences the more I came to understand the extent to which rape and sexual assault are a problem and also the extent to which there can be confusion surrounding consent. Consent seems like an easy concept; a verbal yes is a green light and anything less is insufficient. However, I had women like Caitlin (Woman, 30, Single, Straight) saying,

I was arguably too drunk to consent, but I think we both were, so I don’t really place blame as much as I regret that situation. That was just not good for either of us. I don’t remember if we used a condom or not. There’s a lot of questions there. I definitely regret that. Caitlin is describing a relatively common situation where both parties were intoxicated and the sex wasn’t desired on her end. Unfortunately we have no way of knowing how her partner was feeling, although she states that she doesn’t think he particularly enjoyed it either. Both of them were intoxicated, and both of them were insensitive to the ways that alcohol consumption can impact consent. This is a situation where the sex wasn’t clearly consensual, but it wasn’t clearly rape either. Men enter heterosexual sex with more culturally granted agency and power, a privilege that arguably comes with the obligation to be more attentive to consent. But I think it would be somewhat unfair to place the blame for this regretful encounter squarely on the

108 shoulders of the male participant, particularly when Caitlin explicitly doesn’t. So much of the #MeToo movement talks about consent as if it’s simple, always readily apparent or not. This framework makes sense if you’re trying to condemn individual rapists, but if we want to address the culture that enables frequent rape and sexual assault we need to acknowledge that consent is not always clear cut. Several of the women I talked to said that they did not say no, and that’s why they don’t see their experience as one of assault.

Regardless, their feelings suggest that their aggressor leveraged gendered power to push an unwanted sexual interaction. This is not acceptable behavior, but it’s also true that the men weren’t given the opportunity to hear explicitly that their partner did not want that interaction. Maybe they would have stopped. Maybe not. The bottom line is that placing blame on individual aggressors is missing the bigger picture. These exchanges are ambiguous because they are both terrible and embedded in our dominant sexual scripts, our collective understanding of what is normal sex. People rely on dominant sexual scripts to help guide sexual interactions. When you know what behavior is expected of you it takes some of the pressure off in a vulnerable situation. Women and men have been assigned compatible binary roles of passive and aggressive which often works.

When both parties desire a sexual encounter playing these roles helps it go off smoothly without any tension over who should be guiding the interaction. This allows for sex to feel smooth and natural. These gendered sexual scripts also open up a door to assault and allow rape to be confused for a regular, socially ordained sexual encounter.

I’ve spent most of this chapter talking about women because I had far more women talking about rape and sexual assault than men, but the three examples of sexual

109 violence provided by men in my sample also highlight the way that our dominant sexual script normalizes women’s sexual assault and in some context’s men’s. I had far too few men addressing sexual violence to make any generalizable claims, but their experiences are worth addressing as counterpoints to the narratives provided by women. The first man

I’m going to talk about is Jacob (Man, 36, Partnered, Straight) who experienced some confusion about how to understand his experience.

There was one time with the bad [girlfriend] where we had sex and she didn’t feel like it was enough and she wanted to have sex again. I told her I need time. She said that she needed sex now. I said no and she started to go down on me. Amazingly she got me hard and in my mind I didn’t want to do it. But then I felt guilty that she didn’t get off. She got on top of me and we had sex. She got off, rolled off, and it was fucking awful. I’ve talked to my friend and [current girlfriend] about this, too. It felt like rape. It felt like I’ve never felt so ashamed after sex or so dirty. I can still feel it on my body. I get this adrenaline response. Jacob’s experience is noteworthy because in some ways it violates the dominant sexual script. His female partner took on the role of sexual aggressor and flipped the script regarding who is the active and who is the passive partner. However, despite this encounter being undesired, he did not identify it as rape. He comes very close, “it felt like rape,” but he did not explicitly state that it was rape. This ambiguity makes sense in the context of the expectation that men always be sexually available. As I discussed in the previous chapter, the cultural-level sexual script suggests that men always want sex, and within this framework how can a man be raped, especially in a relationship where other sexual encounters were clearly desired- including one immediately prior to this incident?

Jacob knew that this experience made him feel “ashamed” and “dirty,” but he struggled

110 to name why for reasons similar to the women who did not name their experiences: it was both a violation and in accordance with gendered sexual expectations.

For the other two men that brought up sexual violence what stood out to me was how quickly they recognized that they had been violated and sought help. This is in stark contrast to the 22 women that did not explicitly identify their non-consensual sexual encounters as rape, and the 15 women who identified their experiences as rape or sexual assault but did not seek any institutional assistance. Unlike Jacob, their experiences took place outside of the context of a relationship and their assailants used clear physical force against them. Mark (Man, 35, Partnered, Gay) describes a date he went on early in his college career:

It was with an older gentleman. There wasn’t a plan to have sex. It was messing around and he essentially… I was hard and he was hard. I was 18. He pinned my arms down and rode my cock. It wasn’t very consensual in that sense, but I’ve done what I needed to with that. I said no and tried to push him off. I was shocked and got my clothes and left. I remember that I went back to my RA and kind of told them about it and they told me to take an HIV test. It was 7 day waiting period. I did that and also ordered an at home test. The science wasn’t there yet. I was uneducated around it. The at home test came back positive. There was this huge panic. There was a big scare there. I feel like it was long time before I tried to engage in sex. I talked to a counselor and understood what happened. Mark was raped on his date, and unlike many women I spoke to he didn’t waffle in his understanding that what happened to him was unacceptable. He immediately recognized that he needed to seek support both medically and psychologically, initially speaking with his dorm room’s resident advisor and receiving HIV testing, and pursuing counseling in the long-term. Although he experienced psychological consequences for his victimization, those were not compounded by confusion or feelings of guilt. He did not 111 feel any personal responsibility for his rape. He did not feel that consenting to a date or to

“messing around” with his rapist made him responsible, nor should he. David (Man, 36,

Partnered, Straight) identified an assault with a similar level of confidence:

I had one experience of sexual battery that someone did to me where they licked my face and twisted my nipple in the lobby of a hotel. I did not consent to that and had them removed from the conference. David was at a social conference related to polyamory when an unfamiliar woman approached him and violated his body. Like Mark, he instantly recognized this was wrong, took steps to mitigate the harm done, and received the support needed from those around him. When women discussed sexual violence there was often ambiguity about the extent to which it was unacceptable or even the sole responsibility of the perpetrator. In contrast, it’s clear that both David and Mark responded to sexual violence in ways that demonstrate knowledge that they were victimized and that what happened to them is not normal or acceptable.

Men’s experiences with sexual violence are certainly more diverse than what I was able to capture in this study, but I included these examples because they highlight the ways that cultural-level sexual scripts shape reactions to rape and sexual assault. For women, sexual violence and coercion is so consistent with dominant sexual scripts that it isn’t always readily perceived as a victimization experience. This is in contrast with the experiences of Mark and David where their experience was so far removed from the level of agency that they anticipate having in sexual encounters that it was easy to name and condemn. For Jacob, his experience was murky in part because although his girlfriend was pursuing sex in an aggressive way outside of the dominant sexual script for women, 112 he was also aware of pressures for men to be constantly pursuing and available for sex.

Overall, cultural-level sexual scripts appear to play a significant role in how experiences of rape and sexual assault are understood on the individual level.

Conclusion

My findings regarding the importance of physical pleasure, connection, and novelty in constructing ideas of “good” sex have important implications for how people can improve the quality of their sexual interactions and reap the physical health, mental health, and relationship health benefits of sexual satisfaction. This was initially what I set out to study and understand, but through that process addressing sexual violence, particularly against women, emerged as an essential focus. The sheer number of women that reported non-consensual sex indicates that this is not just a case of a few women having bad luck but rather a widespread pattern of violence and violation enabled by our cultural-level sexual scripts. So many women are being assaulted, and struggling to identify their experiences as assault or rape, because our sexual scripts provide men and women with oppositional roles. Men are expected to be active, initiating sex and steering sexual interactions, while women are expected to be passive and follow the man’s lead.

This creates ambiguity surrounding consent, where it can be challenging to determine if resistance is sincere or an expression of femininity; an attempt to obscure desire and appear virtuous. In a casual encounter this is particularly salient, as this is a moment

113 where women stand to be judged the most harshly for their willingness to engage in sex outside of the context of a committed relationship (Muehlenhard and McCoy 1991).

Aziz Ansari’s case, and the public reaction to it, perfectly highlights the way that sexual assault is embedded in our cultural-level scripts. By aggressively pursuing sex from an intoxicated woman he was fulfilling his masculine role in the script. There was so much debate about whether or not he raped Grace because that interaction fits within our framework for what sex looks like. It does not fall neatly into conceptions of rape that necessitate brute force. He was supposed to push for sex, she was supposed to offer some nominal resistance, and that’s exactly what happened. In this case her resistance was coming from a sincere reluctance to have sex with him, but what is his obligation to interrogate her reluctance when it’s expected as a part of her scripted dialogue? I would argue that being the sexual initiator does come with the responsibility of obtaining direct and enthusiastic consent, but quibbling online over whether or not Aziz Ansari is a rapist completely misses the point. Our focus on identifying individual rapists obscures the need for a larger dialogue about the ways cultural-level sexual scripts attribute agency to men and passivity to women and how this inherently places women in a vulnerable position during sex. If we’re interested in reducing rates of rape and sexual assault and not simply virtue-signally by condemning individual men we need to change the way that we, on a cultural level, understand women’s and men’s roles in sexual encounters. We need to expect women to take an active and consent-oriented role in initiating sex. We need to change cultural-level scripts so that resistance to sex is a moment where explicit dialogue about consent is a part of those scripts, even if pausing to have a conversation

114 breaks up the flow of sex. We need to stop thinking that addressing the behavior of individual men is a substitute for acknowledging the cultural context that makes sexual violence against women so commonplace and sometimes ambiguous. We don’t need to change Ansari, we need to change the script.

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Bell, Susan T., Peter J. Kurlioff, and Ilsa Lottes. 1994. “Understanding Attributions of

Blame in Stranger Rape and Date Rape Situations: An Examination of Gender,

Race, Identification, and Students’ Social Perceptions of Rape Victims.” Journal

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for Child Rape.” The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 89(2): 717-750.

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R. Kenny. 2014. “Hooking Up in the College Context: The Event-Level Effects of 116

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simple

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Chapter 5. Conclusion

When I first started my research I honestly thought that gender was going to factor in more strongly in how participants understood “good” sex. I expected that men and women would have variation in what they’re trying to get out of sex in ways that were sometimes incompatible. I was pleasantly surprised to find a significant amount of consistency in how people understood sexual quality regardless of gender. Novelty (in the right proportions), emotional connection, and physical pleasure all emerged as consistently important factors in describing sexual satisfaction. Women were slightly less likely to directly address physical pleasure, which is unsurprising given that women are socialized to be less open about sexual desire, but it was still a component of sex addressed and prioritized by many women I talked to. When men and women have sex it does not appear that they have to bridge a substantial gap between expectations for both partners to be satisfied.

I also anticipated relationship status to be a more important factor than it turned out to be. It seems reasonable that people in relationships may frame sex differently and see it as a tool to improve the health of the relationship as a whole. I thought that partnered respondents may emphasize emotional connection more, while single

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Table 5.1 respondents may be more Relationship Status Single interested in physical pleasure. (27) Partnered(42) Emotional 22 This does not appear to be the Connection (81.5%) 37 (88.1%) 14 case (see Table 5.1), but I still Physical Pleasure (51.9%) 20 (47.6%) believe that the way emotional connection is experienced varies depending on relationship status. Several respondents indicated that it was possible to be emotionally open and engaged with a casual partner, even if that connection was contained within a discrete sexual interaction and did not translate to overall emotional connection as it may if the sexual actors are in a relationship.

Relationship status was most salient when participants recounted experiences of sexual novelty being perceived positively. Many people enjoyed moments where sexual scripts were altered and something new happened, particularly new sexual locations and behaviors, but these deviations tended to occur while the respondent was in a relationship. Sexual scripts can lead to sex feeling routine and consequently unexciting, but violating those scripts comes with the risk of rejection. Scripts help establish what a partner will respond positively to, and breaking the script requires entering unchartered territory where the sex may be exciting and memorable or conversely unpleasant, awkward, or potentially relationship damaging. I believe most participants who had enjoyed novel experiences did so in the context of a relationship for two reasons. First, the longer two people are in a sexual relationship the more deeply entrenched their

119 interpersonal-level scripts become which over time makes sex predictable and less stimulating, making a script interruption desirable. Second, the risk involved in trying something new can be mitigated by a solid foundation of trust between partners. It’s safer to express deviant desires to someone who has shown over time to be a loyal and supportive partner.

Although the limited importance of relationship status was unexpected, my largest surprise was the prevalence of rape and sexual assault among my female respondents. I set out to study sexual pleasure and was consequently anticipating mostly light-hearted conversations about positively experienced sexual encounters. By the time I had interviewed about ten women I knew that when I asked, “what sexual experience has been your worst,” I should prepare myself for a description of something truly terrible. I tried to be supportive and respectful when sexual violence came up, making clear that respondents could say as much or as little about it as they wanted to. Several women said that when they committed to the interview they expected this to come up as it has had such a significant impact on their sexuality. These were also moments when my responsibility as a researcher sometimes became unclear. There were a few moments when women were blaming themselves for their assaults and I felt an obligation to put objectivity to the side and reassure them that what happened wasn’t their fault. The incredibly high number of women that reported non-consensual sexual experiences, even if they didn’t explicitly name them as such, is not due to the actions of a few bad men but rather the logical conclusion of power differentials between men and women embedded in cultural-level sexual scripts.

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Sexual scripts serve an important function. By establishing the who, what, where, when, and why of sex they take a lot of the guesswork out of sexual encounters and provide sexual actors with a frame of reference for what is expected of them. For many people sex can be a moment of vulnerability, and scripts help reduce awkward fumbling and allow the interaction to flow smoothly. Scripts outline a progression of sex that is not inherently natural but so culturally engrained it can feel like it is. I also found evidence that there are paradoxically scripts for how to break the dominant script. When people had sex in new locations or with new behaviors there was a notable amount of consistency across cases. It appears that there are subcultural-level scripts that provide reference points for what deviant sex looks like. This is important, because as 19 people in my sample reported an unwelcome script violation can be unpleasant. Subcultural- level scripts about appropriate ways to alter the “where” and “what” components of the script increase the chances that both partners will be receptive.

Our dominant sexual script functions to make sex run smoother, but this can come at a cost. Previous research has illuminated the ways that power is imbalanced in cultural- level sexual scripts (Oliver and Hyde 1993; Roberts et al. 1995; Jackson and Scott 2002;

Zubriggen and Yost 2004; Carpenter 2010; Elmersteig et al. 2012), and many of my respondents were acutely aware of this as well. Men are expected to play the role of sexual aggressor, initiating sex and guiding the interaction, while women are expected to take a submissive role. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, there’s comfort in knowing what’s expected of you and gender is an easy demarcation use when dividing sexual labor. The problem with these gendered roles in the sexual script is that they inherently

121 place men in a position of power and do not provide for organic opportunities for women to end a sexual interaction when it becomes unwanted. Men are supposed to push for sex, making it difficult to problematize sexually aggressive behaviors that contribute to sexual violence. Women are supposed to be passive and follow the man’s lead, meaning that if she asserts herself she is violating the sexual script. This puts pressure on both men to try to overcome women’s resistance and women to go along with the man’s wishes, an issue compounded by sexual scripts that often include women offering nominal resistance to maintain an image of sexual purity.

If we want to reduce sexual assault, and I sincerely want to believe that most people do, we need to change the way we frame this social problem. To get at the root causes of why sexual violence is so pervasive we need to push for responses to rape and sexual assault that don’t just focus on the individual victim and perpetrator. The explanations for why men rape women are deeper than just, “he’s a bad person,” their actions are supported by cultural-level sexual scripts. Instead of quibbling over whether or not one individual is a rapist we need to zoom out and look at the bigger picture of how scripted gender roles attribute power to men and blur the line between normative levels of sexual aggression and rape. The cultural-level sexual script is deeply ingrained in our understanding of how to have sex, and changing it is no easy task. I believe there are several actions we as a society can take to begin that work including changing components of sexual socialization and re-examining our institutional response to sexual violence.

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The first step to changing the cultural-level sexual script is to educate the public about gender inequalities in sexual scripts and provide an accessible alternative vision.

Gendered sexual roles are ubiquitous in movies, television, pornography, and interpersonal sexual interactions but they are rarely named or problematized. This phenomenon and its social costs should be brought to the forefront of discussions about sex, and we already have a vehicle through which to do that. If we harnessed sex education within secondary schools to teach not just about the biological dynamics of procreation and pregnancy/STI prevention but also social elements of sex we could encourage teens and young adults to initiate their sexual career with a greater awareness of their obligations towards others. Right now, at best, we’re arming teenagers with the most basic information about how to reduce the physical harms of sex to the exclusion of emotional harms (Kirby 2008). A more effective sex education would teach young people how men and women are expected to behave during sex, show them through relevant examples how this can contribute to rape and sexual assault, and provide a vision for sex where one partner doesn’t have to be clearly dominant- or at minimum establish an obligation for the more assertive partner to actively check in with their partner and listen to their feelings. Creating a sex education curriculum that highlights the social aspects of sex and influences teenagers prior to when they first have it may prove to be an easier task than changing the patterns of adults who are already sexually active.

Most of the participants in my research reported having some form of sex education in elementary through high school. Only seven out of 70 participants said they had no kind of formal sex education at all, but for the other 63 their feelings about it were

123 often lukewarm. Many of them didn’t remember much about it at all, and 42 said that they felt it was inadequate to prepare them for having sex. Only 7 said that they thought they received a quality sex education, and three of those were in countries other than the

United States. I didn’t directly ask how anyone would have improved on their experience, but five of my interviewees volunteered that they wished their curriculum had focused directly on the social aspects of sex. We know that sex is so much more than a purely physical experience, and it’s logical that truly comprehensive sex education would include an intensive social element. We’re currently missing out on a chance to educate young people about the gender dynamics within sex and forcing them to learn from media and personal experience without the benefit of direct guidance from a knowledgeable adult who could suggest script alterations that improve agency for both partners. This is a moment where we could define and prioritize consent for young people and teach that both (or all) partners need to have an equal voice in initiating or stopping sexual encounters.

This issue is compounded by the representations of men’s and women’s roles in mainstream pornography. When young people aren’t educated about sex by an informed and thoughtful source they look elsewhere to understand what is supposed to happen during sex. This is especially important for Millenials and subsequent generations, who came into adulthood with access to the internet and consequently easy access to pornography. All of the people I interviewed with the exception of one admitted to having seen pornography, and 70.0% had been exposed to it within the last month.

Pornography, as the one place where people can consistently see other people having sex,

124 has incredible potential to influence cultural-level sexual scripts (Brown and L’Engle

2009; Braithwaite et al. 2015). The obvious answer for how to alter scripts is to change the way men and women are presented in pornography, but this is easier said than done.

Pornography can be produced with varying degrees of professionalism, from production companies down to amateurs in their own home but they’re all motivated by what is going to sell the most or garner the most views. Obviously, what they’re doing right now is working for them and it’s unlikely that we’ll witness a sea change without some kind of direct pressure.

One way to approach this is to advocate for industry leaders to re-evaluate the gendered roles they have performers enact in the hopes that by framing their production company as one with concerns for social justice they’ll garner social capital and increase consumers. As sales of porn from established studios falls with an increasing influx of free internet pornography (Wilkinson 2017) this may be a re-branding opportunity.

Another way would be to incorporate pornography literacy into sex education classes and teach teenagers that this is a form of media to consume critically. People often think of porn consumption as deeply private and connected to innate desires and thus beyond criticism. By educating people that pornography is reflective of social forces and subject to change it’s possible that over time we could see more people rejecting porn that positions men and women in positions of clearly unequal power and an increasing demand for pornography that follows a different script. As the market becomes more heterogenous and people are exposed to different images of how men and woman can

125 have sex cultural-level scripts would be disrupted and gendered power dynamics challenged.

Another strategy for altering cultural-level scripts entails re-evaluating the way we address rape and sexual assault accusations and prosecution in certain cases. Our current strategies are largely punitive and focused around interpreting available evidence and determining appropriate consequences (Koss and Achilles 2008; Naylor 2010; Marsh and Wager 2015). For some cases this is necessary and effective, but there are also issues with this approach. First, rape convictions are rare, and few victims find satisfaction in the criminal justice system (2008; 2010; 2015). Second, this individual-level focus challenges the actions of one person but fails to question the cultural context that enables sexual violence to happen so frequently. Restorative justice has been offered by some scholars as a supplement or an alternative to traditional criminal justice intervention that may address these inadequacies. Restorative justice is a criminal justice practice where the needs of the victim are placed at the center of the process and the goal is to repair to the extent possible the harm done (Koss and Achilles 2008; Naylor 2010; Marsh and

Wager 2015). Restorative justice can take several forms, the one most applicable to these cases would involve the victim and the offender sitting down with a trained mediator and discussing the crime and the emotions behind it for both people. This would be an opportunity to dialogue about the way sexually aggressive behavior is both normalized and unacceptable, bringing to light some of the complexities behind consent when men are encouraged to push for sex and women are encouraged to initially offer resistance. It also increases the chances of rapists experiencing some type of consequence for their

126 actions, even if it’s lighter than a sentence obtained the traditional way (Koss and

Achilles 2008; Naylor 2010; Marsh and Wager 2015). Conversely, one limitation to this approach is that the victim and community may feel like justice was not effectively served. This is also an approach that can only be successful if both participants believe in the process and are willing to engage with each other and treat the other’s feelings with respect and care (2008; 2010; 2015). A restorative justice approach may be most relevant for cases where the victim and offender have a prior relationship It’s not a one-size fits all approach, but it may help make headway in how we understand the negative impacts of cultural-level scripts, motivating change.

Future research is also needed on this topic, particularly research that focuses on men. As a woman I believe other women were more comfortable discussing their experiences with non-consensual sex than men were. Men are often more open to discussing feelings with female researchers but are generally unwilling to talk about sexual violence (Roberts and Indermaur 2008). If a man conducted research about the coercive strategies men use to obtain sex they would likely obtain richer information about the aggressor side of this dynamic. In terms of understanding what makes sex

“good” there are other avenues that still need to be explored. The lack of diversity in my sample necessitates research that focuses on the impacts of race, religion, and sexual orientation on understandings of sexual pleasure. Because my sample was largely white, a-religious, and reporting heterosexual interactions I was unable to assess the influence that these factors may have had.

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My results indicate that heterosexual sex is a place where gender inequality is perpetuated. Women and men enter sex with binary roles that ascribe more power to men.

This reinforces the social subordination of women to men despite many strides that have been made towards gender equality. Men having consistent power over women during sex reinforces their dominant social status and undermines the agency of women. In its most extreme manifestation this results in women disproportionately experiencing sexual violence (Smith et al. 2015), potentially without explicit intent on behalf of the man. For women to achieve true social equality we have to turn our focus to cultural-level sexual scripts and acknowledge, and then change, the ways that men and women are granted different power and agency during sex.

As it stands now, there is tension in our dominant cultural-level scripts surrounding the ascribed roles of women and men. There may be resistance to change because scripts that ascribe agency to men and passivity to women are often functional.

People like to know what’s expected of them and these gendered roles are highly visible and accessible. Following gendered expectations can make heterosexual sex feel comfortable, natural, and ultimately “good.” Re-writing sexual scripts may entail, to an extent, re-writing pathways to sexual pleasure. Regardless, this is a valuable goal because when the dominant script disfunctions and men pursue sex where interest is not reciprocated the consequences can be devastating on the individual level and ultimately reinforce the subjugation of women.

Ultimately, I believe addressing this issue will lead to greater satisfaction for everyone, regardless of gender. Emotional connection was valued by (in of my sample,

128 and the roles that women and men are encouraged to take during sex can be detrimental to this goal. How can emotional connection be achieved if one partner is not fully engaged but doesn’t feel empowered to voice their dissent? Men want to feel connected and want to be engaged, but social pressures to be the sexual initiator and overcome their partner’s resistance can undermine this goal. Embedding mutual agency into the cultural- level sexual script isn’t a woman’s issue, it’s a social necessity that stands to benefit everyone.

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Appendix A. Methodology

It took me a long time to come into this project. I focused my studies on sexuality in college, but when I arrived at Ohio State I decided to go in a different direction. My

Master’s thesis was about the welfare system, and although I enjoyed completing that research I was not invigorated by the prospect of expanding on that research in my dissertation. Over the course of many months, culminating in a sudden and public existential crisis at a graduate student round table with Dr. Laura Carpenter, I realized that there was a difference between thinking something is politically important and finding it academically interesting. To complete a research project of this scale it’s necessary to be completely absorbed in the subject. After I realized that my interests truly lied within sexuality the rest of the project came together relatively quickly, and I decided to focus on sexual satisfaction and what makes sex “good.”

Choosing the Sample

When I started thinking about who I wanted to interview I knew that gender was going to be a factor in my analysis. Gender has been well established as a source of differing sexual socialization and experiences and it would be remiss to not collect data in a way that would allow for it to be addressed seriously. I imagined a study where I stratified my sample based on gender and one other factor, but I was uncertain what the 141 most relevant other demographic variable would be. I played around with the idea of focusing on religion, as religious socialization is significant in shaping sexual expectations, but I ultimately decided to use relationship status as the other identifier around which I organized my data collection. Part of this was due to issues of access, considering that my personal and professional networks are largely secular I was concerned that I would not be able to recruit a significant number of religious people.

Additionally, I believed that relationship status would change the way participants evaluated sexual quality, with those in romantic relationships seeing sex as a vehicle for emotional connection more than single people, who may prioritize personal physical pleasure. This assumption did not play out within my data, but I still believe that this was a reasonable way to approach the study. My goal was to interview 20 single women, 20 single men, 20 partnered women, and 20 partnered men. I fell short of that goal, but was able to speak with 70 people, enough to form a meaningful analysis.

Age was also a significant factor in selecting my sample parameters. There has been ample research conducted with undergraduates regarding sexuality and I wanted to contribute to the literature by focusing on a different stage of life. At the same time, there is a fair amount of sex research focusing on married people that tends to skew older. I found less research about post-college aged adults despite this being an interesting an important demographic. This group would best be described as post-college aged

Millenials, born between 1980 and 1994. This group is unique because while they may be in committed partnerships they are also likely to be single and still in the process of self- actualizing before settling down with a mate. If they didn’t grow up with access to the

142 internet they came into adulthood with it, and the internet has huge potential as a sexual socializing agent, either through information dissemination or pornography. As people

(especially secular people) increasingly postpone marriage and marriage and sex become increasingly decoupled this age group is in the process of making new meaning out of both relationships and sex and is thus worthy of academic attention.

Site Selection

I interviewed people primarily in Columbus, Ohio for reasons of convenience. As a graduate student and long-term resident of Columbus I have network connections here that helped me find participants. Practically, I was unable to travel extensively and to do in-person interviews I needed to focus on finding interviewees within a reasonable distance of my home base. However, I also opened up phone or video conference interviews in recognition that some people may be more comfortable speaking about their personal sexual history while physically removed from me, the interviewer. Speaking over the phone is conducive to creating a feeling of anonymity and may have encouraged people to respond that would have otherwise been reluctant. However, it’s worth noting that although I asked everyone if they would prefer to meet in person (if possible) or be interviewed over the phone every person who was located in Columbus opted to do an in- person interview. Conducting phone and video interviews also made it possible for me to interview people across the country, and three women in Canada. Overall, 43 of my participants were located in Columbus, and 27 were located in other areas.

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Personally, I was the most comfortable during in-person interviews. I found it hugely beneficial to be able to see respondents’ body language and gauge their level of comfort. It was also easier to be fully engaged and immersed in the interview. The best data came when respondents felt fully comfortable and validated to an extent, and it was easier to utilize my interpersonal skills and make that happen when meeting face-to-face.

Although I tried to bring the same energy level to my phone interviews it was easier for my mind to wander and start thinking more about the future direction of the interview than what my interviewee was saying in that moment. I had five remotely located respondents request a video interview, which came with its own unique set of problems.

Internet connectivity was an issue with all of these interviews, and there were moments when the image and audio would stall or disconnect completely. This interrupted the flow of the interviews, and sometimes required asking respondents to repeat details that they may have been uncomfortable sharing in the first place. With one of these five interviewees the problems were so severe we ultimately stopped the video conference and completed the rest of the interview over instant messenger. However, for the other four the benefit of being able to make eye contact and mutually see who we were talking to did seem to facilitate open dialogue and mitigate the interpersonal costs that came with doing remote interviews over the phone. Were it not for the frequent technological difficulties I would have preferred to conduct more remote interviews this way.

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Gaining Access to Respondents

The personal nature of my interview questions necessitated a high level of trust between myself and the interviewee. I was expecting that potential participants may fear confidentiality breaches, judgement, or just a feeling of interpersonal intrusion. I knew from the start of this project that I would be relying heavily on a snowball sampling strategy. Snowball sampling starts with one, or a few, initial respondents who then refer others to the study. Those new respondents refer others and ideally the sample grows exponentially. Having lived in Columbus for my entire life I have the benefit of strong social networks with many people who can vouch for my trustworthiness. I decided to take advantage of this and ask friends and colleagues to find my initial respondents. I asked virtually everyone I knew to help me find respondents either by asking them personally or sharing my information with other groups they are involved in. The largest disadvantage to this strategy is that I am surrounded by people who are similar to me in race, religion, education level, political orientation, and class background, and I knew that they were likely to refer me to more demographically similar people. Consequently, I also wanted to have an interview chain that was removed from my social network to interject more diversity. I placed ads on Craigslist under the “Volunteer” section in the hopes of recruiting people I am more socially removed from. Unfortunately, this proved fruitless, as I only received one response. This person asked for more details and stopped communicating when I explained the project and interview process. It turns out that strangers were not excited about the prospect of discussing intimate details of their sex life with a stranger for no compensation. My entire sample is built from snowball

145 referrals starting in my own network, the greatest weakness this brings is in the overall lack of diversity (See Table 6.1 for condensed demographic information, and Appendix B for demographic information on every respondent). The largest benefit from this strategy is the trust that comes from being vouched for by someone the interviewee knows personally.

Table A.1 Sample Demographics Women Men Nonbinary Total Single 16 10 1 27 Partnered 27 13 1 41 Relationship Anarchist 0 2 0 2 Polyamorous 7 3 1 11 Race-White 37 20 2 59 Race-Black 1 2 0 3 Race-Latino/a 1 2 0 3 Race-Biracial 0 1 0 3 Straight 26 20 0 46 Gay/Lesbian 0 3 0 3 Bisexual/Pansexual/Queer 16 2 1 19 Education- High School 3 1 0 4 Education- Some College 9 4 0 13 Education- Associate's 2 0 0 2 Education- Bachelor's 20 12 2 24 Education- Master's + 9 8 0 17 Religion- Christian 6 3 0 9 Religion-Agnostic/Atheist/None 23 13 1 37 Religion- Other 5 0 1 6

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Recruitment Problems

I started interviews in June of 2017 and recruitment went well for a few months.

By October my referrals chains had dried up and I had not even conducted half of the interviews I was trying to complete. I needed to access a large pool of potential respondents and decided to use social media as a recruitment platform. I amended my

Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocol and received approval to post a recruitment message as my Facebook status. This proved to be an incredibly successful strategy, almost to the point of being overwhelming. I had some people respond to me directly, people that I knew loosely from high school or college and had still maintained as a

Facebook friend with no actual personal contact. I also had Facebook friends share my post so that their friends, who I did not know at all, could see and respond to my request.

For the first month after posting this I was inundated with interview requests, at times scheduling three or four a day. After the initial post slowed down I made one more additional post requesting more men specifically to help balance out my sample.

Although I can’t know for sure, I think this may have been so effective because potential interviewees could scope me out to an extent before committing to an interview. They were able to view my profile, confirm that I looked like a relatively normal person, and decide that I looked non-threatening enough to talk to. This is speculation of course, but regardless of the reason social media recruitment proved to be a very useful strategy.

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Interview Process

I started all my interviews by getting a general overview of my participants’ lives.

I first asked about what they did on a day-to-day basis and what they spent a lot of time doing or thinking about. This served two purposes. First, it allowed me to begin to get a picture of who they are as a person, but it also allowed for us to develop rapport with low-pressure relatively impersonal questions. I expected some people to be apprehensive about opening up regarding their sexuality to a stranger, and “what does an average day for you look like?” is a softball question that allows both of us to settle in and get used to the flow of the interview. This was also the point when I collected some basic demographic information. My next set of questions focused on romantic relationships, either their current or most recent partner(s). I also started this section with relatively non-invasive questions, asking about how they met this partner, how long they’ve been together, what they like about them. The end of this section is when I first started to ask about sex, and it generally took at least 20 minutes of interview before I directly asked about sex. I believe it was important to spend time building comfort with each other and the interview process before getting into the (intensely personal) heart of my study. The next section of questions directly addressed sex in both ideological (ex. “What makes sex good?”) and experiential ways (ex. “What sexual experiences have been the most fun for you?”). Finally, I concluded with a brief section on gender, asking questions about how the respondent understood their own gender identity and the way that gender may influence sexuality. See Appendix C for a complete interview guide.

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At the end of every interview I asked respondents if there was anything else important about their beliefs or experiences surrounding sex that they wanted to talk about. I recorded any additional comments they may have had, and then shut off the audio recorder. At this point I answered any questions they had about my research, sometimes we chatted for a few minutes about either my research subject or more general small talk, and sometimes interviewees left abruptly. I tried to be conscientious about giving them space to transition from the interview if they wanted. I was acutely aware that I may be bringing up subjects and memories that were difficult to talk about, and I felt that I owed them some time to process the interview experience with me if they so desired. The longest that I spent with a participant after an interview was about 45 minutes, but most of our post-interview conversations wrapped up in under ten minutes.

Gender

My social position as a woman undoubtedly impacted the interview process. In some ways when conducting qualitative interviews being a woman comes with huge advantages. Both men and women are socialized to open up emotionally more readily to women, and my gender may have facilitated easier dialogue about the feelings surrounding sex. Additionally, I did not get the sense that participants were concerned about their physical safety. Had I been a man conducting research about sex participants, women in particular, may have been concerned that I had prurient and predatory interests.

No one expressed any reserve about their safety as a participant, and several people even invited me to their homes to conduct the interview.

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However, being a woman did contribute to differences in interview quality between men and women. Although I felt like men were typically very comfortable talking about most of their feelings surrounding sex they were sometimes uncomfortable explicitly talking about sexual behavior or reporting feelings that they thought might offend me, such as appearance-based desire or disgust regarding menstrual periods. It was also virtually impossible for me to get the same quality of information regarding the commission of sexual violence as I obtained about victimization. Men are unlikely to reveal sexually predatory behaviors to a woman, and this side of the dynamic would be best explored by another man.

Coding

I assigned a pseudonym to each respondent, trying to stay true to the tone of their name. The interviews were transcribed by either myself or an undergraduate research assistant with all identifying information removed. I completed all of the coding for this project myself between September 2018 and February 2019. Ideally, if I had the resources I would have liked to utilize multiple coders to establish intercoder reliability and improve confidence in my interpretations. Unfortunately this was not possible, so all

I can say is that I made a good faith attempt to understand the context my participants were speaking in and keep my coding as true as possible to their original meaning as I understood it. I started with focused thematic coding, looking for trends that I was expecting to be salient such as sexual violence, factors that make sex good or bad including emotional connection and physical pleasure, and novelty generally. As I read

150 through the interviews during the coding process and started to outline my chapters I realized important themes that I overlooked and went back several times to add more codes such as the different types of novelty and the specific ways that respondents saw gender influencing sexuality.

Ethical Issues

I didn’t encounter many significant ethical issues, but there were two primary concerns that I had to be attentive to. The first is a product of starting my recruitment within my social network. I would have, and sometimes still have, friends ask me if I interviewed someone they referred. I believe that even identifying my respondents in this capacity would be a violation of confidentiality and my standard response is to ask them to direct that inquiry to the person in question. Not everyone understands this, and I have to be firm about my absolute refusal to confirm anyone’s participation in my research.

The second most pressing ethical issue that I encountered was how to react to revelations about sexual violence. I was expecting this to come up during the interview process, but not to the extent that it did, and I was not prepared for the conflict this would create within myself. My first priority was to give the respondents the agency to decide how much of their experience they wanted to share. When they mentioned sexual violence I would tell them that they could share as much or as little about that as they wanted, and then used their response to gauge the appropriateness of follow-up questions.

This part was easy, but it was sometimes challenging to determine the appropriate

151 response. Some respondents had clearly spent a lot of time and energy process their experience and did not appear to be unduly emotionally affected by discussing it. When this was the tone I allowed for the interview to flow as normal.

However, sometimes it was clear that this was something my respondents were still struggling to understand, and possibly looking for some validation from me. These were moments when my role as a researcher and my ethical obligations to my respondents came into question. As a researcher I’m supposed to be objective and emotionally removed from the people I study, but there were moments where this was untenable. Sometimes an interviewee would say something suggesting that she blamed herself for her assault, and I couldn’t in good conscience let these remarks pass. I would use these moments to step outside of my role as a researcher and iterate that the sexual violence my respondent experienced was not her fault. The first time this happened I had to decide on the spot how to react. I told her that her two experiences with sexual violence were not her fault and not something she should be ashamed about. I felt self- conscious potentially overstepping my boundaries as an interviewer in that way. After the interview we talked for a few minutes, and she told me that she had never told anyone about those experiences before, in large part because she was afraid she’d be blamed and judged. This conversation validated my decision to react and not just listen in those moments, and I became progressively more comfortable reassuring participants that they were not at fault for their victimization.

Overall, I believe that my research resulted in minimal harm to the participants involved. I established an institutionally approved ethical protocol and was consistent

152 with following it. I made it abundantly clear that participation was voluntary and when participants expressed discomfort I reminded them that they were free to skip a question or stop the interview entirely, although no one took me up on this offer. I did stop the tape recorder a couple times when revelations about sexual violence got particularly intense and respondents asked for a moment to collect themselves. From these interviews

I obtained a basic understanding of the factors that contribute to sexual satisfaction as well as sexual violence, and I did not see evidence of harm that would preclude similar research in the future.

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Appendix B. Complete List of Respondents

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Appendix C. Interview Guide

General

Tell me about yourself. What’s important to you? What do you do on a daily basis? What do you like to do for fun?

What is your primary focus right now? What do you spend a lot of time doing or thinking about?

How old are you?

How do you racially identify?

Do you identify as gay, straight, bisexual, pansexual, or another orientation? -Have you always identified this way?

Do you have a religious affiliation?

Highest completed level of education?

Are you currently in a romantic partnership? Have you ever been in a romantic partnership?

Relationship (Current or Most Recent)

How did you meet?

How long have you been together?

What attracted you to them?

How has your life changed since you entered the relationship?

(If married) How has your life changed since you got married?

Are (were) you satisfied with your relationship?

Who does what in your home? -Is there a primary breadwinner? -How do you divide housework? -How do you divide childcare? 157

-How do you make decisions as a couple? Ex. Buying a home/renting an apartment, getting married, making big purchases -Who does most of the driving? -Who pays when you go out? -Who holds the door?

What is (was) your sex life like? -How often do (did) you have sex? -Who would usually initiate sex? -Describe a typical sexual encounter. -Are there any sexual encounter that stand out as particularly good? Particularly bad? Did your last relationship end? -How has your life changed since the relationship ended? -How do you feel about being single? -Are you trying to date? Using any dating technology?

Sex

As I ask you the next set of questions about sex, I want you to think about your experiences with sex broadly. Your answers may or may not include your current partner.

How do you define sex? What acts constitute a sexual encounter?

What can you tell me about the first time you had sex?

How many sexual partners have you had? Is this something you ask your sex partners about?

Thinking back to when you were growing up as a child and a teenager, how did you learn about sex? How do you get information about sex now?

Why do you have sex?

Do you ever think or talk about sex as being “good” or “bad?”

What do you consider to be “good sex”?

What do you consider to be “bad sex”?

What makes someone sexually attractive?

Do you think that a person can be “good in bed?” “Bad in bed?” Are you good in bed? 158

Can you identify a sexual experience that was your “best?” If not, can you remember a sexual experience that stands out as being particularly satisfying?

Can you identify a sexual experience that was your “worst”? If not, can you remember a sexual experience that stands out as being particularly unsatisfying?

What sexual experiences have made you feel empowered?

Please tell me about a sexual experience in which you felt scared or fearful.

What sexual experiences have been the most fun for you?

Tell me about your experiences with having sex while you were sick or not feeling well.

What sexual experiences have made you feel shamed or regretful?

What sexual experiences have made you feel angry or filled with rage?

Finally, what sexual experiences have made you feel disgusted, repulsed, or revolted? -How do you feel about period sex?

Have you ever had sex with someone you met at a party? At a bar? What was that experience like?

What kind of things do you fantasize about? Is there a difference between what you fantasize about and what you actually do?

Do you ever watch porn? What kind?

Have you ever cried during or after sex? Why?

What sorts of sexual practices or sexual identities offend you?

Are there any songs that you think are particularly sexy? Movies/movies scenes?

How much do you talk to other people about sex? Who do you talk to?

Gender

What does being a man/woman mean to you?

159

Do you think being a man or a woman affects your attitudes and experiences with sex?

Is there anything you do, generally, that does not conform to your gender identity?

Is there anything else you think is important to talk about before we end the interview?

160