Question

Explain what social construction and sexual scripting are. What role does social construction play in the social acceptance of straight women kissing? How are these activities policed via sexual scripting? How does Ward’s research on ‘dude sex’ relate to essentialist and social constructionist theories of sexual identity? Why do you think women give this performance at parties and men do not? Is it an example of women’s sexual liberation or patriarchal dominance? Explain your thoughts.

Answer 1

Social constructionism or the social construction of reality (also social concept) is a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality. The idea of sexual script brings a new metaphor and imagery for understanding human sexual activity as social and learned interactions. The concept was introduced by sociologists John H. Gagnon and William Simon in their 1973 book Sexual Conduct.

Social constructionists view sexual orientation as embedded within the culture in which people live. It will be different in every society and at different times in history. Straight women kissing in western culture may be more acceptable than it is in the eastern culture. Social construction is important to sexual script because sexual scripts can come from how a child is raised through the beliefs of social construction.

A double standard exists in the traditional heterosexual sexual script. It endorses different sexual behavior for women and men, whereby women are expected to confine sexual behavior to the context of a committed relationship and men are expected to engage in sexual behavior in all kinds of relationships. Women performing at parties more often than men are results of gender based expectations that is a result of social construct.

According to classical essentialism, there are underlying true forms or essences, there is discontinuity between different forms rather than continuous variation, and these true forms are constant over time. Modern essentialism consists of a belief that certain phenomena are natural, inevitable, and biologically determined. Social constructionism, in contrast, rests on the belief that reality is socially constructed and emphasizes language as an important means by which we interpret experience. Hence ‘dude sex’ can be a result of inevitable biological force or cognition.