A Center for Peace Analysis: Sexual Scripts, Agency, and Accountability

Part 1: How Cultural Scripts Shape Sexual Expectations

This post is the first in a series where we present our position that our culture shapes our sexual scripts, but does not determine our behavior or interactions with one another in our primary intimate relationships. 

As such, we offer a critical examination of socially adopted ideas that may contribute to asymmetrical expectations in which one partner is positioned as the sexual actor and the other as the gatekeeper of access. We posit that cultural influence is not cultural determinism. Individuals retain the capacity to examine, reject, or revise the meanings they adopt, and therefore remain accountable for how those meanings are enacted in relationships. At Center for Peace, we advocate for peaceful sexual relationships, free of coercion; and inclusive of an understanding of how one’s adopted beliefs impact the dignity and respect of others as can be evidenced in the self-government of one’s agency and personal accountability.

The Framework

An evaluation of the unwritten social patterns, rules, and expectations can be understood as social or cultural scripts. These unwritten patterns and expectations influence how individuals understand relationships, sexuality, agency, and their own roles within them. In this series, we use the term, ‘script’ or ‘narrative’ to refer to ideas and beliefs acquired from culture, past and present. In this understanding, a script does not assume a behavioral outcome. 

Some cultural relationship narratives can mistakenly view sex less as a mutual expression of desire and intimacy and more as a negotiation in which power, status, and culturally prescribed roles influence what each person expects to give and receive. When cultural constructs influence men to view sex as something to obtain from women, a man’s pursuit of sex can become framed as a claim requiring fulfillment rather than a desire requiring mutuality. Within that framework, coercion can emerge when a woman’s autonomous decision to decline is viewed as blocking access rather than as an exercise of her agency and refusal to participate.

It is the position of the Center for Peace that sexual agency and value is expressed in our own individual right to desire, initiation, participation, negotiation and refusal without coercion. Likewise, accountability to one another within the marriage relationship does not guarantee a sexual outcome or entitlement.

Gendered Sexual Agency; From Pursuit and Permission to Mutual Agency

When examining cultural patterns of sexuality, it is important to consider the sexual scripts, relational narratives, and constructions of agency that shape how people understand sexual interaction. This becomes particularly important when male desire is understood in relation to, or at the expense of, women’s sexual agency and autonomy. Without this condition, the sexual encounter can shift from male initiation and pursuit toward entitlement and potentially, to coercion.

Access-type scripts pigeonhole women into either accepting the man’s sexual agenda or to becoming a gatekeeper who has been scripted to grant or deny access. Saying no can therefore become constructed as the problem rather than recognized as an autonomous exercise of her agency. In this binary cultural construction, the man may understand himself as the actor who pursues and the woman as the person who permits or refuses. Sexual interaction can consequently become organized around access and power rather than mutual desire and consent. 

The problem becomes more pronounced when a woman’s right to withdraw consent is compromised by her partner’s attitudes, driven by his unchallenged beliefs organized around his expectations of his partner. This type of assumed sexual entitlement sidelines a woman’s humanity, reducing her from a sexual subject with her own desires and boundaries to an object upon whom sexual action is performed. 

This asymmetry limits mutuality and reciprocity. Potential risks emerge when his desire for a particular sexual outcome is anchored in a self-focused framework rather than a relational value system that recognizes and protects his partner’s sexual agency. This can lead to conditions in which pressure, entitlement, and ultimately sexual coercion become more likely.

It is important to distinguish male desire from the relational structure of that desire. Male sexual desire is not the problem, nor is male sexual agency. The problem is a sexual script in which male agency is constructed primarily as pursuit while female agency is constructed primarily as permission or refusal. Mutual sexuality requires both people to remain subjects—each capable of desire, initiation, participation, negotiation, and withdrawal—rather than allowing one person to become the actor while the other becomes the object of the action. Culture may inform sexual meaning and practice, but each individual has the right to how they agentically engage the scripts with their sexual partner. Healthy sexual negotiation holds space for either person to change the outcome without pressure.

Internalization and Interpretation of Male Cultural Scripts 

Men can be understood as being culturally scripted without being culturally determined. In other words, one’s culture provides the scripts or narratives from which attitudes and beliefs are formed, but each individual must decide how to internalize, reproduce, challenge or reject these presumed norms. Social meaning is not fixed within the instructions, beliefs, or experiences an individual acquires over the course of a lifetime. Although people and social systems can significantly influence how individuals think and behave, such influence does not eliminate an individual’s capacity to evaluate those messages or responsibility for actions that result from them.

Male sexual behavior develops within a social environment shaped by messages that influence constructions of masculinity, desire, confidence, and sexual success. At the same time, men retain the capacity to interpret, resist, negotiate, or reject these messages—and to recognize when their conduct toward women is wrong. As cultural ideas evolve over time, individuals must likewise make decisions about how they will interpret and respond to changing social expectations, particularly when those expectations have a direct impact on another person’s autonomy, dignity, or bodily integrity.

Internalization of cultural ideas or behaviors refers to the acceptance, incorporation, and potential enactment of an idea as part of one’s understanding of the self and the social world. One example can be examined through the cultural construction of women’s perceived duty to submit to men, particularly within marriage. Ideas concerning women’s marital submission have appeared across various historical, religious and sociocultural traditions and have been adapted into broader ideologies concerning gender, marriage, and sexuality. Many women today reject such expectations because they can be understood as limiting women’s sexual agency and autonomy.

Likewise, an individual’s interpretations of male sexual beliefs and behavior patterns can contribute to how men construct meaning and make assumptions for sexual interactions with their wife or partner. For example, marriage does not entitle either partner to sex. However, in the event a wife turns down a bid for sex, a poor and unchallenged interpretation of this script might lead to the husband assuming he is being unfairly treated or disrespected. Conclusions of this nature may result in pressuring, punishing or coercing his wife. 

Marriage establishes a relational commitment, it does not extinguish sexual autonomy or the capacity to withdraw consent. It also does not create the transfer of ownership of another’s body. The right to refuse sexual activity remains inherent in personal autonomy as consent in one’s voluntary agreement and authorization, free of coercion. Without this intrinsically held belief, harmful practices that are contributing to a prevalence of male-based violence may result.

A woman’s rejection of a man’s advances does not require the woman to modulate herself against that man’s male-centered sexual beliefs, particularly those involving sexual entitlement. Some men may perceive that rejection as a violation of what they believe they are entitled to receive. Entitlement-based views can therefore shape how men interpret women’s refusal, disagreement, or assertion of sexual autonomy. When such interpretations are reinforced by beliefs that men are owed compliance, some men may rationalize coercive, controlling, or abusive treatment of women. The cultural script does not compel the behavior; rather, its internalization can provide a framework through which an individual interprets a situation and justifies the actions he chooses to take.

To reiterate, a cultural script may explain where a belief came from without determining what an individual does with that belief. Thus, a cultural explanation does not exculpate the individual’s actions against another. Understanding the origin of a belief is therefore not the same as  excusing the behavior that follows from it. 

Accountability begins precisely where an individual has the capacity to examine, challenge, and choose what he will do with the meanings he adopts and interprets. Internalization is the point at which cultural ideas may begin to influence action, but internalization does not justify harmful behavior. When internalized male scripts remain unchallenged by the individual and are reinforced by a socio-cultural environment that normalizes or accepts them, some individuals may fail to challenge ideas that lead to harm of women. 

Human behavior reflects the influence of internalized and unchallenged scripts. Nevertheless, regardless of the cultural influences that shape an individual’s beliefs, accountability for one’s actions remains with the individual.

Segue to Part II

In Part II, we will examine another distinction that follows from this framework: the difference between what an individual believes to be true, what a culture normalizes, and what is ethically justified in a relationship.