RealLife:Self-Awareness via Sexual Scripts

While masochism focuses on physical sensation as a means of achieving subspace and an escape from the self, some BDSM participants find meaning via a verbal collaboration of ideas that may or may not lead to physical interaction . In this way, sexual scripts—“premeditated sequence[s] of intentional actions”—become a vehicle for achieving an altered state of consciousness in order to bring about a heightened awareness of the self . In negotiating the specifics of a BDSM interaction, and how certain activities might unfold in a carefully controlled setting bound by agreed upon rules, a context is created in which an individual’s psychological characteristics can be emphasized and expressed . In this type of framed fantasy enacted in real time, BDSM participants can behave in ways that may not be socially acceptable or expected in daily life, thereby allowing a release from guilt and social constraints . This type of interaction can have an impact on the evolution of that individual’s identity, including the way they might choose to express themselves sexually . One of the benefits in the negotiation of consent that occurs within BDSM interactions is the heightened sense of awareness and introspection participants can gain from discussing the scene .

Between 1976 and 1983, a team of researchers interviewed participants from San Francisco and New York BDSM communities regarding the nature of their BDSM practices, and found that many of the participants used the interplay of collaboration and context to determine the meaning of individual sexual acts , which can be likened to the creation of sexual scripts . The study indicated that there are five integral components to constructing most BDSM interactions: 1) establishing power roles (e.g., dominant, submissive); 2) the explicit construction of roleplays, or fantasies to be enacted; 3) the inherent nature of negotiation and consent in these roles and roleplays; 4) the effort participants made to place themselves in a specific sexual context related to the meaning collectively assigned to these roles and roleplays; and 5) that the participants’ collective definitions of the activities they performed were interpreted differently according to the specific individuals and the contexts they created . While the study above presented a blueprint for the creation of BDSM sexual scripts, a study conducted in 2001 revealed four qualitatively distinct themes that can emerge from the creation of BDSM sexual scripts: hypermasculinity; administration and receiving of pain; physical restriction; and psychological humiliation . Their finding that BDSM activities are often scripted and therefore collaborative suggests that individual sexual repertoires are socially constructed (i.e., scripted, negotiated, and agreed upon) within a specific sexual context (i.e., a BDSM scene collaboration) . Furthermore, they found that many of the activities were mapped closely on to adjacent sexual script themes according to discrete personal experiences, suggesting that these activities have different meaning depending on the individuals involved and the given context of the interaction . This finding highlights that the participants’ preferred BDSM activities evolved through socialization processes and individualized experiences, which often led to new sexual behaviors and the formation of new sexual scripts. In this way, BDSM interactions that focus on the agreement and enactment of sexual scripts can be said to help further an expansion of an individual’s

identity.