LOVE, SEX AND INTIMACY: AN INQUIRY INTO HOW SINGAPOREAN FEMALE UNDERGRADUATES UNDERSTAND SEXUAL SUBJECTIVITY
LEE AI YUN
LEE AI YUN
Citations
Altmetric:
Alternative Title
Abstract
The ways in which women understand their own sexualities, their sexual behaviours and attitudes are influenced by various social agents such as the family, peer groups, mass media and religion. Although women within similar social environments are assumed to have similar viewpoints of sexual attitudes and degrees of female sexual subjectivity, the reality is that each individual interacts differently with the same social environment to form an individual understanding of the self through a sexual lens. Sexual scripts within a specific culture create a gendered standard of acceptable behaviours in sexual situations but they are not necessarily taken by women as the only set of behaviours to follow. This thesis aims to explore how young women in Singapore universities navigate and renegotiate their sexual subjectivities through the family, peers, mass media and religion. An understanding of the sexual self and autonomy over love, sex and intimacy in women is explored through conversations about sexual double standards, gender and romantic relationships, sex education and conversations about sex. This study finds that traditional sexual scripts are introduced and reinforced within the familial setting, building a foundation of understanding of the heteronormative female social sex role in the participants. However, participants take sexual attitudes and behaviours contrary to these sexual scripts thereby illustrating that female sexuality is not fixed to one set of cultural scripts. Female sexual subjectivity is continuously shaped by the influence of close female friends and portrayals of love and sex within mass media.
Keywords
Source Title
Publisher
Series/Report No.
Collections
Rights
Date
2019-04-19
DOI
Type
Thesis