Other paths: Vulvodynia, Sexual Scripts, Sexual Subjectivity and Negotiation A study of the lived experience of vulvodynia across sexualities

Abstract

This master’s thesis explores how sexual scripts shape the lived experience of vulvodynia, how these scripts are negotiated and what sexual subjectivities emerge in these negotiations, in a Swedish context. Two focus groups with a total of seven participants across different sexualities were conducted. The empirical material was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis and interpreted using sexual script theory, the concept of the coital imperative and Judith Butler's heterosexual matrix framework and concept of intelligibility. The findings show that the coital imperative operates as a powerful and deeply internalised framework, alongside a cultural ideal of sex as effortless and easy, producing shame, inadequacy and diminished self-worth in those whose bodies cannot comply with these sexual norms. Vulvodynia simultaneously disrupts and forces a negotiation of these scripts, opening space for alternative sexual practices, bodily awareness and subject positions. While queer sexual scripts offer greater flexibility, queerness does not automatically equal liberation, queer participants were systematically marginalised within healthcare. The thesis concludes that vulvodynia exposes the instability of dominant sexual scripts, but that alternative scripts remain entangled with the normative structures they negotiate against.