Society’s Blueprint: How Culture Shapes Female Sexuality
When it comes to talking about women’s sexuality after trauma, there’s a tendency to focus only on the event itself, what happened, how, and who was involved. But that’s just one part of the story. The truth is, our sexuality doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s shaped, encouraged, limited, and sometimes distorted by the world we grow up in.
The Invisible Scripts We Inherit
From childhood, we absorb unwritten “rules” about what it means to be a woman and what our sexuality should look like. These scripts, passed down through media, family conversations, and social expectations often carry double standards.
Men’s sexual desire is seen as natural and assertive.
Women’s sexual desire is expected to be reactive, modest, or “earned.”
As one participant in my research reflected:
“From the start, it was clear that sex wasn’t really for me, it was something I gave, something that had to be deserved. I didn’t feel like I could just want it.”
This double standard subtly tells women that their sexuality is something to be controlled or judged, not celebrated and owned.
The Weight of Rape Myths
On top of those scripts, there’s another layer: rape myths—false beliefs that shift blame from the perpetrator to the survivor. They show up in phrases like:
“She was asking for it.”
“It wasn’t really rape.”
“He didn’t mean to.”
“She’s making it up.”
One participant recalled how these ideas showed up in her own life:
“People said maybe I’d misunderstood… like maybe I’d given the wrong signals. It makes you feel like you’re the one who’s done something wrong.”.
My thesis highlighted how pervasive these myths can be. Rape myths are not only perpetuated by the general public but can be embedded within legal systems, healthcare, and even therapeutic services, reinforcing survivors’ self-blame and delaying recovery.
How Beliefs Become Self-Perception
When these cultural messages are everywhere, they don’t just influence how others see a survivor, they can influence how a survivor sees themself. Survivors may internalise shame, question their worth, or feel “damaged” in ways that have nothing to do with the truth of their experience. In the ecological model of trauma, this is called an ecosystem threat, the social environment itself becomes part of the ongoing harm, slowing or complicating recovery.
As one participant expressed:
“I started to think maybe I was broken, like there was something wrong with me, not what happened to me.”
Why This Matters for Sexuality After Trauma
If society tells a woman her worth is tied to being “pure” or “desirable” by someone else’s standards, then an assault doesn’t just impact her safety, it can unravel her sense of identity and her relationship with her body. Sexual difficulties after rape can’t be separated from the social pressures, stigma, and double standards that shape how she understands those difficulties.
Challenging the Blueprint
Breaking free from these harmful cultural scripts is possible, but it starts with awareness. We can:
Question media portrayals of female sexuality and sexual violence.
Call out victim-blaming language in everyday conversation.
Believe survivors without requiring them to “prove” their experience.
Recognise that sexual healing isn’t about “getting back to normal” but redefining what intimacy and desire mean on the survivor’s own terms.
Culture shapes sexuality, but it’s not unchangeable. The more we challenge harmful narratives, the more space we create for survivors to reclaim their sexuality on their own terms, free from judgement or shame.