Embodied sexual scripts: exploring the relationship between the religious cultural socialisation and the sexual experiences of Northern Irish women

There is very little research on the subjective sexual experiences of adult women in Northern Ireland, this is partly due to the dominance of Christianity in Northern Irish society and the promotion of a morally conservative and traditional perspective on sex. What we do know is that there is a deep level of institutional misogyny in Northern Irish society, high levels of sexual violence against women and the sexual health education promotes a heteronormative and patriarchal version of sexuality.

Through the sexual narratives of 18 women aged 26-68 raised and schooled in Northern Ireland, I explored how women navigate this conservative moral backdrop. I conducted semi-structured interviews using a novel intimate interview technique of ‘doing hair’ whilst listening to my participants’ sexual narratives, which allowed me to utilize the routine performance of hairdresser’s emotional labour within the hairdresser/ client relationship.