The internalization of shame: how religious cultural socialization have impacted on Northern Irish women’s intrapsychic sexual scripts

Northern Ireland is still a predominantly Christian society whose values pervade education, sex and sexuality. Although there are fewer practicing Christians than there were a decade ago Christian culture predominates because of institutionalized religious socialization. Sexual relations outside marriage is discouraged and is part of the dominant discourse of women’s sexual socialization. Women who to not follow this religious doctrine can experience and internalise sexual shame and guilt about their sexual actions and feelings when they stray from the dominant moral discourse. Due to the level of religious control, there is little research on sexuality in Northern Ireland and there is virtually no research looking at sexual pleasure. Therefore, this work is building upon feminist, queer, and social constructionist discourses on how religion serves to control sexual subjectivities.

This paper will look at how women internalise sexual shame and guilt using the concept of intrapsychic scripts which is part the broader theoretical framework of sexual scripting theory. Semi structured interviews with 19 Northern Irish women between the ages of 25 and 68 were conducted in 2020. The main findings were that women felt guilty about their own entitlement to sexual pleasure. The sexual shame and guilt manifested itself within the intrapsychic with participants mentioning the words ‘dirty’ ‘bad’ and ‘slut’ in relation to their sexual selves. The aim of this work is to show how the religious proscription of discouraging sex before marriage is destructive to women’s sexual self-esteem.