'I can tell that he's serious because uyandicheckha': the reproduction of sexual vulnerability through scripted sexual practices.

This paper explores how vulnerability is produced through the adoption of sexually scripted practices by young people in a rural area in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. It uses script theory to explore how scripted practices sustain and reproduce dominant gender norms, and in the process reproduce vulnerability for young women. Qualitative data drawn from 23 individual interviews and six focus groups with participants between 18 and 35 years of age were analysed to explore how sexual relationships are configured. An analysis of how relationships are arranged and constructed illustrates the material practices which allow vulnerability to occur. A critical set of practices such as ukucheckha (going to see a girlfriend), ukuoutha (going out to sleep over at a boyfriend's room) and ukushiywa (being replaced) are scripted into relationships and essential for their functioning. However, scripted practices at the cultural level make it difficult for young women to negotiate sexual safety at the interpersonal level, jeopardising personal and sexual safety. A focus on scripted sexual practices highlights the reproduction of sexual vulnerability particularly for young women. Interventions need to attend to the material realities which produce vulnerability for young women.