Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex (32 page)

Dutch boys have clearly been schooled in the notions that girls are al- lowed and supposed to enjoy sex. In today’s society, “sex is allowed,” Sam explains. “[It is] not like boys are allowed to [have sex] and girls are not. It is not taboo for anyone anymore.” Echoing the sex education that Erik received from his father about not doing it unless a girlfriend wants to, Ben says one precondition for having sex is that “she needs to really want it too.” Gert-Jan thinks it is stupid when guys go to prostitutes because “for [those women, sex] does not feel pleasurable. I think going to bed with each other is something special. . . . You do really need to enjoy it, in my eyes.” Nor do Dutch boys portray female desire in the way that several American boys do, as the same indiscriminate hunger “to do it anywhere, anytime,” that is often attributed to them as boys. The unspoken assump- tion seems to be that desire awakens in relation to a particular partner.

However, the limits of what girls are allowed come into view when girls’ sexual desire is directed toward multiple boys simultaneously or in too quick a succession. Pauline had no trouble telling her parents that she anticipated having intercourse with her boyfriend of six months, even though she was only fourteen at the time. But she is careful not to tell her

parents how often she falls in love, and kisses boys, preferring to wait un- til it is “a little more serious” before telling them about the state of her heart. Marjolein thinks it is fine for a girl to have sex with her boyfriend, but, she says, “I would look down on just for one evening.”
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And like Pauline, when Dutch girls are asked
explicitly
about whether girls and boys are perceived differently after sex, the “s” word falls. Fleur echoes Pauline’s words when she says “people are quicker to name a girl ‘a little whore’ than a boy. About boys, people don’t say, ‘oh, he is going to bed with ev- eryone.’ Well, they say it, but it is less problematic. . . . With girls, it is seen as a shame.”

Thus, acceptable sexual behavior for girls is both legitimated and cir- cumscribed by steady relationships in which both parties are in love.
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They may recognize, as does Pauline, that young people sometimes have sex for reasons other than intimacy. Fleur thinks, for instance, teenagers often have sex because “they want to belong or they want to tell stories like, ‘I got there earlier than you did.’” But the recognition that the pursuit of status or pleasure sometimes drives sex does not undermine the funda- mental assumption that teenagers can and do fall in love and have sex in that context. Heidi thinks most teenagers have sex because they are in love. For Elizabeth, it is a “matter of course” that young people love each other when they have sex. Indeed, Natalie has a hard time imagining that one could have sex with someone with whom one is not in love. And unlike their American counterparts, the Dutch girls have no trouble identifying what the feeling of being in love is like or might be like. Marjolein believes that “love” is too “deep” and “heavy” an emotion for most girls her age. “Being in love,” is a more typical experience, which she describes as “be- ing able to count on each other, feeling comfortable with each other,” and having the idea that “I can be together with this person for a while. . . . It is fun, it is going well together. You have a good feeling. You like that person a lot.”

Still, several Dutch girls do note a tension, namely that boys their age are often not yet interested in the kind of steady relationships in which both parties can be in love and legitimately have sex. Karoline thinks sex usu- ally happens “when you love each other,” but she knows that boys some- times just do it “for a little pleasure.” Sarah explains that while “young boys do not [want love],” that changes “when they become more adult- like—eighteen, nineteen, twenty—a little serious.” Sixteen-year-old boys are not yet interested in relationships, Dorien concurs. Not that they get the chance, she says: “The boys [girls choose] are really always older. . . . Most of the boys at sixteen are . . . more childish . . . not as far along.

Maybe the younger ones [want to have sex] but girls really always go for the older boys.” In choosing older boys, however, girls may get more than they bargained for. Marjolein has friends whose boyfriends “suddenly say, ‘I love you.’” Their reaction is: “‘Geez, yuk, what is this? Don’t say that!’”

In short, there seems to be little anxiety among the Dutch girls about being derided for sexual experience and pleasure, as long as they stay within the parameters of the acceptable. Nor do they dichotomize between the kind of love only a few can attain and the meaningless sex that is pur- sued by most teenagers. At the same time, the threat of being labeled a slut may exert a more hidden power on the Dutch girls. For several Dutch girls interviewed suggest that although falling in love is normal, the work of being in love and relationships requires negotiating gender and age differ- ences. Especially when girls form relationships with boys who are several years older, as did Pauline, they face the challenge of internally distinguish- ing being in love from being ready for sexual intercourse. Fifteen-year-old Fleur is aware that she might have trouble drawing that distinction: “I can also imagine that you are not totally ready for it, but that you are so crazy about the guy that you do it anyway. I think that maybe that could happen to me.”
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Like their female counterparts, Dutch boys take for granted that young peo- ple fall in love. “Yes, of course,” says Berend, when asked whether teenagers can love each other. At the same time, the Dutch boys describe the state of being in love in more modest terms than do their American counterparts. As we saw, Karsten describes being in love as having “a warm feeling for someone, like a special place in your heart.” Niek also remembers that be- ing in love “was a good feeling.” Ben enjoys spending time with his steady girlfriend, but he is very low-key about how his feelings for her developed: “When I started to go steady with her, I kind of liked it but did not find it that interesting.” Then it became, “Yeah, this is fun, but not for really long.” And then his feelings about his relationship blossomed. He felt: “Jesus, I want to go on with this much longer. It feels really good the way it is going. This is good—nice and steady.”

If Dutch boys use less exalted language to speak of being in love than do their American counterparts—as
good
feelings and relating, rather than as
extraordinary
feelings and commitment—they are also less disparaging about lust, which they tend describe as an integral part of being in love. Thomas says that he discovered sexual pleasure very early on by “playing

doctor” with a girl next door: “That is when I discovered that . . . well, not sex, but that we were different and that that was fun.” Describing what needs to happen before he wants to have sex with someone, Ben says he wants to “have butterflies in my stomach, I don’t have sex with someone just like that. . . . She needs to really want it too. And there needs to really be a lot [of feeling] between us before I have sex with someone.” Gert-Jan describes sexual excitement and being in love as closely related when he recounts how he experienced the physical changes of puberty. “I thought [going through puberty] was exciting,” Gert-Jan says: “It also has to do with having feelings for someone.” Does he mean being in love? “Yes, you’re re- ally in love.”

While they recognize that young people often approach sexuality in an experimental fashion, Dutch boys tend not to be as harsh as are their American counterparts in judging the joys and follies of youthful experi- mentation as meaningless. Instead, they describe the sexual experiences of young people as simply less mature versions of what adults do. Thus, be- fore having sex with someone, Sam says, “I have to be really in love, and we both need to want it.” But, he says, “I don’t have [the idea] that it has to be the right person, or that I should wait until after marriage or something.” Paul explains that “most young people have sex because they are physi- cally attracted to the other person. . . . When you get older, what attracts a person changes. You are not only attracted to what a person looks like and exudes but also [to] something deeper.” Sam thinks young people have sex “because they are ready and partly also to boast, like to say ‘I had sex with someone.’ But also just to see what it is like, to discover it.” Niek sees differ- ences between older people and younger people: “Older people have more of a relationship with each other; young people need to learn [how to have relationships].”

Like their American counterparts, several of the Dutch boys I inter- viewed struggle to make sense of received wisdom about gender and sexu- ality. But like Erik, they tend to interpret those differences as matters of degree rather than kind and to believe it is normal for boys to want a rela- tionship. Paul thinks boys are quicker to want “something . . . a relation- ship, and, when they’re older, sex.” Paul, wonders whether “maybe it is because of the movies” that he has the impression “girls want to keep a really steady relationship, but boys want to move on to another girl.” His preliminary conclusion is: “I think women are a little more likely to want a steady relationship.” Thomas also thinks “there is certainly a difference. . . . [Girls] say usually ‘Yes, boys only want sex and girls just want to talk.’ So I

do think there’s a difference.” Asked whether he agrees, Thomas responds, “No, no. I don’t think so. I think you just, you just want to have fun with each other.”

Berend believes evolution made women “a little more faithful” than men and inclined to “want a man for life.” But these days, Berend says, “men may also [be looking for that] . . . a lot more than before. [Men are more like women] . . . because of the emancipation (the women’s move- ment).” Marcel states at first that “most boys are much more into the sex than into relating. Girls are much more about talking and all that. . . . Not that it is a big gap.” Later on, Marcel says: “I would like to have a rela- tionship. But I think everyone wants that.” Asked to reconcile this state- ment with his earlier words about gender differences, he explains: “Most people [want a relationship]: someone you can talk to about your feelings and such, a feeling of safety. I think everyone—the largest percentage of people—wants a relationship. But within a relationship, boys want sex ear- lier than girls. But usually [boys] do want a relationship.”

In short, the Dutch boys describe continuities where the American boys describe polarities—between themselves and others, love and lust, teenag- ers and adults. They also see, and seem to experience, more continuity be- tween “what can (and should) be done” and what
is
done. Erik’s actual ex- perience of his sexuality closely matches his description of when it is right to have sex. He believes teenage sex results from a combination of curiosity and desire, coupled with the establishment of a relationship within which to express that curiosity and desire. And like Karsten and Ben, the other two boys who have had sexual intercourse, Erik did indeed experience his first sexual intercourse within the context of an ongoing relationship. Their more modest model for being in love and forming relationships integrates rather than polarizes male and female motivations and experiences, love and lust, and responsibility and pleasure. But blurring the boundaries also allows the Dutch boys to overlook behavior that does not actually evi- dence being “in your right mind”—such as Erik’s first sex after two weeks of courtship and Ben’s “sloppy” contraceptive use—without questioning the unproblematic nature of their love.

The chapter started with the experiences of Americans Stephanie and Jesse. Like more than a quarter of American girls who initiate sex at sixteen, Stephanie did not use contraception.
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And like the majority of American

teenagers who are having heterosexual intercourse, Jesse and his girlfriend do not use the pill or other hormonal contraception. Equally notable are the two teenagers’ emotional experiences. Stephanie found herself shamed at the pharmacy for obtaining emergency contraception. And as do the majority of American teens nationally, she expresses misgivings about her first time.
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Jesse uses condoms faithfully with his current girlfriend, but he thinks one broken condom can leave him “screwed for life.” This fear not only suggests that he and his girlfriend lack access to more reliable contra- ception and emergency contraception, it also reflects the reality that most American teenage girls carry any given unintended pregnancy to term, so that it
does
usually alter, if not “ruin,” their life and that of their partner, forever.
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Pauline and Erik introduce the experiences of Dutch girls and boys. In some respects, Pauline’s first time was atypical: only 8 percent of Dutch girls nationally initiate sex by age fourteen. And the vast majority of Dutch girls say that they were as eager to have their first sex as was their part- ner.
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But like nine out of ten Dutch teens, Pauline did use contraception. She nevertheless berates herself for not “doing it safe,” which, she knows, means using both a condom and the pill—as do four in ten Dutch youth their first time.
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In the long term, however, much of the responsibility of preventing pregnancy falls on sexually active Dutch girls. That Dutch girls generally use the pill effectively and that, even when they fail to do so, they are more likely than not to terminate the pregnancy may explain the nota- bly “missing discourse of danger” among the Dutch boys such as Erik, who not once references sex’s risks.
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The four vignettes also illustrate some similarities in the gender con- structs that teenagers in the two countries encounter—a double standard that penalizes girls for (too much) sexual experience and that places pres- sure on boys to gain sexual experience. However, the effect of the sexual double standard on girls’ and boys’ experiences is mediated by cultural be- liefs about love and lust, femininity and masculinity. The threat of being slandered as a slut seems much more present and real to the American girls who, unlike their Dutch counterparts, often relate stories of having be- come or having seen others be the victim of such slander. And while boys in both countries encounter, and sometimes believe, the notion that boys are more out to get sex than girls, the way that they relate to this notion of gendered sexuality differs. American boys describe themselves as unique in their quest for sex with love and a relationship, while the Dutch boys describe their desires for emotional and sexual intimacy more as universal human longings.