Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (50 page)
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Authors: Laura Carpenter
This was the first question I asked in every interview. I have changed names and some identifying details throughout the text and tables to protect the identities of the people I interviewed.
I did not ask separate questions about fellatio and cunnilingus, nor did I inquire specifically about perceptions of giving versus receiving oral sex. Partici- pants’ remarks at other points in the interview indicated that some people be- lieved that giving oral or anal sex would result in virginity loss, whereas others maintained that only a recipient could lose her or his virginity. To the best of my knowledge, only one previous study has explicitly investigated young people’s own definitions of virginity loss (Berger and Wenger 1973). On the definitional ambiguity of “sex,” see Sanders and Reinisch 1999, Bogart et al. 2000.
Five of the 12 heterosexuals who adopted a lesbigay-inclusive definition of virginity loss said they did so because of discussions with lesbigay friends or be- cause of professional training.
Rich 1980. This pattern also reflects the widespread tendency, described by anthropologist Gayle Rubin (1984), for social groups to place sexual activi- ties in a moral hierarchy, with vaginal sex occupying the place of honor.
A number of radical lesbian feminists have taken a similar stance, claiming that virginity among women who have had sex only with other women is poten- tially transgressive (Dworkin 1987; Jo 1993; Kitzinger and Wilkinson 1994).
Raymond 1994. These men were born in 1967 and 1969, and therefore were teenagers in the early 1980s. None of the younger gay men or any of the lesbians, concurred that virginity was inherently irrelevant to lesbigay sexuality.
Given the prevalence of anti-gay sentiment in the United States overall, heterosexual participants’ stance on same-sex virginity loss is striking; it may be due in part to the relatively high level of education among respondents overall and their metropolitan mid-Atlantic location (education, metropolitan residence, and north/mid-Atlantic location being positively associated with tolerance for sexual diversity) (Laumann et al. 1994). Heterosexuals born between 1973 and 1980 were much more likely than their older counterparts to believe that same- sex virginity loss was possible for both women and men (86 percent and 56 per- cent, respectively).
A few people mentioned acquaintances who felt otherwise; and several women who worked in health-care professions recalled female patients from South Asia and Africa who feared that a pelvic exam would compromise their virginity.
Quoted in Bailey 1989, 80.
Twenty-nine percent of those who hadn’t engaged in oral sex before vagi- nal sex saw oral sex as resulting in virginity loss, compared with 13 percent of those who had experienced oral sex before coitus.
Ali and Scelfo 2002; Jarrell 2000. Despite a dearth of historic data on fel- latio and cunnilingus among U.S. adolescents, popular commentators have spec- ulated that oral sex is becoming increasingly common among youth, either be- cause they have adopted Clinton’s definition of oral sex as “not sex” (and thus may engage in it while remaining virgins) or because media coverage of the im- peachment introduced teens to the practice (making them interested in trying it). It may also be that, since Clinton-Lewinsky, adults have a greater propensity to perceive oral sex—among teens or anyone—as real sex, and thus have become concerned about it. The Clinton controversy has had the welcome effect of en- couraging more social scientists to specify which physical acts they’re referring to when they talk about “sex” or “virginity loss” (e.g., Bearman and Brückner 2001).
The one virgin gay man expected to lose his virginity through anal sex with another man, the one virgin lesbian through oral sex with another woman, and the one virgin bisexual woman through vaginal sex with a man. This gender difference appears to result from the tendency of lesbian and bisexual women to come out at later ages than their male counterparts (Savin-Williams 2003).
In 1995, for instance, the average age at first vaginal sex for teens in Los Angeles County was 16.6 for White boys and girls, 15.0 for Black boys, 16.3 for Black girls, 16.5 for Latinos, 17.3 for Latinas, and over 18 for Asian Americans (Upchurch et al. 1998).
Herdt and Boxer 1993.
Yet, surprisingly, the one man and one woman who had been raped by acquaintances when they were virgins did not apply their own definitions to themselves; they both described themselves as having lost their virginity when they were raped.
Brownmiller 1975; McCaughey 1997.
Darling, Davidson, and Passarello 1992; Holland, Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996; Rubin 1990; Sprecher, Barbee, and Schwartz 1995.
Sanders and Reinisch 1999.
notes t o chapter 3
Bream 1998.
March 1999 interview, quoted in
Houston Chronicle
2000.Smoron 1999; Strauss 1991.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
2000.Knight 2000.
The criteria for determining the worth of any particular gift appear to be fairly universal (Belk and Coon 1993). Gifts are more valuable if they are unique (an original painting), carry symbolic value (a diamond “is forever”), comprise the giver’s time or activities (home-baked cookies), or can be seen as an exten- sion of the giver’s self (a kidney). Also valuable are gifts that involve the sacrifice of the giver’s pleasure or goals in favor of the partner’s. Virginity’s uniqueness may make it an ideal sacrificial gift.
Reported in the British magazine,
Celebrate,
quoted in
Houston Chronicle2000.
Reported in the
San Francisco Chronicle,
quoted in
Houston Chronicle2000.
Singh and Darroch 1999.
11. Gold 2001.
Joyce 2002; Helligar 2002.
Oldenburg 2002.
Tauber, Gold, and Leger 2002, 50.
Haskell 2003. The juicier bits of the interview were picked up by the As- sociated Press.
This chapter’s analysis draws primarily on the work of Mauss 1925, Schwartz 1967, and Gouldner 1960. See also Blau 1964 and Levi-Strauss 1969. In his classic treatise on gift exchange, Mauss marshaled evidence from Western and non-Western cultures to argue that gift giving possesses a similar structure and function wherever it occurs, challenging earlier scholars’ assumption that gifts in “primitive” societies represented a form of commerce, as distinct from the spontaneous and ulterior-motive-free gifts in their own “civilized” cultures. For critiques of Mauss, see Parry 1986.
Exchanging gifts of similar value is seen as ideal. A person who responds to the present of a ruby bracelet with a paperback novel, for instance, will have failed to “repay” the initial gift. “Overpaying” with an excessively large gift would be no more appropriate, as it would place the recipient’s partner too deeply in his debt.
Alternatively, exchanging a series of gifts, each slightly more valuable than the last, tends to increase interpersonal indebtedness. Reciprocating a gift with an identical item is frowned upon, because doing so effectively cancels the obligation to reciprocate, defeating the development of social ties that gift ex- change is meant to foster (Schwartz 1967).
19. Mauss 1925, 10–11.
In societies more homogeneous than the contemporary United States and in which there is a stronger consensus on sexual standards, it may be easier to bring successful sanctions against partners who fail to reciprocate (Lindisfarne
Like Spears, Shields as an adolescent simultaneously embodied youthful innocence and adult sexuality. She rose to fame playing a child prostitute who sold her virginity in Louis Malle’s 1978 film
Pretty Baby,
and spent the early 1980s as sultry spokesgirl for Calvin Klein jeans, proclaiming “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins” (Maurstad 1996). Yet Shields also likened her vir- ginity to a gift intended for her future husband. “Being a virgin is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s sacred,” she told
Redbook
magazine (McCaughey 1991). As a young adult, she encouraged other women to follow her example and, even at the ripe old age of 30, shied away from publicly admitting that she and tennis champion Andre Agassi were lovers (
South China Morning Post
1995).Until very recently, laws accordingly treated rape as a property crime against a father/husband, rather than as a sexual crime against the woman her- self. On women’s status as the property of fathers and husbands, see Rubin 1975, Ortner 1976. On rape and virginity historically, see Brownmiller 1975, Dworkin 1987.
The gift metaphor dovetails with traditional beliefs about gender in other areas of social life, such as the notions that women are natural nurturers, inher- ently different from men, and ought to place family before other concerns.
Two-fifths (14) of the women I interviewed saw virginity as a gift at the time of their own virginity loss, as did one-fifth (5) of the men, two of whom were virgins at the time of the interview. Three-fifths (20) of women and one- third (10) of men had ever likened virginity to a gift. Women’s greater tendency to interpret virginity as a gift is consistent with the tendency for women but not men to interpret sexual acts of all kinds as gifts (Gilfoyle, Wilson, and Brown 1993).
Kelly and her friends particularly identified with Katherine Danziger, the heroine of Judy Blume’s popular teen novel,
Forever
(1975). Nearly one-fourth of the women I interviewed, across all interpretive groups, mentioned
Forever
as a source of information about virginity loss. Continually in print since 1975,
Forever
tells the story of high school senior Katherine’s decision to lose her vir- ginity, which she perceives as a gift, with her beloved boyfriend, Michael. Al- though she eventually decides to end the relationship, Katherine has no regrets. Less pleasant fates befall female characters who approach sex casually, how- ever.Only three people in the study had actively tried to remain virgins until marriage. Two saw virginity as a gift, while the third viewed it as an act of wor- ship (see chapter 6). One of the three lost her virginity with a man she expected to marry (but did not); the other two were virgins when I interviewed them. This relative disinterest in confining virginity loss to marriage reflects broader social trends, including steadily increasing ages at first marriage (which make it harder
Kevin Cleary, a 22-year-old, heterosexual White college senior, had, sub- sequent to losing his own virginity (which he’d seen as a stigma), started dating a devout Roman Catholic who convinced him that sex should be reserved for cou- ples who were betrothed or (ideally) spouses.
Kelly had lived with her mother and stepfather, who introduced the fam- ily to the Lutheran church. As an adult, Kelly considered herself religious even though she went to church only on holidays.
Belk and Coon 1993. In contrast with Kelly, some people, such as Danielle Rice, described virginity as a lost or transferred part of the self: “some- thing private a woman gives up.”
On the extended self, see especially Belk and Coon 1993; see also Fox and Swazey 1978 on the literally shared self involved in organ transplants.
Schwartz 1967.
Haskell 2003.
Of the nonvirgins in this group, only three had not been in love with their virginity-loss partners; two of the exceptions had liked their partners very much, one had been raped by a friend.
Everyone in this group told their virginity-loss partner that they were a virgin. The majority recalled discussing their virginity openly with friends, and none sought deliberately to conceal it.
Six of the 17 nonvirgins in this group reported close calls, as did one of two virgins.
Ten of 17 reported mutual virginity loss.
Fine 1988; Horowitz 1983; Lees 1986; Thompson 1990.
These figures exclude the highest and lowest outlier in each group.
Only one bisexual man, one lesbian, and one bisexual woman had seen virginity as a gift at the time of their virginity loss. A virgin gay man also viewed virginity as a gift. One gay man, two lesbians, and two bisexual women had held but rejected the gift perspective prior to virginity loss.
The stories of the lesbigay women and men who
did
favor the gift metaphor closely resembled those of their heterosexual counterparts.Like many people, he means vaginal penetration, but sees this as so obvi- ous that he doesn’t feel the need to specify further.
Study participants of every interpretive stripe noted similar patterns, as have scholars (e.g., Thompson 1984).
When I asked what he meant by horror stories, Bryan cited his worst- case scenario: “party situations” in which “virgins . . . hoo[k] up with people
Faderman 1993; Levine 1995.
Ehrenreich, Hess, and Jacobs 1986; Rubin 1990. Women of this genera- tion are responsible for launching third-wave feminism (Kamen 2000).
On “new” masculinities, see Connell 1995, Kimmel 1995.
Recent studies show corresponding increases in the average age at which boys first have vaginal sex and in the proportion of boys who disapprove of pre- marital sex (Ku et al. 1998; Sonenstein et al. 1998).
Thornton and Camburn 1989; Brewster et al. 1998; Meier 2003.
Sprecher, Barbee, and Schwartz (1995) compared young people who were 17 and older when they first had vaginal sex to those who were 16 and younger.
Kinsman et al. 1998; Billy and Udry 1985b.
Thompson 1990.
Most of the people who saw virginity as a gift and were generally satis- fied with the way they lost theirs, like Karen and Kelly, were willing, even eager, to share the news with their close friends.
Laumann et al. 1994.
Landry, Kaeser, and Richards 1999.
Of the remaining four, two spoke of maintaining virginity as an act of worship and two had left the church as teenagers, around which time they’d begun to see virginity as a stigma. Two of the ten had become conservative Protestants as adults.
Belk and Coon 1993. This interpretation makes sense either assuming that Scott himself saw virginity as a gift or (more likely) that he believed that Julie did; or if he assumed (as many people do) that women always bleed when they lose their virginity, and, when he didn’t see physical signs, he assumed the worst.
A person who gives an initial gift takes a particular risk, for she and her chosen recipient have set no precedent of ongoing exchange (Mauss 1925).
This practice can be interpreted either as a type of direct reciprocation or as a form of indirect reciprocation in which each person gives to a member of her social group, expecting to receive from a different member (Mauss 1925).
Compared with those who believe, like Kelly Lewis, that the part is merely shared. See note 30 above.
The other three women’s stories closely resemble Julie’s. It was not al- ways clear from the interviews whether these young men drew on specific knowl- edge about their girlfriends’ beliefs or on the common assumption that women view virginity as a gift.
On gender and sexual agency during adolescence and/or at sexual initia-
This was true across interpretive stances.
Alternatively, they may have been reluctant to challenge beliefs they’d held from very early ages, simply preferred taking a traditionally feminine stance, or told me what they thought I wanted to hear from women.
One of these three, Charlotte Brandt, wasn’t disappointed with her vir- ginity-loss experience, but rather found herself, immediately afterwards, in a context where the kinds of relationships she wanted were impossible (a college campus where casual sex was the norm). She felt that calling herself a born-again virgin made her abstinence easier to explain.
Eleven out of 19 gifters (including virgins) maintained that virginity was renewable, compared with 7 of 19 processers and 5 of 19 stigmatized (all of whom had adopted the process frame by the time of our interview). I discuss the fourth born-again virgin, who viewed virginity as an act of worship, in chapter 6.
On Asians’ and Asian Americans’ tendency toward reticence around sex- uality, see Espiritu 2000, Takagi 1996.
Bryan described the male-female divide in his high school as less ab- solute, perhaps because of his involvement with the virginity-friendly coed AIDS- awareness group.
Referring to the award-winning 1968 film
The Graduate,
in which 21- year-old Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has an affair and loses his virgin- ity with 40-something Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft).See, e.g., Martin 1998, Komter 1989, Blumstein and Schwartz 1983.
Aneshensel, Fielder, and Becerra 1989; Thompson 1995.
Zerubavel (1996) discusses the tendency to dichotomize and the per- ceived differences between having sex zero and one times, versus one and two times.
Two-thirds of gifters who lost their virginity under nonideal circum- stances found secondary virginity plausible, compared with less than two-fifths of gifters whose experiences were nearly ideal. People whose first experiences were “perfect” simply might not have seen second chances as helpful, and may even have seen them as threatening their own perspectives on virginity.
Chan 1994; Cochran, Mays, and Leung 1991; Meston, Trapnell, and Gorzalka 1996; Upchurch et al. 1998.
Such conservatism and reticence should not be confused with the stereo- type of asexuality often misattributed to Asian Americans (Espiritu 2000).
Steele 1999; Sutton et al. 2002.
This is not to suggest that Hispanic cultures are unitary; however, empir- ical research indicates that certain beliefs and practices transcend intragroup di- versity (Espin 1984; Raffaelli and Ontai 2001).
The links between social identity and approaches to virginity may remain stronger in the South and western Midwest, where gender norms are more tradi- tional, Christian beliefs more conservative and pervasive, and public school sys- tems less likely to provide comprehensive sex education (Landry, Kaeser, and Richards 1999; Laumann et al. 1994; Rice and Coates 1995).
National studies tracking changing ages at first vaginal sex and attitudes about premarital sex also indicate such a trend (Ku et al. 1998; Sonenstein et al. 1998), as do a handful of studies exploring subjective aspects of adolescent sexu- ality (Risman and Schwartz 2002; Sprecher and Regan 1996).
The close parent-child relationships reported by many members of this group may have disposed them toward adopting their parents’ ideals. Previous studies have shown that adolescents’ beliefs about sexuality tend to resemble those of their parents, with relatively conservative parents raising relatively con- servative children, and religious youth subscribing to more conservative sexual beliefs and behaviors than their more secular peers (Thornton and Camburn 1989; Meier 2003).
On peer influence over sexual beliefs and behavior, which tends to in- crease over the course of adolescence as parental influence declines, see Jessor and Jessor 1975; DeLamater 1987; Herold and Goodwin 1981. Billy and Udry (1985a, 1985b) found somewhat different peer-influence patterns by race and gender. Teens’ sexual beliefs and behavior typically resemble those of their clos- est friends, in part because of socialization and in part because teens acquire friends who share their sexual status.
The women and men I interviewed did, however, feel free to reject the traditional Christian injunction to reserve sex/virginity loss for marriage; this may reflect a (perhaps uniquely American) “this religion but done my way” ap- proach toward religious doctrine.