Virgin: The Untouched History (37 page)

Helen King's monograph
The Disease of Virgins: Green Sickness, Chlorosis, and the Problems of
Puberty
(New York: Routledge, 2004) is a gem in the history of the intersection of medicine and culture. For a shorter but still useful assessment, see Robert P. Hudson, "The Biography of Disease: Lessons from Chlorosis,"
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
51 (1977): 448-463.

The doggerel quoted at the end of this section is of anonymous authorship. It can be found as "A Cure for ye Greene Sicknesse," Bodleian Ms. Rawlinson poet. 172, fol. 2v.

Data on average hymenal dimensions can be found in many sources, including Berenson and Grady, "A Longitudinal Study of Hymenal Development from 3 to 9 Years of
Age," Journal
of Pediatrics
140 (2002): 600-607, and Susan Pokorny, "Configuration of the Prepubertal
Hymen,"
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
157/4 part 1 (October 1987):
950-56.

The mainstream press is peppered with articles about hymen restoration surgeries and the medical ethics surrounding them. A representative pair consulted in the preparation of this book are Sue Yeon Choi, "Restoring Virginity: Hymen Repair Surgery Saves Lives at the Expense of Deception,"
Issues: Berkeley Medical Journal
(Fall 1998), viewed at (http://www.0cf.berkeley.edu/~issues/fall98/hymenrep.html), and Susan Oh, "Just Like a Virgin?".0
cf.berkeley.edu/~issues/fall98/hymenrep.html
), and Susan Oh, "Just Like a Virgin?"
Maclean's
113/24 (June 12, 2000): 44—46. A useful overview of the medical profession's own ethical discussion of the issue is A. Logmans, et al., "Should Doctors Reconstruct the Vaginal Introitus of Adolescent Girls to Mimic the Virginal State? Who Wants the Procedure and Why,"
British Medical Journal
316/'7129 (February 7,1998): 459-60.

6: The Blank Page

Queen's University Belfast anthropologist Paloma Gay-y-Blasco's work on Gitano virginity,
Gypsies in Madrid: Sex, Gender and the Performance of Identity
(Oxford: Berg, 1999), is exemplary
and astonishing. Her two articles, "Gitano Understandings of Female Virginity: Sex and the Construction of Ethnic Difference,"
Cambridge Anthropology
17 no. 1 (1994), and the 1997 "A 'Different' Body? Desire and Virginity among Gitanos,"
The Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Society
3 no. 3, provide more focused discussions of the specific beliefs and practices addressed at the beginning of this chapter.

The remarks made by a young woman who spoke of the assumptions of her peers in regard to her virginity, based on their feelings about the appearance of her buttocks and hips, are from Kristin Haglund, "Sexually Abstinent African American Adolescent Females' Descriptions of Abstinence,"
Journal of Nursing Scholarship
35 no. 3 (2003): 231-36. There are many other similar "visual diagnosis" issues mentioned throughout the medical and sociological literature on virginity, as well as in sexual folklore. Some of them are addressed from this angle in Mariamne Watley and Elissa Henken,
Did You Hear About the Girl Who
. . .
?: Contemporary
Legends, Folklore, and Human Sexuality
(New York: New York University Press, 2000).

Virginity tests can be found in an. enormous number of medical texts written prior to the twentieth century and have been discussed at some length in the historical literature, including: Clarissa W. Atkinson, "Precious Balsam in a Fragile Glass: The Ideology of Virginity in the Later Middle Ages,"
Journal of Family History
(Summer 1983): 131—43; Vern L. Bullough and James Brundage, eds.,
The Problem of Impotence in Sexual Practices and the Medieval
Church
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1982): 135-40; Tassie Gwilliam, "Female Fraud: Counterfeit Maidenheads in the Eighteenth Century,"
Journal of the History of Sexuality 6
no. 4 (1996): 518-48; Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset,
Sexuality and Medicine in
the Middle Ages,
Matthew Adamson, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Kelly,
Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages,
Routledge Research in Medieval Studies Series (New York: Routledge, 2000); King,
The Disease of Virgins: Green
Sickness, Chlorosis, and the Problems of Puberty
(New York: Routledge, 2004); Lastique and Lemay, "A Medieval Physician's Guide to Virginity," in
Sex in the Middle Ages,
Joyce E. Salisbury, ed. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991); Lemay,
Women's Secrets: A Translation
of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus'De
secretis mulierum
with Commentaries,
SUNY Series in Medieval Studies, Paul Szarmach, ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); Lemay, "The Stars and Human Sexuality: Some Medieval Scientific Views,"
Isis
71 (March 1980): 127—37; Hermann Moller, "Voice Change in Human Biological Development,"
Journal
of Interdisciplinary History
16 no. 2 (Autumn 1985): 239—53; Jacqueline Murray, "The Origins and Role of 'Wise Women' in Causes for Annulment on the Grounds of Male Impotence,
" Journal of Medieval History
16 (1990): 235—49; Stephen Robertson, "Signs, Marks, and Private Parts: Doctors, Legal Discourses, and Evidence of Rape in the United States, 1823-1930,"
Journal of the History of Sexuality
9 no. 3 (1998): 345-88; Rousselle,
Porneia:
On Desire and the Body in Antiquity,
Felicia Pheasant, trans. (London: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1988); Joyce E. Salisbury, "Fruitful in
Singleness," Journal of Medieval History
8 (1982).

Dr. Sara Paterson-Brown's informal research in regard to the percentages of women who report bleeding at the time of virginity loss was given in the context of: "Commentary: Education about the Hymen Is Needed," in the February 7,1998,
British Medical Journal,
p. 341.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' statement of its expectations of a physician's ability to diagnose a "normal" versus an "altered" hymen was made in the context of a technical bulletin on pediatric gynecology,
American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists, Technical Bulletin No. 201: Pediatric Gynecologic Disorders
(Washington, D.C.: The College, 1995).

Dr. Abby Berenson's comments on the relative infrequency with which examiners find reliable genital evidence of sexual abuse can be found in Berenson, et al. "A Case-Control Study of Anatomic Changes Resulting from Sexual Abuse," American
Journal of Obstetric Gynecology
182 (2000); Debarge, et al. "Examen medico-legal de l'hymen: Etude analytique de 384 dossiers d'expertises medico-legales pratiquees a l'occasion d'agressions sexuelles,"
M
é
decin Legale et Dommage Corporelle
6 no. 3 (1973): 298-300, provides a bit of independent (and much earlier) confirmation that the same sort of variability of findings is also true in regard to rape cases.

Additional reflections on the ability of the hymen to reflect specific sexual histories can be found in: S. J. Emans, et al., "Hymenal Findings in Adolescent Women: Impact of Tampon Use and Consensual Sexual Activity,"
Journal of Pediatrics
125 (1994); Felicity Goodyear Smith and Tannis Laidlaw, "Can Tampon Use Cause Hymen Changes in Girls Who Have Not Had Sexual Intercourse? A Review of the Literature,"
Forensic Science International
94 nos. 1—2, (1998); and Edgardh and Ormstad, "The Adolescent Hymen,"
Journal of Reproductive
Medicine
47 no. 9 (September 2002).

The
British Medical Journal
article dealing with practitioner education and beliefs about aspects of the hymen is in Emma Curtis and Camille San Lazaro, "Appearance of the Hymen in Adolescents Is Not Well Documented,"
British Medical Journal
(February 27,1999), 605.

The studies directed by Jan Paradise cited in this chapter are Paradise, et al., "Assessments of girl's genital findings and the likelihood of sexual abuse: agreement among physicians self-rated as skilled,"
Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine
151 no. 9 (1997): 883-91, and Paradise, et al. "Influence of History on Physicians' Interpretation of Girls' Genital Findings,"
Pediatrics
103 no. 5 part 1 (1999), 980—986.

The short story from which the title of this chapter was taken, and which is discussed at the chapter's end, is from Isak Dinesen, "The Blank Page," in
Last Tales
(New York: Random House, Inc., 1957): 99—106.

y: Opening Night

Among the numerous fine sources on marriage and marriage customs history are: Nancy F.
Cott,
Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2003); Chrys Ingraham,
White Weddings: Romancing Hetirosexuality in Popular
Culture
(New York: Routledge, 1999); Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz,
Wedding as Text:
Communicating Cultural Identities through Ritual
(Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
2002); and George Ryley Scott,
Curious Customs of Sex & Marriage
(London: Senate, 1995)

The anthropological literature on the rite of passage begins properly with Arnold van Gennep,
The Rites of Passage,
Monika Vizedom and Gabrielle Caffe, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). A useful companion volume is Louise Cams Mahdi, Nancy Geyer
Christopher, and Michael Meade, eds.,
Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage
(Chicago: Open Court, 1996).

A variety of discussions of virginity-loss narratives can be found in: Francoise Barret-Ducroq,
Love in the Time of Victoria: Sexuality, Class, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century London,
John Howe, trans. (New York: Penguin Books, 1992); Karen Bouris,
The First Time: Women
Speak Out About Losing Their Virginity
(Emeryville, CA: Conari Press, 1993); Louis Crozier,
Losing It: The Virginity Myth
(Washington, D.C.: Avocus Publishing, Inc., 1993); Ginger
Frost,
Promises Broken: Courtship, Class, and Culture in Victorian England,
Victorian Literature
and Culture Series, Herbert Tucker and Jerome McGann, series eds. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995); Alice Schlegel, "The Social Criteria of Adulthood,"
Human Development
41 (1999): 323-25; and Sharon Thompson's
Going All The Way:
Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1996) and "Putting a Big Thing into a Little Hole: Teenage Girls' Accounts of Sexual Initiation,"
The
Journal of Sex Research
27/3 (August 1990): 341—61.

Of the many statistical reviews of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing in the medical, sociological, and demographic literature, two helpful ones are Susheela Singh and Jacqueline Darroch, "Adolescent pregnancy and childbearing: levels and trends in developed countries,"
Family Planning Perspectives
32/1 (2000): 14—23, and Stephanie Ventura, et al., "Trends in Pregnancy Rates for the United States, 1976-97: An Update,"
National Vital
Statistics Reports
49/4 (2001): 1-10.

The single Western scholar who has done the most research on contemporary virginity loss is Vanderbilt University sociologist Laura M. Carpenter, whose book
Virginity Lost: An Intimate
Portrait of First Sexual Experiences
was published by New York University Press in 2005. See also: Carpenter, "Gender and the Social Construction of Virginity Loss in the Contemporary United States,"
Gender & Society
16/3 (2002): 345-65; "The Ambiguity of 'Having Sex': The Subjective Experience of Virginity Loss in the United States,"
The Journal
of Sex Research
38/2 (2001): 127-39; "The First
Time/Das Erstes Mai:
Approaches to Sexuality in U.S. and German Teen Magazines,"
Youth & Society
32/3 (2001): 31—61; and "From Girls Into Women: Scripts for Sexuality and Romance in
Seventeen
Magazine, 1974-1994,"
The Journal of Sex Research
35/2 (1998): 158—68.

On the related (but not identical) subjects of bridewealth and dowry, consult: Jack Goody and Stanley J. Tambiah, eds.,
Bridewealth and Dowry,
Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology no. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); Karen Ericksen Paige, "Virginity Rituals and Chastity Control during Puberty: Cross-Cultural Patterns," in
Menarche: The
Transition from Girl to Woman,
Sharon Golub, ed. (Lexington, KY: D.C. Heath, 1983): 155-74; Jane Schaneider, "Of Vigilance and Virgins: Honor, Shame, and Access to Resources in Mediterranean Societies,"
Ethnology
10 (1971): 1-24; Lawrence Stone,
The Family, Sex,
and Marriage in England i5oo—i8oo
(New York: Harper and Row, 1977); and Randolph Trumbach,
The Rise of the Egalitarian Family
(New York: Academic Press, 1978).

In the literature about the specific relationship of virginity, dowry, status, and social management, Alice Schlegel's work deserves particular notice, specifically her "Status, Property, and the Value of Virginity,"
American Ethnologist
18 (1991): 719-34; "The Cultural Management of Adolescent Sexuality," in
Sexual Nature Sexual Culture,
Paul R. Abramson and Steven D. Pinkerton, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995): 177—94; and "The Chaste Adolescent" in
Celibacy, Culture, and Society: The Anthropology of Sexual Abstinence,
Elisa J. Sobo and Sandra Bell, eds. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2001): 87-103.