Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (31 page)

Jason’s curiosity about sex wasn’t so intense that he felt compelled to seek out opportunities to lose his virginity. Rather, he figured, a chance would arise soon enough in the natural course of things. He and his friends had seen lots of movies in which peer pressure to have sex figured prominently—
Losing It
and
The Last American Virgin
among them— but his own high school career was marked by an absence of such pres- sures, as well as by a liberal, value-neutral sex education curriculum. By the time he turned 17, Jason had experienced kissing and “petting, fondling, [and having] manual sex, oral sex, things like that,” with a dozen girls he dated casually or “knew generally at parties.” Although Jason enjoyed these casual liaisons immensely, he wanted to be in “a pos- itive, pretty solid emotional relationship” when he lost his virginity. This wasn’t because he felt that virginity loss would be meaningless if it weren’t an expression of love and commitment, as gifters did, but rather because he thought that virginity loss was an experience “you’re not going to forget. So the fewer bad memories you have stored in your bank, the better probably. So it’s nice if it can at least be, the person can be a good memory.”

Jason was a senior in high school when he fell in love for the first time. Fifteen-year-old Melissa’s parents had just joined his family’s synagogue, and they hit it off right away. After a few dates to movies and concerts, Melissa and Jason decided to see each other exclusively. In the weeks that

followed, they engaged in “sex play at varying levels,” from kissing to oral sex—the typical pattern for heterosexuals in this interpretive group. They discussed their mutual virginity; but neither gave it much thought beyond taking it for granted that, if they dated long enough, they would probably have vaginal sex. Eventually, the question was
when
they would lose their virginity together. Jason recounted:

There were plenty of opportunities before it happened. I think it was more just timing. . . . At the time when it happened, I think it seemed like something that we both wanted to do. Whereas previous to that, I remember at least one, I remember specifically one instance before that, where I had brought up, you know, “Do you want to have sex now?” and she had said, “No, not now.” And we let that lie. So it, it was sort of a timing thing.

They’d been a couple for almost 5 months when mutual interest and opportunity coincided. When a mandatory school play rehearsal pre- vented Jason from joining his family on a weekend trip, he invited Melissa to stay with him overnight. He made sure to change his sheets and have plenty of condoms on hand, just in case. But even careful plan- ning didn’t prepare them for the debacle that ensued. Jason recalled:

We spent a good twenty minutes just trying to, to penetrate and eventu- ally I just, it just wasn’t happening. So we stopped trying and went out and got some food or whatever, and I think we tried again later that day and it worked. So. And that was just—by the time it actually worked, it was, it turned into sort of a frustration thing. You know, ’cause it was something, it seemed like it should be really easy to do and it wasn’t working. And I know, I know that she felt . . . pain when it actually worked. . . . And I was frustrated, so it was not very pleasant at all.

Despite the circumstances, Jason had an orgasm; Melissa did not.

Rather than renounce sex after such a fiasco, Jason and Melissa de- cided to give it another try. Like Jennifer and Andy, they took encour- agement from the strength of their relationship and from their enjoyment of earlier sexual encounters. Happily, their persistence was rewarded. “After the first time,” Jason said, “when we went back and did it more, it was actually good, it was actually very pleasant. So I’d kind of had this idea that sex is something pleasant, and it panned out that way.” In this

way, they made their mutual transition to nonvirginity “stick.”
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And, even though Jason’s virginity-loss experience was more unpleasant than Jennifer’s, and his frustration magnified by his preconception of first vagi- nal sex as “easy,” he too came to value it for bringing him a step closer to a complete and fulfilling sexual life. In retrospect, he said the only thing he would change was as follows:

I would’ve tried to make the time when it actually did happen . . . a little more nice. A little more pleasant. It was just. You know, when we first tried, it was in bed and naked and all that, and the second time it was on the floor of the living room, pants down. You know, it was just like, “Damn it, this should be working,” and so I would probably get the one that worked to be more like the first try.

Jason and Melissa continued to date and to have sex for almost 2 years. He let his friends surmise that he wasn’t a virgin anymore, but did- n’t broadcast his new status, since he wanted to maintain some semblance of privacy. The pair broke up after a frustrating year of dating long dis- tance—while Melissa was a high school senior, Jason attended college 300 miles from home. When he was 21, Jason became involved in “an- other very serious relationship that went on for about a year.” That ro- mance reinforced his understanding of sex as a process in which virginity loss represented just one step:

I think it was the first time where I really thought I was having sex that was pointedly good. And that my partner was contributing something unique and specific to the activity, you know . . . that she had skills and knowledge of how to do different things, to get different kinds of plea- sure. And I remember . . . with this person that sex seemed a little more expansive then, there was more to it.

Jason’s gender inevitably, if subtly, influenced his beliefs and experi- ences. For men, interpreting virginity loss as a step in a process served as a somewhat unorthodox compromise—acceptably masculine, according to popular opinion, but less extreme than the tradition equating men’s virginity with stigma. (Jason’s privileged sexual, racial, and class identi- ties may have made it easier for him to reject the stigma metaphor.) Yet, Jason did not experience virginity loss as gender neutral; he saw this rite of passage as transforming him from a boy into a man (at least in a sex-

ual sense). Being male did not, however, appear to affect Jason’s sense of sexual agency; he felt neither as though he’d been out of control nor that he’d been at Melissa’s mercy. Similarly, the other male processers also felt that they’d remained in control.

Becoming Women and Men

Women and men who viewed virginity loss as a step in a process were, by and large, exposed to the same ideas about virginity as people who pre- ferred other interpretations. But while they were aware that virginity could be seen as a stigma or as a gift, these approaches did not appeal to them. Different patterns of sexual socialization provide a partial expla- nation for the groups’ different interpretive inclinations. Although indi- viduals from working- and middle-class families were equally likely to have ever viewed virginity loss as a rite of passage, middle-class youth were overrepresented among those who drew on that metaphor at the time of their own virginity loss—that is, fairly early in life.
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Since the metaphor derives from anthropological studies that are a staple of college curricula but are seldom taught in secondary school, it may be that col- lege-educated parents are better situated to share this perspective with their children. In general, the parents of men and women in the process group tended to hold fairly permissive attitudes about adolescent sexual- ity, typically taking it for granted that their offspring would have sex be- fore marriage (though most parents frowned on virginity loss in early adolescence or with casual partners). With the exception of Tom, no one in the process group grew up in a conservative Protestant and/or devoutly religious family. Few recalled being exposed to, much less influenced by, religious teachings about virginity loss. Processers were also dispropor- tionately likely to have participated in value-neutral comprehensive sex education programs, such as those described by Meghan and Jason. Pos- sibly for this reason, they described their peers as nonjudgmental more often than did members of the stigma and gift groups—even when those peers disagreed with their beliefs—and reported experiencing little if any peer pressure around sexual activity.

Beyond their sexual socialization, processers were acutely aware of the possibility of constructing their identities through virginity loss—trading one social status for another being precisely what their interpretation of that event entails. They invariably spoke of virginity loss as a signal event

in their transformation from relatively naive adolescents to sexually knowing adults. Many moreover described this transformation in gen- dered terms, as a process of becoming women or men. Because the rite of passage metaphor is seen as an appropriate, but not especially traditional, option for men and women in American culture, it provided the people in my study with a vehicle for challenging the sexual double standard by re- jecting rather than reversing it (as when a man views virginity as a gift). In this sense, viewing virginity loss as a step in a process helps young peo- ple to establish a truly unorthodox adult masculine or feminine self through virginity loss. More than half of processers had done “everything but” lose their virginity with at least one casual partner. By contrast, sex play with casual partners was exceedingly rare among gifters and seen as a kind of consolation prize by the stigmatized.

The passage metaphor also helps people to fashion sexual identities. Tom, Abby, and the other gay, lesbian, and bisexual women and men in this group experienced virginity loss as intertwined with the process of coming out. Losing virginity with a same-sex partner enables individuals to “prove” their lesbigay sexual identity to themselves and others. In fact, the two lesbians who lost their virginity with men before they came out noted that those experiences contributed to their growing sense that they weren’t heterosexual. Heterosexual women and men likewise demon- strated their sexual identities through virginity loss, although they were typically less conscious of doing so. If the men and women in my study used the passage frame to construct or perform other aspects of social identity, they did so in ways that I did not discern. For example, although being raised in mainstream religious traditions and/or nondevout families probably reduced the likelihood of being encouraged to view virginity as a gift, neither participants’ words nor their behavior suggested that they preferred the process metaphor because it helped them construct them- selves as relatively secular beings.

Taken together, the interviews I conducted help illuminate the complex ways through which young Americans come to favor one understanding of virginity loss over another. What youth learn about virginity and sex- uality from their parents, peers, schools, religious institutions, and mass media—lessons that are patterned by gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, so- cial class, and religion—shapes their preferences; as do the specific social contexts through which they move. But traditional links between social identity and interpretations of virginity loss are weaker today than in the past, as the unconventional preferences of many of my study participants

reveal. Broad social changes, especially those brought about by the femi- nist, gay rights, and civil rights movements, have opened new avenues, new ways of being men and women, gay and heterosexual, racially or eth- nically identified, and so forth. Young women and men are, consequently, able to choose specific approaches to virginity loss based on the versions of social identity that those approaches will help them achieve.

6

Abstinence

The student workbook for Sex Respect, one of the most widely used sex education curricula in the United States, gives pride of place to a teen- written “rap” declaring:

Love and sex Sex and love

Both are gifts from up above One is good

The other is great

They would both be greater If you WAIT.
1

In addition to learning that virginity is a gift, students are given the im- pression that the only alternative—adopted by foolish youth—is to think of virginity as a stigma. For example, the SR-produced videotape, “Dat- ing: Predator or Partner,” promises to demonstrate that

on dates there are only two types of people . . . predators or partners.

. . . Derek Wiersma grew up as a sexual predator who began having pre- marital sex at 13. Derek was interested in “the hunt” and “getting as much out of a girl as he could.” . . . After college, Derek realized that preying on women was wrong and he stopped.
2

Traditional beliefs about gender differences in sexuality permeate Sex Respect and other similar curricula that share its only-abstinence-until- marriage perspective, as does the assumption that “normal” people are heterosexual.
3
Claiming that “many things about the male and female gender . . . are opposite,” the SR student workbook suggests that, “be- cause they generally become physically aroused less easily, girls are still in