Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (36 page)

Throughout this book, I have shown how many of the factors that his- torically lent great significance to virginity have lost much of their salience, due to extensive changes in social and sexual life. One of the most notable changes for a large segment of the populace has been the di- minishing appeal of religious reasons for preserving virginity until mar- riage, brought about by the steady secularization of American society. The development of effective birth control methods—and tremendous expansion of their availability—has also had a considerable impact, by reducing the danger that virginity loss (or subsequent sexual encounters) might result in unintended pregnancy.

When, in the 1960s and 1970s, it became widely apparent that Amer- ican understandings and experiences of virginity loss were undergoing radical changes, many predicted that virginity loss would soon mean lit- tle to young women and men. In fact, premarital virginity did lose much of its allure as an ideal, and it has not regained widespread favor since, the Virgin Cool trend of the 1990s and early 2000s notwithstanding. Yet, as is clear from the stories of the men and women here, young Americans from a wide range of social backgrounds still see virginity loss as an es- pecially important life event.

One reason that virginity loss is significant today is that, thanks to the multiple meanings it carries, it offers young men and women a flexible ve- hicle for constructing particular versions of gender, sexual, racial/ethnic, and religious identities.
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For instance, young men who are attached to traditional ideas about masculinity may favor the stigma metaphor as a way of enacting their understanding of manhood; conversely, young men less invested in machismo may prefer the process or gift metaphor. Vir- ginity loss also is significant because it represents one of the few steps in the transition from youth to adulthood over which young people enjoy almost complete control. In recent decades, the American life course has grown increasingly varied and unpredictable. Many people do not expe- rience the life events traditionally associated with adulthood until they are in their late twenties or older, much less do they experience those events in the “traditional” order.
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Where a majority of young men and women once followed a fairly predictable path from school to paid work to marriage and parenthood, many now combine or alternate between school and paid labor, have children before or without marrying, or delay marriage long after completing their education. The people who took part in my study were no exception. At an average age of 25, they were indisputably adults, but only one-fifth of them had ever been married (of course, lesbigay participants could not legally marry) and even fewer had children; some had yet to begin their “real” careers, while others had left jobs to continue their education. Beyond being unpredictable, many as- pects of the passage from youth to adulthood lie largely outside of indi- vidual control.
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Institutional rules and financial resources govern high school and college graduation; broad economic processes determine the timing and conditions of employment; and legal statutes regulate voting, driving, and the purchase of cigarettes and alcoholic beverages.

Virginity loss, by contrast, represents a step from youth to adulthood that individuals can accomplish fairly early in life and with the assistance of just a single partner. In my study, men and women who favored the rite of passage metaphor were the most explicitly attuned to this aspect of vir- ginity loss; but those who followed other approaches mentioned it as well. Hannah Cooper, a 29-year-old White heterosexual sign-language in- terpreter, who had seen her virginity as a stigma, recalled, “I think when I lost it, I decided I was an adult. Which was really stupid. . . . I thought I was grown up.” In semicontrast, Danielle Rice, who interpreted virgin- ity as a gift, said:

I felt like it was like I entered into womanhood. . . . It wasn’t the [first menstrual] period that made me feel like a woman. It was sex. Like, I’ve done it. And I was ahead of certain . . . friends. . . . So I was like, “I’ve done it and I can tell you all about it.”

Similarly, Carlos Rodriguez, a 28-year-old gay Latino nurse practitioner, who had seen virginity as irrelevant to his own experience, said:

I do remember stories of some friends telling me that . . . when it’s time, their dads would take the[m] to some kind of brothel . . . so they would lose their virginity. I remember thinking about that when I was younger and [laughs], “I hope my father doesn’t do this to me.” . . . I guess . . . it meant to them some kind of reaching of manhood, you know, losing your virginity.

Growing up in a context of uncertainty, diversity, and change, Ameri- can youth benefit from being able to understand virginity loss in ways that help them to fashion specific social identities and that bring them one step closer to adulthood. In fact, if the possibilities for social identities and life course trajectories continue to expand — as well they may — young Americans may invest virginity loss with even more meaning than currently is the case. Given these benefits, it makes sense to treat virgin- ity loss as a significant and important life event.

But my research suggests that treating virginity loss as one of the most important sexual experiences of a person’s life carries real costs as well. Consider, for example, the stories of Julie Pavlicko, who saw virginity as a gift, and Bill Gordon, who viewed it as a stigma. Their divergent stances notwithstanding, Julie and Bill both approached virginity loss as an event that had an unsurpassed power to determine what they would do, and who they would become, as sexual beings. Julie’s distress when her boyfriend failed to reciprocate her gift of virginity was magnified and pro- longed because she saw virginity loss as the best-but-irreplaceable way of bonding with a life partner. By a similar token, the humiliation and inad- equacy Bill felt when Diane jeered at his inexperience were all the more intense and long-lasting because he gave the distinction between virgins and nonvirgins so much weight.

Less severe troubles also result from investing virginity loss with para- mount importance. A number of men and women told me that, had they not been so worried about maintaining or eradicating their virginity per se,

they would have had sex with another, earlier partner or waited for a later one. Marcy Goldberg, a 27-year-old Jewish heterosexual therapist who saw virginity as a gift, said that, had she been able to put virginity in bet- ter perspective, she would have given hers to her first boyfriend, whom she really loved, rather than the boyfriend with whom she did first have sex.

I would’ve definitely had sex with Michael. . . . Not that that would make me a happier person, but I’d have more things to compare, not even compare to . . . just more experience. . . . ’Cause now I only have Chuck and my husband. And Chuck wasn’t all that good [laughs]. And, you know, my husband’s great, but, you know.

Conversely, Marty Baker surmised that, had he felt less pressure to shed his virginity, he might have waited for a girlfriend with whom he was re- ally close, thereby gaining even more from the experience.

Not to say that there was anything wrong with [my virginity-loss en- counter]. Just like, personally . . . I would have chosen to have a differ- ent, this other person. . . . Just because the [virginity-loss] relationship wasn’t as strong and the second one was definitely a better, like, I con- sidered myself in a very tangible friendship with her.

In short, men and women who view virginity loss as the most signifi- cant event of their sexual careers may be more likely to experience ad- verse outcomes than people who do not see virginity loss as uniquely im- portant. For this reason, it might be wise to temper the importance that American cultural and social institutions grant to virginity loss. Several of the women and men in my study reached the same conclusion. In the words of Lisa Orlofksy, a 35-year-old Jewish lesbian who worked as a school administrator:

By focusing on [virginity loss], we put too much attention to it, which can . . . I think, sort of encourage people to lose it before they’re ready. Or they hold on to it while they do other things that could be considered sex.

In Conclusion

Although virginity loss represents an important turning point in sexual life, surprisingly little was known about young Americans’ definitions, in- terpretations, and experiences of virginity loss before I began my re- search. Through my interviews, I have been able to develop a four-faceted model for understanding virginity loss today, based on the metaphors of the gift, the stigma, the rite of passage, and the act of worship. Because specific metaphors give rise to distinctive expectations and desires, my model provides a way to understand a person’s decisions and behavior, before, during, and after virginity loss. Moreover, since my model derives from people’s own understandings of virginity loss, it remains faithful to their beliefs and experiences in a way that a model deduced from previ- ous studies or my own cultural assumptions cannot.

How people interpret virginity loss depends in large part on their so- cial identities—both the ones they already possess, like being male or fe- male, and the identities they wish to have, like being cool or unconven- tional. Throughout the preceding chapters, I have shown how youth are encouraged—by parents, peers, and popular culture—to interpret vir- ginity loss in ways that are deemed appropriate for individuals of their gender, racial/ethnic background, religion, and so forth. Thus, young women are typically urged to view virginity as a gift, while men are en- couraged to see it as a stigma. Yet, because social identities are more flex- ible today than ever before, young Americans can also draw on different interpretations of virginity to construct themselves as the kinds of people they’d like to be. For instance, by interpreting her loss of virginity as a rite of passage, a young woman can establish a somewhat unorthodox femi- nine identity, whereas the gift and stigma frames respectively imply tradi- tional femininity and a wholesale rejection thereof. In this sense, virgin- ity loss can transform one type of person into another.

Social identities are not the only factor implicated in the processes whereby young people come to prefer one understanding of virginity loss over another. Women and men learn about virginity loss from parents, peers, popular culture, schools, and religious institutions. When these sources of information disagree about the meaning of virginity loss, what close friends or other peers believe typically outweighs the attitudes of other sources, parents included. Contrary to common assumptions, pop- ular culture tends to reinforce, rather than determine, beliefs. Although people are exposed to diverse understandings of virginity through mass

media, they selectively attend to the messages that match their current in- clinations. For example, Kelly Lewis and Emma McCabe learned about virginity loss from the same movies, magazines, and especially the teen novel,
Forever
; but Kelly focused on images that framed virginity as a gift, while Emma concentrated on those that treated virginity as a stigma.

Generational differences are also very important. The resurgence of moral conservatism, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the growing visibility of les- bigay communities, and second- and third-wave feminism all helped to transform Americans’ approaches to virginity loss. My research reveals clear differences by generation, with younger men being more likely than older men to interpret virginity as a gift, and younger people of all sexual identities being more likely than their “elders” to define virginity loss in same-sex inclusive ways. Younger-generation lesbigay people are also more likely to come out at earlier ages, to eschew heterosexual “experi- mentation,” and to insist on applying a uniform definition to virginity loss with same- and other-sex partners. Given the likelihood that lesbigay youth will become increasingly visible, moral conservatives’ efforts notwithstanding, it is likely that definitions of sex and sexual acts, vir- ginity included, will continue to change, even broaden, in the years ahead. Several decades have passed since premarital virginity was the all-but- undisputed ideal of the land. American society has changed tremendously in that time, such that proposals to turn back the clock are altogether un- realistic.
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Indeed, a great many Americans would not wish to return to bygone views of virginity loss. It is important that young women and men feel able to embrace virginity, if and when they wish to do so. But at- tempts to declare a new era of Virgin Cool and refusals to provide accu- rate information about sexual health are no more likely to prevent teenagers from having sex today than they were in the 1950s, when a ma- jority of Americans had sex before marriage. Rather, we would do well to give teenagers the tools to help make their virginity-loss experiences as

healthy, safe, and happy as possible.

Methodological Appendix
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Telling Truths about Virginity Loss

One of the questions I’ve often been asked about this project is, “How can you be sure that the people you interviewed told the truth?” Study participants’ truthfulness is of perennial concern of all social scientists; and this concern is magnified by the private nature of sexuality in Amer- ican culture. Beyond the possibility that participants may lie outright, researchers must confront the fact that accounts of any event inevitably entail a certain degree of interpretation. When people share stories about their experiences, they frequently highlight different things de- pending on their audience, their reason for telling, and even their mood at the time. Sometimes these choices are conscious, sometimes not. Peo- ple may also reinterpret their experiences over time; what they see as the truth about their lives at one point in time may differ from what they understand to be true at another juncture. Drawing on postmodernist theorists’ insights about the nature of reality and representation, Nor- man Denzin, Catherine Riessman, and other experts in qualitative soci- ological methodology recommend that researchers accept that the same story can be told in different truthful ways, rather than struggling in vain to uncover the one single “Truth” about a given event.
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Truth, in this singular sense, does not exist; but a scholar who recognizes the mul- tiplicity of truth, and the inevitability of (re)interpretation, can learn a great deal about the meanings and purposes of specific accounts told under particular circumstances. This is not to suggest that accounts can never be false. For instance, one would be wise to doubt the truthful- ness of a person who claimed to have lost her virginity on the planet Mars.