Read Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences Online
Authors: Laura Carpenter
9. Turner 1969, 103.
In general, an initiate’s control over a rite of passage can be limited by her relative ignorance about the status she hopes to assume.
Some passages, like marriage, are accomplished through formal institu- tions and agents (e.g., clergy and state officials), whereas others are achieved through informal channels (Glaser and Strauss 1971).
Two-fifths of the women I interviewed and one-fifth of the men favored the process metaphor when they lost their virginity; however, men and women were almost equally likely
ever
to employ it (61 percent and 52 percent, respec- tively).
Glaser and Strauss (1971) advocate analyzing status passages in terms of variation in desirability, irrevocability, and inevitability, all of which affect the way people approach a passage. Insofar as contemporary Western societies treat sexual activity as an essential ingredient of human happiness (Foucault 1978; Weeks 1985) and as few Americans pursue lifelong celibacy (Donnelly et al. 2001; Laumann et al. 1994), we would expect virginity loss to be perceived as desirable and inevitable.
15. Rich 1980.
Savin-Williams 2003.
One was Tessa Hauser, a 32-year-old White lesbian, who lost her virgin- ity with her first girlfriend, Becka. Tessa (who had dated men before) concealed her virginity from Becka, who’d been openly gay for years, until after they had sex because she feared Becka would be reluctant to have sex with a woman who’d never had sex with a woman. The other was Tricia Watson, a 20-year-old White heterosexual student, whose curiosity about sex inspired her to lose her virginity with a stranger whom she never expected to see again, and with whom (ironically) she preferred not to share something so personal as her sexual his- tory.
Four years later, when I interviewed Meghan, she said both of her parents had indicated that they knew she was having sex, but they avoided acknowledg- ing it explicitly.
Van Gennep 1908, 175. Van Gennep called first-time rites of passage “founding ceremonies.”
Ten White women (of 26), 2 Asian American women (of 2), one African American woman (of 3), and one Latina (of 2) interpreted virginity as a process at the time of virginity loss. (These figures include virgins.)
Tolman 1996; Wyatt 1997.
On these sexual stereotypes, see Espiritu (2000). The desire to reject both stereotypes is one possible reason that the two Asian American women I inter- viewed approached their own virginity loss as a rite of passage; their self-identifi- cation as bisexual may also have played a role. The reader should bear in mind that I interviewed too few Asian women to reach definitive conclusions about how their interpretations and experiences might differ from women from other backgrounds.
Tom’s sexual career exemplifies Glaeser’s (2004) account of the process of adopting a new understanding of a situation after one’s previous understand- ing has been invalidated (see Introduction).
It is interesting that Tom didn’t simply apply the gift metaphor to gay marriage, a topic already on gay activist agendas in the early 1990s; rather, he
Glaser and Strauss 1971.
Herdt and Boxer 1993.
Despite coming out to himself early in college, “I never said that I was gay to anyone out loud until I was 22.”
Raymond 1994; Savin-Williams 2003. Even fewer teens and young adults openly identified as gay in the early and mid-1990s, when the participants in question lost their virginity.
Specifically, 71 percent of lesbians, 11 percent of gay men, and 50 per- cent of bisexuals saw virginity as a process
at the time
of virginity loss, compared with 33 percent of heterosexual women and men (these figures include virgins). In addition to Tom, 3 of the 4 lesbians who saw their own virginity loss as a process explicitly mentioned the intertwining of the coming out and virginity- loss processes, as did one of the 3 bisexual women (a virgin). Although 2 of the 4 lesbians and 2 of the 3 bisexual women in the passage group came out
after
los- ing their virginity, it appears that their understandings were influenced by sexual identity, insofar as they were, more or less consciously, already in the process of recognizing and dealing with their desires for same-sex partners.
Concurrent passages may complicate or facilitate one another; see Glaser and Strauss 1971.
Comedian Ellen DeGeneres came out personally and as a television char- acter, to great fanfare, on her eponymous sitcom in 1996. Lesbigay youth groups across the U.S. sponsored “Come out with Ellen” parties and the like (Walters 2001).
Phelan 1989; Stein and Plummer 1994.
Herdt and Boxer 1993; Savin-Williams 2003.
Even if they had thought about STIs, Abby reasoned retrospectively, the risk of contracting one through woman-woman sex was very low. Lesbians’ deci- sions about safer sex represent one of the few issues where sexual identity clearly outweighed interpretive stances in influencing sexual behavior.
Glaser and Strauss (1971) recommend analyzing status passages in terms of variations in duration, rate, significance, desirability, irrevocability, and in- evitability. About half of the processers, including Jennifer and Abby Rosen, viewed virginity loss as a long and gradual passage. Two-thirds explicitly said that they had expected to feel transformed by virginity loss; several others hadn’t expected to feel transformed, but did.
Interestingly, the only female character to survive in
Halloween
(and many other horror films) is a virgin, a fact made much of in the 1997 satire/homage
Scream,
and analyzed by film scholar Carol Clover (1992).
The content of sex education programs in U.S. public schools varies tremendously by region and school district, in part because school curricula are
Twelve of the 17 in this group lost their virginity within a year (in either direction) of high school graduation.
Although Jennifer had known it was possible to get HIV from heterosex- ual sex (it was 1990), preventing pregnancy had been her primary concern.
Glaser and Strauss 1971. Andy’s supportive, encouraging response to Jennifer’s distress also seems to exemplify this tendency.
Weis 1985; Sprecher, Barbee, and Schwartz 1995.
Sharon Thompson (1990, 1995) found that adolescent girls who dis- cussed sex openly with their mothers—as Jennifer did—were disproportionately likely to be “pleasure narrators.” Jennifer’s story supports Thompson’s con- tention with regard to emotional pleasure if not physical enjoyment.
Turner 1969.
Espin 1984; Hovell et al. 1994; Raffaelli and Ontai 2001.
Aneshensel, Fielder, and Becerra 1989; Upchurch et al. 1998.
Repeating an activity that engendered a transition, in order to make it harder to undo or back away from (i.e., to “stick” it), is especially common in the case of desirable but tenuous passages (Glaser and Strauss 1971).
One-fifth of working-class men and women I interviewed drew on the process frame at the time of their virginity loss, compared with over one-third of their middle-class counterparts.
notes t o chapter 6
1. Mast 2001, 16.
Advertisement copy (Respect, Inc. 2004).
SR defines sex as “the physical and personal act of male and female genital union, sexual intercourse” (Mast 2001, 6). See also Teen-Aid’s high school text,
Sexuality, Commitment, and Family,
and the Human Sexuality: Values and Choices curriculum, especially Teen Talk. For a review of curricula, see U.S. House of Representatives 2004.
Mast 2001, 6, 12. This rhetoric resonates richly with that of 1890s-era so- cial purity campaigns (see chapter 2).
5. Mast 2001, 80.
Dailard 2001; Landry, Kaeser, and Richards 1999.
Definitions adapted from Landry, Kaeser, and Richards 1999. A 2004 study commissioned by California representative Henry Waxman found that 11 of the 13 curricula used most often by SPRANS grantees “contain false, mislead- ing, or distorted information about reproductive health” (U.S. House of Repre- sentatives 2004, i).
Sex Respect
often cites scientific research in misleading ways (Moran 2000; Trudell and Whatley 1991). For example, despite acknowledging
Landry, Kaeser, and Richards 1999.
Although only 69 percent of school districts have formal policies requiring some form of sex education, 86 percent of students live in districts that require sex education (Landry, Kaeser, and Richards 1999).
Kaplan and Springen 1991; Mast 2001.
Landry, Kaeser, and Richards 1999. See also Advocates for Youth and SIECUS 2001.
Darroch, Landry, and Singh 2000.
Funding restrictions, local officials’ desire to avoid controversy, and dis- comfort and lack of training on the part of teachers have all contributed to self- censorship (Irvine 2002).
14. KFF 2000.
Dailard 2001; Landry, Kaeser, and Richards 1999.
Advocates for Youth and SIECUS 2001; Irvine 2002; Moran 2000; Wal- ters 2001. Although moral conservatives historically opposed any sex education in public schools, arguing that such decisions should be left to families, their emergence as a major political force in the late 1970s combined with widespread recognition, in the mid-1980s, that the HIV/AIDS epidemic required a sex edu- cation-type response, to produce their current stance.
Title V was passed by Congress as a provision of the 1996 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Act (TANF). Although TANF has expired, Con- gress reauthorized the welfare system and Title V.
California has been a consistent hold-out from Title V funding (Advo- cates for Youth and SIECUS 2001); in 2004, Arizona and Pennsylvania followed suit.
Section 510(b) of Title V of the Social Security Act: L. 104–193. More specifically, “Title V and AFLA require that programs not be inconsistent with any of the eight points, SPRANS-CBAE requires that all programs funded be re- sponsive to each of the eight points” (SIECUS Legislative Action Center).
SIECUS 1996, 7. SIECUS’s Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Edu- cation are, properly speaking, not a sex education curriculum but a highly de- tailed guide to developing one.
Advocates for Youth and SIECUS 2001; Dailard 2001.
Moran (2000) and Trudell and Whatley (1991) contend that popular public school abstinence-only curricula are implicitly imbued with Christian morality. Note also the phrase “gifts from up above” in this chapter’s opening quote.
True Love Waits (TLW). The page goes on to describe the dangers of
By 2002, the TLW pledge had been reworded, with “a commitment to
. . . my friends” replacing “to . . . those I date,” “sexually abstinent” replacing “sexually pure,” and “biblical marriage relationship” replacing “covenant. . . .” TLW materials are promoted primarily at churches; however, “pledge clubs” can be found in some public schools (Bearman and Brückner 2001). Like Sex Re- spect, TLW promotes secondary virginity for unmarried people who have al- ready had sex.
Crim.
True Love Waits.
Conservative Protestant denominations rank among the fastest-growing religious groups in America and, despite representing a minority of the American populace, they have become politically very powerful (American Religion Data Archive; Woodberry and Smith 1998).
In fact, for a conservative Christian, Carrie struck me as remarkably open-minded, sex positive, and gay friendly. For instance, she explained her be- lief that it was possible to lose one’s virginity with a same-sex partner by saying, “I wouldn’t want to just categorize [virginity loss] to one kind of physical act . . . because that takes away so much of the beauty and significance of what sex is.”
See chapter 3. Both Carrie and Kate told me they knew men who shared their beliefs; however, I was unable to locate any who were willing to take part in the study. Additional factors distinguishing people who see virginity as an act of worship from those who see it as a gift include the former group’s absolute in- sistence on retaining virginity until marriage, their understanding of God as the rightful decision maker in the realm of personal relationships, and their very re- strictive stance on sexual intimacy, including kissing, before betrothal or mar- riage.
According to my and other studies (Sprecher and Regan 1996; Bearman and Brückner 2001).
Gallagher and Smith 1999; Stacey 1991.
Of the 6 currently practicing conservative Protestants, 4 had been raised in such denominations; another 4 study participants had withdrawn from their churches/denominations as adults. Thus, I interviewed a total of 10 former or currently practicing conservative Protestants.
My sampling methods prohibit making generalizations about the preva- lence of particular beliefs; more study is needed.
Woodberry and Smith 1998; Irvine 2002.
Widmer, Treas, and Newcomb 1998; Dailard 2001; Harding and Jencks 2003.
The relative popularity of the gift metaphor among conservative/devout Christians is consistent with conservative denominations’ promotion of tradi- tional gender and sexual ideologies, and the gift metaphor’s Christian roots.
Thornton and Camburn 1989; Paradise et al. 2001; Petersen and Don- nenwerth 1997; Brewster et al. 1998; Meier 2003.
Kirby 2001, 2002. The Effective Research and Programs Task Force of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy considered program evalua- tions to be scientifically sound if they used an experimental or quasi-experimen- tal design, waited a minimum of 6 months after the program to collect follow-up data, had a sample size of at least 100 youth, and measured effects on behavior rather than attitudes or intentions.
Kirby 2001; U.S. House of Representatives 2004; Advocates for Youth and SIECUS 2001. One independent review (i.e., conducted by a party other than the curriculum’s producer or a partisan think-tank) found that, of 10 pro- grams evaluated as successful by the conservative Heritage Foundation, only one (
Not Me, Not Now
) was associated with delayed sex and lower pregnancy rates; yet, the study design couldn’t rule out alternative explanations (Kirby 2002).
In 2001, 62.3 percent of U.S. twelfth-grade girls and 60.7 percent of boys reported having had vaginal sex (Grunbaum et al. 2003). About 80 percent of young adults (18 to 24) report having had vaginal sex (KFF 2003). For data on condom effectiveness, see World Health Organization 2000.
CDC 1997. The report also notes that “studies of hundreds of couples show that consistent condom use is possible when people have the skills and mo- tivations to do so.”
Grunseit and Kippax 1993; Kirby 1997, 2002; Jemmott, Jemmott, and Fong 1998. Evaluations often group comprehensive and abstinence-plus pro- grams together because both provide accurate information about contraception.
Advocates for Youth and SIECUS 2001; Office of National AIDS Policy 2000. In 2003, allegedly under pressure from “higher-ups in the Bush adminis- tration,” the CDC discontinued Programs That Work and removed from its Web site all information about the proven-to-be-effective comprehensive sex educa- tion programs (Union of Concerned Scientists 2004).
Alford 2003; Singh and Darroch 2000. Ages at first sex are slightly higher among Europeans.
David et al. 1990; Singh and Darroch 2000; Planned Parenthood Federa- tion of America 1999. European teens also use more effective methods of contra- ception than their U.S. counterparts.
Jones et al. 1985.
On media, see Carpenter 1998, 2001b, Jones et al. 1985. On adults’ atti-
tudes, see Schalet 1998; Harding and Jencks 2003; Widmer, Treas, and New- comb 1998.
Carpenter 2001b; David et al. 1990; Widmer, Treas, and Newcomb 1998; Schalet 1998; Schmidt et al. 1994.
Patterns of religiosity account in part for these cross-national differences in outlook and public policy (Furstenberg 1998; Westoff 1988).
As per provision E of the Title V definition of abstinence education. Note that the term used by the definition’s authors—“likely”—is open to a wide range of interpretations.
Advocates for Youth and SIECUS 2001, 15.