Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (53 page)

notes t o chapter 7

  1. World Health Organization 2002. David Satcher’s definition is quite simi- lar (U.S. Surgeon General 2001).

  2. One of the two was Carrie Matthews, profiled in chapter 6; the other was Chris Albrecht, a heterosexual Southern Baptist man who saw virginity as a gift (see chapter 3).

  3. Study by Peter Bearman and Hannah Brückner, discussed in Altman 2004. In this nationally representative survey, nearly 90 percent of teenagers who pledged virginity until marriage (as part of True Love Waits or similar cam- paigns) did have sex before marriage. Forty percent of sexually active pledgers used condoms in the last year, compared with 60 percent of nonpledgers. The study did not assess interpretive frames for virginity loss; however, the pledge is consistent with the act-of-worship and gift frames.

  4. Horowitz 1983; Lees 1986; Thompson 1995.

  5. Such feelings might, of course, be mitigated by the belief that God forgives mistakes. The only study to address this possibility suggests, based on longitudi- nal survey data, that teens who break their pledges to remain virgins until mar- riage experience similar changes in self-esteem as nonpledgers who have sex (Bearman and Brückner 2001).

  6. For a similar argument, see Furstenberg 1998.

  7. On pledger/nonpledger marriage rates, see Altman 2004; on age at mar- riage and divorce rates, see Bramlett and Mosher 2001. Abstinence-only advo- cates have recently begun explicitly to address this critique, albeit not very satis- factorily; see, e.g., http://www.sexrespect.com/FundInfo.html.

  8. Irvine 2002; Landry, Kaeser, and Richards 1999; Moran 2000. 9. Dailard 2001, 12.

  1. Union of Concerned Scientists 2004.

  2. Navarro 2004.

  3. Should moral conservatives succeed in their efforts to rescind abortion rights and limit unmarried youths’ access to contraception, young Americans (es-

    pecially women) may once again find themselves valuing virginity out of fear of unintended pregnancy and/or contracting STIs.

  4. Irvine 2002.

14. Jehl 1994.

  1. Dailard 2001.

  2. Laumann et al. 1994; Widmer, Treas, and Newcomb 1998.

  3. Hackstaff 1999.

  4. National Coalition Against Censorship 2001; Simson and Sussman 2000.

  5. Irvine 2002.

  6. U.S. House of Representatives 2004, i. The study focused on SPRANS- CBAE grantees. I suspect that this critique will result in greater medical accuracy in abstinence-only curricula rather than a shift to comprehensive programs.

  7. For example, in Wisconsin (Kaplan and Springen 1991, 69).

  8. Advocates for Youth and SIECUS 2001.

  9. Carpenter 1998; Sutton et al. 2002. They have also been the targets of moral conservative-sponsored consumer advertising boycotts intended to force the removal of such content (Larsen 1990).

  10. KFF n.d. For example, the “Entertainment Media Partnership” among the Kaiser Family Foundation, Viacom, and public health initiative, KNOW HIV/AIDS.

  11. Stern 2002; Wray and Steele 2002.

  12. In other words, virginity loss is significant because of the ways young people use virginity loss, in what they ask it, as a cultural object, to help them do. Conversely, social identities also guide and constrain people’s choice of metaphors. See Introduction.

  13. Mortimer and Larson 2002; Furstenberg et al. 2004.

  14. Elder 1987. For a similar argument, albeit one influenced by functional- ism, see Muuss 1970.

  15. For similar arguments, see Kamen 2000, Risman and Schwartz 2002.

notes t o methodological appendix

  1. Denzin 1989a; Riessman 1993.

  2. Denzin 1989b; Mies 1983; Reinharz 1983.

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