Why Women Have Sex (26 page)

—heterosexual woman, age 25

And for some women it was just not an issue at all:

Tired, but he wanted it. No big deal. I do it to him too.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

What determines whether a woman will feel happy or remorseful after engaging in consensual unwanted sex? Probably the best predictor is whether the behavior occurred because of what psychologists refer to as
approach
versus
avoidance
motives. Approach-motivated behaviors refer to acts done in an effort to achieve a positive or pleasurable experience. In the sexual arena, this would mean, for example, that a woman agrees to have unwanted sex because she wants to make her partner happy and to feel that she is a good mate. That motivation would likely result in her feeling good about her decision. Avoidance-motivated behaviors, on the other hand, refer to behaviors undertaken to avoid negative or painful outcomes. This could mean agreeing to have sex out of fear of losing one’s partner or making the partner angry or disappointed. Consenting to sex to avoid negative outcomes more often than not leads to feelings of shame and remorse.

There are also approach-motivated reasons for having sex that are focused on the woman rather than her partner. Sometimes, having sex when a woman is not really in the mood can actually “jump-start” her sex drive. Here is how two women in our study experienced this:

I had a headache and just wanted to sleep, but my boyfriend kept kissing me and pressing a bit. We were in a long-distance relationship, seeing each other for the first time in a few weeks, so I relented after not too much pressure. But once I started to respond to his pleas, I found myself getting more and more “into it,” I guess you could say.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

There have been instances where I have told my partner that I did not feel like having sex. On the occasions when I have had sex due to my partner’s insistence, it has been because his insistence came in the form of foreplay (romantic kissing, petting, etc.), and I found that I had changed my mind about wanting to have sex.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

The notion that having unwanted sex can make a woman desire sex once she gets started can most easily happen if she is in a state of
“sexual neutrality.” Being sexually neutral means not consciously thinking about or wanting to have sex, but also not being completely averse to the idea. Whether a woman’s neutrality turns into sexual desire depends on a number of things, including how skilled her partner is at foreplay, how easily her body responds to sexual stimulation, and the degree to which bodily changes that occur during arousal feel good to her psychologically as well as physiologically. And some of these factors are within a woman’s control—particularly for those women who say that they sometimes have sex to gain more sexual experience.

An American Virgin would never dare command; an American Venus would never dare exist.

—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)

 

Virginity in women has been considered a valuable commodity socially, spiritually, and even politically. Mary of the Christian New Testament may be the most famous virgin of all time. Because of her unique ability to give birth to Jesus, the son of God, without having to engage in the dirty, sinful sex part, the Virgin Mary remains the model of virtue for Christian women. But even among the nonreligious, virginity in wives, sisters, and daughters was highly valued by men. Among
the aristocracy, marrying off an undefiled daughter was a way of guaranteeing that bloodlines remained unpolluted. From an evolutionary perspective, controlling a woman’s sexual activities and preserving her virginity prior to marriage—through the chastity belts or circumcision that were described in chapter 5—was the surest way for a man to guarantee the lineage of his children. What a woman got in return for protecting her virginity was the eligibility to marry “well” and receive the necessary food, shelter, and social status that came with it. Before women were able fully to join the workforce, this was often their best option.

The importance of remaining a virgin until marriage has changed—at least in the Western world. One study tracked the importance Americans attach to a woman’s virginity from the 1930s to the end of the twentieth century. In 1939, a woman’s virginity was rated as the tenth most important of eighteen characteristics in a wife. By 1985, the importance of virginity had dropped to near the bottom of the list, and has remained there ever since. Women in our study illustrate this change:

I was in college and all my friends had experienced [sex] and I wanted to know what it was like. Thinking about how everyone in the world knew what sex was and that people started wars and killed over it . . . it made me curious and I felt a sort of “pressure” to find out about it.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

Many women in our study gladly traded in their virginity for the chance to explore their sexuality. And women said they frequently had sex because they wanted the experience—they wanted to try out new sexual techniques or positions, see what sex was like with someone other than their current partners, act out a fantasy, or improve their sex skills. Some women simply “wanted to see what all the fuss is about,” and others were just plain curious—either about their own sexual abilities or those of another person. In this chapter we discuss the motivation for, and consequences of, women’s sexual adventurism.

Despite all the fuss associated with preserving virginity, until the eighteenth century medical doctors actually warned about the perilous effects of long-term virginity. They claimed that remaining a virgin for too long could lead to ill health. The “closed” body of the virginal woman was thought to be prone to such ailments as chlorosis, a condition that caused young women to turn pale green, and “womb suffocation,” wherein the womb roamed around the body, causing disturbing “uterine fits.” In situations where girls were thought to be dangerously sexually frustrated, yet not ready to be married off, getting a dose of the supposed “health-giving” semen was obviously not an option. So medieval doctors instead suggested that trusted midwives assist the girls with masturbation. Even by today’s sexually liberal standards, this type of activity would raise more than a few eyebrows.

The value of women’s virginity shifted dramatically with the introduction of the birth control pill in 1961. The resulting freedom to have sex without the fear of pregnancy fueled the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. Indeed, there are substantial differences in the rates of premarital sex reported by women before and after the year 1960. In the landmark 1953 Kinsey report surveying nearly six thousand American women, 40 percent reported being nonvirgins before marriage. In a 1994 survey of more than 1,600 American women, approximately 80 percent of the women who were born between 1953 and 1974 reported having had premarital sex. Several studies recorded a large uptick in premarital sexual activity among women during the 1970s. The average age for a woman to lose her virginity also radically changed during this time period. In 1950, the average age for a woman to first engage in sexual intercourse—or at least admit to it—was twenty. In 2000, the average age was sixteen.

We do not really need statistics to show us how the value of virginity in North America has changed since the 1950s. We can instead look at popular culture. Recall the lyrics to the Everly Brothers’ 1957 hit “Wake Up Little Susie,” which tell the story of a couple who fell asleep in a movie theater and missed their curfew: “We fell asleep, our goose is
cooked, our reputation is shot.” The song clearly demonstrates the social ostracism associated with having premarital sex at that time. Now contrast that tale of woe with Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright),” released in 1976. The lyrics implore a virgin to yield to her desire for her lover, to “spread your wings and let me come inside.” There’s no shame in sex, and no one will stop them.

For many women in our study, virginity was considered neither sacred nor valuable. Several viewed it as something they just wanted to be done with—like taking a dose of bad-tasting cough medicine:

I sort of felt like I just wanted to get it [virginity] over with. It was fine and now I have that out of the way.

—heterosexual woman, age 25

Other women said it was something they wanted to do to fit in with their peers:

I lost my virginity at seventeen because I felt like everyone else I knew was having sex and the idea of going to college a virgin was not what everyone else was doing. I was kind of scared at the time, but in retrospect I honestly don’t regret it.

—heterosexual woman, age 21

When I was in high school, I was the last of my friends to lose her virginity. Most of them had had sex by thirteen and at sixteen I was far behind them. So in order to prove that I was not afraid of sex or intimacy, I had sex—if only to tell them I did.

—heterosexual woman, age 27

Perhaps in reaction to this cavalier attitude toward virginity among many American women, virginity—to be or not to be—has today made its way into the political realm. Former president George W. Bush approved a one-billion-dollar abstinence campaign. Although it was targeted at both men and women, many believe it was primarily intended to reinforce the idea that sex outside of marriage is a bad thing for women—regardless of how safe or consensual it might be. Slogans such
as “Would you eat a cookie that already had a bite out of it?” were intended to shame people into remaining virgins until marriage. Young people who completed abstinence programs wore silver rings to display publicly their vows of chastity. But was the program successful at changing young people’s sexual habits? The results released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2007 showed no evidence that the programs actually affected rates of sexual abstinence.

Of course, not every American woman wants to lose her virginity as soon as possible or before she gets married. A woman’s attitude toward her own and other women’s virginity is undeniably influenced by cultural and religious expectations. Cross-cultural studies of sexuality reveal important differences in both these attitudes and the rates of premarital intercourse, even between ethnic groups living in the same country. To some extent, a woman’s feelings depend on how acculturated or enmeshed she has become with the prevailing North American assumption, reflected in mass-media depictions of sexuality and most women’s actual behavior, that women have sex before marriage.