Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (3 page)

I deliberately chose to speak with a diverse group.
22
Interviewing roughly equal numbers of men and women, and many more lesbians, gays, and bisexuals than are representative of the U.S. population over- all, permitted me to compare virginity-loss experiences across gender and sexual identities more directly than previous researchers have done. Other aspects of social identity, such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic sta- tus, and religion, have historically also shaped individuals’ approaches to sexual life. Collecting the stories of people from a wide range of back- grounds therefore allowed me to develop a more comprehensive picture of the varied meanings of virginity loss available to Americans today, and of the processes through which they come to prefer one approach over another.
23

I also actively sought interviews with men and women who described themselves as secondary or born-again virgins (the terms are used inter- changeably in popular parlance), both to broaden my vision of the mean- ings that could be applied to virginity and to benefit from the capacity of “exceptional” cases to illuminate deep cultural assumptions.
24
One man and three of the women I interviewed described themselves as current or former secondary virgins.

Speaking with people who came of age before the mid-1980s, as well as those who came of age afterward, enabled me to explore the impact of

broad social changes on individual sexual careers and to remedy earlier studies’ neglect of this younger group.
25
Just under half of the people I in- terviewed were born between 1962 and 1972; they were 26 or older when I interviewed them. The remaining half were born between 1973 and 1980; they were 25 or younger when I met them. Sociologists recognize that people’s life stories bear the profound imprint of the context in which they grow up.
26
Everyone in the study came of age after the sexual revo- lution of the late 1960s to early 1970s. The “older” generation turned 13 between 1975 and 1985, the “younger” generation between 1986 and 1993. Thus, the older group learned about sex and virginity loss primar- ily in the era before HIV/AIDS, whereas their younger counterparts came of age during or after the transformation the epidemic wrought in Amer- ican sexual life.
27
How these generational differences affect virginity-loss experiences is a theme threading throughout this book.

Another watershed moment in U.S. sexual history occurred during my study, after I had interviewed about half of my study participants. In late January 1998, allegations of a sexual relationship between President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky surfaced in the news media. The ensuing controversy over whether “sex” encompassed fella- tio inaugurated something of a national consciousness-raising about the definitional ambiguity of sex and, therefore, of virginity loss.
28
I suspect that this incident may change the way Americans define virginity loss, but doubt that it will alter the meanings people assign to virginity. Nor do I believe that it greatly affected people’s assessments of virginity-loss expe- riences that had already happened.
29
However, given that the entire coun- try seemed to be discussing the meanings and mechanics of sex, not to mention dress stains and cigars, I imagine that some of the men and women I spoke with may have been more forthcoming about the details of their sexual lives.

Because I did not identify participants using probability-based meth- ods, my findings cannot be generalized to young Americans as a whole.
30
In particular, I cannot make claims about the
prevalence
of beliefs and be- haviors in the population overall. Nor was I able to speak with enough individuals from specific racial/ethnic minority and religious groups, within broader gender and sexual identity categories (e.g., African Amer- ican gay men, Jewish heterosexual women), to draw more than sugges- tive conclusions about the relationship of these social statuses to virgin- ity loss. However, because my sample was quite diverse, I am confident that the range and variety of perceptions, processes, and broad patterns

by gender, sexuality, and other aspects of identity that I discovered through my interviews are present among other young adults who grew up in the metropolitan United States between the mid-1970s and late 1990s.
31

The first people I interviewed were introduced to me by colleagues, friends, and contacts at local organizations, such as a community center for gay youth. At the conclusion of these and every subsequent interview, I asked my informants if they could recommend other women and men who might be willing to share their virginity-loss stories with me.
32
This technique, known as chain referral or snowball sampling, was critical to the success of my study, for the personal introductions I received did much to help participants feel safe disclosing such intimate details to me.
33
I met with people wherever they felt most comfortable—often at their homes or workplaces, sometimes at my office. The interviews were conversational in style and lasted from one to three hours; I tape-recorded them with permission.
34
I began by asking people for basic information about their background, then invited them to tell me how they defined virginity loss and what it meant to them, now and in the past. We then discussed how, when, and from whom they learned about virginity loss and sexuality. The remainder of the interview focused on the person’s own sexual history, particularly their experiences related to virginity loss. Although I sometimes had to probe for information about specific topics, such as using safer sex or birth control, most people spun richly detailed narratives with little prompting.
35

Many diverse definitions of virginity loss were offered, as I show in chapter 2. Out of respect for this diversity, in subsequent chapters I defer to each individual’s understanding of when and through what sexual acts he or she lost his or her virginity, rather than imposing the conventional definition of virginity loss on their experiences.

Understanding Virginity Loss through Metaphors

Once I began asking people about virginity loss, I heard many stories that rang familiar, but many things that surprised me as well. Having grown up in a society where the meaning and purpose of sexuality was a favorite topic of debate among everyone from my high school friends to public figures across the political spectrum, I had expected to find young women and men interpreting virginity loss in different ways. Yet I was struck by

the patterns that I discovered. Although there were a few exceptions and every tale was unique in its details, all but a few of the accounts featured at least one of three metaphors, variously comparing virginity to a gift, a stigma, or a step in the process of growing up.
36
Half of the people I in- terviewed had, at some point in their lives, likened virginity to a gift, more than one-third had thought of it as a stigma, and just over half had ever viewed it as a step in a process. (Some study participants referred to this step as a rite of passage; I use the expressions interchangeably.) Two peo- ple described premarital virginity as an act of worship. Although other re- searchers have undoubtedly heard people using these metaphors to talk about virginity loss, I am the first to use them as a way of theorizing vir- ginity loss and to recognize their importance in shaping individuals’ be- liefs, choices, and experiences.

Because I wanted to know how they personally made sense of and ex- perienced virginity loss, rather than imposing my preconceived notions I used an inductive approach.
37
For example, I did not ask people whether they thought virginity resembled a gift, stigma, or process; rather, they volunteered these comparisons spontaneously as we conversed. Discov- ering that young Americans interpret virginity loss through these metaphors helped me to develop a more sophisticated and useful under- standing of people’s beliefs and behavior than has been possible through analyses linking sexual activity to broadly positive or negative attitudes toward virginity or to social characteristics (like growing up in a single- parent home). According to linguistic philosophers George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, people routinely use metaphors to make sense of every- day life; they expect the phenomena juxtaposed in a metaphor to resem- ble one another in meaningful ways.
38
In my study, I found that people who invoked the same metaphor took strikingly similar approaches to virginity loss, sharing distinctive sets of expectations, preferences, and practices—which, in turn, reflected social conventions for gifts, stigma, and rites of passage more generically. (I use the terms metaphor, under- standing, interpretation, approach, script, and frame as synonymous.)
39

Interpretations of virginity loss are also affected by gender and other aspects of one’s social identity. As sociologist Judith Lorber has noted, however, when researchers expect to find differences by gender, they can often (if inadvertently) overstate those differences while neglecting to ex- plore important similarities across gender.
40
I have therefore tried to iden- tify general patterns of beliefs and behavior before examining the effects of social identity in order to illuminate the complex relationship among

gender, sexuality, and virginity loss. Although participants’ interpretive preferences differed by gender and sexual identity, “atypical” interpreta- tions were more common than previous studies have suggested.
41
What is more, people who favored the same metaphor understood and experi- enced virginity loss in very similar ways, regardless of their social identi- ties. Yet, gender, sexuality, and other aspects of identity did lend distinc- tive nuances to virginity-loss stories within interpretive groups, in some cases affecting individuals’ feelings of control over their experiences.

The young men and women I interviewed were, as a rule, familiar with different interpretations of virginity loss. Yet most of them favored a sin- gle metaphor for virginity rather than blending interpretations or switch- ing frequently between them. This is not to say that their approaches were static or wholly bounded, however. About one-third reported adopting a new interpretation of virginity at some point in time, typically in response to new life events. Moreover, in practice, the boundaries between the metaphors and the experiences of the women and men who invoked them were fluid, even indistinct. My descriptions of these interpretive stances should, therefore, be understood as ideal types.
42

Of course, these metaphors are a part of our culture.
43
More broadly, it’s important to note that as men and women move through the world, they draw on their culture to help make sense of their experiences; to guide them as they confront various problems; to learn how to become particular kinds of people; and to differentiate themselves from others.
44
In a heterogeneous culture such as that in the contemporary United States, a single phenomenon can often be understood in multiple ways; such is the case with virginity loss.
45
Gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, so- cial class, and religion shape individuals’ understandings of virginity, both because people learn about the world from others who share their social identities and because cultures deem particular understandings ap- propriate for particular kinds of people.
46
People possess many social identities simultaneously—one can be female, Jewish, working class, and the daughter of divorced parents as well as a popular high school cheer- leader with a committed boyfriend—and, in that sense, must negotiate among conflicting sets of beliefs and expectations. Individuals may, of course, resist or reject what is expected of people “like them”; but they typically face sanctions for doing so. For instance, girls can be labeled “sluts” if they have sex without love and boys can be labeled “wimps” or even gay should they not have sex early in their adolescence. How ideas

about gender, sexuality, and other identities influence one’s understand- ing of virginity loss is a central theme of this book.

Over the course of the twentieth century, extensive social and cultural changes “eroded and destabilized long-standing relationships to create a more fragmented and individualized society.”
47
Formerly, life trajectories were largely dictated by social statuses like gender; today, Americans enjoy considerably more latitude. Just two generations ago, for instance, many middle-class White women felt constrained to choose between mar- riage, children, and homemaking and practicing a “feminine” profession while remaining a chaste spinster; today, they may embrace those tradi- tional versions of feminine identity or adopt “progressive” forms of fem- ininity by delaying or forgoing marriage, becoming single mothers or re- maining “child free,” and pursuing hitherto masculine careers. In this way, to the extent that metaphors for virginity are associated with par- ticular versions of gender, sexuality, and other identities, the experience of virginity loss becomes a vehicle through which people can cultivate preferred versions of social identities.
48
Therefore, in addition to examin- ing how social identities shape interpretive choices around virginity, this book also explores how people actively choose and use metaphors for vir- ginity to construct and enact social identities.

Which metaphor for virginity loss a person favors matters for other reasons as well. My research shows that different understandings of vir- ginity loss promote certain sexual beliefs and behaviors which, in turn, can have different effects on one’s physical health and emotional well- being. Importantly, some metaphors for virginity are more conducive to emotional and physical well-being—before, during, and after virginity loss—than others.

I will also consider how my research can inform the ongoing debate about sex education in U.S. public schools. Since the mid-1980s, two major models of sex education have been vying for dominance: those that emphasize sexual abstinence and those that present a more comprehen- sive array of information. In addition to providing different types and quantities of information about pregnancy and STI (sexually transmitted infection) prevention, the two approaches tend to promote specific inter- pretations of virginity. Abstinence-focused curricula typically depict vir- ginity as a gift to be given in marriage and frame the stigma metaphor as an unacceptable alternative, while comprehensive sex education curricula often present virginity loss as a step in a process. My comparative analy-