Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences

Notes

Notes notes to the introduction 1. Bernstein, 2004. Headlines cited: Jeff Barker, “A Is for Abstinence,” Baltimore Sun, July 26, 2001; Lorraine Ali and Jule Scelfo, “Choosing Virginity,” Newsweek, December 9, 2002; Alex Tresniowski, Shermakaye Bass, Vicki Bane, and John Slania, “Like a Virgin (Sort Of),” People, September 9, 2002; Tamar Lewin, “More in High School Are Virgins, Study Finds,” New York Times, September 29, 2002; Tamar Lewin, “1 in 5 Teenagers Has Sex before 15, Study Finds,” New York Times, May 20, 2003; Michelle Tauber et al., “Young Teens and Sex,” People, January 31, 2005. 2. Ingrassia 1994, 59. 3. Ingrassia 1994, 64. 4. “Conservative Christian” is an umbrella term referring to conservative Protestants—denominations with evangelical and fundamentalist worldviews (e.g., Southern Baptists, Pentacostals) and doctrinally conservative groups such as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses—as well as to Roman Catholics with similarly conservative beliefs about social issues like abortion (Roof and McKinney 1987). 5. On changing depictions of adolescent sexuality in movies, see Douglas 1994, Lewis 1992. On virginity-loss films specifically, see Carpenter 2002. 6. The plotline involving Donna’s virginity was already pronounced in 1994 (Rexfelis). 7. Singh and Darroch 1999; Ku et al. 1998; U.S. Census Bureau 2001. 8. As in a Penthouse Forum (1985) letter titled, “De-Virginized—Both Ways” (i.e., through vaginal and anal sex). 9. For example, when survey researchers use the term “virgin” as shorthand for people who have never had vaginal sex or when sex educators advocate abstinence as the best protection against pregnancy and STIs, they imbue virginity loss with exceptional significance. 10. Solin 1996, 93. 11. Berger and Wenger (1973, 667) proposed to treat virginity as a social category rather than as a “residual category of . . . experience,” but few researchers 217 have followed suit. Given my interest in virginity loss as a cultural phenomenon (“What is this thing people call virginity loss?”), as well as an experience, I have chosen to retain the conventional term. That said, many study participants did not experience the transition called virginity loss as a loss of something either positive or negative. 12. Much of this literature additionally assumes that people who have had coitus once are thereafter “sexually active” (despite research indicating that first coitus is frequently isolated) and tends to ignore activities like oral and anal sex when designating who is sexually active. For a critique and alternative approach, see Singh and Darroch 1999. 13. A handful of popular volumes on virginity loss have been published (Fleming and Fleming 1975; Bouris 1993; Crosier 1993), along with a psychoanalytic volume (Holtzman and Kulish 1997) and two memoirs (McCarthy 1997; Wolf 1997). Two early monographs were poorly documented, largely speculative , and focused almost exclusively on women (de Lys 1960; Nemecek 1958). 14. Studies addressing subjective aspects of first sex among heterosexual women and men include those by Holland, Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996; Rubin 1990; Sprecher, Barbee, and Schwartz 1995. Studies looking at first sex among women of various sexual orientations include Brumberg 1997, Thompson 1995, Tolman 1994. Wight 1994 explores sexuality among heterosexual Scottish boys. 15. Foucault (1978), among others, would argue that the scientific study arises out of, and enables, the impulse to social control. 16. Berger and Wenger 1973; Bogart et al. 2000; Kelly 2000. 17. Following Carrington’s (1999) example, I use the increasingly common term “lesbigay,” which includes people who identify as lesbian, gay, and bisexual , as an occasional alternative to variants of the more cumbersome expression, “gay, lesbian, and bisexual.” 18. Elder 1996; Hart 1995. 19. Further information about study participants and my research methods can be found in chapter 2 and the Methodological Appendix. 20. These designations by sexual identity are based on participants’ self-descriptions at the time of the interview. Presumably, anyone I interviewed could reevaluate their understanding of their sexual identity at some later juncture. No one I interviewed identified as queer without also identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. 21. I chose to sample according to social class and religious background, rather than current status or practice, because people typically lose their virginity while they are dependent on their parents (or newly independent). However, my analyses take current socioeconomic status and religious beliefs and practice into account. I measured social class background by parents’ occupations and educational attainment. 218 | Notes to the Introduction 22. More specifically, I used a theoretical sampling strategy; see...