gender and the meaning and experience of virginity loss in the ...

GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002Carpenter / GENDER AND VIRGINITY LOSS

GENDER AND THE MEANINGAND EXPERIENCE OF VIRGINITYLOSS IN THE CONTEMPORARY

UNITED STATES

LAURA M. CARPENTERJohns Hopkins University

This article draws on in-depth case studies of 61womenandmenof diverse sexual identities to showhowgender, while apparently diminishing in significance, continues to shape interpretations and experi-ences of virginity loss in complexways. Althoughwomen andmen tended to assign different meanings tovirginity, those who shared an interpretation reported similar virginity-loss encounters. Each interpre-tation of virginity—as a gift, stigma, or process—featured unequal roles for virgin and partner, whichinteracted with gender differences in power to produce interpretation-specific patterns of gender subor-dination, only one of which consistently gave men power over women.

Virginity loss is widely understood, by scholars and lay people alike, as a centralevent in the process through which girls and boys become adult women and men(Gagnon and Simon 1973; Long Laws and Schwartz 1977; Solin 1996). In theUnited States, young people have traditionally assigned different meanings to vir-ginity and experienced virginity loss in divergent ways based on their gender.1

Throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, young women typi-cally perceived their virginity as precious and strove to maintain it until they weremarried or at least engaged. In contrast, young men customarily saw their virginityas neutral or even stigmatizing, and often sought to lose it outside the context of acommitted romantic relationship (D’Emilio and Freedman 1988; Rubin 1990; Wel-ter 1983).

Major social changes occurring in the 1960s and 1970s—the feminist, youthcounterculture, and gay rights movements, and the sexualization of the publicrealm—helped bring about new sexual norms and behaviors (D’Emilio and

345

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to thank Robin L. Leidner, Constance A. Nathanson, Demie Kurz, Har-old J. Bershady, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., Gloria Y. Gadsden, Sara Kinsman, Eileen Lake, SangeethaMadhavan, Shara Neidell, and Eva Skuratowicz for their assistance at various stages of this project.

REPRINT REQUESTS: Laura M. Carpenter, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of PublicHealth, Department of Population and Family Health Sciences, 615 N. Wolfe St., 4th Floor, Baltimore,MD 21205.

GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 16 No. 3, June 2002 345-365© 2002 Sociologists for Women in Society

Freedman 1988; Seidman 1991; Weeks 1985).2 Young people increasingly voicedapproval of, and engaged in, what Gagnon and Simon (1987) call “pre-premaritalsex”—sex with partners whom they did not expect to marry (Hofferth, Kahn, andBaldwin 1987; Reiss 1967; Zelnik and Shah 1983). This transformation was espe-cially pronounced among young women, as they had formerly been less permissivethan men. Yet traditional gendered approaches to sexuality and virginity loss didnot disappear so much as take on new configurations, becoming a new sexual dou-ble standard (Moffatt 1987; Rubin 1990).

It was in this period of change that adolescents and young adults became staplesubjects of sexuality research (Ericksen 1999). Virginity loss, almost invariablydefined as the first time a person engages in vaginal intercourse, has been a frequenttopic in this literature. The preponderance of research has addressed aspects ofearly sexual life that are easily quantifiable and seen as having clear implicationsfor public health, such as the ages at which young women first risk pregnancy byengaging in vaginal sex. Despite routinely enumerating differences and similaritiesbetween women and men, however, most scholars working in this vein have failedto analyze early sexual encounters through a gender lens (Christopher and Cate1985; Zelnik and Shah 1983). Studies concerned with the subjective aspects ofearly sexuality, though rare by comparison (di Mauro 1995), have been far moresensitive to the gendered nature of human experience. Feminist scholars in particu-lar have done much to illuminate the ways gender differences in social power shapesexuality in adolescence and young adulthood (Fine 1988; Horowitz 1983; Rubin1990; Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994).

Studies of early sexuality in the 1970s and 1980s found that young women,while more permissive than in previous decades, continued to value virginity andpredicate sexual activity on love and committed romantic relationships (though sel-dom on marriage), whereas young men continued to express disdain for virginity,engage in sexual activity primarily out of curiosity and desire for physical pleasure,and welcome opportunities for casual sex (Anderson Darling, Davidson, andPassarello 1992; Christopher and Cate 1985; Holland Bollerud, BoyntonChristopherson, and Schultz Frank 1990; Laumann et al. 1994; Moffatt 1987;Rubin 1990). Many women reported feeling disappointed when their own experi-ences failed to fulfill the “romantic fantasy” of the “first time,” fantasies in whichyoung men rarely if ever indulged (Rubin 1990; Thompson 1984). Young men, bycontrast, typically saw virginity loss as a rite of passage entailing physical perfor-mance and the achievement of manhood, themes largely absent from youngwomen’s accounts (Holland, Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996; Rubin 1990;Thompson 1984). Women also typically found virginity loss less pleasurable, phys-ically and emotionally, than did men, and their pleasure was more dependent onrelational factors, such as loving partners (Anderson Darling, Davidson, andPassarello 1992; Rubin 1990).3

Yet at the same time, some researchers found a growing number of youngwomen perceiving virginity as neither desirable nor undesirable, and a minority ofwomen even approaching virginity loss with eagerness and curiosity, expressing

346 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002

desire to “get it over with,” or seeing virginity as embarrassing or constraining(Brumberg 1997; Rubin 1990; Thompson 1984, 1990). Studies using data from theearly 1990s confirmed this picture of increasing gender similarities alongside per-sistent differences and also noted changes among men. Holland, Ramazanoglu, andThomson (1996) interviewed some young men who regretted losing their virginitywith casual partners or who felt that they had somehow missed the rite of passagethat virginity ostensibly entails. Sprecher and Regan (1996) found a growing pro-portion of young men expressing pride and happiness about being virgins (althoughthe majority reported guilt and embarrassment, in contrast with virgin women’spride and happiness) (see also Sprecher, Barbee, and Schwartz 1995). Gender dif-ferences in age at first vaginal sex, substantial in the 1960s, had almost vanished bythe 1990s (currently between age 16 and 17 for both genders) (Alan GuttmacherInstitute 1999).

The few scholars who explicitly analyzed the gendered power relations involvedin early sexual life have shown women to be disempowered relative to men. Manyyoung women experience sexual desires but feel confused about whether and howto act on them (Tolman 1994). Young women whose boyfriends pressure them forsex may feel trapped between contradictory pressures to obey male authority and toremain sexually chaste (Horowitz 1983). Holland and colleagues (1996) found thatmost young men felt empowered by virginity loss, whereas young women reportedexercising sexual agency only rarely, and then primarily through negative means,such as restraining their partners or themselves or ridiculing male sexual perfor-mance. Young women who first have sex with other women appear to enjoy greatercontrol over their experiences than women whose first partners are men but faceother perils such as homophobic reactions from their parents or peers (Brumberg1997; Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994). Yet tales of sexual agency among young het-erosexual women, while rare, do exist (Thompson 1984, 1990), and women’s dis-advantage in early sexual encounters may be diminishing over time. One recentstudy found a minority of young men actively resisting the dominant masculine role(Holland, Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996); another cited an increasing numberof young women complaining that they remained virgins because of unwilling malepartners (Sprecher and Regan 1996).

In sum, the literature on gender and the subjective aspects of early sexuality indi-cate increasing similarities among men and women alongside persistent differ-ences, the most disturbing of which is young women’s relative disempowerment atvirginity loss. But none of these studies offers a thoroughgoing, theoreticallyinformed account of which young women and men escape traditional gendered pat-terns of sexual agency or how they manage to do so. Many scholars have based theirconclusions about gender on data from women or men only (Brumberg 1997;Horowitz 1983; Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994; Wight 1994), and studies includ-ing both genders have typically neglected gay and bisexual youth (Holland,Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996; Laumann et al. 1994; Rubin 1990; Sprecher,Barbee, and Schwartz 1995; Sprecher and Regan 1996) despite anecdotal evidencethat young gays and lesbians are refashioning understandings of virginity loss to fit

Carpenter / GENDER AND VIRGINITY LOSS 347

their own experiences (Elder 1996; Hart 1995).4 Much previous research on thesubjective gendered nature of virginity loss is further limited by its reliance on dataabout encounters that occurred primarily before the emergence of HIV/AIDS as amajor public health problem, the Christian Right’s consolidation of power in theU.S. public policy arena (e.g., over publicly funded sex education programs), andthe heightened visibility of lesbian and gay culture from the mid-1990s on(Brumberg 1997; Rubin 1990; Thompson 1995). Studies using more recent datareveal the broad contours of virginity-related beliefs and behaviors but do notexplore meaning making and sexual conduct at the micro level (Sprecher, Barbee,and Schwartz 1995) or may not apply directly to the United States (Holland,Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996).

Feminist understanding of early sexuality in the United States can therefore beenhanced by an in-depth investigation of the meaning and experience of virginityloss among women and men of various sexual identities who came of age followingthe changes of the late 1980s. In this article, I draw on 61 detailed case studies, col-lected from young women and men of diverse social and sexual backgrounds, todevelop a grounded theoretical account of the complex ways that gender shapesinterpretations and experiences of virginity loss even as gender’s significance as ashaper of sexual meanings appears to be on the wane.

DEFINING VIRGINITY LOSS

In virtually every society, the first time a young person has sex with a partner isseen as a major social and sexual transition, a rite of passage constituting part of theirreversible journey from childhood to adult life (Muuss 1970; Schlegel 1995).Scholars and lay people usually call this transition virginity loss. Although beliefsabout the meaning of this transition and the types of sexual encounters necessary toachieve it have varied considerably over time and across cultures, scholarly andpopular writers concerned with virginity loss have almost invariably defined it asthe first time a man or woman engages in vaginal-penile intercourse (Jessor andJessor 1975; Solin 1996; Sprecher and Regan 1996; Weis 1985). Not surprisingly,most discussions focus on first coitus, an experience that falls into, but does notconstitute the entire category of, phenomena that real-life women and men refer toas virginity loss.

My goal in this study was not to judge which sexual encounters meet the criteriafor virginity loss and which do not but rather to explore the range of experiences thatordinary people refer to as virginity loss today. Therefore, in the analyses that fol-low, I bracket (or decline to consider) the physiological definition of virginity lossso as to draw explicit attention to the diverse meanings young men and womenattach to the transition and to show how these meanings are socially created. Givenmy interest in virginity loss not only as an experience (“What do people do whenthey lose their virginity?”) but also as a cultural phenomenon (“What is this thingpeople call virginity loss?”), I have chosen to retain the conventional term (cf. DeVault


1992). Convention notwithstanding, however, many study participants did notexperience the transition called virginity loss as a loss of something either positiveor negative. Perhaps a new term is in order, but that is not my purpose here.

A detailed analysis of study participants’ definitions of virginity loss is beyondthe scope of this article (see Carpenter 2001); however, a brief overview will helpprepare the reader for the discussion to follow. Everyone who took part in my studybelieved that a person could lose his or her virginity the first time he or she engagedin vaginal sex. However, most also contended that other kinds of genital sex could,under some circumstances, result in virginity loss. Four-fifths of participantsbelieved that both men and women could lose their virginity with a same-sex part-ner, through fellatio, cunnilingus, or anal intercourse, as appropriate. Lesbian, gay,and bisexual respondents were more likely than their heterosexual counterparts (95and 75 percent, respectively) to include same-sex encounters in their definitions ofvirginity loss, consistent with the lesser salience of vaginal sex to people whosepotential sexual partners include members of the same sex.5 (Every nonvirgin het-erosexual participant reported losing her or his virginity through coitus, comparedwith only one-third of lesbians and gay men.) At the same time, many people Ispoke with felt that nonconsensual sexual encounters would not constitute virginityloss or would do so only technically. Consistent with women’s greater susceptibil-ity to rape and the greater likelihood that women respondents had personally beenthe victims of forced sex, two-thirds of the women argued that rape could never orcould only technically result in virginity loss, compared with half of the men.6

DATA AND METHOD

To explore the relationship between gender and virginity loss, in 1997 and 1998,I conducted in-depth interviews with 61 women and men from diverse back-grounds. Of the 33 women in the study, 22 (67 percent) self-identified as heterosex-ual, 7 (21 percent) as lesbians, and 4 (12 percent) as bisexual. Of the 28 men, 17 (61percent) described themselves as heterosexual, 9 (32 percent) as gay, and 2 (7 per-cent) as bisexual. Of the participants, 48 (79 percent) were white, 6 (10 percent)were African American, 4 (7 percent) were Latino, and 3 (5 percent) were AsianAmerican. Two-thirds came from middle-class backgrounds and one-third fromworking-class families.7 One-third were raised as mainline Protestants, one-fourthas Roman Catholics, one-sixth as evangelical Protestants, one-eighth as Jewish,and one-tenth without religious training. Most respondents lived within two hoursof Philadelphia at the time of the study, but nearly half had grown up and becomesexually active elsewhere in the United States. Of the 56 participants who describedthemselves as nonvirgins at the time of the study, 90 percent reported losing theirvirginity during adolescence, at age 16.4 on average. Respondents ranged in agefrom 18 to 35. I chose to interview young adults (older than 17) rather than adoles-cents to better situate virginity loss in the broader context of individuals’ sexualcareers and to explore the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on approaches to


virginity loss. (The youngest participants, at 18, turned 13 in 1992; the oldest, at 35,in 1975; HIV/AIDS was not widely recognized as a serious health risk for hetero-sexuals and teens until the late 1980s.)

To locate study participants, I used the purposive snowball sampling method. Ibegan by identifying initial respondents through professional contacts (school-teachers and counselors, health care providers, religious leaders, and administra-tive staff at local colleges) and special-interest organizations (such as a supportgroup for gay youth and an evangelical Christian student association). Then, at theend of each interview, I asked my informant to recommend others who might alsobe willing to participate. Snowball sampling facilitated my investigation of the sub-jective aspects of virginity loss in several ways. People are often less reluctant toparticipate in research on topics perceived as private, such as sexuality, when theyare recruited through their own social networks (Sterk-Elifson 1994; Thompson1995). Relying on personal referrals additionally helped me locate gay and bisexualwomen and men, who are relatively invisible, numerically rare, and unevenly dis-tributed throughout the larger U.S. population (Biernacki and Waldorf 1981).

Because snowball samples are neither random nor statistically representative,they do not allow the researcher to establish the overall distribution of specificbeliefs or behaviors in a broader population. Yet sufficiently diverse snowball sam-ples are well suited for illuminating the range of ideas and experiences available in agiven social group. As a way of ensuring a diverse sample, and to offset the poten-tial for bias resulting from the relative homogeneity of most social networks, Ibegan multiple snowballs in each of the four main gender/sexual identity categoriesand interviewed no more than five people in a given network. Seventeen snowballscomposed the sample; most contained two or three members. As the interviewingprogressed, I heard the same general themes repeated, again and again, by peoplefrom different social networks. This phenomenon, which Glaser and Strauss (1967)term “saturation,” gave me confidence that I had discovered the primary approachesto virginity currently circulating in the United States. Given the goals of my study,the advantages of snowball sampling outweighed its drawbacks.

I personally interviewed every participant between April 1997 and October1998. Questions were primarily open ended, enabling respondents to speak freelyabout what they saw as the salient aspects of virginity loss. At the same time, everyinterview covered the same categories of information: learning about virginity andsex, personal sexual histories, and social interactions related to virginity and sexu-ality. This open-ended, semistructured format enabled me not only to collect richdata on subjective understandings and experiences of virginity loss, including thosethat defy easy categorization, but also to draw comparisons among respondents.

To code and analyze the interview data, I relied primarily on the systematic pro-cedures referred to as grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967). This approachstresses the inductive development of analytic categories, allowing the researcherto focus on the meaning of experiences to study participants. It also helps theresearcher to avoid making a priori assumptions that can inadvertently lead toneglecting unanticipated findings or overemphasizing expected gender differences


(Lorber 1993). To further minimize these risks, I strove to identify general patternsin the data prior to evaluating them in terms of gender. This two-tiered approachenabled me to develop a highly nuanced analysis of factors underlying variationswithin and across gender.

As I perused the interviews for salient themes and patterns, I was struck by thefact that my informants spoke about virginity loss in fundamentally metaphoricalterms. I did not ask participants whether they thought virginity resembled a gift,stigma, or process; rather, they volunteered these comparisons spontaneously as weconversed. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), people routinely use meta-phors to make sense of everyday life. When people think metaphorically, they com-pare two phenomena and anticipate similarities between them. Thus, people whodescribe virginity as a gift will expect “giving their virginity to someone” to resem-ble gift giving more generically. Lakoff and Johnson’s theoretical framework sug-gested that I could gain deeper insight into my informants’ expectations for andexperiences of virginity loss by drawing on social scientific research correspondingto the metaphors they invoked.

In the pages that follow, I present findings about interpretations and experiencesof virginity loss in turn; each section is organized around the three primary interpre-tive frames—gift, stigma, and process—invoked by study participants.

FINDINGS

Interpretations of Virginity Loss

When describing what virginity loss meant to them, study participants drew pri-marily on three distinctive metaphors, or interpretive frames, variously comparingvirginity to a gift, a stigma, or a step in the longer process of growing up.8 Theseinterpretive frames are best understood as ideal types (Weber 1946). In practice, theboundaries between the frames, and the experiences of the people who used them,were somewhat indistinct. Moreover, about one-third of respondents told me thattheir perspectives on virginity had changed over the course of their sexual careers,most often in response to new experiences.9 Although women and men favored dif-ferent interpretations on average, their approaches to virginity loss were far fromdichotomous.

Half of the people I spoke with said that at some point in their lives, they hadthought of virginity as a gift. To Danielle Rice (27, heterosexual, white) (all namesare pseudonyms), virginity loss meant “that you’re willing to give up something pri-vate of yourself. . . . [It’s] something of mine that I choose to give up, that I can onlygive up once.” Danielle and the other respondents in this group saw virginity as ahighly valuable gift, due to its nonrenewable nature and their sense that it was partof the self that would be forfeited on giving. They moreover described the idealvirginity-loss experience in terms that reflected conventions of gift giving moregenerically. In particular, they believed that a person receiving the gift of virginity


was obliged to reciprocate with a gift of similar value (Gouldner 1960; Mauss 1925;Schwartz 1967). Brian Meyers (18, heterosexual, white) explained,

[There] definitely has to be just trust and most importantly reciprocity. . . . I think thatthere has to be a mutual amount of giving on both behalves, because . . . [if] somebodythinks that I do so much more or I feel so much more or . . . if you feel as though you’renot loved as much as . . . you love this other person, and you actually decide to have sexwith this person, I think you kind of feel slighted.

Brian’s emphasis on reciprocation through love and commitment was typical,although he and many others in this group said that it would be ideal if partnerscould also give their respective virginities to one another. They did not, however,believe that a return gift of virginity alone would suffice; rather, they saw commit-ment and affection (often, though not always, love) as the keys to proper reciproca-tion. This (perhaps counterintuitive) emphasis follows from what Mauss (1925)described as the ultimate goal of gift giving: establishing an ongoing chain ofexchange, every round of which strengthens the bond between the givers. Indeed,identical gifts are typically discouraged because they effectively nullify the obliga-tion to reciprocate and bring the ongoing exchange, along with the social ties it fos-ters, to an end. To many of these women and men, the gift of virginity seemed to rep-resent a particularly special (nonrenewable) instance of the gift of love, to which theappropriate response was enhanced love and commitment (which could be continu-ally exchanged and intensified as the relationship continued).

Seeing reciprocation as crucial and potentially endless—for the norm of obliga-tory reciprocity entails that every gift must be returned—women and men whointerpreted virginity as a gift stressed the importance of choosing one’s virginity-loss partner carefully. Ultimately, however, even the most selective of givers cannotforce a recipient to reciprocate against his or her wishes.10 The very structure of gift-exchange relationships thus effectively ensures that givers are always somewhat atthe mercy of recipients.

A second way of interpreting virginity—as a stigma—was mentioned byslightly more than one-third of study participants. Ettrick Anderson (19, gay, Afri-can American) recalled,

The first time I actually heard the word virgin would have to be elementary school.And it was used as a way to, like—especially with the guys, it was the cut-down of theperiod. . . . Virgin equals bad, laughed at.

Although many kinds of stigma are basically permanent, like physical deformities,virgins need not retain the stigma of virginity (Goffman 1963). Consequently, menand women who had seen their own virginity as a stigma had been intensely con-cerned with expunging it, preferably as soon as possible. Many had tried to concealtheir virginity from peers and potential sexual partners, a typical reaction to allmanner of stigma.11 People in this group stressed the importance of not incurringany additional stigmas, such as a reputation for sexual ineptitude, during the quest


to lose virginity. Marty Baker (26, heterosexual, white), for instance, rememberedworrying about “whether or not I was going to do it right.” Stigmatized people arerelatively powerless, for they perpetually face the possibility that others will iden-tify and expose their stigma, sanction them for it, and even confer new stigmas onthem. The sexual partner of a virgin may be especially well situated to identify sex-ual inexperience, which is stigmatizing both in itself and as the ostensibly telltalesign of virginity.

Finally, more than half of the people I interviewed likened virginity loss to a stepin the longer process of growing up. Said Tim Davis (18, heterosexual, white), “I’dsay virginity loss sort of meant just another experience. . . . It was, like, a differentexperience, I mean something, something special. But it’s not as profound as youwould think [laughs]. I mean, it’s just sort of another experience.” Women and menin this group expected virginity loss to resemble other familiar transitions from onesocial status to another, such as high school graduation or marriage. Referring togeneric features of such rites of passage, they said that virginity loss would increasea person’s knowledge (about sexual activity or about themselves) and transformthem in certain ways (as from a child into an adult) (Turner 1969; van Gennep1908). Jessica Tanaka (27, bisexual, Japanese American) quipped, “It was just sortof one of those things that eventually would happen, and then we would know.”

Status passages vary in terms of desirability, inevitability, duration, and rate(Glaser and Strauss 1971). Despite perceiving virginity as essentially neutral invalue, virtually every participant who framed virginity as a step in a processdescribed the transition to nonvirginity as inevitable and desirable in physical, emo-tional, or intellectual terms. Opinions were divided as to whether the passage fromvirginity to nonvirginity was rapid and dramatic—“the year zero in between thepart of life before sexual activity and . . . the one after” (Jason Cantor, 24, heterosex-ual, white)—or gradual and incremental—“not like, one epiphanic moment, it’spart of a process, even” (Jennifer Gonzales, 25, heterosexual, Latina). If knowledgeis power, then partners who are both virgins differ little in power, while a virgin willhave less power than a nonvirgin partner. Yet because virgins who see virginity lossas a step in a process can achieve the fundamentally internal goal of gaining knowl-edge merely through losing their virginity, they are, in practice, not greatly subjectto power wielded by nonvirgin partners.12

Consistent with the sexual double standard, women tended to approach virginityas a gift, whereas men tended to see it as a stigma. Three-fifths of women in thestudy saw virginity as a gift, compared with one-third of men (see Table 1). Con-versely, slightly more than half of the men interpreted virginity as a stigma, com-pared with one-fifth of the women. (Women may be more apt than men to approachall sexual encounters as gifts; Gilfoyle, Wilson, and Brown 1993.) Women wereabout twice as likely as men to view virginity loss as a step in a process—a perspec-tive neither distinctively feminine nor masculine—at the time of virginity loss;however, men were slightly more likely than women ever to draw on the processframe (61 percent compared with 52 percent). The substantial increase in the pro-portion of men favoring the process frame stems from the tendency of people who


saw their own virginity as a stigma to revise their understanding after virginity loss.Eleven of the 15 men and 3 of the 4 women who interpreted virginity as a stigma atthe time of virginity loss subsequently adopted the process frame. They did so inpart because, once relieved of their own stigma, they felt free to reevaluate virginityand in part because they had come to believe, through experience, that sex improvedwith practice (i.e., that sex evolved as a process).

Gender differences in interpretation were more pronounced among older (ages26 to 35) than younger (ages 18 to 25) participants (see Table 2). Two-thirds of olderwomen but only one older man spoke of virginity as a gift; however, youngerwomen and men were equally likely to describe virginity as a gift (56 percent and53 percent, respectively). Similarly, older men were more than three times morelikely than older women to frame virginity as a stigma (64 percent compared with18 percent), whereas younger men were only twice as likely as younger women toemploy the stigma frame (53 percent and 25 percent, respectively). The propensityto interpret virginity as a step in a process varied little by age. The contrast betweenolder and younger participants and the fact that gender-atypical and gender-neutralunderstandings, while relatively rare in previous studies, were fairly common inmine suggest a possible convergence between women and men in the past 10 years.

Experiences of Virginity Loss

Although understandings of virginity varied by gender, women and men whoshared an interpretive frame told very similar stories about virginity loss. Theymade similar choices about sexual encounters and drew on shared expectations toassess their virginity-loss experiences.13 The one aspect of virginity loss that dif-fered appreciably by gender, among people who shared a frame, was the sense ofhaving exercised sexual agency. Structural features of each interpretive frame gaveone partner power over the other, as we have just seen. When people lost their vir-ginity with a partner of the other sex, these frame-based power dynamics interactedwith gender-based differences in power to produce frame-specific patterns of gen-der subordination.

Virginity as a gift. The 17 women and men who lost their virginity seeing it as agift all believed that virginity loss should take place in a committed love relation-ship with a partner who would recognize the significance of, and appropriatelyreciprocate, the gift of virginity. All 17 recalled carefully considering whetherpotential sexual partners were likely to return the gift of virginity. To underline theimportance she placed on reciprocity, Danice Marshall (28, heterosexual, AfricanAmerican) told me about her flirtation with one young man when she was 15:

I would ask him to give me a reason why I should have sex with you. . . . And, he couldnot give me a valuable, you know, like [he said], “It would feel good.” And [I said],“But you can’t guarantee me, give me something concrete.” . . . I knew that I didn’twant to have my first experience with a guy that would view me [as] a notch on thebedpost.


TABLE 1: Interpretations of Virginity at Time of Virginity Loss and Ever, by Gender

At Time of Virginity Lossa Ever

Women Men Total Women Men Total

Interpretation % n % n % n % n % n % n

Gift 47 14 12 3 30 17 61 20 36 10 49 30Stigma 13 4 58 15 34 19 21 7 57 16 38 23Process 40 12 19 5 30 17 52 17 61 17 56 34Otherb 0 0 12 3 5 3 6 2 11 3 8 5Total 30 26 56 33 28 61

a.Figures are for nonvirgin respondents.Of thosewho remained virgins at the time of the study, twomen interpreted virginity as a gift, twowomen saw virginityas part of a process, and one woman understood virginity as a way of honoring God.b.Threemen, all of whomwere gay, lost their virginity thinking of it as irrelevant to their own experiences.Two heterosexual womenwhowere devout evangeli-cal Christians interpreted maintaining virginity as a means of honoring their commitment to God.

TABLE 2: Interpretation of Virginity Ever, by Gender and Age Group

Younger (Ages 18 to 25) Older (Ages 26 to 35)

Women Men Women Men

Interpretation % n % n % n % n

Gift 56 9 53 9 65 11 9 1Stigma 25 4 53 9 18 3 64 7Process 56 9 59 10 47 8 64 7Total 22 28 22 15

355

Danice felt her cautious approach had been amply rewarded. When, a year later, shedecided to give her virginity to her first serious boyfriend, Jerry, he responded bygiving of himself emotionally as well as giving her his own virginity. Exchangingthese gifts seemed to strengthen their relationship, Danice said, noting that they haddated for almost a year afterward.

Danice and the seven other women and two men whose partners returned theirgifts described their virginity-loss encounters in glowing terms. Yet, losing virgin-ity with a nonreciprocating partner did not preclude satisfaction for the two womenand one man who had actively chosen to do so. One woman, Karen Lareau (21, het-erosexual, white) consciously decided, out of curiosity and a growing sense that itwas “weird” to be a virgin at 20, to give her virginity to a close friend, Chip, eventhough “I knew that emotionally we weren’t in the type of relationship that wasreally going to pay out.” Despite some sadness at having set aside her lifelong viewof virginity as a gift and missing the romantic experience she’d once dreamed of,Karen said, “I don’t regret it.”

In contrast, intense dissatisfaction and feelings of impotence characterized thestories of the five respondents who expected reciprocation, through enhanced loveand commitment, but whose virginity-loss partners failed to provide it. All fivewere women who lost their virginity with men, and their inability to shape theirexperiences stemmed from gender-based norms and differences in power. Of thefive, Miranda Rivera (29, lesbian, Puerto Rican) suffered most directly from men’srelative power over women: A male acquaintance raped her after a mutual friend’sparty. The other four were affected by gender in more subtle ways. Julie Pavlicko(25, heterosexual, white), for example, had decided to “save” her virginity for thefirst boyfriend with whom she fell in love. That young man, Scott, pressured Julie tohave sex with him for the first five months they dated. She finally consented (at 15),but when she did not bleed, Scott “was really upset . . . because he thought for surethat I lied to him. And that he hadn’t been my first.” Julie felt betrayed by Scott’sreaction: “It was like, ‘ . . . You think I lied to you.’So, you know, ‘Why, obviously itdidn’t mean that much to you, ’cause you don’t trust me enough to, to believe me.’ ”Furthermore, contrary to her expectations, Julie’s gift failed to enhance their love orstrengthen the bonds between them. She said,

I think I thought it would make me maybe feel love for him that I knew I didn’t have.Maybe it would, like, give us a fresh connection that we didn’t have. Whether it bephysical or mental or. . . . You know, there was, there was nothing added to the rela-tionship. No more caring, no more nurturing, no more nothing.

In retrospect, she felt that Scott, not she, had controlled her virginity-lossexperience.

As a result of their carefully chosen partners’ failure to reciprocate, Julie and thethree women who told of similar experiences felt unable to exercise sexual agencyin subsequent relationships. Julie saw herself as so diminished in value after givingher virginity to someone who did not appreciate it that she felt she no longer


deserved to be selective about her sexual partners. For several years afterward, shesaid, “I was pretty promiscuous.” Scott and the other women’s partners appear tohave used their girlfriends’ beliefs about virginity to their strategic advantage.14

Although gift giving is commonly understood to be voluntary, it is also held to beobligatory in some circumstances, such as between romantic partners and on holi-days and birthdays (Mauss 1925; Schwartz 1967). To someone who sees gift givingas voluntary, pressuring a person to give her virginity violates the norms of giftexchange. Yet the partners of these four women stressed the obligatory nature of thegift of virginity, as when Scott told Julie, “If you do love me, then you will.” Theseyoung women were, in effect, trapped between two contradictory understandingsof gift giving. Significantly, the constructions that prevailed were those promotedby the women’s structurally more powerful men partners.

Virginity as a stigma. The 19 men and women who saw their own virginity as astigma all shared the goal of shedding the stigma of virginity without incurring anew one. Many of them chose to lose their virginity at the first available opportu-nity, often with relatively casual partners, such as friends or strangers. They alsooften tried to conceal their virginity from those partners. For instance, whenEttrick’s boyfriend of three weeks offered to fellate him on the very night Ettrickhad planned to break up with him, Ettrick, then 14, thought for a minute beforedeciding, “What, you’re going to say no?” Ettrick ended the relationship the nextday, never having mentioned the embarrassing fact of his virginity. As far as heknew, his boyfriend never found out. Like the other participants—10 men and 4women—who lost their virginity without incident, Ettrick described his experienceas positive and himself as an active participant.

But for the three men whose female partners discovered their carefully con-cealed virginity or teased them for being sexually incompetent, virginity loss wasdeeply humiliating and disempowering. Bill Gordon (31, heterosexual, white)recalled how his worst fears came true the night he, at 18, lost his virginity withDiane, a young woman he had just met:

I was so nervous, it was my first time, and . . . I didn’t want to look foolish. . . . And wehad sex and I didn’t know anything about it. So all I did was I tried to, I tried to do whatI saw the people do in the porno movies. . . . And so I was, like, moving on top of herreally fast. She was saying to me, “There’s another person here,” you know. . . . Shewas totally unsatisfied and I had no control, I didn’t know what I was doing.

Three years passed before Bill was willing to risk having sex again. A fourth man,Ed Winters (28, bisexual, white) lost his virginity at age 16 when the daughter of afamily friend coerced him into having vaginal sex with her (ironically) by threaten-ing to tell their parents that Ed had raped her. Despite regretting his lack of choice inthe matter, Ed was delighted to have shed the stigma of virginity.15 He explained,

I was put in a situation where . . . saying no would have been much worse than sayingyes. . . . It was one of those things where after it happened it was like, “Huh? What just


happened?” And part of me was going, like, “Yes, Ed, you are no longer a virgin!”And another part of me was saying, like, “I didn’t want that to happen.”

Although women and men in this group had similar experiences overall, socialnorms about gender and sexuality tended to empower women and disempowermen. In fact, the 4 women who saw their own virginity as a stigma seemed to benefitfrom the sexual double standard. Men’s relatively greater willingness to have sexoutside of dating relationships appeared to enhance these women’s ability to losetheir virginity fairly rapidly once they elected to do so. Emma McKay (24, hetero-sexual, white), for instance, lost her virginity with a male friend she propositioned,while Lisa Orlofsky (35, lesbian, white) attended a party for the express purpose oflosing her virginity with a stranger. Women in this group additionally profited fromthe widespread belief that virginity is a positive trait in women. Despite personallyinterpreting their virginity as a stigma, they believed that few others would concurand consequently worried far less about being identified as virgins than did theirmale counterparts.16 Emma and 2 other women told their partners that they werevirgins, thus avoiding the more shameful circumstance of having their virginity dis-covered and ridiculed. (Only 7 of the 15 men did likewise.) Lisa decided not to tellher partner about her virginity because he was a stranger but said that it would nothave mattered to her—or, she surmised, to him—if he had found out.

Popular stereotypes of women as sexually passive and men as sexually activemay help women disguise their virginity and sexual inexperience. Of the seven menwho actively concealed their virginity from sexual partners, four, including Bill,found themselves accused of virginity or sexual inexperience (one man’s partnerreacted sympathetically). In contrast, Lisa hid her virginity easily, aided by the factthat she bled little during coitus.17 She said, “I’m sure he had no idea I was a vir-gin. . . . Like he just assumed that we were, that he was having sex with someonewho’d done this before.” Women cannot, however, take limited bleeding forgranted; many women in my study reported bleeding profusely the first time theyengaged in coitus (Weis 1985).

Virginity loss as a step in a process. The 17 women and men who lost their vir-ginity interpreting it as a step in a process shared an understanding of virginity lossas a desirable and essentially positive transition, which would give them knowledgeabout sexuality or themselves. Gaining knowledge through virginity loss is a broadgoal, and every participant in this group achieved it. The 8 women and 3 men whotold of virginity-loss encounters that were physically or emotionally pleasurableexpressed deep satisfaction with the positive lessons they had learned. MeghanO’Brien (22, heterosexual, white), for example, said that losing her virginity withboyfriend Rich at age 18 was, despite some physical discomfort, “emotion-ally . . . very enjoyable” and, moreover, “made me more aware of my sexuality. Imean . . . once we had kind of decided that was where our relationship was going tobe, we were more sexually experimenting.”


For the four women and two men whose virginity-loss encounters were unpleas-ant physically and emotionally, the key to satisfaction was in finding some redeem-ing quality in an otherwise negative episode. For instance, although Jason Cantor(24, heterosexual, white) described losing his virginity (at 17) as physically andemotionally “not very pleasant at all,” he and his long-time girlfriend, Melissa, feltsufficiently convinced that sex would improve to try it a few more times. Happily,their persistence was rewarded: “After the first time, when we went back and did itmore, it was actually good.” In retrospect, Jason felt positive about that first encoun-ter because it played an important role in the process through which he and Melissalearned about sex.

Gender differences were least pronounced among people who interpreted vir-ginity loss as a step in a process. The process frame neither gave disproportionatepower to either partner nor interacted with gender differences in power. At base, thegoal of enhancing one’s knowledge about sex is achieved internally, albeit with apartner’s assistance. Therefore, a person who felt he or she learned something posi-tive from virginity loss could find satisfaction independent of his or her partner’sconduct. Although sexually experienced partners could theoretically have wieldedpower over virgins, none appeared to do so (half of these respondents lost their vir-ginity with another virgin). Nor did gender appear to affect the degree to which part-ners were supportive or sympathetic after unpleasant encounters.

However, the extent to which people in this group experienced physical pleasureat virginity loss did differ somewhat depending on the sex of the virgin and her orhis partner. Although a perhaps surprising proportion of men—three-fifths—didnot find virginity loss physically enjoyable, even more women—three-fourths—recounted physically unpleasant experiences. Sex-specific physiology may limitthe physical pleasure of women who lose their virginity through vaginal sex and ofmen who lose their virginity through receptive anal sex.18 For example, the 2women in this group who lost their virginity via cunnilingus with other womendescribed their encounters as very pleasurable physically, compared with 1 of the10 women who lost their virginity through coitus. This gender difference had littleimpact on overall satisfaction with virginity loss, however, because these respon-dents emphasized emotional and intellectual concerns over physical pleasure.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The women and men who took part in my study tended to assign different mean-ings to virginity loss. However, gender differences in interpretation were less pro-nounced among younger participants, and men and women who shared an interpre-tive approach experienced virginity loss in very similar ways. The one exception tothis pattern of gender similarity within interpretive frames concerned the ability toexercise sexual agency. One interpretive frame—virginity as a gift—consistentlydisempowered women; another—virginity as a stigma—disempowered men; and athird—virginity as a step in a process—did not disempower either gender.


These findings suggest that the relationship between gender and virginity loss ismore complex than previous research has indicated and, moreover, that gender maybe diminishing in importance as a determinant of sexual meanings and experiences.Earlier studies found a small but increasing number of women and men adoptinggender atypical beliefs and behaviors, even as traditional gender differences innotions and experiences of virginity loss persisted. My research indicates a furthererosion of traditional dichotomies. Gender-neutral and -atypical interpretations ofvirginity, relatively rare in previous studies, were quite common among my infor-mants, and gender differences in interpretation were far less pronounced among theyounger men and women I interviewed than among their older counterparts. More-over, when women and men in my study shared an understanding of virginity, theymade similar choices about virginity loss and experienced it in similar ways. Thesefindings suggest that due to changes among both men and women, gender may belosing salience as an aspect of identity shaping virginity loss and perhaps early sex-ual careers more generally. (However, because my data are cross-sectional, thesefindings should be taken as strongly suggestive rather than definitive.)

My research also paints a more complex picture of the relationship between gen-der and sexual agency at virginity loss than do previous studies, which have foundthat young women seldom experience themselves as sexual agents whereas youngmen typically do (Holland, Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996; Horowitz 1983;Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994). In my study, disempowering virginity-lossencounters were relatively rare among both sexes, and women felt able to shapetheir experiences only slightly less often than men. More than four-fifths (47) ofnonvirgin participants recounted virginity-loss experiences over which they hadcontrol. Of 30 nonvirgin women, 5 (17 percent) described themselves as lackingagency during virginity loss, compared with 4 of 26 nonvirgin men (15 percent).Notably, every respondent who reported a disempowering encounter lost his or hervirginity with a partner of the other sex. (This is not to suggest that power politicsare absent from sexual relationships between same-sex partners; see Renzetti andMiley 1996.)

Whether a specific individual enjoyed agency at virginity loss depended on theinteraction between his or her gender and understanding of virginity. Each interpre-tive frame features structurally different—and differentially powerful—roles forthe virgin and her or his partner. When people lose their virginity with partners ofthe other sex, these differentially powerful roles interact with gender differences inpower (which typically favor men) to produce frame-specific patterns of gendersubordination. Among participants who interpreted virginity as a gift, only women(5 of 14) described themselves as lacking sexual agency or being taken advantageof by their (men) partners.19 Conversely, among those who saw virginity as astigma, only men (4 of 15) recalled virginity-loss encounters in which they felt atthe mercy of their (women) partners, whereas women seemed to enjoy enhancedpower and agency. None of the women or men who approached virginity loss as astep in a process characterized themselves as lacking control over their own virginity-loss experience.


These findings can help guide public policy on adolescent sexuality. The giftframe tends to reproduce current patterns of gender inequality by intensifyingwomen virgins’ lack of power relative to male partners. In contrast, the stigmaframe tends to empower women and subordinate men. Yet we can no more condonethe loss of sexual agency among young men than we can among young women. Theprocess frame does not systematically allow either partner, regardless of gender, tocontrol the other and thus shows the greatest promise for policy initiatives intendedto promote equitable and satisfying virginity-loss experiences for all young people.

Before concluding, a brief overview of the ways sexual identity influenced inter-pretations and experiences of virginity loss is merited (for more details, see Carpen-ter 2001). Understandings of virginity loss were, like definitions, patterned by sex-ual identity. Lesbians and gay men were considerably more likely than theirheterosexual counterparts to have ever seen virginity loss as a step in a process (73percent and 46 percent, respectively); conversely, heterosexual men and womenwere more likely than their gay and lesbian counterparts to have ever viewed virgin-ity as a gift (54 percent compared with 31 percent). Bisexual women and men fellsomewhere in between, with two-thirds ever interpreting virginity as a gift and two-thirds ever perceiving it as a step in a process. The propensity ever to see virginity asa stigma varied little by sexual identity. Many gay and bisexual participants inter-preted virginity loss as a step in a process because, for them, virginity loss wasclosely intertwined with the process of coming out.

As with gender, experiences of virginity loss differed very little by sexual iden-tity among people who shared a frame. However, when partners were of the samegender, frame-based differences in partners’ relative power were not magnified bygender-based differences in power. This finding confirms those of studies showingthat women who begin their sexual careers with other women appear to enjoygreater sexual agency than women whose first partners are men (Brumberg 1997;Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994). These patterns correspond imperfectly with sex-ual identity, however, insofar as many people who ultimately self-identify as les-bian, gay, or bisexual lose their virginity with partners of the other sex.

Caution should be used when extending findings from this study to youngAmericans overall. Given study participants’backgrounds and the manner in whichthey were located, the patterns described here may be specific to economicallysecure women and men living in metropolitan areas. Poor and rural Americanswere underrepresented in the sample, as were gay men and lesbians who concealtheir sexual identity. The relatively small sample size also precludes any but themost tentative conclusions about the ways race, ethnicity, class, and religion inter-sect with gender and sexual identity to shape virginity loss.20 Studies focusing indepth on the subjective aspects of virginity loss among members of specific socialgroups (e.g., working-class Latinas, middle-class African American men) wouldgreatly enhance scholarly understanding of early sexuality. Other aspects of therelationship between gender and virginity loss also merit further research. Exam-ining the processes through which young people come to prefer one interpretationof virginity over the available alternatives could help explain why some young


people adopt gender-traditional interpretations of virginity loss while others do not.A project assessing the prevalence of the patterns reported here in a large, prefera-bly national, probability sample would be especially useful in the development ofpublic policy.

The people who participated in this study gave their time and shared their storiesin the hope that doing so would ultimately help ensure more positive virginity-lossexperiences for future generations. None of the meanings these men and womenassigned to virginity is inevitably disempowering. But interpreting virginity loss asa step in a process holds the most promise for enhancing the ability of all people,regardless of gender or sexual identity, to experience virginity loss in ways that areempowering, health-enhancing, and consonant with their desires.

NOTES

1. This study relies on a view of sexuality and gender as socially constructed. On the former, seeGagnon and Simon (1973), Stein (1989), and Vance (1991). On the latter, see Lorber (1993) and Rubin(1975).

2. Scholars disagree as to whether the changes of this period represent a true sexual revolution orthe culmination of gradual changes beginning in the 1900s; for example, compare D’Emilio and Freed-man (1988) and Seidman (1991).

3. Physical and emotional reactions are intertwined. Men’s greater pleasure at first sex is partly dueto higher rates of orgasm; first coitus is painful for many women (Sprecher, Barbee, and Schwartz 1995;Weis 1985).

4. Horowitz (1983) focused on heterosexual sexuality. Laumann et al. (1994) gathered data on firstsame-sex encounters but excluded these from their chapter on first sex. Herdt and Boxer (1993) analyzedgender’s effects on the sexual careers of gay and bisexual youth but did not explore the dynamics of firstintimate sexual experiences in detail. Scholars’ silence as to how gender might influence virginity lossamong gay and bisexual youth stems from both the neglect of gay and bisexual experience in conven-tional sex research and the pervasive assumption that virginity loss is by definition heterosexual (seeRaymond 1994).

5. Young people whose own first sexual encounters diverge from the dominant definition do notappear to be abandoning the notion of virginity loss but rather actively developing new definitions of vir-ginity loss that better reflect their own circumstances. This phenomenon suggests that virginity loss is aremarkably durable concept, even in the rapidly changing sexual landscape of the contemporary UnitedStates (Carpenter 2001).

6. One-fourth (eight) of the women in my study had been the victims of forced sexual encounters atsome point in their lives, as had one of the men. None of these nine respondents believed that virginitycould be lost through coerced sex, although two (paradoxically) reported losing their own virginitythrough acquaintance rapes.

7. Class background was measured by parental education and occupation; 55 percent were whiteand middle class.

8. I use the terms interpretation, understanding, approach, and frame interchangeably. Goffmandefined frames as schemas that enable people to “locate, perceive, identify and label” occurrences intheir lives (1974, 21).

9. Figures in this section refer to people who ever employed a given frame. In my discussion ofvirginity-loss experiences, I group people according to the approach they favored at the time of their ownvirginity loss.


10. In societies more homogeneous and/or traditional than the contemporary United States, it may beeasier to bring successful sanctions against partners who fail to reciprocate (Lindisfarne 1994; Rubin1976).

11. Respondents who lost their virginity when they were relatively young felt less stigmatized thandid those who remained virgins relatively late (especially after age 18). One consequence of this increas-ing stigmatization with age was that as virgins grew older, they put increasing effort into concealing theirvirginity from others.

12. If an experienced partner attempted to exercise power by delaying the passage, most virginscould find another partner. Virgins in this group generally accepted their sexual inexperience and did notstress commitment (as did adherents to the gift frame) and so worried relatively little about being stigma-tized or abandoned by a partner.

13. Satisfaction was closely related to the sense of having exercised agency at virginity loss.14. These young men may have drawn on specific knowledge about their girlfriends’beliefs or on the

common assumption that women cherish their virginity.15. The contrast between Ed and Miranda highlights the chasm between the gift and stigma frames.

Miranda was devastated that a rapist “took” the gift of her virginity (such that she could never give itvoluntarily).

16. Virginity might be seen as discrediting in a woman who is unusually “old” to be a virgin or whosevirginity is closely related to another stigma, such as obesity (see Goffman 1963). Ironically, avoidingthe stigmas of discovery and being labeled sexually inept often depended on admitting one’s stigmatizedstatus.

17. Another woman who successfully hid her virginity from a stranger-partner was Tricia Monsano(20, heterosexual, white), who saw virginity as a step in a process. Younger virgins were also relativelysuccessful at concealing their virginity, often because their partners were likewise young and sexuallyinexperienced.

18. For women who lose their virginity through coitus, the partner’s sexual expertise may also beimportant.

19. These women closely resemble the young women Thompson (1984) saw as stressing the roman-tic aspects of virginity loss so much that they could only be disappointed, given the transience of youth-ful relationships.

20. African American women and men, respectively, tended to interpret virginity as a gift and as astigma. I discerned no patterns by social class. Fundamentalist Protestant men and women tended toview virginity as a gift or, rarely, spoke of maintaining virginity until marriage as a way of honoring theircommitment to God.

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LauraM.Carpenter holds a Ph.D. in sociology and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in aging atthe Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. Her current research focuses on genderand sexuality inmidlife and on policy debates surroundingmale circumcision and female genitalcutting in the United States.


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