Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences by Laura Carpenter Page A
Authors: Laura Carpenter
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figured prominently in the reasoning of the other half of participants, who believed it was possible to be a virgin more than once. Most of these men and women saw renewing virginity as an emotional, psychological, or spiritual matter. As Terence Deluca, a 27- year-old White heterosexual heating and air conditioning mechanic, put it:
There is a different feeling when you love somebody and when you just care about somebody. So I would have to say if you feel that way then I guess you could be a virgin again. Christians get born all the time again, so . . . when there’s true love involved, yes, I believe that.
Women were twice as likely as men to contend that a person could po- tentially resume her or his virginity. This is not surprising, for, as we will see, women are more apt than men to sympathize with (or to have per- sonally felt) the desire for a second chance at virginity loss—in part be- cause women typically place greater value on having “special” virginity- loss experiences and in part because women are more often disappointed with virginity loss. 18 Women born after 1972 were substantially more likely than those born between 1962 and 1972 to argue that a person could be a virgin again, suggesting that the conservative Christian notion of secondary (or born-again) virginity has infiltrated mainstream U.S. cul-
ture through abstinence-focused sex education curricula, mass media campaigns, and growing membership in conservative denominations. Men’s opinions did not differ by age.
A handful of people I spoke with mentioned a third domain in which nonphysiological criteria for assessing virginity status may be gaining im- portance: the spiritual. Some conservative Protestants claim that almost every non-genital sexual activity, including kissing and perhaps even looking at sexually explicit magazines or movies, is tantamount to vir- ginity loss. This argument essentially represents a resurrection of Victo- rian thought. Dana Hagy, a 30-year-old White heterosexual homemaker and born-again Christian, explained: “Some people even say if you’ve looked at—obviously these people, I think, are radical—if you’ve looked at a pornographic magazine, well now you’re not a virgin anymore, in some sense, in innocence.” Dana was one of four conservative Protestants who told me that this perspective was circulating in their religious com- munities; all four quickly declared that they personally rejected it.
On Second Thought . . .
Definitions of virginity loss do not change only at the broad societal level; people can also revise their perspectives over time. Almost two-fifths of the women and men I interviewed informed me that they had, at some point, rethought the way they defined virginity loss. The majority of them were self-identified lesbigay men or women who had begun to include same-sex encounters in their definitions of virginity loss when they began questioning and rejecting heterosexual norms during the process of com- ing out. Several heterosexual people also told me that they had added same-sex virginity loss to their definitions after they’d discussed sex with lesbigay friends or undergone career training that sensitized them to GLBT concerns. Gaining more firsthand sexual experience inspired a few other heterosexuals to redefine sex and virginity loss. Heather Folger, a 28-year-old White office worker, told me that, although as a teenager, “I probably would’ve said, ‘Yeah, [having only oral sex] would still make you a virgin.’ . . . Not ever having done it, you know, not knowing what it really entails,” when she started having oral sex, some years after los- ing her virginity, she decided that fellatio and cunnilingus were just as much sex as vaginal intercourse. A similar pattern was observed by psy- chologists Stephanie Sanders and June Reinisch; they found that young
adults who had engaged in coitus were more likely to include oral- and anal-genital contact in their
There is a different feeling when you love somebody and when you just care about somebody. So I would have to say if you feel that way then I guess you could be a virgin again. Christians get born all the time again, so . . . when there’s true love involved, yes, I believe that.
Women were twice as likely as men to contend that a person could po- tentially resume her or his virginity. This is not surprising, for, as we will see, women are more apt than men to sympathize with (or to have per- sonally felt) the desire for a second chance at virginity loss—in part be- cause women typically place greater value on having “special” virginity- loss experiences and in part because women are more often disappointed with virginity loss. 18 Women born after 1972 were substantially more likely than those born between 1962 and 1972 to argue that a person could be a virgin again, suggesting that the conservative Christian notion of secondary (or born-again) virginity has infiltrated mainstream U.S. cul-
ture through abstinence-focused sex education curricula, mass media campaigns, and growing membership in conservative denominations. Men’s opinions did not differ by age.
A handful of people I spoke with mentioned a third domain in which nonphysiological criteria for assessing virginity status may be gaining im- portance: the spiritual. Some conservative Protestants claim that almost every non-genital sexual activity, including kissing and perhaps even looking at sexually explicit magazines or movies, is tantamount to vir- ginity loss. This argument essentially represents a resurrection of Victo- rian thought. Dana Hagy, a 30-year-old White heterosexual homemaker and born-again Christian, explained: “Some people even say if you’ve looked at—obviously these people, I think, are radical—if you’ve looked at a pornographic magazine, well now you’re not a virgin anymore, in some sense, in innocence.” Dana was one of four conservative Protestants who told me that this perspective was circulating in their religious com- munities; all four quickly declared that they personally rejected it.
On Second Thought . . .
Definitions of virginity loss do not change only at the broad societal level; people can also revise their perspectives over time. Almost two-fifths of the women and men I interviewed informed me that they had, at some point, rethought the way they defined virginity loss. The majority of them were self-identified lesbigay men or women who had begun to include same-sex encounters in their definitions of virginity loss when they began questioning and rejecting heterosexual norms during the process of com- ing out. Several heterosexual people also told me that they had added same-sex virginity loss to their definitions after they’d discussed sex with lesbigay friends or undergone career training that sensitized them to GLBT concerns. Gaining more firsthand sexual experience inspired a few other heterosexuals to redefine sex and virginity loss. Heather Folger, a 28-year-old White office worker, told me that, although as a teenager, “I probably would’ve said, ‘Yeah, [having only oral sex] would still make you a virgin.’ . . . Not ever having done it, you know, not knowing what it really entails,” when she started having oral sex, some years after los- ing her virginity, she decided that fellatio and cunnilingus were just as much sex as vaginal intercourse. A similar pattern was observed by psy- chologists Stephanie Sanders and June Reinisch; they found that young
adults who had engaged in coitus were more likely to include oral- and anal-genital contact in their
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