NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Losing one’s virginity is among life’s most significant experiences, and a new study explores its complexities, from how men and women view the act – much less differently than people might think – to how the circumstances surrounding virginity loss affect people long term and what it means for young gays and lesbians.
The study’s results are included in Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences, the first scholarly book on virginity loss as a social phenomenon. While most books on virginity loss fall into either the “celebrity tell-all” or public health categories, Vanderbilt University sociology professor Laura M. Carpenter asked men and women from diverse social backgrounds to share with her their personal stories in order to understand the variety of meanings and experiences associated with virginity loss today.
“We all read and hear the statistics about at what ages men and women begin having sex, but it doesn’t tell us what losing their virginity means to them. Nor do these figures tell us how teens and young adults made decisions about when, where and with whom to lose their virginity,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter believes what she has learned could have implications for how to develop sex education programs for teens and young adults.
Though every story was unique in its details, most of the people viewed virginity in one of three ways – as a gift, a stigma or as a step in the process of growing up.
“Processers” seemed to have the most emotionally satisfying, healthy and safe experiences, whereas “gifters’” well-being depended on having partners who reciprocated loving, appreciative feelings. For the five women in the study for whom that did not happen, the result was not only disappointment – even devastation – but also a feeling of being deprived of sexual empowerment.
The “stigmatized” had mostly positive virginity loss experiences. On the downside, the intensity with which most members of this group wanted to hide their inexperience, along with circumstances and casual relationships in which many lost their virginity, resulted in the lowest rates of protected sex in the study.
Men who saw virginity as a stigma especially felt compelled to conceal their inexperience and felt particularly vulnerable to humiliation and disempowerment at the hands of female partners. Derided as virgins or sexual incompetents, three men in the study avoided sex long after losing their virginity.
In comparing the effects of the metaphors, Carpenter suggests that viewing virginity as a rite of passage or step in the process of growing up is the most conducive to physical health, emotional well-being and sexual empowerment. She says parents, policymakers, sex educators and others would do well to encourage young people, one-on-one and through public policies, to approach virginity as a step in a process.
Interestingly, Carpenter found that people – regardless of gender – who viewed virginity loss through the same metaphor – as a gift, stigma or a rite of passage – understood and experienced the act in very similar ways.
“Men and women are a whole lot less different that people think they are when it comes to how they view virginity loss,” she said.
During 18 months in 1997 and 1998, Carpenter interviewed the 61 young adults – ages 18 to 35 – in great detail. They included 33 women, of whom 22 self-identified as heterosexual, seven as lesbians and four as bisexual, and 28 men – 17 of them described themselves as heterosexual, nine as gay and two as bisexual. The group came from diverse racial and ethnic groups, social class backgrounds and religious traditions. All but five were no longer virgins when Carpenter met them and most lived within two hours of Philadelphia. But nearly half had grown up and begun their sex lives elsewhere. Carpenter was a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia at the time.
She also sought to interview secondary or born-again virgins – people who re-commit to abstinence, often after a religious awakening. One man and three of the women she interviewed described themselves as current or former secondary virgins.
“Growing up in a context of uncertainty, diversity and change, young people benefit from being able to understand virginity loss in ways that help them fashion specific social identities and that bring them one step closer to adulthood,” Carpenter said.
“Given these benefits it makes sense to treat virginity loss as a significant and important life event; however, treating it as one of the most important sexual experiences of a person’s life appears to carry real costs as well.”
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