Modesty and the discipline of reserving sex for true love, on the other hand, increase the sense that something very important is happening. That heightened importance makes modesty more erotic than the casual free-for-all celebrated as sexual liberation.
Young women overwhelmed by the coarse sexual climate and inundated with the message that casual sex is an important part of being a modern woman should consider some of women’s real experiences. Many women regret casual sex, not just immediately, but also years later when they’ve married or finally found the love of their lives.
From Friends:
Joey: Heh. Let me get this straight. He got you to beg to sleep with him. He got you to say he never has to call you again. And he got you thinking this is a great idea?
Phoebe: [weakly] Uh-huh.
Joey: This man is my God!
Of course, as will be discussed in more detail in chapter five, women face far more than emotional risks when it comes to casual sex. There are also significant physical risks that young women need to consider before engaging in casual sex.
None of this is to suggest that all young women need to embrace abstinence until marriage nor does it require that society go back to the days of demonizing sexually active unmarried women. But young women should recognize the pitfalls of casual sex that often are hidden in our sex-saturated culture and consider the benefits of taking sex seriously.
Chapter Four
NOT EVERYONE IS DOING IT
Not all teenagers are sexually active and fewer young adults than you might think are racking up significant numbers of sexual partners. That’s not the message you get from popular culture. If television or magazines geared toward women were any guide, you might assume that all teens and young adults are engaging numerous lovers. The message to parents is that there’s no point in trying to discourage teenage children from having sex; at best encourage them to use contraception to limit the risk of pregnancy and disease.
In reality, parents play a huge role in shaping their children’s attitudes and choices about sex. It’s important for young women (and men) to know that not all of their peers are sexually active because the desire to “fit in” can have real influence on their behavior.
Popular culture’s message to kids: just do it!
Sex education begins in elementary school throughout much of America today. Thongs are marketed to girls as young as seven. Magazines that cater to pre-teen audiences are filled with advice about sex and relationships. Teenage girls increasingly get breast implants—some as graduation presents from their parents.
Guess what?
Television and movies often make it seem as though a teenage virgin is as rare as a unicorn.
Surveys reveal that many teens are pretty conservative in their ideas about the role of sex and the importance of virginity.
Parents have an important role to play in shaping teens’ attitudes toward sex.
In youth culture, sex is nearly inescapable. Television and movies often make it seem as though a teenage virgin is as rare as a unicorn.
One recurring plot in the hit 1990s television show Beverly Hills 90210 revolved around the character Donna Martin (played by Tori Spelling)—a virgin who initially aspired to wait until marriage. This incredibly old fashion sentiment caused endless problems for Donna in the 90210 world, and the audience waited to see when this last virgin would finally wise up and give in.
The message was a carryover from 1980s teen classics such as Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, in which the high school characters are loath to admit that they’re still virgins. These movies are now staples or “the new classics” featured regularly on cable television networks like TNT.
In the last few years, television shows like The O.C. and Dawson’s Creek have continued to feature torrid teen age love affairs, and lament the fate of those awkward or unlucky teens that haven’t yet sealed the deal. The hit movie American Pie centered on four high school guys’ quests to lose their virginities by senior prom. Graduating high school as virgins was a fate too terrible to contemplate.
At the Movies
“You realize we’re all going to go to college as virgins. They probably have special dorms for people like us.”
—Jim, American Pie (1999)
It isn’t just in the movies and on television where virgins are made to seem as out of date as ruffled tuxedos and shoulder pads. Best-selling author and Harvard law student Ben Shapiro describes how he’s been ridiculed as the “The Virgin Ben.” Shapiro has written extensively about the over-sexualization of his generation—which he dubs the “porn generation”—and advocates abstinence, making him an easy target. Critics mock him as having had celibacy “thrust upon him” and that “not once is he ever going to get to have really good hot sweaty sex.” In his most recent book, Porn Generation, Shapiro notes that the ridicule he faces is a common experience for high schoolers and college students who abstain from sex:My own experience is representative of what many members of the porn generation endure in their own high schools and on their college campuses every day. We’re forced to undergo this experience because, in the twisted view of the sex-obsessed moral relativists, abstinence before marriage is a demented way of life, and virginity itself is seen as a sort of strange plague. In a world where deviance is praised, purity is the new sin.
If actual virgins are exotic and repressed, it’s nearly as bad for men and women who aren’t regularly doing the deed. Valerie Frankel—whose columns appear in women’s magazines such as Mademoiselle, Redbook, Allure, and Self—wrote a novel, The Accidental Virgin, which details the horror thirty-something Stacy feels when she realizes she hasn’t had sex in almost a year. Stacy reads that if you go a whole year without sex, you will be “revirginized” and thus embarks on a week-long quest to avoid this sorry fate. She attempts to seduce her boss’s twenty-year-old son, a delivery man, and several other acquaintances. She begins having a lesbian encounter with a coworker, and considers hiring a male escort to do the job.
Stacy lives in a glamorous New York world of sophisticated parties and fancy clothes, and her reaction to her predicament is depicted as perfectly normal: This heroine is the picture of a liberated woman who has seized control of her sex drive.
The applause for sexually free women isn’t reserved just for adults and isn’t limited to popular culture. Some feminists write with equal fervor about sexual freedom among younger women, including teens.
In Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation, a book that purports to provide a voice and forum for young feminists, essayist Rebecca Walker (named by Time magazine as one of the fifty future leaders of America) describes her own sexual exploration, including losing her virginity at age eleven. She extols the importance of greater acceptance of sexual liberation for young women (i.e., girls) and makes the case that sex should be seen as an opportunity for personal growth, not an expression of love for another person.
While Walker focuses on breaking societal taboos against premarital sex and sexual activity by the very young, she also tries to change the reader’s view of what’s normal. She tries to convince the reader that intercourse by an eleven-year-old is not only appropriate, but also commonplace: “Shocking, right? Not really. Sex begins much earlier than most people think, and it is far more extensive.”
Walker envisions a world where no one can or should encourage teens to forgo sexual intercourse. Instead, she argues that parents should help their children embark on this exploration and simply provide contraception: “The question is not whether young women are going to have sex, for this is far beyond any parental or societal control. The question is rather, what do young women need to make sex a dynamic, affirming, safe and pleasurable part of our lives?”1
The message is that parents should just give up on urging sexual restraint for their daughters (and sons) after age eleven. It’s no use; kids are going to do it anyway, so you may as well put them on the pill or hand them a box of condoms. Probably best to get ready t
o help raise your grandchildren—they may be coming sooner than you think.
Teens and young adults: not as sexually active as you—or they—might think
Contrary to Walker’s declaration, teens actually tend to over-estimate how sexually active their peers are.
In 2003, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Seventeen Magazine surveyed boys and girls aged fifteen to seventeen about their sexual experiences and attitudes toward sex.2 Of those interviewed, 32 percent responded that they had had sexual intercourse—including 36 percent of the boys and 28 percent of the girls. This is lower than a survey completed by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC found that 46.7 percent of high school students had had sexual intercourse during their lifetimes. Just 7.4 percent of students surveyed—and 4.2 percent of the girls—experienced sex before the age of thirteen.3
A Book You’re Not Supposed to Read
Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future, by Ben Shapiro; Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, 2005.
So while it’s true that many high schoolers have had sex, it’s important to recognize that a majority has not.
Most teens don’t know this fact. A survey conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy found that teens routinely overestimate the number of their peers who are sexually active, with two-thirds of the teenage girls surveyed agreeing with the statement that “most teens my age have had sex.”4
Similarly, the Kaiser Family Foundation/Seventeen Magazine survey revealed that one in three teens overestimated the percentage of sexually active high schoolers compared to one in four who underestimated this rate. Girls’ perceptions were more skewed than boys: They were twice as likely to overestimate as underestimate the percentage of sexually active teens.5
Sexually active students were even more prone to overestimate the number of their peers who were sexually experienced: 56 percent said that 80 percent of their peers were sexually active. This is a significant misperception if you assume that the CDC’s estimate that just under half of teenagers are sexually active is generally accurate. Only 10 percent of sexually active teenagers underestimated the level of sexual activity.
This is very important because teens’ perceptions of what’s “normal” influences their decisions. Sixty-two percent of sexually active teens surveyed by Seventeen Magazine believed “many of their friends had already done it” and this influenced their decision to have sex.6
It’s equally important for teenagers to know that, contrary to what they see on television and in movies, few of their friends—and even few of the twenty-somethings—are racking up numerous sexual partners. Only 11 percent of high school girls surveyed by the CDC reported having had four or more sexual partners.7 This number may be high, but it still represents a small minority of teens.
Getting “Rid” of Your Virginity—One Young Woman’s Story
It’s a big deal-losing your virginity is supposed to be something you do when you’re in love and its supposed to be special and society has created this stigma around it, but you talk to everyone and nobody lost their virginity in this perfect flowers and candles kind of way. Everyone’s sucked. People were drunk, people didn’t tell the guy they were a virgin, it wasn’t perfect for anybody. So I started thinking about it more and more and more and I was like, “God, I just want to get it over with and not have to worry about it anymore.” So when I was home over spring break . . . I hooked up with this guy I know from home and asked him to take my virginity, so that was that.
[Now] I feel strangely emotionless about it. It’s liberating because I don’t have to worry about it. . . . at least he knew I was a virgin . . . I wasn’t drunk, another plus. I remember it . . . I thought about it a long time . . . . It would be really nice to have a flower and candles virginity losing, it would be really nice to be in love—I’ve never been in love—that would be great, I’m jealous of people who get to experience that, but I guess I just feel like I’m settling a little bit . . . but it’s not like I’m missing out on something that everyone else gets.
—A twenty-year-old college junior, interviewed by author
A study of sexually active people in their twenties found that just 31 percent of men and 20 percent of women had more than one sexual partner in the past year.8
Furthermore, a 1997 survey of college students provided some pretty disturbing statistics: nearly half had had a one-night stand, 43 percent had cheated on a steady partner, and 36 percent had had sex with someone they didn’t like. These numbers aren’t exactly encouraging, but they can be looked at from a “glass half full” perspective: More than half of college students hadn’t had a one night stand. This suggests that the image portrayed on television and in movies—of women and men changing sexual partners as rapidly as they change clothes—doesn’t reflect reality for the majority of women or men.
Teens who want to mimic their peers also should be aware that many of their sexually active friends think they made a mistake. As discussed in the last chapter, teen age girls who became sexually active wished overwhelmingly they had waited until they were older.
More alarming is the number of young girls that confess to undesired intercourse. Among teen girls aged fifteen to nineteen, who have had sexual intercourse, 24 percent described their first time as “voluntary and unwanted” and 7 percent as “involuntary.” Therefore, teenage girls seeking to “fit in” not only should adjust their perceptions of the number of their peers who are sexually active, but also account for the fact that more than three in ten of their sexually-active peers didn’t want or didn’t voluntarily have sex.
Most teens think being a virgin is positive
Surveys reveal that many teens, even those who are sexually active, are pretty conservative in their ideas about the role of sex and the importance of virginity. Ninety-five percent of girls and 89 percent of boys strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement that, “I think being a virgin in high school is a good thing.” When asked, “At what age do you personally think it is OK for someone to lose his or her virginity?” a majority responded with “eighteen or older.”
Strikingly, one in four volunteered that virginity should be maintained until marriage. More than one-third of those who had not yet experienced intercourse planned on waiting until marriage and another four in ten planned on waiting for a committed relationship. Even among those who were sexually active before age eighteen, 17 percent volunteered that marriage is the appropriate time to begin sexual relations, and most thought it was best to be over eighteen or married.9
Given these facts, it’s sad that women feel pressure to become sexually active to avoid a perceived stigma associated with being a “virgin.” One young woman interviewed for this book detailed the burden that her virginity became and how she had decided to get “rid” of it. She stressed that she was happy in general with her decision—but she seemed to be trying to convince herself that she shouldn’t be disappointed that it lacked the romance she had clearly wanted.
Parents have an important role to play
A primary finding of the research conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy is that parents have an important role to play in shaping teens’ attitudes toward sex.
Parents tend to discount their own importance in influencing the attitudes of their children: Nearly half (45 percent) of teens ranked parents as most influential in their decisions about sex—which made them more influential than any other group. Just three out of ten teens (31 percent) said that their friends were most influential, followed by religious leaders (7 percent), teachers and sex educators (6 percent), and the media (4 percent).
Few parents recognize how important their opinions are to their children. Nearly half (48 percent) believed that their children’s friends had the greatest influence, compared to just three in ten (32 percent) who thought that parents had the greatest impact.10
Conclusion
Knowing that they’re not alone in never having been
sexually active can help young men and women avoid feeling like outcasts because they’re virgins. It can encourage some teenagers and young adults to put off sex and make them more comfortable with their decision to abstain since there are considerable physical and emotional risks, especially for women, if they engage in casual sex.
Chapter Five
THE RISKS OF SAFE SEX
Sex education can start as early as elementary school for America’s children. In addition to learning the birds and the bees, sex education classes teach students the many benefits of contraception. Teens are encouraged to practice safe sex whenever the time comes, particularly through the use of condoms. This message is echoed on college campuses and in popular culture geared toward twenty-somethings: Condoms are the responsible way to avoid the unwanted consequences of casual sex.
Certainly condoms are a useful tool for reducing the risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)—but they’re no get-out-of-STD free device. There are many sexually transmitted diseases that condoms—even when properly used—don’t necessarily prevent from spreading.
The fallibility of condoms helps explain why, even with the increased awareness about the potential for STDs and the increased reported use of contraception, the prevalence of infection among teens and young adults has continued to climb. Young women are at particular risk for contracting and sustaining lasting damage from STDs.
Young women need to know that condoms aren’t fool proof in preventing the spread of STDs. Some health professionals are reticent to give youngsters this message since they fear they’ll stop using protection altogether, but young men and women deserve the truth about an issue critical to their health.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism Page 5