To anticipate the main empirical findings reported in Laura M. Carpenter’s article, “Gender and the Meaning and Experience of Virginity Loss in the Contemporary United States,” there might be something for everyone. Whether one views virginity as a gift, a stigma, or a process, these aspects still shape the individual’s identity.
It might be true that gender may be diminishing in importance as a determinant of sexual meanings and experiences, according to the study, yet there is sexual agency exercised in many relationships, where one partner disempowers the other. On this issue, I think, feelings run strong. Within the adolescent world, it is the rhetoric of romantic love that provides boys with the key cultural mechanism by which they “get a yes” from girls. Why this behavior? Most male participants in the study associate virginity with stigma. So virginity as a stigma, for men, is also a disempowerment for them. This explains the key cultural mechanism and the pressure coming from adolescent boys. It also shows the relationship between gender and virginity loss being more complex.
The interpretation of virginity as a gift by most women (participants) portrays a cautious approach to the idea. Most women were amply rewarded, or just had the experience of reciprocity (“gift” exchange was fair). In other cases, there are dissatisfying virginity-loss encounters, where there is a nonreciprocating partner who does not “participate” in gift-exchange, but rather treats the situation as a casual encounter. Here, the lifelong view of virginity as a gift gets lost, and what remains is a person who has a missed, romantic experience once dreamed of. On the other hand, in the absence of social control and labels, adolescents are more susceptible to engaging in nonnormative, “enjoyable” behavior or heightening the cost of such behavior.
Some may argue that interpreting virginity as a gift does not make one gain or lose self-esteem, suddenly join sports teams, do better in school, have better relations with his parents, or become less or more attractive. It just simply means delaying intercourse. However, others may argue that delaying intercourse is a way to stress moral systems that justify saying “no thank you” to sex. Are we seeing a new subculture emerged in which it is “cool” to say no to sex? What happens when celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio in several accounts shout to the interviewer: “Virginity is hot!”? Perhaps virginity does not disempower women, as the study suggests, and maybe gender is not losing salience as an aspect of identity shaping.
On the other hand, there is the interpretation of virginity loss as a step in process, which the study shows does not disempower neither males nor females, but rather enhances one’s knowledge about sex, albeit with a partner’s assistance. There seem to be no psychological downsides to this interpretation—virginity loss as a process. Nonetheless, I believe this might be true mostly for adults who are more perceptible to viewing virginity-loss as an empowering and health-enhancing experience.
Work Cited
Carpenter, Laura M. “Gender and the Meaning and Experience of Virginity Loss in the Contemporary
You've laid out the issues from the article clearly enough, but it reads to me like a prelude to a more interesting discussion, which is absent here:
ReplyDeleteWhat do *you* think about virginity - the maintenance of it, the ending of it, etc? Your opinions are too guarded here.
Thank you for your comment and remark . . . My goal was not to provide analysis of my own take on virginity-loss, not to write a reflection piece, but to decipher the article itself, the three interpretations based on empirical findings.
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