First Person: Sarah "Sexual experiences don't have to fall into the categories of 'right' or 'wrong' or 'mistake.' They are simply expressions of myself."

This week's First Person interview comes from 25-year-old Sarah, who talks about where her sexuality is rooted and why she doesn't want others to define it for her. Please send us an email if you'd like to tell your story.



Tell us about yourself:

I am 25 years old and studying creative writing in New York City.  I grew up in Texas, and until a few months ago, I was a virgin.



How do you define virginity?

I know the definition I grew up with: that a virgin is someone who has not had penis-in-vagina sex. Now, I find that definition unsatisfactory for lots of reasons. It is not just that this definition applies only to heterosexuals, but I'm not sure that it works for heterosexuals either. When we talk about virginity loss we are not simply talking about a physical change, but something far more complex, an intangible, filled with deeply symbolic meanings. The categories of "virgin" and "non-virgin" fail to take into account the richness of sexual experience. It invests so much in one single moment (the moment in which a penis first enters a vagina) as this moment of profound change in our lives–when we pass magically from girls into women.

We are taught that this moment will somehow determine the rest of our sexual lives and it's a decision we take cautiously, because (as women especially) we are told that when and how we lose our virginity has a lot to say about the people we are.



Why did you wait and why did you stop waiting?

As a girl, I grew up hearing that for women sex is profoundly emotional. We must be careful, we must protect ourselves, and we must be very, very certain that the decisions we make about sex are the right ones. Why? Because the emotions that accompany sex for women might be too difficult or overwhelming if not shared with the right person at the right time.

When I did finally have sex it was with a guy, a friend of a friend, who I knew for about twelve hours.  They were a significant twelve hours in my life, and they were not devoid of emotion; in fact, they were full of emotion–excitement, aliveness, and loneliness too–but I did not fall in love as I knew I would not, nor did I fall apart (as had for years been subconsciously told I could).

Recently, after hearing I had had sex, the a male friend said of the guy: "I am not sure this guy was deserving of that." An older friend said to me, "Well, you are still emotionally a virgin." My younger sister, outraged at my one-night-stand said: "Sarah, if a guy is worth it, he shouldn't care about your past."

These comments, though meant well, have a somewhat disturbing message underpinning them: that my sexuality is somehow not my own.  That I threw away my virginity too easily.  That somehow the sex I had was meaningless because it was not shared with a partner.  That I had sex for my future partners or just to get it over with.  When in fact, I had sex because I wanted to.

I found a deeper truth I had known for a long time but was finally giving power to: Each sexual encounter is an expression of my sexuality, but my sexuality has to do with so much more than who I have sex with, or how much sex I have, or if I have ever had sex before. It has to do with my own relationship to my body.  My sexuality is deeply rooted in me.

I can trust in my own desires, my own emotions and move with them. Experiences don't have to fall on the categories of "right" or "wrong" or "mistake".  They are simply expressions of myself–among  many I will make over the course of my life–some of which will feel more authentic than others but all of which matter and are important and true.



Any thoughts on virginity in our society?



Perhaps the most lasting message girls get is that sex is powerful, scary, and has the potential to hurt you if you are not ready for it.  I think back to my brother and the messages he he received. Decide when you are ready and be safe. Boys hear, in essence, that they are able to make their own choices; that they should trust in their own intelligence and are aware enough of their desires to make responsible decisions about sex.  What a girl hears is very different: That her emotions and desires are not to be trusted but that she should be protected from them.  That she is fragile and could make a bad decision that will leave her harmed.

It perpetuates this notion that our sexuality is defined by external factors. I think of sexuality differently; as something internal whose movement outward takes many forms of expression and sex itself is only one of those.  In this I find great freedom and confidence and joy.

First-time sex: For some girls it happens without protection–and without consent

Cara at The Curvature reports on a (not-yet-peer-reviewed) study that claims girls take more chances during first sex, that is, are less likely to use birth control. Which has researchers confused, since they say boys are more likely to engage in risky behavior. Huh? Are you shaking your head at this simplistic logic? So is Laura Lindberg, senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute:

"...boys may still have a lot to do with it. She said teenage girls are less likely than boys to want to have sex when it happens for the first time and may not do as good a job advocating for birth control. Lindberg added that contraception at first sex is 80 percent condoms, meaning birth control largely depends on the boy."

No kidding. The Curvature goes on to point out a statistic I wasn't aware of: "10% of young women's first intercourse is involuntary. "In other words, they are raped. As Cara writes:

I can’t quite wrap my head around that. We’re talking about young women being raped, and calling it risky behavior. We’re talking about young women being raped, and asking questions about condom use. We’re talking about young women being raped, and the biggest concern at the front of our minds is about STDs. We’re talking about young women being raped, and we’re asking why they don’t know any better?

As Cara points out, every sex ed curriculum should include a serious discussion about what consensual sex means, and we're not doing that at all. I strongly encourage you to read the rest of her excellent post here.

Talkin' virginity with Lena Chen and the Gurls

Lena Chen is definitely on our radar these days: she writes the blog The Chicktionary and is now the Health, Sex and Relationships expert for gURL.com, a community for teenage girls. Lena and I had a great conversation over at gURL about virginity, chaste pop stars and whether you can tell if a guy's a virgin by checking his penis (don't worry, you can't). Here's a just a little snippet:



Therese: Let’s start with something simple like how do you define virginity. Which actually isn’t at all simple, so never mind.



Lena: I defined virginity in previous posts on gURL (“The gURL Guide To Virginity Through History“), and there’s so little consensus on the definition of sex that it’s surprising that anyone attributes any significance to their “purity.” There are a lot of people who still think (incorrectly) that you can “test” for a girl’s virginity. But guys just don’t have the same anatomy, so they don’t have to deal with the same crap.



Therese: Right. Checking the condition of someone’s hymen gives you as much information about someone’s sex life as checking the tip of someone’s penis. None. Why is it that guys and gURLs are judged differently for the same behavior?



Lena: I think the even more interesting thing is that girls are fetishized. Male sexuality isn’t commodified in the same way.



Therese: It’s true. We talk about giving away your “precious gift,” like your virgin status is really all you have to offer someone. When Taylor Swift (left, with Demi Lovato) sings in her song friend ‘gave everything she had’ to a boy, it means she gave him her virginity, doesn’t it? And it ended badly because, well, if all you have is your virginity, then you’re left kinda worthless.That was EVERYTHING SHE HAD! Really, she has nothing else of value to offer this world? Like being a kind person or being good at math, or being able to run really fast? There are a lot of very excellent reasons to wait to have sex, but the fact that your virginity is the only thing of value you have to offer the world is NOT one of them.



Read the rest of our conversation at gURL.com...

Fromt the archives: What's this film all about? A bounty of Q&As will answer all your questions (except what color dress Therese finally wore at her wedding)

As we work though the tough process of boiling down 70 hours of interviews and Miley Cyrus videos into an hour-long film, I've been looking back at some of the things we've been writing about. This is a pretty good distillation of the things that have driven me batty enough to do this film. So for those of you just joining us, a little distillation and review:



I want to thank a group of fantastic bloggers who have spread the word about our project far and wide. A few of them did Q&As with me, and their questions were so good, they made my brain hurt. Here are some of the hopefully smart-sounding answers I produced in response.



From Amanda Hess's The Sexist who asked about the different meanings of virginity in the contexts of abstinence pledging, porn and the wedding industry:



Therese: I think they’re remarkably similar in that they all work within the fantasy of female sexual purity as something to be fetishized. They have different props—the Big White Wedding Dress, porn’s white panties, and the purity ring—but all use a sort of ritualized process whereby a symbolically virginal female is offered up to a male for deflowering. I say symbolic because the porn actress is definitely not a virgin, we’re pretty certain that most modern brides aren’t either, and given our shaky definition of the V-word, we might not even consider some purity pledgers to be totally chaste. But it’s the fetishization of all three that really fascinates me. For whose benefit is it this being played out?



From Australian journalist Rachel Hills' Musings of an Inappropriate Woman about mainstream media coverage of virginity and female sexuality:



Therese: There’s still a lot of alarmist hand-wringing about so-called ‘hookup culture,’ the evils of young women having casual sex, and the death of relationships. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with it. I think most of us find ourselves in all sorts of sexual situations in our lives, some good, some bad. Instead of talking about how many partners someone has had, it’s more important to talk about consent, doing things because you want to, not because you’ve been coerced, or you think all your friends are doing it so you have to as well. I’ve read that about 1/3 of college students identify as virgins, which is a far cry from the media portrayal of college as one big scary female-soul-crushing orgy.



And from Kyna Morgan's blog about women filmmakers Her Film who asked about the origins of the film from a personal perspective:



Therese: I was planning my own wedding at the time of the shooting, and was getting a little freaked out by all the chastity-based wedding rituals and coded wedding accessories. What would it mean for me to embrace the white dress, don a veil, and be ‘given away’? What would that say about my own sexual autonomy and identity? It echoes the narration of I Was a Teenage Feminist where I refer to myself as “a woman who feels incredible pressure to conform to an ideal that I don’t even buy into. Is it possible to be who I want to be without judgment, or apology or compromise?”



And this post written by Melanie Klein at Feminist Fatale on why the film is important amidst our culture's contradictory messages about sex:



Melanie: These manufactured, one-dimensional images of heterosexual sexuality constantly shoved down my throat (no pun intended). Running parallel to the cultural obsession with sex (and nude or near-nude ladies that grace countless magazine covers, billboards and populate advertisements), is the obsession with female virginity (so much so that many women opt to have their virginity restored via plastic surgery).

Clearly, with all this sex out there, the important issues regarding sex and sexuality are glossed over and given little media coverage. What remains in the public eye remains a vapid, one-dimensional image of sexuality and a perpetual reinforcement of the good girl/ bad girl (madonna/whore dichotomy)



[With thanks to superintern/editor Sara for her help!]

Only Virgins Need Apply

From the June 1974 issue of Ms. Magazine, who doesn't think we've come all that far since then.

All that free milk is ruining it for the rest of us!

"This city, the internet and the world at large is filled with single women looking for relationships and not succeeding for many reasons not the least of which is the availability of casual sex. Shame and guilt have their place in this world, they are functional and who the hell are you to liberate anyone of those powerful and functional emotions[...]

If you have no interest in seeing a person in the context of a relationship, you have no business engaging in sex with them–end of story."

Irate comment left by Jill, a reader of Em & Lo's 'Negotiating a Night of Casual Sex' who was unhappy about the column's apparent promotion of one night stands for women. The theory being that an over-abundant availability of said casual sex would make it impossible for good women to find men to have relationships with.

I'm confused. I thought that all the gals giving the milk for free would never be in relationships anyway. Their slutty, slutty ways would surely disqualify them from consideration by decent men, leaving the path wide and clear for Jill.