What if we could broaden it to think that there's multiple virginities

March 29, 2016 12:19 PM

'Girls & Sex' And The Importance Of Talking To Young Women About Pleasure One of the things that was really great was in talking to a gay girl I asked her, "When did you think that you had lost your virginity?" And she said, "Well, you know, I really have thought a lot about that, and I'm not really sure." She gave a few different answers and then she said...
posted by Michele in California (25 comments total)

Thanks for this post. I liked Cinderella Ate My Daughter and didn't realize she had a new book coming out -- and this one looks like it should be required reading for everyone.

Refinery29 broke Orenstein's findings down to: "7 Crucial Factors That Affect Young Women's Sex Lives"
1) Everything from bad sex to low self-esteem can be traced back — in part — to our failure to teach girls how to achieve and value pleasure.
2) Whether girls consider virginity as something precious to be protected or a rite of passage to rush through, it overemphasizes the milestone of vaginal sex over other sexual acts and encourages girls to orient their self-worth around whether or not they’ve had sex.
3) Truth: The internet is full of porn, and a lot kids are watching it; for many, it’s their first exposure to sex. And: ...given the prevalence of porn use among what Orenstein calls “Generation XXX,” it’s worth asking: How and what kind of porn could actually help girls value their own pleasure, particularly if they’re not being taught to do so by anyone else?
4) According to Orenstein, social media encourages many girls to commodify themselves as brands and objects to be liked based on their sex appeal, and she isn’t so sure that “empowered” pop divas like Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, and Miley Cyrus, are helping.
5) The internet serves as a double-edged sword for LGBTQ teens: a source of cyberbullying to which they disproportionately fall victim, but also a much-needed avenue for self-discovery.
6) Ordering a pizza is actually a perfect metaphor for sexual consent.
7) Maybe we should all just move to the Netherlands:

According to a study Orenstein cites of American and Dutch women at two similar colleges, “[The] Americans, much like the ones I met, described interactions that were ‘driven by hormones,’ in which boys determined relationships, male pleasure was prioritized, and reciprocity was rare. As for the Dutch girls? Their early sexual activity took place in loving, respectful relationships in which they communicated openly with their partners (whom they said they knew ‘very well’) about what felt good and what didn’t, about how ‘far’ they wanted to go, and about what kind of protection they would need along the way. They reported more comfort with their bodies and their desires than the Americans and were more in touch with their own pleasure.”

posted by zarq at 12:36 PM on March 29, 2016 [11 favorites]

and she isn’t so sure that “empowered” pop divas like Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, and Miley Cyrus, are helping.

If the problem is not teaching women to value their own pleasure, Nicki Minaj is emphatically not part of the problem.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 12:47 PM on March 29, 2016 [20 favorites]

An economics major taking a gender studies class is getting dressed in her college dorm room for a night out, cheerfully discussing sexual stereotyping in advertising with Orenstein — while at the same time grabbing a miniskirt and a bottle of vodka, the better to achieve her evening goal: to “get really drunk and make out with someone.”

“You look hot,” her friend tells her — and the student, apparently registering the oddness of the scene, turns to Orenstein. “In my gender class I’m all, ‘That damned patriarchy,’ ” she says. “But . . . what’s the point of a night if you aren’t getting attention from guys?”

Her ambition, she explains, “is to be just slutty enough, where you’re not a prude but you’re not a whore. . . . Finding that balance is every college girl’s dream, you know what I mean?”

-The New York Times reviews Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
By Peggy Orenstein
posted by four panels at 1:04 PM on March 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

Reminds me of this line from Sleeping With Other People.
posted by Talez at 1:18 PM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

I will need to get the book. I kept rewinding the end to hear what she had to say about what I could say to my daughter (in the future) that would help her be as liberated and in control of her sexuality as those Dutch girls. I'm not sure I got it. I think I need that talk because I sure didn't get that as a girl.
posted by amanda at 2:56 PM on March 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

I think I need that talk because I sure didn't get that as a girl.

I will suggest that working on getting it yourself will be the single best thing you can do for your daughter.

Reading books and articles and doing therapy to help me wrap my brain around ideas was useful, but of limited use. A much more powerful experience was just having a good time sexually with someone else.

"The Joy of Sex" and "The Joy of Sex 2" by Alex Comfort (and I heard them once referred to by a psychologist as "The Comfort Twins") are a good thing to share with a trusted lover. Climb into bed with them and read together in bed, like a grown up version of reading stories to your kids. Let it go where it goes. There doesn't have to be a specific goal of trying anything. The goal should just be to read this stuff and get educated as a couple. That's it.
posted by Michele in California at 3:38 PM on March 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

There's an argument that some of the girls have in the book about exactly what [oral sex] is. Is it sex? Is it not sex?

That this is even a question puzzles and fascinates me. As I once pointed out to an ex who was a fair bit younger than me -- it's not like it's called oral cuddling.
posted by webmutant at 7:07 PM on March 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

I just lstened to her Fresh Air interview, and was glad I happened on it. As parents of a preteen girl, we've thought we were doing OK, but it was sobering to hear P.O. describe the Scylla & Charybdis that so many girls have to navigate. I hope we'll have the guts to keep learning what we need to know, so we can help our girl learn the strengths & smarts she'll need to handle that herself.
posted by NumberSix at 7:17 PM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

“You look hot,” her friend tells her — and the student, apparently registering the oddness of the scene, turns to Orenstein. “In my gender class I’m all, ‘That damned patriarchy,’ ” she says. “But . . . what’s the point of a night if you aren’t getting attention from guys?”

I'm glad that when I was in college we found nothing odd about this at all. Being free to acknowledge the shittiness of patriarchy while also going out on the town to make out with someone for fun always seemed eminently compatible to me and my girlfriends.

According to Orenstein, social media encourages many girls to commodify themselves as brands and objects to be liked based on their sex appeal, and she isn’t so sure that “empowered” pop divas like Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, and Miley Cyrus, are helping

Every person I know who loves Minaj is a woman, and most of them are gay. I'm not sure how I feel about this.
posted by stoneandstar at 7:57 PM on March 29, 2016

I met a bunch of Dutch guys recently, and every last one of them was more in touch with themselves mentally and emotionally than your typical North American. More confident and assertive too. Also they all really liked to drink. I don't think it's just sex where we're kind of losing sight of ourselves. It's our entire culture.

The part of the article about young adults using alcohol as mutual absolution was interesting. Hadn't thought of it that way before. As was the part about the fine line between being a "slut" and a "prude." I'm not sure if there actually is a sweet spot on that axis with a positive adjective. When you're framing female sexuality in terms of how much pleasure they give to others (via appearance or sexual acts) it's pretty black and white.
posted by mantecol at 8:29 PM on March 29, 2016 [8 favorites]

> the fine line between being a "slut" and a "prude." I'm not sure if there actually is a sweet spot on that axis with a positive adjective.

'Cool girl'?
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:12 AM on March 30, 2016

When my daughter was reaching the age when sex was a possibility, I was in the 'meet her boyfriend with a shotgun camp.' Later--with a large helping of education from my daughter herself--I came to understand how sexist that stance is and I realized that it's not that I didn't want my daughter NOT to have sex; I didn't want her to be taken advantage of, feel compelled to engage in the one-sided sexual activities that our society encourages.

Unrelated to that, recently I have heard about two 20-something women who are/were involved in long-term relationships with men who wanted to 'save themselves for marriage.' In both cases, this meant engaging in everything but PiV activities, one of whom was doing it to meet what he understood to be evangelical Christian expectations of purity (I don't know the other's motives). In both cases, the women in the relationship were more than happy to have full sexual relationships and (understandably) expressed frustration with their boyfriends' policies. It's so idiotic for these young men to think they're meeting the letter of the law while so blindly not seeing what was originally the spirit of the purity laws.
posted by tippiedog at 7:13 AM on March 30, 2016

That this is even a question puzzles and fascinates me. As I once pointed out to an ex who was a fair bit younger than me -- it's not like it's called oral cuddling.

When I was in high school a million years ago (80s) my best friend convinced me that oral sex was not sex. It had always seemed to me (still does) that oral sex is WAY more intimate than whatever form of pushing genitals together people want to do, but she convinced me I was wrong and a prude to boot.

A couple years later, when I got my first really serious boyfriend this came up in conversation and he said, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure you and Lora are the only ones who think that." Clearly she was just ahead of her time.

Having said all that, I sure wish there was a way to say to my daughter, who's straight, DON'T YOU DARE go down on a guy a second time until he has gone down on you once--you know without her dying of horror at the conversation.
posted by looli at 9:32 AM on March 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

I listened to Orenstein on the Fresh Air podcast this morning, but I haven't read the book. When she described her study, though, she revealed a pretty big bias and what would appear to me to be a serious limitation to her work.

She said that she interviewed around 70 girls, of different ethnicities, but that they were all middle class and educated. She said this was a specific choice because she wanted to show that if "even these girls"--who have so much opportunity and are "leaning in" (her words)--are facing this kind of intimate inequality then clearly there must be a real problem.

That's a hugely classist assumption that compromises her findings to some degree. I mean, who's to say that working class or impoverished girls aren't demanding all kinds of reciprocal pleasure in their intimate relationships? Certainly not Orenstein, because she didn't ask that question. Personally I'd be curious to find out it the college aged women are "giving in" in the bedroom because they are "leaning in" in the classroom and that's threatening to young men. Or not, you know, but I think ignoring class is a big mistake.
posted by looli at 9:40 AM on March 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

@looli: Having said all that, I sure wish there was a way to say to my daughter, who's straight, DON'T YOU DARE go down on a guy a second time until he has gone down on you once--you know without her dying of horror at the conversation.

That's pretty much the point I reached eventually, though my awesome daughter has become an awesome strong feminist on her own (age 21 now). [I'm the father, by the way]

I haven't said anything that directly, but I've made my own viewpoints well known to her. For example, when I heard a report claiming that oral sex is on the rise, I ranted about the fact that nobody was talking about the fact that it was most surely primarily female-on-male and what a crock of shit that is and about a report that says boys are convincing women that oral sex--again, gender-on-gender not stated-- is not sex was every teenage boy's dream but a crock of shit for the girls involved.

I'm sure she got the point.

To her embarrassment, I have told her I hope she has a vibrator. On second thought, I have been pretty damn direct with her.
posted by tippiedog at 10:08 AM on March 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I happened to hear this yesterday yesterday as well, and the thing that struck me was just how American this was. The American relationship to sex and especially women/girls and sex is uniquely strange. Strange in a way I have a hard time really articulating. It's worshiped and feared and thought of as bad but almost never is sex just another thing that lots and lots of people do. Sex sells everywhere, but only here is there so much guilt and weirdness and other...stuff. It has this pigpen-like cloud of detritus hangover from I guess the puritans. I just came back from New Zealand after quite a while and on the way to the airport in a strip mall there was a huge sign advert for a "sexual health clinic under 18 free". And I thought to myself, damn I so very want to steal that banner put it in my carry on and hang it next door to my local hobby lobby down here in Arkansas.
posted by hatchetjack at 12:44 PM on March 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

I have really mixed feelings about the discussion along international lines here. If we were saying "Black Americans do it better" or "Hispanic Americans do it better", I imagine that would get deleted and called out as racist. So I am not thrilled with the "Dutchmen do it better" slant to this discussion and how everyone seems willing to just accept that whole cloth.

During my divorce, I strongly favored the company of men who were not white Americans. This included a variety of ethnicities and nationalities. It was definitely a broadening experience. But I am disinclined to say that any of them was hands down better in every way than white American culture.

It was a sexual education, definitely. But I did not for one minute turn a blind eye to some of the less lovely aspects of the cultures of the men I was involved with. One of them was Middle Eastern and grew up Muslim. If I began promoting the idea that "Muslims do it better" that would not likely be accepted without question here.

This is a problem space I have contemplated a great deal. I remain on the fence about saying anyone has a, hands down, better answer in every way. I would very much like to see some improvements in American culture. But I would also like to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
posted by Michele in California at 1:33 PM on March 30, 2016

> That this is even a question puzzles and fascinates me. As I once pointed out to an ex who was a fair bit younger than me -- it's not like it's called oral cuddling.

This doesn't seem like a strange question to me at all. I think it's a pretty blurry line, actually.

The question is whether oral sex is "sex," or kissing, and why?

I think most people would agree kissing is not "having sex," even when it's sexy kissing, as long as we're talking about kissing someone's mouth or shoulder or fingers or hipbones or even nipples.

If we're saying that sexy kissing of someone's in-their-pants-parts is sex, and sexy kissing of the rest of them is something less than sex, perhaps there's a genitals-makes-it-sex argument to be made...

...except that that argument is maybe a little ickily reductionist. Besides, it also doesn't work if your sexual needs and wants don't involve your genitals, for all sorts of reasons including how you feel about your genitals, health or physiological limitations, or other situations that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head.

Frankly, as a bisexual woman, I basically consider the line between "did we have sex, yes or no" as being situationally self-defined (i.e. did it seem like we turned a corner that felt like "yep, we had The Sex?") Blessedly, that sort of determination line is less and less important as I get older.
posted by desuetude at 2:37 PM on March 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

"I have really mixed feelings about the discussion along international lines here. If we were saying "Black Americans do it better" or "Hispanic Americans do it better", I imagine that would get deleted and called out as racist. So I am not thrilled with the "Dutchmen do it better" slant to this discussion and how everyone seems willing to just accept that whole cloth."

Sex and sexuality is approached completely differently by different cultures. (See the oft quoted case of Saudi Arabia vs Australia). The "better" part is subjective and I would perhaps have used the word healthy. The issue with your quote here, correct me if Im understanding wrong, is that the black americans and the hispanic americans are both americans at the end of the day, even within individual ethnic... "norms?".
posted by hatchetjack at 3:11 PM on March 30, 2016

Hearing that boys/young men still won't reciprocate oral sex on women is actually surprising to me because men bragging about how much they like it/how good they are at it seems to have become way more common in pop culture the last decade or so.
posted by atoxyl at 3:42 PM on March 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

> Hearing that boys/young men still won't reciprocate oral sex on women is actually surprising to me because men bragging about how much they like it/how good they are at it seems to have become way more common in pop culture the last decade or so.

True, but there's also so much societal pressure for boys and men to be sexually experienced that it's commonplace for them to lie, openly bragging about sex that never actually happened.

If I had a dollar for every time I'd caught a guy telling everyone that he'd slept with me, when actually we'd perhaps kissed and then gone our separate ways home...well, I'd be able to buy myself a nice cocktail, at the very least.
posted by desuetude at 8:55 AM on March 31, 2016

That's absolutely true. I wasn't expecting that the bragging would be reflective of the reality though I was expecting that it would be creating a reality where you grow up thinking it's the norm for dudes to go down.
posted by atoxyl at 11:40 AM on March 31, 2016

the Dutch are funny, they pair up young and get married at uni or just after - it's probably like rural america. They're not open-minded, they just really don't care what other people are doing, they know what they want. Phlegmatic? (Based on 8 weeks there as a student.)
posted by maiamaia at 2:19 PM on March 31, 2016

maiamaia, that's not what I see among my peers. I strongly suspect your sample may not be representative.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:04 AM on April 1, 2016

I don't really want to post this as a separate post. I happened to trip across it today and it sort of does a good job of explaining the worst case scenario of not educating girls and young women and not helping them feel at ease with their bodies and sexualities: After Staying a Virgin Until Marriage, I Couldn't Have Sex With My Husband

(cough -- hetero men should pay attention here: if we can't accept our sexualities, good luck getting your needs adequately met -- cough)
posted by Michele in California at 1:36 PM on April 2, 2016