Our Bodies, Ourselves (33 page)

Young women in particular are burdened with conflicting pressures about virginity. On the one hand, popular culture promotes an everyone's-doing-it attitude that can make young women feel something's wrong with them if they're not ready to have sex. On the other, morality messages shame young women into “saving themselves” for marriage.

Jessica Valenti, author of
The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women
, writes about the troubling dynamics of federally funded purity balls (father/daughter dances where girls pledge their virginity to their dads, who promise to protect it until a suitable husband comes along) and abstinence-only programs that compare girls' bodies to wrapped lollipops that become unwanted when used. “While young women are subject to overt sexual messages every day,” notes Valenti, “they're simultaneously being taught—by the people who are supposed to care for their personal and moral development, no less—that their only real worth is their virginity and ability to remain ‘pure.'”

Also troubling is the messaging about who can attain such purity. The girls most often presented by the abstinence-only movement as examples to idolize are white, are straight, and fit a narrow beauty ideal. “Women of color, low-income women, immigrant women—these are the women who are not seen as worthy of being placed on a pedestal,” adds Valenti.

Complicating attitudes further is the pressure to make “the first time” meaningful in every way. A young college student says:

Particularly for girls, there is pressure coming from two opposite ends: the pressure to “lose it” and the pressure to lose it “in the right way.” I don't think guys feel that “right way” bit as much.

You may choose to abstain from intercourse and/or other sexual activities for any number of reasons, including just not being ready. You have the right to say no to someone who is pushing you to have sex, and the right to say yes to sex that is pleasurable and responsible:

It's not that I am waiting for marriage, or even for the “right” guy to come along. It isn't that I don't like to look sexy and that I don't enjoy flirting or being sexual. It's just that I haven't had sex. I haven't been in the position with a person where I am comfortable and feel safe. For some reason being a virgin in high school is relatively normal, but being a virgin in college seems to have as much of a stigma as being a “slut” does.

© Amanda Harrington/Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin

If sex were not such a taboo subject, comprehensive sexuality education would not only cover birth control and sexually transmitted infections, but also make room for discussions about pleasure and enthusiastic consent (topics
that are covered in depth in the next chapter). When women are shamed into always saying no, and men are pressured to always say yes, we all miss out on experiencing our full sexual selves.

There is no reliable way for anyone to tell by looking at a woman's genitals whether she has been sexually active. The hymen, more recently referred to as the vaginal corona, a tiny bit of mucous membrane at the opening of the vagina left over from the vagina's development, is often considered an indicator of virginity, but its presence doesn't have any real significance. And not everyone has one.

“Some girls are born without a hymen,” says Carol Roye, a nursing professor at Hunter College and a nurse-practitioner, while “others have only a scanty fringe of tissue. Moreover, for all its fabled mystery, the hymen is just a body part.”
3
For more information, see
“Vaginal Corona,”

While the hymen can be torn during sex or other physical activity, it doesn't “break.” Torn areas can bleed, but it doesn't always happen.

It is also impossible to tell if someone has had sex by how her body looks, how she walks or sits, or by any other means.

Media images and messages often reinforce stereotypes about sexuality. For example, Latina characters on TV shows and in films are often dressed in tight, revealing clothes, while Muslim women are covered head to toe and depicted as repressed. African-American women are often cast as hypersexual when young and asexual when they're older. And media portrayals of African-American men and women in loving relationships are almost entirely absent from popular culture:

What are the young ladies thinking and feeling when the only women who resemble them are shaking their ass in front of the camera for LiL Wayne and Drake? What are the media telling us about African-American women? That we are only good to be video vixens and single.

Racism, which often limits representations of color, exacerbates such stereotypes.

Other stereotypes arise from sexism and general fear of difference. Lesbians are often portrayed as aggressive man-haters; bisexuals as promiscuous, because they refuse to be boxed into an either-or definition of sexual attraction; and trans people as confused, hypersexual, or deceitful. Those of us who express sexuality and sexual desire openly may find ourselves called sluts. Slut shaming is frequently used against young women who are believed to have had sex (even in monogamous relationships) and women who have (or have had) more than one partner. It may also be used as a slur for other reasons:

Those girls, I learned, were nearly every girl—not only the ones who showed interest in sex or had sex …but the ones who wore skimpy clothing, read fashion magazines, drank, dated, flirted, or had any investment in finding a partner.

These and other destructive stereotypes influence the ways we do (or don't) assert our desires and the ways we judge ourselves and other women. They affect how others treat us and, when we internalize them and believe them, how we treat ourselves.

In reality, there are enormous differences in sexual experiences and attitudes among women within any racial, cultural, gender, or sexual identity. We can begin to free up the range of sexual values and expression available to
all
of us by approaching one another ready to listen and learn.

We often see ourselves through the eyes of others. Influenced by popular images, we may lose
respect for our uniqueness and end up judging ourselves harshly. This can have a negative effect on the ways we express ourselves and the risks we take:

For years I wouldn't make love in a position that exposed my backside to scrutiny, for I had been told it was “too jiggly.” Needless to say, this prevented me from being sexually assertive and creative and limited my responses. We have a good sex life with lots of variety, fantasies, games. The fact that my disability prevents me from bending my leg limits us in some positions, but we just try different ones. Yet …I am still struggling with my body. When I am unclothed, I still feel like parts of me are really ugly. I think that when I can finish mourning and cry out my anguish over the disability, then sex will get better for me.

Courtesy of YWCHAC

Members of the Young Women of Color HIV/AIDS Coalition at the 2010 Teen Health & Wellness Film Festival in New York City. Learn more at statusispower.com.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the difficult position of trying to help our partners overcome their own negative feelings:

While I love my girlfriend's body without reservation, and think she looks damn sexy in most clothes (not to mention achingly beautiful naked), I know—in part because I've felt that way myself—that when you're feeling lumpish and fat no amount of affirmation from a partner or other friend/family member is going to help drown out those voices in your head. In part this is because we're relentlessly told by media and medical “experts” that not conforming to our culture's physical standards of beauty isn't just unfortunate—it's somehow immoral. I don't have a lot of authority, as just one person (who's blinded by love to boot), to counteract those omnipresent voices of cultural authority that say, “You're bad, you're wrong, you're not beautiful, you're unworthy.”

Acceptance that comes from within can be the most satisfying. Getting to where we can block out the damaging messages frees us to love ourselves and our partners more fully:

One of the difficult things about being large is that more often than not other people are the problem, not me. Many times I have felt that people I know wonder at my friendship with my lover. They wonder how a thin person can make love to a large one. The idea, I suppose, is that large women aren't attractive. Nonsense, of course. I enjoy my body immensely when I make love, either to myself or my boyfriend. I never think about my largeness. I simply am it and positively luxuriate in it.

As a woman, and particularly as a trans woman, I sometimes find it difficult to forget all the messages from society and the media about what I'm “supposed to” look like. The possibility that my body can give me pleasure—regardless of whether or not I think I'm thin enough or my breasts are big enough or I'm too tall—is really wonderful.

For further discussion, see
Chapter 3
, “Body Image”; and
“What Is It Like to Be in a Relationship When You Don't Like Some or All of Your Own Body?”

Power differences often play out in sex. Even if you feel equal to a male partner, the culture we live in generally values men more. A female sexual partner may also have more power or status than you because of earning power, level of education, class, race, or other factors. If you are transgender, non-trans lovers may have more respect in society because they operate within the context of a widely accepted gender identity. Though a partner may not acknowledge or even feel that there's a power differential, such privileges can surface in sex, resulting in the following responses: