CHAPTER 1

The First Time

How deep the need is to tell the story, to hear it to the end.

—Susan Griffin, A Chorus of Stones

One of the most significant stories a woman can tell is the experience of herfirst sexual intercourse. Not only is the event a traditional rite of passageinto womanhood, but it is the door to one of the most intriguing and sacredsides of herself—her sexuality. Unfortunately, for many women the first timethey have intercourse isn't by choice: prey to miseducation, abuse, coercion, oroutright violence, they have the decision taken from them. For others, however,it is the beginning of sexual discovery and romance, independence and physicalcommunication; in fact, many young women feel it's the first adult decision thatthey are able to make.

No matter what the experience—joyful or scarring, meaningful or seemingirrelevant—it can mark the threshold of the expression of our physicalrelationship with others. The stories we hold and the stories we tell of thistime are important to us as individuals—and as girls and women trying to makesense of the mysterious and intriguing experience of sex.

Several years ago, I remember looking in bookstores through categories ofbooks on women's issues and sexuality. There were books on masturbation, ontantric loving, on improving both heterosexual and homosexual technique. A waveof erotic literature had hit the mainstream, along with several landmark studiesabout female sexuality. But nothing on virginity loss except a few statistics onage of sexual initiation. With all of the books talking about the practicalitiesand the erotic, the emotional experience—how our heart and soul are affected bysex—was almost completely ignored.

I found it odd that in all that research, all that exploration of femalesexuality, nobody had broached the topic and asked any questions: How did youfeel about "losing your virginity"? What was it like, emotionally andphysically? The subject seemed almost purposefully ignored, as though it weretaboo, inconsequential, or simply a can of worms that nobody was willing toopen. Our society has exploited and sensationalized sex in every way possible,yet we have profoundly neglected the engaged heart and body—and the passage thatleads to or tears us away from this.

Granted, it is difficult to study and explore psychological and emotionalexperience. The range of variables, as well as the fear people have of revealingintimate details, make it nearly impossible. But I wanted to know what otherwomen felt about their "first time," what impact it had on their futuresexuality, and how their sexual selves unfolded.

I began by drafting a questionnaire, testing it out, and revising it until itwas impartial yet specific enough to get honest answers to my questions. My maingoal was to create a safe space for women to share the intimate details of theirstories, no matter what their experience. I wanted to provide a forum for womento express themselves, a way to talk about not only the event itself, but alsohow they felt about it and how their sexuality evolved as a result of it. Iasked open-ended questions, which I hoped would lead each woman to anexploration of the emotional aspect of her sexuality, a chance to see patternsand turning points, beginning with sexual initiation.

Over one thousand questionnaires went out to such women's organizations asshelters, support groups, professional associations, clubs, colleges, andspecial-interest groups. I also interviewed women who felt more comfortablespeaking than writing, from homeless women to busy working mothers.

More than 150 women from all walks of life—teachers and students,psychologists and writers, waitresses and security guards, lawyers andministers, prostitutes and sorority members—answered the questionnaire. Theaverage (median, mean, andmode) age of first intercourse was seventeen. AlthoughI tried to get as broad a racial mix as possible, the overwhelming majority ofrespondents were white—eighty-five percent—were Caucasian. Nine percent wereAfrican American, three percent Hispanic, and three percent Asian. I triedspecifically to reach minority women through a variety of organizations, clubs,and personal contacts, but social and/ or ethnic taboos about discussingsexuality might have discouraged some women from answering, as well as the factthat I am a white, middle-class woman. Many religious upbringings wererepresented, including Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic.

Geographically, the largest number of respondents were from California, makingup 20 percent of the total. Regionally, 31 percent came from the West, 33percent from the Midwest, 9 percent from the Southeast, and 25 percent from theNortheast; 2 percent from outside the United States. Approximately 10 percent ofthe respondents defined themselves as lesbians; about 25 percent have had asexual encounter with another woman.

The lack of response from older women was particularly noticeable. Age rangedfrom thirteen to seventy-four, but the average age was thirty-three. It's nothard to imagine that for older women, who grew up in a very different socialclimate, the mere inquiry was an invasion. A few wrote to tell me so. Oneseventy-five-year-old white Presbyterian said, "Thank you for the questionnaire,but I shall have to let you down. My friends and I were raised in a fardifferent era—with different standards and a different moral code. There were notherapists or self-help groups. If we had any problems, we 'shed a few tears,''thought we would die,' and in a few days were back to normal. Sounds simple, Iknow. So to fill out your questionnaire just isn't part of our world. I hope youunderstand."

"I have to just keep telling myself that these are changing times," writes aseventy-six-year-old black woman from South Carolina. "My granddaughters try tokeep me up on things, but sometimes I cannot believe how things have changed.The things they do, the things they talk about! I am trying to accept that it'sa different world, but I'd like to keep my own story and bedroom goings-on tomyself."

A sixty-seven-year-old white Catholic from Massachusetts echoes thissentiment: "There are some things in life that I feel should be your very own.Also, because of my very early training to not unburden myself to others, Idon't think I ever felt close enough to any woman to discuss such intimatedetails."

A few other women wrote back to say that they were refusing to fill out thequestionnaire or talk to me. The reasons varied, but often the reactions wererevealing. One eighty-year-old woman said, "It happened so long ago, has beenburied so deep, that to dredge it up now would be too difficult." And a youngprostitute, who had agreed to talk with me about her sexual history, whenquestioned about her first time, said, "I'll tell you anything but that." I alsogot responses questioning my intentions: "Are you a pervert? A lesbian?" or,simply, "What business is it of yours?"

The responses I did get were overwhelming. Something about telling the storyto a neutral party gave women the guts to look at themselves and theirsexuality, often with startling insight. Women exposed their secret, sexualself—a self usually reserved for intimate bedroom conversations, sessions with atherapist, or deemed too private to show anyone at all. Many women said, "Thankyou for asking this question," and others commented that it had been healing towrite down their story; some confided things that they had never before toldanyone.

Through the series of questions (see Appendix), women shared theirdisappointments: "I should have valued myself more and not 'given away' myvirginity to the first guy who wanted my body but not necessarily me." Theyshared their anger: "Now whenever I see this man/boy who date-raped me, I wantto punch him in the face, hurt him, and make him feel ugly as he made me feel."And they shared their growth: "Finally, through making love with a caring,compassionate man, I was shown how special, unique, and attractive I was; hegave me a wonderful gift—a new image of myself."

Because of the intimate nature of the questions, all of the names in thestories have been changed to ensure confidentiality. Other identifyingcharacteristics were also altered slightly, with only general references towhere a woman was raised and her occupation or religious background.

The stories I chose to include were those that I thought shared a commonthread of experience but which were also revealing of the individual. Thepassionate responses testify to the powerful emotions that women have about thisexperience. They offer a keyhole glimpse into the gamut of feelings, opinions,and beliefs women have about their own sexuality.

Because I asked specific questions about how first sexual experiences affectedtheir later sexuality, many women took the opportunity to give me an overview oftheir sexual history. In general, the older and more experienced the woman, themore she told of the metamorphosis of her sexuality, a positive transformationthat took place over the years. Again and again women disclosed that the olderthey got, the better sex was.

Often it took women years to learn about their bodies and what they needed andwanted sexually. Some women had to erase stereotypes they had held on to fordecades: how their bodies were "supposed" to function and how women were"supposed" to act during sex. Other women needed to learn to trust their partnerin order to communicate their needs. Age also brought about a change in women'sideas about the myths of fairy-tale romance and gave them the perspective torecreate ingrained images and relationship models to fit real life. Withexperience and maturity, women began to say what was important to them, ask forwhat they needed, and expect respect and support.

As I looked at the questionnaires and interviews as a whole, I saw certainthemes emerging. There were many issues surrounding the relationship between sexand power, whether feelings of empowerment, powerlessness, or using sex to havepower over men. As much as power was an issue, so was choice, in all its formsand gradations. Some women felt liberated by the choice they had consciouslymade. Others felt like passive participants or observers in something thatcoincidentally happened to them—they were not aware they even had a choice. Andstill others had the choice stripped from them by rape or other forms of abuse.Not surprisingly, the women who reported a positive experience almost alwaysneeded to feel love in order to enjoy sex; emotional connection seemed to be thegateway to sexual pleasure.

The tremendous changes in sexual mores and behavior over the past thirty yearswere clearly reflected in the differing responses between older and youngergenerations. Not only was there a greater willingness to share their experiencesamong younger women, but there was also less adherence to the notion of needingto preserve virginity and more claiming the right to sexual experience andadventure. The cutoff age seemed to be fifty—women over fifty had either "saved"their virginity for their wedding night, or at least felt they were supposed to.Women in their thirties and forties, who grew up in the sexually liberatedsixties and seventies, more comfortably claimed their right to premarital sexand told tales of many sexual partners. Young women in their teens and twenties,however, grappled with the very real fear of AIDS and other sexually transmitteddiseases, along with the pressure to grow up quickly and become sexually active.

Against the backdrop of all these experiences are individual responses to aset of sexual "rules" for women, the cornerstone of which traditionally has beenvirginity until marriage. Taken generationally, the broad spectrum of storiesrepresents the breakdown of the old rule, the ensuing confusion and conflictingpressures both to have and not have sex, and the discovery process which we, asa society, are in now.

Lillian Rubin, in her book Erotic Wars, discusses the unconscious nature ofthese rules. "How do we learn these sexual rules? I don't remember anyoneexplicitly saying those words to me. Yet I knew, as surely as I knew the time ofday or the day of the week. For the sexual norms of an age are passed on to theyoung in a thousand unseen and unspoken ways, as much in what is never said ornamed as in what is."

Nowhere did women react more strongly to the existence of such norms than intheir reactions to the concept of "losing your virginity," which is why I'vedevoted an entire chapter to responses to this question. Largely, women weredissatisfied with the social value placed on female virginity, and were offendedby sexual initiation being considered a loss. As one woman explained, "I don'tfeel as if we really 'lose' anything by making love for the first time. I feelwe gain a better understanding of ourselves and our bodies, knowledge about sexand sexuality, and a greater amount of self-confidence. My sexual partners havemade me feel much more comfortable about my body, which overall makes me feelbetter about myself. I didn't lose; I gained a whole lot more." Some womenthought that the term was appropriate, because they felt they had lost somethingthrough the experience: their youthful innocence, a private part of themselves,or a coveted bargaining chip.

Others resented the emphasis on penile-vaginal intercourse as the ultimatesexual experience. As one woman wrote, "If the idea is that a woman's a virginuntil she has penile-vaginal intercourse, that perpetuates the idea that theonly sex that counts is intercourse. I beg to differ! By still using theterm 'losing your virginity,' we are allowing a notion that sex equalsintercourse to continue."

The belief that the act of intercourse is the ultimate goal ignores orundermines much of our sensuality, notes sexologist Marty Klein in Ask MeAnything. "[We] need a broader view of sexuality. Intercourse and even orgasmare optional parts of a sexual experience. Describing everything else as'getting ready for sex' robs us of the deep satisfaction available from kissing,caressing, teasing, and oral and manual stimulation."

Nonetheless, the hallmark of sexual initiation for most people continues to beheterosexual penile-vaginal intercourse, and what emerged from thequestionnaires is that even in this day and age, we have conflicting feelingsand beliefs about the first time we perform this act (if we do), notions thatremain gender based. According to the recently published Janus Report on SexualBehavior, eighty-seven percent of eighteen to twenty-six-year-oldssurveyed believe that a double standard still exists. Virginity is stillsomething that girls are supposed to cherish and save while red-blooded Americanboys should try desperately to lose. Many men still have some vague belief thatthey want to marry a virgin—someone who doesn't challenge their sense ofadequacy, as one thirty-four-year-old man said to me, or someone, as SigmundFreud speculated, over whom they can feel a sense of sole ownership.

Not surprisingly, many of the young women who answered are still very uneasyabout coming to terms with their budding sexuality, allowing themselves to betalked into sex in order to be loved, feeling afterward that they've beendegraded by or confused about the experience. The conclusion that exposure tosex in pop culture somehow made one ready to become sexual caused endlessdisappointment.

This fourteen-year-old junior high school student offers a story and reactiontypical of younger women: "I didn't really think sex was a big deal, but it is.Maybe because my stepmom slept around a lot and cheated on my dad. She treatedsex as nothing and was very promiscuous. So last year, when I was thirteen, Ilost my virginity to a sixteen-year-old boy I had been friends with for threeyears. He was pretty drunk, and I had just broken up with my boyfriend of twoyears and was upset. We went on a walk in the woods and lay down on his sweater.It hurt, and I bled a lot. I regretted it later and wished it had been withsomeone whom I was really in love with.

"I felt sad because losing my virginity should have been a wonderfulexperience, but instead it was meaningless. I let him inside of me, we weresharing something totally sacred, and it was treated as nothing. I felt likea slut, real dirty. I've had other sexual encounters since then. I feel thatbecause my first time wasn't special, none of the other men I'm with will loveme, and they'll think I'm dirty."

This conflict—is it acceptable for young women to have sex—finds its echo, andperhaps origins, in ideas we are exposed to in literature, movies, andtelevision, through religion, and by parents and friends. We are given images ofdoe-like, innocent virgins, but when we turn the page or switch the channel wesee a voluptuous, sensual, experienced woman as the icon of the female sex.Thus, to be a virgin is both desirable and undesirable: You are fresh andmarriageable; you are inexperienced and unappealing. To be sexually active isboth desirable and undesirable: You are attractive, seductive, and comfortablewith your sexuality; you've been around the block a few too many times. Withinthis maelstrom, each woman must find her place—and we do.