MOST U.S. HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS HAVE NEVER HAD SEX: Carolyn Moynihan

at MercatorNet: Here is some important info from the US that we missed last week. A report from the federal health monitoring agency, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), brings the news that births to teenagers aged 15-19 are down by 44 per cent on 1990. The 2010 birth rate for that age group of 34.3 per 1000 females represents a 70-year low, and record lows for all racial/ethnic groups.

Actually, by itself a lower teenage birth-rate is an equivocal statistic. It could have been brought down by abortion. It could mean that hundreds of thousands of young women are on hormonal contraceptives that make them vulnerable to diseases and facilitate harmful relationships. It is a matter for ethical evaluation whether it is worse for an 18- or 19-year-old to have a baby than to be subject to these alternatives.

The good news is that the dramatic drop in pregnancies is related first and foremost to increased sexual abstinence among teens. Those reporting (in the National Survey of Family Growth) that they had never had sexual intercourse increased from 48.9 per cent in 1995 to 56.7 per cent in 2006-2010 - a 16 per cent change. Significantly, this increase was greater among 18- to 19-year-olds (from 28.9 per cent to 36.5 per cent, which = 26 per cent increase) than among 15- to 17-year olds (from 61.4 per cent to 72.9 per cent = 19 per cent).

That suggests at least three-quarters of high school teens have never had vaginal sex, and more than a third of those starting college. Well over half of the combined age-groups say they have never had sex. You can believe them or not, but there is no evidence to support a statement like, “Most American teens have had sex by the time they leave high school.” more

Labels: abstinence, adolescence, contraception, culture, premarital sex, race, virginity

posted by Eve at 10:28 PM VOTE

TV'S TORTURED VIRGINS: Willa Paskin

at Salon:

Ever since “90210’s” Donna Martin held on to hers for seven seasons, adult virginity — the state of having it and the act of losing it — has been a recurring plot point on TV dramas, and not just ones set in high school. The rules that apply to virginity in characters of a certain age are more or less the same ones that apply to Chekhov’s famous gun: If it appears in the first season, it will probably go off by the third, or the fourth, or the seventh, just as it did for Donna Martin. There are currently three fictional adults — or two adults and a self-identified “Girl” — grappling with their virginities with varying amounts of shame in big-name TV shows. (Shame-free virginity: not currently a fictional TV offering.)

“Grey’s Anatomy’s” April Kepner (Sarah Drew) just lost her virginity last week, and will be dealing with the fallout in this one, on tonight’s episode. April’s deflowering would have been a happy event — if the show hadn’t used the mind-bending powers of retroactive continuity to suddenly assert that she had been saving herself because of her religious beliefs. At the beginning of last season, the high-strung, cheery Kepner (a common characteristic of TV virgins is a type-A, neurotic personality) yelled at her colleagues, in an effort to quell their merciless teasing, “I am a 28-year-old virgin, namely because I wanted my first time to be special and then I waited too long, and partially because I’m pretty sure guys find me annoying.” She then spent the next year and a half flirting, making out with and never quite sleeping with a series of guys who weren’t right for her, without once mentioning chastity or a higher power.

Then last Thursday, she threw herself on fellow resident Jackson, assuring him — after he kept repeating to her, out loud, “You’re a virgin” — that having sex with him was really what she wanted to do. The next day, she seemed shell-shocked. When Jackson tried to apologize, she explained, “It’s not you. It’s Jesus. I was a virgin because I loved Jesus. And now Jesus hates me.” Ta-dah! April Kepner had been magically transformed from an accidental, circumstantial virgin into a religious one. In the process she’s gotten stuck in a fun house mirror of TV sex-shaming: Having felt ashamed for two seasons about not having had sex, she now gets to feel ashamed for a few more seasons about having had it.

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Labels: culture, gender, men, premarital sex, religion, sex, virginity, women

posted by Eve at 2:00 PM VOTE

ABBOTSFORD VIRGINS SEEK GOOD MEN AND "HOLY" SEX: Vancouver Sun

reports:

"Confessions of a 29-year old virgin."

That’s the title of the emotionally revealing blog of four Fraser Valley virgins who are looking for some good men for marriage and “holy” sex.

The Abbotsford women’s online “virgin diaries” have suddenly made them media stars. Their quest for guys led to a video about them appearing Wednesday on the popular show of Ellen DeGeneres, who proceeded to get in some virgin jokes.

The virginal British Columbians, all of whom are 29 or 30 and evangelical Christians, were also to be videotaped Wednesday night for an upcoming appearance on HLN’s Dr. Drew Show.

And this Sunday evening three of the four young B.C. women will be starring on a pilot program called The Virgin Diaries on the TLC network. The program includes video of the young women dating eligible men, all of whom also happen to be virgins.

The extroverted B.C. females, all members of a small church in Abbotsford called The River, began their blog four months ago because they were tired of being stereotyped as defective for being virgins (actually, one confesses to being a “born-again” virgin who wants to start over). They are fighting back against a sex-saturated culture, and looking for guys, in the name of spiritual “purity.” ...

The four young women’s crusade for virginity before marriage goes against the grain of North American culture, where a poll released this week by online polling system Soda-Head suggested 70 per cent of North Americans think cohabitation before marriage is a good thing.

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Labels: Canada, Christianity, culture, dating, Marriage, premarital sex, religion, virginity

posted by Eve at 2:49 PM VOTE

WOMEN WHO LOST VIRGINITY EARLY MORE LIKELY TO DIVORCE: NEW STUDY: Huffington Post

reports:

There might be a new argument to try when convincing your teen to wait to have sex. According to the a study conducted by the University of Iowa, women who lost their virginity in their young teens are more likely to divorce.

The study, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, surveyed the responses of 3,793 women and found that 31 percent who lost their virginity as teens divorced within five years, and 47 percent divorced within 10 years. On the flip side, the divorce rate for women who had waited to have sex was only 15 percent at the five year mark, and 27 percent by the time 10 years rolled around.

But the study also found that a first sexual experience before the age of 16 -- wanted or not -- was still strongly associated with divorce.

Of course early sexual experiences can have lasting effects on relationships later in life. So it's not surprising that with 42 percent of participants claiming their first sexual experience before the age of 18 wasn't completely wanted, that it could affect them in their adult life.

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Labels: abstinence, adolescence, culture, divorce, girls, Marriage, premarital sex, sex, sexual assault, virginity, women

posted by Eve at 5:17 PM VOTE

UK ROYAL BRIDE'S VIRGINITY NO LONGER AN ISSUE: Washington Post

reports:

In 1981, Princess Diana’s uncle made a public statement before her royal wedding to clear up The Question: Yes, she was a virgin.

What a difference a generation makes.

Today, few people seem the least bit concerned that Prince William and Kate Middleton, set to wed this month, have been living together off and on since their university days.

“We live in a modern age and people do all sorts of things before they settle down,” said Keith Morley, 34, an engineer from Birmingham. “It’s probably best that they lived together before making a commitment.”

Some historians say it’s about time the royals shed the prudishness they exhibited at the time of Diana’s marriage, which came years after the pill and the Summer of Love made casual sex more socially acceptable even in traditionally uptight Britain.

The modern-day tolerance of William and Middleton’s living arrangements, many say, just brings the House of Windsor in line with the times. Part of the change may have to do with the very public infidelities that played out in the disastrous marriage of Charles and Diana, which rocked the royal family to its core.

“After two decades of scandal, I think it’s the royal family recognizing that to be normal is to their advantage,” said Deborah Cohen, a historian at Northwestern University in Chicago who specializes in modern Britain.

“It’s a canny refashioning of the image. There is no longer an investment in being anachronistic, or a public expectation that they ought to be harkening back to a different era of sexual politics.”

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Labels: Anglican Church, cohabitation, Marriage, United Kingdom, virginity

posted by Eve at 11:02 PM VOTE

WHY MONOGAMY MATTERS: Ross Douthat

in the NY Times:

Social conservatives can seem like the perennial pessimists of American politics — more comfortable with resignation than with hope, perpetually touting evidence of family breakdown, social disintegration and civilizational decline.

But even doomsayers get the occasional dose of good news. And so it was last week, when a study [pdf] from the Centers for Disease Control revealed that American teens and 20-somethings are waiting longer to have sex. ...

Why is this good news? Not, it should be emphasized, because it suggests the dawn of some sort of traditionalist utopia, where the only sex is married sex. No such society has ever existed, or ever could: not in 1950s America (where, as the feminist writer Dana Goldstein noted last week, the vast majority of men and women had sex before they married), and not even in Mormon Utah (where Brigham Young University recently suspended a star basketball player for sleeping with his girlfriend).

But there are different kinds of premarital sex. There’s sex that’s actually pre-marital, in the sense that it involves monogamous couples on a path that might lead to matrimony one day. Then there’s sex that’s casual and promiscuous, or just premature and ill considered.

This distinction is crucial to understanding what’s changed in American life since the sexual revolution. Yes, in 1950 as in 2011, most people didn’t go virgins to their marriage beds. But earlier generations of Americans waited longer to have sex, took fewer sexual partners across their lifetimes, and were more likely to see sleeping together as a way station on the road to wedlock.

And they may have been happier for it. That’s the conclusion suggested by two sociologists, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, in their recent book, “Premarital Sex in America.” Their research, which looks at sexual behavior among contemporary young adults, finds a significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between promiscuity and depression.

This correlation is much stronger for women than for men. Female emotional well-being seems to be tightly bound to sexual stability — which may help explain why overall female happiness has actually drifted downward since the sexual revolution.

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Labels: culture, gender differences, Marriage, premarital sex, sex, virginity, women

posted by Eve at 8:25 PM VOTE

VIRGINITY RISING: Maggie Gallagher

column:

Shocking news: Virginity is on the rise in America.

The source is sober, academic, practically irrefutable: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Its latest analysis of the sex lives of Americans age 15 to 44 includes a startling finding: Virginity is increasing among teens and young adults in the U.S.

Compared with data from the 2002 (National Survey of Family Growth), a higher percentage of males and females 15-24 in 2006-2008 have had no sexual contact with another person. In 2002, 22 percent of young men and women 15-24 had never had any sexual contact with another person, and in 2006-2008, those figures were 27 percent for males and 29 percent for females.

The survey was was drawn from in-person interviews with a national sample of 13,495 males and females. The data were collected using audio computer-assisted self-interviewing, or ACASI, in which the respondent enters his or her own answers into the computer -- known to be the most accurate way of collecting sensitive data.

The response rate for the 2006-2008 NSFG was 75 percent -- very high for this kind of data.

The increase in virginity is not just "technical virginity," mind you. These are young adults who say they have had no sexual contact of any kind: no intercourse, no oral sex, no anal sex. (Presumably, a lot of them have, however, kissed and hugged!)

I'm an old hand at stats. But even I was surprised by this finding buried in the report (Table 3): 32 percent of currently married women under the age of 45 say they have had only one sex partner in their life. ...

The same data show that less than 2 percent of adults under the age of 45 self-identify as "homosexual, gay or lesbians" (more if you count bisexuals, of course). If the data are accurate, they suggest there are at least as many adult women under the age of 45 who have never had sex with anyone but their husband as there are gay people in the general population.

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Labels: culture, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage, premarital sex, sex, STDs, virginity, women

posted by Eve at 8:22 PM VOTE

New Study: CDC Reports Sharp Rise in Abstinence Among Teens, Young Adults

According to this Reuters report, the largest and most in-depth report on US sexual behavior, sexual attraction, and sexual identity shows a rising number of young people are electing to remain abstinent. In 2006-2008, 29 percent of females and 27 percent of males ages 15-24 reported not having any sexual contact, compared with 22 percent in 2002, CDC said Thursday.

The study also reports a sharp rise in same-sex sexual activity among women: 13 percent of women reported every having had same-sex sexual contact compared to 5 percent of men.

The report, “Sexual Behavior, Sexual Attraction, and Sexual Identity in the United States: Data from the 2006-2008 National Survey of Family Growth,” was published in National Health Statistics Reports (2011:36). It can be found by visiting http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr036.pdf. 

Labels: culture, homosexuality, men, premarital sex, sex, STDs, virginity, women

posted by Imapp Staff at 10:38 PM VOTE

VIRGINITY'S MAKING A COMEBACK, REPORT SAYS: MSNBC

reports:

Curious what people are up to when it comes to sex?

For some of us, not much, according to a new report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics which painstakingly details the country’s sexual habits.

Based on in-person interviews with approximately 13,500 men and women between the ages of 15 to 44, the report describes who’s having sex with whom, what kind of sex they’re having, and who has yet to become sexually involved.

Yes, virginity is apparently making a comeback.

Researchers found that between 2006 and 2008, the percentage of 15- to 24-year-old men who had never had any form of sexual contact with another person was 27 percent (up from 22 percent in 2002) while the percentage of 15- to 24-year-old females who had never had any sex whatsoever was 29 percent (up 7 percent points from 22 percent in 2002).

Anjani Chandra, a health scientist at the NCHS and lead author of the study, says 15- to 19-year-olds made up the lion’s share of this category, a finding that seems to counter other reports regarding teen sex trends.

“I think a lot of people misconstrue this as meaning they’ve never had vaginal sex,” she says. “But this is no sexual contact of any kind. They didn’t have oral sex or anal sex. They didn’t have anything.”

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Labels: culture, homosexuality, lesbians, sex, virginity

posted by Eve at 7:12 PM VOTE

MEN HAVE UPPER HAND IN SEXUAL ECONOMY: Elizabeth Landau

blogs at CNN:

It's not a new theory: As women progress in educational and professional opportunities, their odds of finding a committed man appear to go down. Women in their 40s and 50s have long heard this, but new research finds it's true for women just entering adulthood as well.

That's one of the findings in the new book "Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying," by researchers Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker at the University of Texas at Austin.

They looked at the results from a number of national studies including the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the National Study of Youth and Religion, in addition to interviews with young people ages 18 to 23.

Researchers found that since women in the 18- to 23-year-old group feel they don't need men for financial dependence, many of them feel they can play around with multiple partners without consequence, and that the early 20s isn't the time to have a serious relationship. But eventually, they do come to want a real, lasting relationship. The problem is that there will still be women who will have sex readily without commitment, and since men know this, fewer of them are willing to go steady.

"Women have plenty of freedom, but freedom does not translate easily into getting what you want," Regnerus said.

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Labels: committed relationships, culture, divorce, heterosexual couples, hooking up, Mark Regnerus, Marriage, men, premarital sex, virginity, women

posted by Eve at 8:42 PM VOTE

The Sexual Lives of Sri Lankans: Hannah Tennant-Moore

at WorldHum:

“We cannot be out after six or a devil will enter our body,” Sarasi told me as we hurried to finish our rice and curry. It was almost dark and Sarasi’s secluded boarding house was a 30-minute bus ride from town. It would take me at least that long to walk back to my guesthouse, but I wasn’t too worried about being accosted by demons on the way.

“Is it only girls who can’t go out after six?” I asked Sarasi, a 19-year-old college student I’d met while walking around Kandy Lake in central Sri Lanka. She’d asked me if she could practice her English with me; we spent most of the next week together. “Boys are allowed to stay out as late as they want?”

“Oh, yes. Boys have no problem.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, is not fair,” Sarasi said slowly, washing her rice-covered hands in the bowl of water on the table. “But I think is not good if girls are outside at night. Because if boys see us, they try to grab us.”

“That’s awful,” I said, letting the ball of curry I was about to eat fall out of my hand. I struggled to couch my objections in simple language. “In the U.S., I go out dancing until two in the morning. Sometimes I dance with boys or kiss boys. But only if I want to.”

Sarasi tilted her head and let her jaw fall open, pressing her tongue against the back of her crooked upper teeth for a moment before she spoke. “But I think is normal to be raped in your country.” ...

When I saw Sarasi again a few days after the massage, I thought of how horrified she would be to know that I’d put myself in that situation. She wouldn’t even let her boyfriend kiss her on the mouth. He was 23 and she was 19; they had been dating for four years. “For Sri Lanka people, the body is very important,” she’d said in response to my shock at their restraint.

“Doesn’t your boyfriend try to do more with you?” I asked.

“Oh, no!” She tossed her shiny black braid over one shoulder. “He says, ‘When we marry, you are mine. Until we marry, I protect you.’” I tightened my jaw against a sense of vicarious suffocation. But then Sarasi flashed me an excited smile, her eyes widened mischievously. I couldn’t help grinning back.

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Labels: culture, Marriage, premarital sex, race, sex, Sri Lanka, virginity

posted by Imapp Staff at 11:58 AM VOTE

HOW UNUSUAL IS IT TO BE A 20-YEAR-OLD-VIRGIN?: Lynn Gazis-Sax

blogs:

Articles about teenagers having sex are often laments by adults about how all teens now are hooking up right and left (which then inspires debunking like this piece by Matt Yglesias). When people do get down to actual statistics, they usually talk about the average age at which teenagers have intercourse for the first time. What’s the age now? Is it going down or up? How does it compare with the rest of the world. (In the US, right now, it’s around 17.)

But averages aren’t all there is to statistics. There’s also the spread. What’s the standard deviation here? Just how unusual is it, for example, not to have had sex yet at the age of 20 (three years above the average age for losing your virginity). Are you some rare freak, obviously a religious nut or obviously socially inept, or taking sex way too seriously? Or some rare paragon of virtue, amazing in your self-control, a model of chastity for others to follow? Or are you, perhaps, a little later than average in having sex, but really pretty normal overall, and not all that rare?

How rare are 20-year-old virgins? Google is my friend, and I have found several answers for you.

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Labels: culture, premarital sex, sex, universities, virginity

posted by Eve at 5:11 PM VOTE

"Sex Positive" Young Women Reconsider Abstinence: Jessica Grose

at Slate:

...Chen doesn't apologize for her old blog, but she acknowledges that the early posts "reflected a painful desire to be liked" and that she's lost a lot because of it. Her experience echoes that of other female bloggers who have written about their intimate lives. Emily Gould also does not apologize for her former antics in her new book, And the Heart Says Whatever. In a New York Times Magazine article, she wrote about the panic attacks she experienced as a result of the public vitriol she received after an unfortunate appearance on Larry King Live. Chen admits that she didn't understand the potential repercussions when she started blogging.

Now, Chen seems dedicated to making sure no one else goes through what she had to endure. In theory, the Rethinking Virginity conference was supposed to create a utopian space in which no one is judged for any kind of sexual behavior—whether it be Jesse James' mistress Michelle "Bombshell" McGee or someone who chooses to be abstinent. But the conference-goers didn't exhibit much tolerance for unusual or hedonistic behavior. I asked the panel called "The Feminist Response to Slut-Shaming & Sexual Scare Tactics" what they thought of adults having nonmonogamous unprotected sex, and the response was uniformly, well, shaming. "They're doing something damaging, and careless, and it's not a choice I personally approve of," said one panelist.

The final panel of the day, moderated by Chen, was called "Toward a Sex Positive Vision of Abstinence." The panelists all concurred that abstinence should be taught to high schoolers as part of an arsenal of ways to prevent pregnancy and STDs. The only real debate seemed to be about whether the government should continue to push the abstinence message past high school and make sure that adults knew it was an option as well, by, for example, mandating that abstinence be discussed as part of comprehensive sex education programs in colleges across the country.

While the one middle-aged sex educator on the panel seemed horrified by that idea ("I wouldn't presume to teach abstinence to adults," she said), Chen was intrigued. "What if an 18-year-old virgin needs to learn how to talk to his partner about how he's never had sex before?" Chen inquired. It was striking to hear young adults call for a government-mandated safe area to save a hypothetical virgin from the risks—and the joys—of youthful trial and error. That abstinence was even being considered as a solution to the young adult sexual minefield is a surprisingly conservative shift.

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Labels: abstinence, culture, feminism, hooking up, premarital sex, sex, sex education, virginity

posted by Imapp Staff at 2:50 PM VOTE

EDUCATORS CHALLENGE VIRGINITY CONNOTATIONS: The Harvard Crimson

reports:

Health educators, feminist bloggers, and queer activists gathered at the Rethinking Virginity Conference on Monday to critique American society’s negative portrayal of losing one’s virginity.

“Why do we say ‘losing it’ anyway?” said Shelby Knox, a feminist activist and blogger. “Why don’t we say, ‘I am celebrating my first time!’?”

Many of the speakers at the panels, which were hosted by the Harvard Queer Students and Allies, agreed that sex and virginity are often associated with loss and even shame. They argued for a more positive approach to sexuality.

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Labels: culture, heteronormativity, homosexuality, sex, sex education, universities, virginity

posted by Eve at 2:02 PM VOTE

"CROSSING CONTINENTS" ON VIRGINITY IN THE ARAB WORLD

from the BBC:

Across the Arab world, whether the woman is Christian or Muslim, virginity before marriage is the most coveted gift on the wedding list. It signifies the honour of the bride's family and reflects the integrity of the groom and his family.

Now women who have lost their virginity before their wedding night have discovered a face-saving solution to this controversial and sometimes life-threatening dilemma. Under cover of the burgeoning fashion for plastic surgery, women are undergoing hymen repair surgery to artificially restore the appearance of "virginity", and so bridging this cultural and sexual divide.

Lebanese journalist Najlaa Abou Merhi from the BBC Arabic TV Service meets "Nada," "Mouna" and "Sonia" - Arab women spanning three generations who lost their virginity while teenagers but felt compelled to regain it through the medical procedure called hymenoplasty. While they wish to remain anonymous, they hope by sharing their stories that other women in their situation will feel they are not alone and that there is a way to cross what Nada describes as an unbreachable wall.

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Labels: Marriage, virginity

posted by Eve at 3:39 PM VOTE

"FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS" AND THE TEENAGE VIRGIN: Ian Ayres

at Balkinization:

I’m a huge fan of Friday Night Lights — to the point that when a student makes an especially good point in class, I sometimes intone “Clear eyes, full heart,” emulating the coach in the series.

But it was with some sadness that I watched a couple weeks ago an episode in which Julie, the coach’s daughter, lost her virginity (or at least when her parents learned that she was no longer a virgin). I agree with the discussion on Slate that the episode included one of the best parent/child conversations about sex on television (made all the more interesting because it paralleled a mother/daughter conversation two years ago on the same subject).

Nonetheless, I was somewhat concerned that the last senior on the show lost her virginity. The show has reached what the Supreme Court calls the “inexorable zero.” I am not a fan of “socialist realism,” the idea that art needs to move society toward a better equilibrium. But viewers may get the subtle message that it is really unusual to graduate from high school as a virgin.

In fact, I asked a bunch of adolescents (ranging in age from 10 to 15) who had just seen the episode to estimate the percentage of high schoolers graduating this year in the United States who are virgins, and they came back with estimates in the range of 20 percent to 35 percent.

The truth is harder to determine; but there is a very good chance that the majority of high-school graduates are virgins. According to a 2002 study conducted by the CDC [pdf], approximately 54 percent of high-school students are virgins. In 2007, the virgin percentage was still holding at 52 percent.

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Labels: abstinence, culture, virginity

posted by Eve at 11:07 AM " target="display" style="text-decoration:none;color: rgb(204,0,0);"> " target="display" style="text-decoration:none;color: rgb(204,0,0);"> VOTE