Virginity's role in a game of power

By ELIZABETH HEATHCOTE

Virginity: there's a lot of it about at the moment, or at least there will be if President Bush gets his way. Since taking office he has put the agenda of True Love Waits - an abstinence-until-marriage campaign formerly the province of a small group of conservative Christians - at the core of American sex education and, earlier this month, he caused outrage when he made it clear that he wanted to extend this to as much of the world as possible.

He is blocking United Nations sexual health education funding for developing countries - including safe-sex teaching in the countries most affected by HIV/Aids - unless it includes commitments to teach chastity.

Sadly for him, the announcement clashed with another piece of breaking news - the fall from grace of that weird hybrid of writhing sex kitten and chastity, Britney Spears. Britney had promised to stay pure until marriage, but now her long-term boyfriend Justin Timberlake, has (apparently) confided to a fellow passenger on a plane that her virginity is no more.

It seems bizarre in the 21st century that the question of whether or not a grown woman is a virgin can make headlines. The concept that virginity is something special, there to be saved and then "given" to someone wonderful, seems as weird to me today as it did when I was 16. And the men and women I quizzed about their experience of virginity were almost unanimous in their agreement.

"It was like tonsils wasn't it?" said one woman: a useless encumbrance, in other words, that - painful as its removal might be - you knew you could only be better off without. Then you could be equal in power to the opposite sex and on a par with your mates.

My experience was - and remains - fairly typical. I lost mine at 17 (16 and 17 are the most common ages for first sex today), within a fortnight of my best friend doing it. Six months before, we'd sat with a group of girls around a table behind the local pub and choked on our Bensons as Heidi Saunders, who wore leopard-skin knickers, told us what it was like. American research suggests that once a young person's peers lose their virginity, they are almost certain to do so within two years. The time had come: we both selected suitable partners, organised contraception and got it over with.

Aside from the euphoria of having done it - not to be underestimated - we weren't bowled over. But that too is typical. According to the American research, around one in four boys fails to manage it at all on the first attempt, and less than 5 per cent of girls have an orgasm. Whether you're 16 or 20, married or on your third date, the reality is that great sex is probably going to be some years ahead. That's the nature of inexperience.

There are plenty of reasons why waiting until a respectable age is a good idea. British teen pregnancy rates are the highest in Europe, and research published in The Lancet shows that the younger the age of first intercourse, the more likely the person is to regret the decision, as well as to fail to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. But the idea that the answer is the reintroduction of sacred virginity gives me the creeps.

Throughout history, the symbolism of virginity has been ambivalent, representing power as well as purity - the look, presumably, that Britney was going for. But the strength embodied by virgins such as Joan of Arc and Elizabeth the Virgin Queen, even by the uber-virgin - the Madonna - just doesn't do it for me.

I see virginity as my dictionary does, as "pure and natural, uncorrupted, unsullied and untouched" - and these words put me too much in mind of the way paedophiles express their "love" for children.



Virginity for me represents powerlessness, possession, vulnerability - the experience of too many children today and most women for most of history. Make no mistake - virginity may have been reborn for the 21st century but it is still about girls. Dr Michael Bader, a psychotherapist and author of Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies still sees (male) clients who have virgin fantasies, although he says the number is decreasing. "Female virginity has multiple meanings for men," he says. "Being the one and only reassures a man against his own competitive insecurities about how special he really is. A sexually experienced woman might not be satisfied by him. Sexual inexperience on the other hand means that she can't be disappointed or critical ."

More commonly, the legacy lives on in men's problems with handling their girlfriends' sexual past - still much more prevalent than the other way around. "Competitive jealousy is a strong legacy of the virgin fixation," he says. The good news is that if your partner is thus afflicted but otherwise perfect, there is a simple solution. "It only comes up if the woman has to tell the man something about having sex with another man," says Dr Bader. In other words, you should act as fallen women have down the centuries: you did what you did; now admit nothing.

- INDEPENDENT