Greetings, and welcome to another installment of “Sarah and Candy: The Email of Many Kilobytes.†Today’s topic: virginity in romance, and in the real world. From two women who are decidedly not virgins, so of course we are standing ready to discuss the topic at length.
Sarah wrote:
Check out this article: a very tongue-in-cheek suggestion that women looking for a good man should… look into polygamy, especially black women who bemoan the lack of fine fellas.
I have one friend who would dearly love to meet a great man, but she has a few non-negotiable standards, and one of them is that he agree to wait until marriage. She’s a virgin until married. Period. End of sentence. And no guy will go for that. The minute they find out she’s not available in that way, they’re gone.
Do you know of any dudes who value virginity? Or who even care that much? Hubby didn’t give a crap in the slightest. So of course I wonder, why is a hymen such a frequent character in contemporary romance, including erotica? (cat barb penis CAT BARB PENIS oh GOD make it STOP.) How many times have we read some guy going at it and then, “He broke through her maiden barrier, and felt shock and wonderment pass over him. She was a virgin! He didn’t know! He is the first! And now SHE BELONGS TO HIM FOREVER MWAAAHAHAHAHHA.”
It’s some kind of powerful fantasy construct, either in the sense of being completely and uniquely possessed by the hero, or in the sense of being a remnant from the virginity requirement enforced on so many heroines in past novels. What do you think?
Candy wrote:
Hmmm, interesting article, and interesting tidbit about your friend and her virginity.
I think I can safely say my guy friends don’t give a shit about virginity. However, I can imagine many men feeling sketched out by a woman who wanted to wait until marriage for a couple of reasons:
1. Some people, like me, believe that sexual compatibility is very, very important. Like it or not, that means trying before buying. And sexual behavior CAN be taught and learned, but there’s a certain chemistry that…well, it works, or it doesn’t, and you don’t generally find out until you’ve slept with each other.
2. Some guys are jerks who just want to get their rocks off, and finding a girl who’s not willing to help with that is a turn-off. No nookie, no go.
It’s a lot pressure, being somebody’s first, and the older the virgin, the higher the pressure. I think people are sometimes scared of this pressure, because there’s an implication of long-term commitment, and, well, most people don’t want to think of the long-term when they’re still working on figuring out whether the short term will work.
Now, leaving the Good Ship Reality and embarking on the wacky vessel that is Virginity in romance fiction:
I think this primal satisfaction in having deflowered the heroine (at least in contemporaries) is kind of a fictional construct. Romance heroes are usually all gung ho and In Lurve and Ready For Marriage (whether they’re ready to acknowledge these two states or not), and these feelings of possessiveness and GRAR MY WOMAN have become shorthand for “He’s in LURVE, he just doesn’t know it yet.”
Sarah said:
Other people’s virginity is ALWAYS more interesting than just about anything else! I’ve been emailing back and forth with my friend and she also thinks that part of the problem is the attitudes toward sexuality in the secular community versus in the religious community. On one hand, you have people witnessing folks Doing It for whatever reason in sexually explicit depictions at all hours of the day in print, film, and television, and on the other you have those same people showing up in church being told it’s a sin, and there’s no reconciliation between one and the other.
Oddly enough, she talks to her male married friends from church and they are all like, “Yeah it’s great that you save yourself” but when she asks if they waited for their wives they were like, “Oh, hell no.”
Heh.
But I am totally with you on the sexual compatibility question. It is my opinion that you do have to try before you buy. There’s no way to tell sometimes – sometimes the quietest guy is a dynamo in the sack. And vice versa.
And you are SO right about the subtext of the hero’s feelings of possession as far as the heroine’s virginity. It’s certainly enough of a squicky moment that the hero does usually pause and think, “WHY ME? Oh, the honor of her luuuurve® is too much†while he’s gettin’ his bidness done, and it also contains that convenient subtext of traditional historic women-as-chattel ownership.
Candy said:
Hey, this conversation makes me think of some of the stuff we talked about a month back, about sexual empowerment in romance novels. I managed to dig up what I wrote:
See, while I think romance novels are subversive and reinforce the whole notion that women CAN have premarital sex and NOT die horribly by the end of the book, in a lot of ways, the message isn’t subversive at all. In fact, the message is oftentimes quite distressingly sexist.
Look at the obsession with virgins, for example. In no other genre are there so many women over the age of 20 and widows running around with their hymens firmly intact. (However, this may also be due to the fact that almost all of them suffer from some kind of genetic defect that places their hymen 2-3 inches within the vaginal canal.) It’s one thing if historical romances are the only ones guilty of overaged virgins, but SO MANY contemporary romances are obsessed with virginity, too. I mean, dear God, there exists a contemporary romance out there in which the mother of a secret baby IS STILL TECHNICALLY A VIRGIN. (I wish I can remember the title! It was a Harlequin, I remember that much.)
The heroines who aren’t virgins generally aren’t allowed to have orgasms or fulfilling sex lives before the hero comes along with his Monster Cock of Awesome Orgasmatronic power. Many of the non-virgins in Romancelandia are populated with rape victims, abuse victims, unfulfilled widows, women with clueless, sexually selfish exes and neurotic, sexually frigid women. Even in contemporary romances, way too many of these non-virgins somehow skipped sex ed, were never curious about their own bodies and never picked up a vibrator or a woman’s magazine in their lives. They don’t seem to know where the clitoris is, much less know what to do with it—even AFTER having sex. I almost feel like if you asked them what a clitoris was, they’d say, “Wasn’t he that Greek guy who wrote a bunch of tragedies?”
Women are also rarely allowed to be promiscuous the way men are in romance. Most of the heroes are rakish rakes (and somehow miraculously herpes- and gonorrhea-free), but even in contemporaries, the woman is much more constrained in her sexual roles. This becomes especially evident when you read contemporaries in which there’s a Long Separation between the hero and heroine. Usually the hero tries to deal with the trauma by fucking anything that moves. The woman? Why, she stays pure, of course. God forbid that she, too, embark on a slutty phase. I’ve read quite a few books in which the heroine either doesn’t have sex with anyone for years and years and years and YEARS, or she steadfastly remains a virgin.
Erotica and erotic romance have done a better job of blasting through a lot of these walls, in my opinion, and portraying more sexually empowered women. The women masturbate, have hot sex with people they don’t love, enjoy teh buttsecks, have a wider variety of sexual partners and experiences, and hell, they’re allowed to experiment with other girls and multiple partners. This is not something you see in the average romance novel.
Jeeebus. I managed to go on and on and on about that subject, didn’t I? And given the discussion in the comments for my review of Hot Spell about virginity and 20-something-year-old women keeping it, I definitely think this is a pretty hot topic. I’m afraid I came across as an asshole who thinks every woman should lose her cherry by the time she’s 22, or something, and I want to clarify my thoughts on this. (Just to be clear: I’m an asshole, just not an asshole who thinks every woman past 20 should no longer be a virgin.)
Losing one’s innocence is powerful juju in fiction. Having the heroine surrender her innocence (snort!) has been romanticized to a large degree in romance novels, but in the real world…. We attach significance to it, but after a certain age, I think the significance takes on somewhat creepy overtones—or at least, that’s the vibe I get from it.
Sarah said:
Your examination (ha!) makes me think of two things:
1. I think that the revolutionary statement that was “women can have sex before marriage and not die a horrible death like Pamela” was as big a statement to traditional sexual value statements back then as the evolution of the nonvirginal heroine in erotica is now. In other words, to be told it’s ok to have premarital sex AND a happily ever after is as much a challenge to existing standards of female sexuality when romance novels first appeared, as the nonvirginal sexually adventurous butt-plug-wearing erotica heroine is today. It’s just an assault on the castle of virgin/whore dichotomy from a different angle.
To put it visually, I picture the development of the feminist subtext in romance novels as a baton relay race, with the baton of female sexual advancement (maybe instead of a baton it’s a bowl or a big inverted pyramid jutting into the Louvre?) being passed from romance to erotica. With the established structures of romance pretty set, there’s a little wiggle room here and there for clever twists on the theme, but the ideas surrounding virginity and sexual exploration are relatively firm. Then, when you pass the sexual advancement on to the erotica writers, you get a whole new set of rules to explore the sexuality of women and men, and in multiple combinations! That said, the advancement made by the romance writers is not to be denied, though the more identifiable progress now seems to be among the erotica writers.
Note: this is not a slam on romance writers; I go back and forth between romance and erotica, because too much of one makes Sarah a dull girl.
2. What do I personally think of virginity in romance novels? Is it important to me? (And by the way, if we were members of a Native American tribe, my name would have to be Bitch Who Questions Everything Rhetorically, and you’d have to be Declarative Bitch).
Personally, I’m not sure I give a crap if the heroine’s a virgin, except for in a historical, because if she’s not, I’d like to know why, since it was of more importance back then that the bride be unsullied. Not being a virgin in a historical is more than just a characteristic, like hair color. But in a contemporary? Do I expect the heroine to be virginal? Not really, unless there’s, again, a reason for it. Writers, be alert! Sarah needs an explanation if she’s not a virgin in the past, and she needs one if she is the Virgin Connie Swail in the present! And if it’s a time travel, she needs the Hymen-Reattachment/Detachment 2000 module added to that time machine.
However, it is curious that those romances that are populated with nonvirgins are rarely sexually explicit as to why she isn’t a virgin. Certainly the construction of the male hero as The Sexual Powerhouse of Orgasmatronic Power is one way of delineating that he is The One, The One Who Shall Bring Orgasms, and is thus a tired cop out in terms of easy definition of the hero – just like abusing animals is an easy way toward creating a villain.
Virginity is such a tricky issue, especially for characters. Shall we turn this over to the Bitchery and see if we can achieve hymeny — sorry, harmony?
Candy wrote:
Oooh, excellent analogy with the baton-passing. I agree with you: romances revolutionized the way sex was written and viewed in fiction, but it became way too hung up on the Heroines Shall Feel Pleasure Only at the Hands (and Cocks) of the One True Hero trope, and now other related genres are exploring other avenues of female sexuality in fiction.
I think that when it comes down to it, the heroine’s virginity should make sense. I feel that far too many authors are contorting the stories and characters to fit the State of the Hymen, instead of having the State of the Hymen fit the characters.
Some random thoughts, not all of them coherent:
A few people have noted that their first times (either losing their virginity or the first time with a new sexual partner) have been awkward, awful or unmemorable. Have I been exceptionally lucky in that almost all my first sexual encounters, up to and including losing my virginity, have been, well, pretty freakin’ hot, even taking into account the awkwardness and occasional bit of silliness? Not that I’ve slept with a whole bunch of people, because I don’t need to resort to my toes to do the math, and they have tended to be very, very smart, very good-natured boys, which may or may not skew my sample.
For those of you looking for first-time sexual experiences in romance novels that perhaps reflect reality a bit better, in that a virginal heroine doesn’t immediately come her brains out 20 seconds after being ripped apart by the hero’s Battering Ram of Lurve +10 and then is ready for seconds and thirds, may I suggest Laura Kinsale? She does a great job of writing love scenes that build on each other, using the love scenes to build intimacy and demonstrate the power dynamics between the hero and heroine.
Some of you have also noted that there’s a difference between being a virgin and being stultifyingly pure in mind and heart, and I thank you for pointing out that distinction. Never having marinated the nether rod in the squish mitten (bless the Bloodhound Gang for coming up with the best euphemisms, ever) doesn’t mean you haven’t done plenty of other things, or at least know about the mechanics of said marination.
A friend of mine was reading the comments over my shoulder the last night, and he noted that romance novels seem to be depicting a view of sexuality and womanhood that tends to be a great deal more conservative than my personal politics (and the politics of a lot of Smart Bitch readers), and the only reason I could offer to him for why I continue to read romances is that when it works well, it’s just so very, very, very good.
Oh, and the virgin mother book I read? She wasn’t artificially inseminated. The whole thing was described in only the vaguest of terms, but from what I gathered, the heroine engaged in some heavy petting with the hero and he spooged in The General Region without penetrating her. I understand that it certainly IS possible to get pregnant from that, but c’mon, what are the odds, especially when that was the only sexual contact the two of them had before the pregnancy?
As for intact hymens after childbirth…I’m speechless. That Diana Palmer books feature such miracles of modern engineering doesn’t surprise me. I bet that heroine made excellent biscuits, too.
EAP and Robin: I, too, am extremely irritated at the way virginity has been conflated with being a good woman in fiction. What bugs me just as much is the way enjoyment of any sort of sexual pleasure that’s not connected to the hero has frequently been demonized as well.
What bugs me just as much is the way enjoyment of any sort of sexual pleasure that’s not connected to the hero has frequently been demonized as well.
Yes, because it’s all part and parcel of the same thing. How many times do you see the heroine having to be taught by the hero that her desires are healthy—he’s the one who give the heroine permission to enjoy her sexuality (as long as it’s with him, of course!). I don’t, ironically, see this as the problem of big bad patriarchy, though, as much as I see it as a general cultural tendency to still see authority in general as gendered male. Whether we’re conforming or rebelling, as long as we somehow orient ourselves toward a sense of authority that skews male, we’re likely to defer on those terms. It’s like we need an entire cultural transformation such that values like wisdom, authority, virtue, power, love, caretaking, etc. are not so strongly (en)gendered.
Hey you all,
I’m right there with you on many of these points, but I think there’s a point about the virgin heroine no one’s brought up yet. The virgin can be a strong female power fantasy, too.
I know a lot of women and girls who are really, REALLY unhappy with how they ‘lost it’. They were pressured, they made a bad choice, they were too young, or they were even forced, and it was hardly EVER fun.
So a book that gives us the fantasy of a virgin having
1. Control over the who, and the when
2. Fun (the “instant multi-orgasmic” heroine)
…can be very good escapist entertainment.
Virgin books can also play into the fantasy of “If only I’d started out the right way, my sex life wouldn’t be so screwed up now. It was Joe’s fault, back in 1989, the insensitive 16 year old bastard!”
Another thought: cast your minds back to the long-ago in your own life, before the “first time”. Do you remember the POWER of being a virgin and just saying “no” again…and again…and again… hahahaha (evil virgin laughter)? The virgin bitch could be a powerful icon, smart enough to know what she *doesn’t* want, getting wicked pleasure out of making men beg. Oops, now I’m giving myself away. Remember that 80’s song, “I Know What Boys Like”?
Thing is, I don’t think any of the current crop of virgin books have virgin bitch heroines. Sigh.
So a book that gives us the fantasy of a virgin having
1. Control over the who, and the when
2. Fun (the “instant multi-orgasmic†heroine)
…can be very good escapist entertainment.
I agree with this, and generally prefer a heroine who enjoys sex (even if it’s wildly unrealistic in how she’s portrayed) than one who struggles with it. When Candy mentioned Laura Kinsale, I immediately thought of Merlin from Midsummer Moon, whose free attitude toward sexuality was one of the things I liked most about her (it was classic watching the hero strain for a propriety the heroine couldn’t even see).
I think, though, that there’s a slim and slippery line between portraying a woman who exercises real autonomous control over her sexuality and one who waits (for whatever reason) and then falls prey to the incredible power and prowess of the hero’s penis, giving over all sense of control she once had in exchange for the hero’s sex and love.
But I certainly agree with you that the virgin bitch heroine can be lots of fun AND really empowering when done well.
JAK’s Amanda Quick backlist is also pretty good about the first time not being mindblowing. The hero usually knows it and is eager to show her just how good it can be.
re: virgin bitch.
agreed, i’m 23 and i am one. if someone hasn’t written one of those yet, maybe i’ll write an autobiography 😛
“This may seem an example of extreme fictionalization, but think about the slut you knew in high school. How was she treated by her peers? Did your parents let you hang out with her? Did anyone expect her to do anything successful with her life? (I met my high school slut at a reunion, with no expectation about her in mind. In fact, I forgot she existed, but when I saw her again, it all came back to me. I’m humiliated to say, was actually surprised that she had an enormously successful life.)”
Speaking as a Former High School Slut, I think, even at that tender age, it’s all about choices.
Those of us sluts who were genuinely into sexual experimentation for the experience and gratification—right alongside our male peers—and understood and managed the risks and consequences, probably came out all right.
Those of us who were looking for love in all the wrong places probably encountered misfortune and misery.
I did a little of both, and learned a tremendous amount about myself and other people. At forty, I can say I regret specific incidents in my sexual history, but I’ve never regretted my history as a whole. I’ve certainly never regretted choosing to BE sexually experienced rather than inexperienced.
Oddly enough, my husband—who has only ever slept with me and one other woman, to whom he was also married—agrees.
I’ll be honest with you – I wanted to BE the slutty girl in my high school, because when I got up the nerve to ask her about the rumor that she gave good head, and how she felt about it, she replied, “At least it was good.” She totally didn’t care because she had enough confidence to know what she did and didn’t do and wow, I was blown away.
I agree that a virgin bitch would be a very interesting character to write. I’m not sure I’ve seen such a creature in the hallowed halls of Romancelandia, however.
Myself, I was a virgin dork. I was all “OMG you find me sexually attractive? HELL YES I want to have sex, wheeee!”
I’ve learned to be somewhat more cautious and selective, but overall, my first lover wasn’t BAD. Just not too terribly good, once my excitement over the novelty wore off.
I want a romance about lusty evangelical teenage virgin boys ripe for deflowering. With stuff like this: “He quivered in anticipation as she loomed over him, her pendulant breasts swaying like two ripe melons ready for the plucking. Billy uttered a quick prayer for the sin he was about to commit. His innocent male member, harder than the stone columns supporting Reverend Gleamingteeth’s church, strained against his Guess jeans. Sally Slutpuppy smacked her lips as she slowly unzipped him, eyeing his towering hardness like his pudgy kid sister salivating over a double chocolate dipped cone at Dairy Queen.â€
“The only evangelicals who don’t look forward to the Rapture are teenage boys, who desperately want to have sex before the Rapture occurs. Teen evangelical boys usually drift to sleep each night praying fervently that God will delay the Rapture until they can lose their virginity. The threat of Rapture also helps to explain the young age at which evangelicals get married and begin breeding. “
From, “A Field Guide to Evangelicals and Their Habitat†by Joel Kilpatrick
“OMG you find me sexually attractive? HELL YES I want to have sex, wheeee!â€
Isn’t that a turning point in your life? When you realize that you don’t have to be flattered that the cute guy wants to have sex with you? Gawd. And does anyone else look back at pictures of themselves in high school and say, “Holy Mother of Fuck, I was HAWT! Why didn’t I know that then?”
And I love that “Recent Bitching” says “Victoria Dahl said ‘OMG you find me sexually attractive?’” I think it’s going to be the opening line of my next book.
The virgin heroine does have the advantage of getting rid of the possibility that the heroine might compare the hero with an ex-boyfriend. After all, it’d be pretty hard on Fabio Q. Man-Titty’s ego to have to tell him that his ten inches of throbbing love just don’t compare with that boy back in high school who tried, like, *foreplay*.
More generally, ex-boyfriends pose a whole host of story issues. Was the heroine in love with the ex? If so, how does she know this guy’s different? If not, does she really love the new guy, or is she just horny again?
Of course these are surmountable — after all, the heroes are rarely virgins (though their exes are always invisible) but it’s just plain *simpler* if she’s a virgin.
And, of course, we *are* still more willing to think of a girl who sleeps around as a slut than a guy. (The situation is reversed, incidentally, when it comes to same-sex relations; make of that what you will.)
Virgin bitches? Heh, there’s a lot around. Come on, American Beauty had the classic virgin bitch. 🙂 Or was she more of a poser?
To me, what really matters is if the story, characters, and writing are interesting, then it becomes moot point if they’re virginal or not. However, people enjoy reading stories they can relate to, and perhaps that’s why I have a certain fondness in reading stories with virgin heroines.
While it seems a lot of you find it sooo unrealistic to read a virgin waiting for love, this is what most of my friends and I did in real life, and with generally happy results. And none of us are necessarily prudes or religious either. Just romantic, busy, and picky. 😉
However, virgin does not necessarily equal complete inexperience, cold, or clueless. I don’t like reading when women are so completely submissive, as if they just lay like cardboard while Mr. Orgasmo does all the “magic work.”
I enjoy reading stories where the woman may have some uncertainty at first (that’s realistic), but then impishly takes control and is adventurous in bed when the intial confusion wears off.
Why aren’t more virgins teases? I’m 24, a virgin because of a heady blend of religious upbringing and academia. Not all evangelicals are prudes, ya know… One of my friend’s moms said to my mom when they met for the first time (we were about 13), “Oh don’t you just love Jesus even better than sex?! …if that’s possible!” Which my mom thought was hilarious and has used repeatedly. Ok, we’re probably not the norm.
The power of knowing a lot but not acting on it is good stuff. I think that if you’re going to be a virgin for ideological reasons, then nothing below the belt should be going on because what value is technicality anyway? There’s a lot to be said for knowing that I could be a very virginal bride who can deepthroat (girl’s night, bananas, condom application dares…you get the picture). TMI?
The point is that choosing to submit to one person because you want to is a powerful statement. Maybe I just like control. Anyway, back OT, what someone was saying about the power of a virgin bitch is great stuff for tension. It’s strong stuff to realize that you can make people want you and say no. The unavailability makes you hotter. Most especially because you know and they know you know. EH has some choosy virgins like in Hunting Midnight.
There has already been a virgin-bitch autobiography and ohmigod was it tedious. Nothing but her prurient “anything but” exploits over and over and… I wish I could remember the title, since it was the best part. Anyway, the field is certainly still open.
Re: waiting for love. Surely many of us did? It’s just that in romance novels, that guy you’re crazy about when you’re 18 winds up being your One True Love a hell of a lot more often than he does in real life. But I was my husband’s first girlfriend, so I have no axe to grind with virgins. 😉
I have just reread Crusie’s Faking It and laughing my a*se off at the hero trying to pull the ‘one taste of my nether rod and you will be mine’, followed by ‘no really This Time it will happen, promise’. Plus the heroine kept turning him down because she had a vibrator with which she had a special relationship. It was fantastic!
It was a splendid antidote to all those romances I read growing up [sex! in books I could get from the library!] in which all non-virgins, or suspected nono-virgins, were somehow less human and could be treated with contempt.
Prime example of this was a Judith McNaught book in which the hero talks the heroine out of the Big V with the argument that, well, he would respect her in the morning. And then he didn’t. He treated her like a slapper for putting out and it took a couple of hundred pages for him to get over himself. And obviously realise it was True Lurve. Because otherwise he wouldn’t hate her so.
[no, really, this was essentially the plot]
More generally, ex-boyfriends pose a whole host of story issues. Was the heroine in love with the ex? If so, how does she know this guy’s different? If not, does she really love the new guy, or is she just horny again?
Good point, Anne. That’s also why so many heroines are orphaned only children. If she has a family, the story has to deal with it, at least enough to explain why they never show up. Simpler to kill the family all off or have them never exist in the first place.
So if your heroine’s a virgin, you don’t have to get into her romantic history because there isn’t one. (I’m ignoring the fact that a romantic history doesn’t necessarily include intercourse because the books do, too.)
I like reading virgin-on-purpose books as long as the author (and character) aren’t making a huge EVENT about the whole thing. that is she either wants to lose it NOW or she is so determined to save it she’s lost track of what’s most important in a relationship. That makes it a wallbanger.
My last EC book was all about a male virgin—and he was just about clueless too. (it was based on a really funny Mrs. G essay about the standard virgin who never has an orgasm until some guy shows her how. She said she wanted to read about a the male virgin nearly as cluless—“holy cow! What’s that white stuff coming out of my body???”—so I wrote it)
hey, can this count as an entry into the bwhahahaha contest?
hey, since I’m blogwhoring myself come see the funny GM ads in my blog. hey, that isn’t really all about me though.
hey.
Where have I been for the last two days? This has been such an interesting topic to read about.
On the subject of virgin heroes, one of the bits I liked best in Outlander was where the older, experienced heroine deflowers her new husband. Oh la la – but also a sweetly realistic sex scene. From memory, when Claire has an orgasm Jamie is all ‘oh my God I’ve just broken something what did I do?’.
>>On the subject of virgin heroes, one of the bits I liked best in Outlander was where the older, experienced heroine deflowers her new husband.<<
OMG, I literally screamed out loud when Jamie says (about her not being a virgin), “As long as you don’t mind that I am.” WHA? WHA? I had never seen that in a romance novel. Wait, I’d never seen that in any novel. Sexiest fucking virgin EVAH!
Was it Outlander or one of the sequels where a horny Claire is waiting for Jamie by a stream—I think they’re supposed to be having sex, but he went off to do some task first—anyway, she’s sitting on a rock totally horned-up and decides to masturbate to take the edge off? Jamie finally arrives while she’s in the middle of fingering herself all agog; his own horniness ramped up exponentially. Am I remembering it right? Loved that scene. A woman who knew her body and wasn’t afraid or ignorant of her own sexuality…a very powerful image.
okay which historical was it that the hero stormed out of the room and out of her life when he realized the heroine didn’t have a hymen? was it a balogh?
Wish I could remember….I know I read the book, silly thing to do.
“Was it Outlander or one of the sequels…”
Drums of Autumn… I think the first sex scene in that book.
(Off-topic, but I just wanted to say thanks to the SBs for introducing me to Laura Kinsale and PC Cast :-).)
Hmm. I’m thinking about my two best friends. One has only been with one man, and she is marrying that man next month. He has only been with one woman. She said she actually came her first time, although “it took awhile.”
My other best friend lost her virginity to a guy she met on the internet who was also a virgin and honestly wasn’t sure where to put it. So yeah. Draw your own conclusions about how good that was.
We’re all in our early 20s. And I’m the only virgin left in the group. There are moments when I hate my first friend, honestly, because it seems like it so rarely ever happens that you end up with the first guy you’ve ever had sex with. It just all seems so sweet and unfair. 😛
As for my other friend, she’s been with another man since then, but he wasn’t very good. She is currently single, like me.
As far as how I feel about being a virgin…I go back and forth. I’ve only had one bf in my life, ever, and that was awhile ago and we didn’t go very far. Since then, I don’t know if it’s timing, if it’s a lot of guys my age are assholes, or if I’m just fundamentally undateable or something. I don’t know. Really, I don’t. But it’s nice to know I’m not the only person who has had to wait/is waiting awhile. Because there are times when I feel like such a freak, honestly.
I know I’ll have to be in love with the guy before I’ll have sex with him. See, I’ve never been in love. Even with my one bf, I told him I loved him, but mostly because he said it first. Maybe I thought I was in love then. But I wasn’t. And sex terrified me back then because I grew up in a very religous kind of atmosphere where I was afraid to let myself go, to enjoy pleasure. Really kind of sad.
I think part of this is why I read romances, because, pathetic as this may sound, it makes me realize it’s okay to want sex and to want passion and to enjoy things like that. I don’t expect my first time to consist of 18 orgasms or anything. But I expect it to be good in its own way, because I’ll be with a guy I care about who will want me to feel pleasure. I still have sexual hang-ups, I admit. I still have hangups about love-there are times when I think the idea of giving myself up to a guy like that, both emotionally and physically, scares the shit out of me.
So yeah, I hope since I am still uh, intact, when it does happen the guy will actually know what he’s doing rather than not know where to put it as teenage boys are apt to.
Anyway, I often feel like a loser, a virgin reading romance novels, which is probably ridiculous. But I guess what I like about say, those 28-year old spinsters in historical novels who finally do get some and it’s wonderful is that it was worth the wait, ultimately. Love and sex were both worth waiting for. Because I know, the first time has to suck to a degree, but damnit, at some point, I want it to be mind-blowing awesome. Novels just tend to speed up when the awesomeness uh, comes. 😛
This is not so much on the subject of virginity in books but I have a guy friend irl who is like 28 (I think) who is a virgin, plans to remain one til marriage, and honestly doesn’t care if the woman he marries is or not. He just has strong religious beliefs about it for himself, but doesn’t feel right imposing it on the rest of the world. Also probably a healthy dose of pragmatism helps with that. I do hope he finds someone soon though! Poor guy. I know he must be horny as hell. Funny thing is though I know some women have been unwilling to date him cause he won’t put out. Which I can’t help laughing my ass off at. Poor man gets to help balance the cosmic scale.
I feel like the only one here who actually likes virgin heroines.
Now, I’m not talking about the TSTL, “what is this clitoris of which you speak” variety. But I’m totally cool with an author nudging the boundaries of plausibility a little to make the climactic sex scene more, er, climactic. I don’t read romance for hard-hitting realism here, or to subvert the patriarchy. It’s fantasy fullfillment.
For me, the “first time” fantasy is a powerful one. When I lost my virginity in real life, yeah, it was awkward, but it was also amazing – feeling that complete intimacy with another human being. I want the heroine to be swept away, for it to be a “holy shit” moment for her, not “ho hum, I hope he’s as good as my last boyfriend.”
What can I say, it pushes my buttons.
Sure, in real life women lose their virginity to a guy who’s not so great, and often it’s sucky and painful. Also, in real life, people sometimes have bad breath and acne and get the stomach flu. That doesn’t mean I want to read about it in my romances.
So I’m all for opening up the genre to include more sexually experienced heroines – obviously there’s a readership for it – but let’s not do away with all the virgins just yet.
Well, Selah and I seem to be in the minority here as proud, well-adjusted, happily married (ex-)Sluts. “Regrets we’ve had a few, but then, too few to mention,” as Sinatra would say. Hoo-aah!
And Dr. Ruth, I am now obsessed with writing an erotic short story about deflowering a 19-year-old fundamentalist dude, maybe under the bleachers at a Promise Keepers rally.
But seriously, I think it’s unfortunate that we have to resort to reading erotica to find a heroine in charge of her own sexuality. It just reinforces the virgin/whore dichotomy. Why is it so hard to find honest portrayals of sexually fulfilled women in mainstream romance?
I’m not saying that romances should reflect the gritty, shitty reality of day-to-day life—part of their appeal is the escapism. But authors and especially publishers need to realize that readers they want to see more of their own personal realities reflected in the books they read. If Jenny Crusie bucks all these stereotypes and her books are wildly popular, maybe someone should take a hint. (And I really need to start reading her books.)
I really wish the business would wake up and figure out how many Smart Bitches are out there, drooling for a book that makes them feel deeply but doesn’t insult their intelligence.
Oops, I think I glued the soapbox to the bottom of my feet. [hobbles away…]
Hmmm, I should add that being a virgin and “in charge of her own sexuality” are certainly not mutually exclusive. I should have said “sexually assertive/adventurous.”
Which wouldn’t necessarily eliminate technical virginity.
At the risk of making this into a confessional, let me level a brief defense of the non-religious twenty-something virgin.
I’m a month shy of 27 years old. Not only am I a virgin—and more virginal than is strictly believable—most of my friends are in the same situation. For one or two of those friends, it is a religious choice. For others, myself included, it’s been a lack of opportunity or conscious decision not to be with someone they weren’t sure about or weren’t ready for.
While I agree that in contemporary romance it’s often profoundly silly to find a virgin heroine, I know for a fact that it’s not impossible. If anything, I think the silliness or stupidity of it is the way, as others have already pointed out, they are completely *ignorant* of sex and sexuality.
I want to see a contemporary that features a strong, smart, and sexually aware 20-something virgin heroine, and a hero who doesn’t act like it’s either disgusting or the Greatest Honor Of All Time to be her first. (I read this Nora Roberts book once—can’t remember the title offhand—in which the hero kept going on and on about how it wasn’t right for him to take the 25-year-old virgin heroine’s “innocence.” Ugh.)
I think part of the problem is this weird all-or-nothing mentality we have. Either you have sex, or you’re a religious fanatic who will keep yourself rigidly pure until your wedding night. It’s extremely frustrating for those of us who are non-religious adult virgins. It’s also extremely isolating. Despite the fact that several others posted their ages and the fact that they are virgins, the majority of people say, “Oh, I don’t believe that’s possible.”
And yet here we are. I don’t know what to do with that.
I think part of the problem is this weird all-or-nothing mentality we have.
Definitely. It goes back to what someone else was saying about how screwed up this country is with regard to sex. It’s everywhere in the media and yet deep-down we’re still Puritans. We can’t get enough of sex as a culture and yet a significant segment of our population can be classified as sex-hating, IMO (like people who want to restrict access to birth control so that even married couples must abstain or have babies).
On a personal level, it’s possible to have a very satisfying sexual relationship without intercourse. I had two boyfriends in college who were saving sex for marriage. We did a lot more than hold hands. I imagine the same is true for 20- or 30-something non-religious virgins. Being a virgin doesn’t make you frigid, and being sexually active doesn’t necessarily make you satisfied.
Hey all,
Newish visitor to this site. Must say I love it.
I’ve read the many lovely and insightful comments on this topic. I kept thinking up points I would like to make and then someone else made them, almost like they were reading my mind. It’s great.
I am kind of in between on the opinion that virginal heroines are annoying vs ok. If the book is overall well written then I have no problem with it. However, I do have a problem with the virgin heroine who knows nothing before getting it on with the hero but soon afterwards seem to gain incredible love making skills. I guess it is just another way to demonstrate that they are meant for each other. But still, I can’t quite accept the fact that someone that innocent would magically know all the best sex tricks.
As for real life, older virgin stories, closing in on 26 and I remain one not for religious reasons but for my own standards for how well I want to know someone before I am willing to have sex with them. However I do know “that tab A can fit into slot B, C, and D and it can be a whole lotta fun.” (to quote the post by Taekduu)Much like the recent annon posting I go back and forth between being proud of my current status and envying my friends and their sexual experience. It can be hard being the only “pure” (ha!)one amongst your friends, and if you’re also the only single one?
Thought of another virgin hero book (though the heroine is also a virgin), Almost Heaven by Katherine Kingsley (or something close to that title).
cheers
To “Definitely Anonymous”, who feels like she might be pathetic since she’s a twentysomething virgin reading romance novels: at the risk of turning this into ‘Dear Abby’ rather than a discussion, let me just say, you have no need to feel that way! I’m not magic, but I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone about six times
. Nor do I live in the Regency period, or shape-shift, or have any number of traits I love to read about.
And that’s the point. A good read can take us where we’ve never been but we oh, so want to go. Enjoy with pride, baby.
I’m also a reasonably new browser on this site, but wanted to add my two cents to an interesting discussion. This is mainly in response to all those “Why?!?” comments I’ve seen in this series of posts regarding the popularity of sexually naive heroines. I may be in the minority here, but for me the character who is not technically a virgin but who is woefully unaquainted with the finer points of sex until the “right man” comes along rings rather true. And because of that, it is a plot device I rather enjoy when it is well written. Especially since the element of discovery is one way to inject added interest into the often revisited topic of sex scenes.
Maybe my perspective springs from my own experiences-it wasn’t until my fifth sexual relationship that I actually had an orgasm. What’s worse, I hadn’t even realized that I had never had one (don’t ask…). But although my history makes me feel mildly ridiculous, I can’t help thinking that I’m not alone. Surveys that I’ve seen vary a lot in the percentages they quote but consistently report that a non-neglible fraction of woman have either never had or don’t regularly have orgasms. It has also very much been my experience that good sex and good relationships are inextricably linked, so when the main character finally finds Mr. Right and has a mind-blowing time with him, this makes some sense, too.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t agree that the prevalence of sexually inexperienced women in books has strong cultural underpinnings. But one reason why some of us enjoy reading about women finally discovering great sex after a long time without it is the simple fact that we identify with the situation.
“…And none of us are necessarily prudes or religious either. Just romantic, busy, and picky.”
LOL!! Well, there ya go—:). Hell, I had my eyes open for guys who looked interesting enough to bang starting in high school, but it wasn’t a top priority with me (I’m in a tough career field, and getting through college, established, and my student loans paid off was far more important.) As well, sure, it’s easy to find a guy to sleep with. But it isn’t so easy to find a guy you _want_ to sleep with. And the problem is double-compounded if you aren’t pretty or popular—and feel lousy about yourself because of that. (Getting rejected—or treated like a convenient sperm receptacle—under those circumstances can be devastating, and it’s often easier to just not risk the grief.) And I’ve found you really have to be clear on what you want and what you are after when you are hunting, and not everyone has that self-knowledge when they are young. In short, there are far more reasons women stay virgins than just the religious aspect or “she’s frigid and freaky” thing.
I’m nineteen and I still got it…but that doesn’t really bug me. Haven’t met any guys who turned my crank, so to speak. Crushes last less than fifteen minutes and hormonally I’m fairly stable, and even tend to consider myself as asexual most of the time. I just have no real interest in sex. Love reading it, though. *shrug*
Virgin heroines don’t bug me too much in historicals; but what does bug me are contemporary virgins/women who haven’t had any sexual pleasure EVER until boyo comes alone…I mean along. *face/palm/Freud* Wow. That was my best typo to date. Hence: not fixing it.
Anyhow…
Ritual of Proof freaked the hell out of me…mostly because of the psychedelic landscape and technicolour chocobos that everyone rode like horses or something and the male deflowerment scene. The idea that her orgasmic juices were searing through his flesh and making him scream and writhe and have to be strapped down so he didn’t blindly reach up and snap her neck…made me slightly fearful of my own fluids.
And I don’t understand how it is at all comparable to girl-deflowerment—I just don’t. Even if all I do is read about it, the two scenarios didn’t seem at all similar, except that both times it hurt like hell and then everyone had an orgasm and went home happy. It was just a very confusing and scary thing for me to read when I was fifteen and bored in the public library.
I think that, while the virgin thing is frequently a throwback, especially in contemporaries, there is a huge element of fantasy fulfillment. A lot of it is that the readers of romance novels may not have had a first time yet, or had a shitty or mundane first time (and not just readers of romance novels, obviously, but the general population). But I think there is another element. I went to a school with a large population of Orthodox Jews, many of whom followed the practice of not even touching members of the opposite sex until they were married. And some of us thought, “Wow, their wedding night is going to be AWESOME.” Probably not technically awesome, what with two people who have no idea what they’re doing, but come on – the first kiss is going to be the biggest turn-on in the world! They haven’t even held hands!
And I think (and this works better in historical) that that’s some of what’s imbued in the total-ignorance mode of losing virginity. If this is a girl who hasn’t even figured out what’s between her legs, IMAGINE how great it’ll be when she does! Woohoo!
I don’t think that’s the only thing that’s going on. But I think it’s something.
Well, I don’t know if you’re all shooting at strawmen, or if my own social group is horribly abnormal.
I’m male, 19, and a type six atheist. I’m a virgin. I fully expect to be one until I finish grad school (which should be around 2017), and until I get married (civil union?), but it has nothing to do with being busy or time restraints. Six out of seven of my friends still are virgins as well, while the other is a total man whore. Three are atheists, one is a non-practicing Buddhist, the others are Christians. I go, by the way, to the University of Washington Seattle as a Chemistry/pre-med major.
I hate (or rather, can’t read) romance novels (not that I do so much anyways) in which the hero is a Casanova, or the heroine is a slut. I simply can’t relate to the mindset. It’s pretty much a deal killer to me.
I went on my first date last year, with a total slut (17, and says, “oh no, I’m not a slut, I’ve only slept with eight guys. In the last year.”). Since then I’ve been on about one a month. Is it immoral to be a slut, or even just non-virginal? Absolutely not. I see no reason why a consenting man and woman (though perhaps in this case girl might be more appropriate) can’t enjoy a perfectly normal function of their own bodies. By and large, more sex is generally safer sex anyways, and they’re probably happier in general. The “try it before you buy it” argument seems pretty cogent to me as well. So why am I a virgin, and why am I turned on by, if I had to give an archetype name, the virgin bitch or tsunderekko*?
Simple. Pure and utter selfishness and arrogance.
Now as I said before, I’m an atheist, and the reason for that is that I’m a die-hard rationalist and science geek. All the evidence points to consciousness being an epiphenomenon of the physical brain, and love as being the collective effect of a set of hormones secreted to encourage monogamy for long enough to pop a kid out and take care of it for a while. I’m also a die-hard romantic love enthusiast. I reconcile these apparently contradictory aspects simply by saying that, while I find it immensely depressing that there isn’t such a thing as deep, soul-to-soul, spiritual, universe shattering love, I’m doing my damnedest to make it real myself, and one of my ways of doing so is to withold something from everybody else, to symbolically link the simple and dirty act of sex to what is essentially an oath to let someone as close to you as anyone can ever get.
Now, you make fun of “feelings of possessiveness and GRAR MY WOMAN”-ness, and rightly so in the many cases of the “rakish rake”, but my own feelings are by no means the light, fluffy, and naiive true lurve kind of thing you often see in heroines. Matter of fact, I consider Opeth’s (a Swedesh progressive death metal band, for the uninformed) The Leper Affinity” to be my favorite romantic song, after Ma Cherie Amour. “Your body is mine to avail / such a tragic sight you are / Slave under my creed / spurring me with those tears…”
Now of course, turnabout is fair play, and while I’d love it if I could put a collar on my wife with a nametag saying “property of JP” or some such, I’d be perfectly fine with putting one on my neck too. The same symbolism as a wedding ring, I think, but more audacious and, to be frank, erotic. And that’s what it’s all about. Fully giving yourself to someone else.
While there is a certain appeal to the naiive and innocent woman, it’s certainly not my thing, I fully expect to finally settle down with a woman who, although being a virgin, certainly knows her way around her own body, owns a few dildos, and has a porn collection to rival my own (although in hindsight it’s more likely to be an erotica collection). In my opinion, such a thing makes the act of having recieved something and having made a connection that no one else has all the more, well, special. There’s no greater turn on to me than a smart, well educated, assertive, rational woman who takes no shit and has made the conscious decision to withold her body from anyone else for the same reasons I have. Except maybe red hair.
That’s also pretty much the reason I can’t stand reading most western Romance novels. They’re full of the naiive virgin heroine + Casanova hero. And, basically for that reason, I read tons of manga in which the heroine is generally a virgin, but not naiive, and the hero is also a virgin. For example, Suzuka, which I heartily recommend any of the Bitches read if they’re looking for something quite different.
Well, there’s my answer to the question “Do you know of any dudes who value virginity? Or who even care that much?”
Thanks.
wow this is a 2 year old article.
Hi JP
I’m an old woman who was a virgin at marriage. I gotta tell you ,25 years down the road, I wish I’d taken that man for a test drive LOL. Actually, I wish 3 or 4 other women had taken HIM for a testdrive before I got him…
But that’s beside the point.
Your post is refreshing and youthful and reminds me of all the ” MY mate is going to be; this, this, this, and this”
Then love hit and he was that, that , that and that!
Good luck with your virginity and your quest for a
and who is “
you aint picky ! LOL