GENDER /&GENDER

Carpenter SOCIETY
AND
/ June
VIRGINITY
2002 LOSS

GENDER AND THE MEANING

AND EXPERIENCE OF VIRGINITY
LOSS IN THE CONTEMPORARY
UNITED STATES

LAURA M. CARPENTER
Johns Hopkins University

This article draws on in-depth case studies of 61 women and men of diverse sexual identities to show how
gender, while apparently diminishing in significance, continues to shape interpretations and experi-
ences of virginity loss in complex ways. Although women and men tended to assign different meanings to
virginity, those who shared an interpretation reported similar virginity-loss encounters. Each interpre-
tation of virginity—as a gift, stigma, or process—featured unequal roles for virgin and partner, which
interacted with gender differences in power to produce interpretation-specific patterns of gender subor-
dination, only one of which consistently gave men power over women.

Virginity loss is widely understood, by scholars and lay people alike, as a central
event in the process through which girls and boys become adult women and men
(Gagnon and Simon 1973; Long Laws and Schwartz 1977; Solin 1996). In the
United States, young people have traditionally assigned different meanings to vir-
ginity and experienced virginity loss in divergent ways based on their gender.1
Throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, young women typi-
cally perceived their virginity as precious and strove to maintain it until they were
married or at least engaged. In contrast, young men customarily saw their virginity
as neutral or even stigmatizing, and often sought to lose it outside the context of a
committed romantic relationship (D’Emilio and Freedman 1988; Rubin 1990; Wel-
ter 1983).
Major social changes occurring in the 1960s and 1970s—the feminist, youth
counterculture, and gay rights movements, and the sexualization of the public
realm—helped bring about new sexual norms and behaviors (D’Emilio and

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to thank Robin L. Leidner, Constance A. Nathanson, Demie Kurz, Har-
old J. Bershady, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., Gloria Y. Gadsden, Sara Kinsman, Eileen Lake, Sangeetha
Madhavan, Shara Neidell, and Eva Skuratowicz for their assistance at various stages of this project.
REPRINT REQUESTS: Laura M. Carpenter, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public
Health, Department of Population and Family Health Sciences, 615 N. Wolfe St., 4th Floor, Baltimore,
MD 21205.

GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 16 No. 3, June 2002 345-365

© 2002 Sociologists for Women in Society

345
346 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002

Freedman 1988; Seidman 1991; Weeks 1985).2 Young people increasingly voiced
approval of, and engaged in, what Gagnon and Simon (1987) call “pre-premarital
sex”—sex with partners whom they did not expect to marry (Hofferth, Kahn, and
Baldwin 1987; Reiss 1967; Zelnik and Shah 1983). This transformation was espe-
cially pronounced among young women, as they had formerly been less permissive
than men. Yet traditional gendered approaches to sexuality and virginity loss did
not disappear so much as take on new configurations, becoming a new sexual dou-
ble standard (Moffatt 1987; Rubin 1990).
It was in this period of change that adolescents and young adults became staple
subjects of sexuality research (Ericksen 1999). Virginity loss, almost invariably
defined as the first time a person engages in vaginal intercourse, has been a frequent
topic in this literature. The preponderance of research has addressed aspects of
early sexual life that are easily quantifiable and seen as having clear implications
for public health, such as the ages at which young women first risk pregnancy by
engaging in vaginal sex. Despite routinely enumerating differences and similarities
between women and men, however, most scholars working in this vein have failed
to analyze early sexual encounters through a gender lens (Christopher and Cate
1985; Zelnik and Shah 1983). Studies concerned with the subjective aspects of
early sexuality, though rare by comparison (di Mauro 1995), have been far more
sensitive to the gendered nature of human experience. Feminist scholars in particu-
lar have done much to illuminate the ways gender differences in social power shape
sexuality in adolescence and young adulthood (Fine 1988; Horowitz 1983; Rubin
1990; Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994).
Studies of early sexuality in the 1970s and 1980s found that young women,
while more permissive than in previous decades, continued to value virginity and
predicate sexual activity on love and committed romantic relationships (though sel-
dom on marriage), whereas young men continued to express disdain for virginity,
engage in sexual activity primarily out of curiosity and desire for physical pleasure,
and welcome opportunities for casual sex (Anderson Darling, Davidson, and
Passarello 1992; Christopher and Cate 1985; Holland Bollerud, Boynton
Christopherson, and Schultz Frank 1990; Laumann et al. 1994; Moffatt 1987;
Rubin 1990). Many women reported feeling disappointed when their own experi-
ences failed to fulfill the “romantic fantasy” of the “first time,” fantasies in which
young men rarely if ever indulged (Rubin 1990; Thompson 1984). Young men, by
contrast, typically saw virginity loss as a rite of passage entailing physical perfor-
mance and the achievement of manhood, themes largely absent from young
women’s accounts (Holland, Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996; Rubin 1990;
Thompson 1984). Women also typically found virginity loss less pleasurable, phys-
ically and emotionally, than did men, and their pleasure was more dependent on
relational factors, such as loving partners (Anderson Darling, Davidson, and
Passarello 1992; Rubin 1990).3
Yet at the same time, some researchers found a growing number of young
women perceiving virginity as neither desirable nor undesirable, and a minority of
women even approaching virginity loss with eagerness and curiosity, expressing
 Carpenter / GENDER AND VIRGINITY LOSS 347

desire to “get it over with,” or seeing virginity as embarrassing or constraining

(Brumberg 1997; Rubin 1990; Thompson 1984, 1990). Studies using data from the
early 1990s confirmed this picture of increasing gender similarities alongside per-
sistent differences and also noted changes among men. Holland, Ramazanoglu, and
Thomson (1996) interviewed some young men who regretted losing their virginity
with casual partners or who felt that they had somehow missed the rite of passage
that virginity ostensibly entails. Sprecher and Regan (1996) found a growing pro-
portion of young men expressing pride and happiness about being virgins (although
the majority reported guilt and embarrassment, in contrast with virgin women’s
pride and happiness) (see also Sprecher, Barbee, and Schwartz 1995). Gender dif-
ferences in age at first vaginal sex, substantial in the 1960s, had almost vanished by
the 1990s (currently between age 16 and 17 for both genders) (Alan Guttmacher
Institute 1999).
The few scholars who explicitly analyzed the gendered power relations involved
in early sexual life have shown women to be disempowered relative to men. Many
young women experience sexual desires but feel confused about whether and how
to act on them (Tolman 1994). Young women whose boyfriends pressure them for
sex may feel trapped between contradictory pressures to obey male authority and to
remain sexually chaste (Horowitz 1983). Holland and colleagues (1996) found that
most young men felt empowered by virginity loss, whereas young women reported
exercising sexual agency only rarely, and then primarily through negative means,
such as restraining their partners or themselves or ridiculing male sexual perfor-
mance. Young women who first have sex with other women appear to enjoy greater
control over their experiences than women whose first partners are men but face
other perils such as homophobic reactions from their parents or peers (Brumberg
1997; Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994). Yet tales of sexual agency among young het-
erosexual women, while rare, do exist (Thompson 1984, 1990), and women’s dis-
advantage in early sexual encounters may be diminishing over time. One recent
study found a minority of young men actively resisting the dominant masculine role
(Holland, Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996); another cited an increasing number
of young women complaining that they remained virgins because of unwilling male
partners (Sprecher and Regan 1996).
In sum, the literature on gender and the subjective aspects of early sexuality indi-
cate increasing similarities among men and women alongside persistent differ-
ences, the most disturbing of which is young women’s relative disempowerment at
virginity loss. But none of these studies offers a thoroughgoing, theoretically
informed account of which young women and men escape traditional gendered pat-
terns of sexual agency or how they manage to do so. Many scholars have based their
conclusions about gender on data from women or men only (Brumberg 1997;
Horowitz 1983; Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994; Wight 1994), and studies includ-
ing both genders have typically neglected gay and bisexual youth (Holland,
Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996; Laumann et al. 1994; Rubin 1990; Sprecher,
Barbee, and Schwartz 1995; Sprecher and Regan 1996) despite anecdotal evidence
that young gays and lesbians are refashioning understandings of virginity loss to fit
348 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002

their own experiences (Elder 1996; Hart 1995).4 Much previous research on the
subjective gendered nature of virginity loss is further limited by its reliance on data
about encounters that occurred primarily before the emergence of HIV/AIDS as a
major public health problem, the Christian Right’s consolidation of power in the
U.S. public policy arena (e.g., over publicly funded sex education programs), and
the heightened visibility of lesbian and gay culture from the mid-1990s on
(Brumberg 1997; Rubin 1990; Thompson 1995). Studies using more recent data
reveal the broad contours of virginity-related beliefs and behaviors but do not
explore meaning making and sexual conduct at the micro level (Sprecher, Barbee,
and Schwartz 1995) or may not apply directly to the United States (Holland,
Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996).
Feminist understanding of early sexuality in the United States can therefore be
enhanced by an in-depth investigation of the meaning and experience of virginity
loss among women and men of various sexual identities who came of age following
the changes of the late 1980s. In this article, I draw on 61 detailed case studies, col-
lected from young women and men of diverse social and sexual backgrounds, to
develop a grounded theoretical account of the complex ways that gender shapes
interpretations and experiences of virginity loss even as gender’s significance as a
shaper of sexual meanings appears to be on the wane.

DEFINING VIRGINITY LOSS

In virtually every society, the first time a young person has sex with a partner is
seen as a major social and sexual transition, a rite of passage constituting part of the
irreversible journey from childhood to adult life (Muuss 1970; Schlegel 1995).
Scholars and lay people usually call this transition virginity loss. Although beliefs
about the meaning of this transition and the types of sexual encounters necessary to
achieve it have varied considerably over time and across cultures, scholarly and
popular writers concerned with virginity loss have almost invariably defined it as
the first time a man or woman engages in vaginal-penile intercourse (Jessor and
Jessor 1975; Solin 1996; Sprecher and Regan 1996; Weis 1985). Not surprisingly,
most discussions focus on first coitus, an experience that falls into, but does not
constitute the entire category of, phenomena that real-life women and men refer to
as virginity loss.
My goal in this study was not to judge which sexual encounters meet the criteria
for virginity loss and which do not but rather to explore the range of experiences that
ordinary people refer to as virginity loss today. Therefore, in the analyses that fol-
low, I bracket (or decline to consider) the physiological definition of virginity loss
so as to draw explicit attention to the diverse meanings young men and women
attach to the transition and to show how these meanings are socially created. Given
my interest in virginity loss not only as an experience (“What do people do when
they lose their virginity?”) but also as a cultural phenomenon (“What is this thing
people call virginity loss?”), I have chosen to retain the conventional term (cf. DeVault
 Carpenter / GENDER AND VIRGINITY LOSS 349

1992). Convention notwithstanding, however, many study participants did not

experience the transition called virginity loss as a loss of something either positive
or negative. Perhaps a new term is in order, but that is not my purpose here.
A detailed analysis of study participants’ definitions of virginity loss is beyond
the scope of this article (see Carpenter 2001); however, a brief overview will help
prepare the reader for the discussion to follow. Everyone who took part in my study
believed that a person could lose his or her virginity the first time he or she engaged
in vaginal sex. However, most also contended that other kinds of genital sex could,
under some circumstances, result in virginity loss. Four-fifths of participants
believed that both men and women could lose their virginity with a same-sex part-
ner, through fellatio, cunnilingus, or anal intercourse, as appropriate. Lesbian, gay,
and bisexual respondents were more likely than their heterosexual counterparts (95
and 75 percent, respectively) to include same-sex encounters in their definitions of
virginity loss, consistent with the lesser salience of vaginal sex to people whose
potential sexual partners include members of the same sex.5 (Every nonvirgin het-
erosexual participant reported losing her or his virginity through coitus, compared
with only one-third of lesbians and gay men.) At the same time, many people I
spoke with felt that nonconsensual sexual encounters would not constitute virginity
loss or would do so only technically. Consistent with women’s greater susceptibil-
ity to rape and the greater likelihood that women respondents had personally been
the victims of forced sex, two-thirds of the women argued that rape could never or
could only technically result in virginity loss, compared with half of the men.6

DATA AND METHOD

To explore the relationship between gender and virginity loss, in 1997 and 1998,
I conducted in-depth interviews with 61 women and men from diverse back-
grounds. Of the 33 women in the study, 22 (67 percent) self-identified as heterosex-
ual, 7 (21 percent) as lesbians, and 4 (12 percent) as bisexual. Of the 28 men, 17 (61
percent) described themselves as heterosexual, 9 (32 percent) as gay, and 2 (7 per-
cent) as bisexual. Of the participants, 48 (79 percent) were white, 6 (10 percent)
were African American, 4 (7 percent) were Latino, and 3 (5 percent) were Asian
American. Two-thirds came from middle-class backgrounds and one-third from
working-class families.7 One-third were raised as mainline Protestants, one-fourth
as Roman Catholics, one-sixth as evangelical Protestants, one-eighth as Jewish,
and one-tenth without religious training. Most respondents lived within two hours
of Philadelphia at the time of the study, but nearly half had grown up and become
sexually active elsewhere in the United States. Of the 56 participants who described
themselves as nonvirgins at the time of the study, 90 percent reported losing their
virginity during adolescence, at age 16.4 on average. Respondents ranged in age
from 18 to 35. I chose to interview young adults (older than 17) rather than adoles-
cents to better situate virginity loss in the broader context of individuals’ sexual
careers and to explore the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on approaches to
350 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002

virginity loss. (The youngest participants, at 18, turned 13 in 1992; the oldest, at 35,
in 1975; HIV/AIDS was not widely recognized as a serious health risk for hetero-
sexuals and teens until the late 1980s.)
To locate study participants, I used the purposive snowball sampling method. I
began by identifying initial respondents through professional contacts (school-
teachers and counselors, health care providers, religious leaders, and administra-
tive staff at local colleges) and special-interest organizations (such as a support
group for gay youth and an evangelical Christian student association). Then, at the
end of each interview, I asked my informant to recommend others who might also
be willing to participate. Snowball sampling facilitated my investigation of the sub-
jective aspects of virginity loss in several ways. People are often less reluctant to
participate in research on topics perceived as private, such as sexuality, when they
are recruited through their own social networks (Sterk-Elifson 1994; Thompson
1995). Relying on personal referrals additionally helped me locate gay and bisexual
women and men, who are relatively invisible, numerically rare, and unevenly dis-
tributed throughout the larger U.S. population (Biernacki and Waldorf 1981).
Because snowball samples are neither random nor statistically representative,
they do not allow the researcher to establish the overall distribution of specific
beliefs or behaviors in a broader population. Yet sufficiently diverse snowball sam-
ples are well suited for illuminating the range of ideas and experiences available in a
given social group. As a way of ensuring a diverse sample, and to offset the poten-
tial for bias resulting from the relative homogeneity of most social networks, I
began multiple snowballs in each of the four main gender/sexual identity categories
and interviewed no more than five people in a given network. Seventeen snowballs
composed the sample; most contained two or three members. As the interviewing
progressed, I heard the same general themes repeated, again and again, by people
from different social networks. This phenomenon, which Glaser and Strauss (1967)
term “saturation,” gave me confidence that I had discovered the primary approaches
to virginity currently circulating in the United States. Given the goals of my study,
the advantages of snowball sampling outweighed its drawbacks.
I personally interviewed every participant between April 1997 and October
1998. Questions were primarily open ended, enabling respondents to speak freely
about what they saw as the salient aspects of virginity loss. At the same time, every
interview covered the same categories of information: learning about virginity and
sex, personal sexual histories, and social interactions related to virginity and sexu-
ality. This open-ended, semistructured format enabled me not only to collect rich
data on subjective understandings and experiences of virginity loss, including those
that defy easy categorization, but also to draw comparisons among respondents.
To code and analyze the interview data, I relied primarily on the systematic pro-
cedures referred to as grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967). This approach
stresses the inductive development of analytic categories, allowing the researcher
to focus on the meaning of experiences to study participants. It also helps the
researcher to avoid making a priori assumptions that can inadvertently lead to
neglecting unanticipated findings or overemphasizing expected gender differences
 Carpenter / GENDER AND VIRGINITY LOSS 351

(Lorber 1993). To further minimize these risks, I strove to identify general patterns
in the data prior to evaluating them in terms of gender. This two-tiered approach
enabled me to develop a highly nuanced analysis of factors underlying variations
within and across gender.
As I perused the interviews for salient themes and patterns, I was struck by the
fact that my informants spoke about virginity loss in fundamentally metaphorical
terms. I did not ask participants whether they thought virginity resembled a gift,
stigma, or process; rather, they volunteered these comparisons spontaneously as we
conversed. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), people routinely use meta-
phors to make sense of everyday life. When people think metaphorically, they com-
pare two phenomena and anticipate similarities between them. Thus, people who
describe virginity as a gift will expect “giving their virginity to someone” to resem-
ble gift giving more generically. Lakoff and Johnson’s theoretical framework sug-
gested that I could gain deeper insight into my informants’ expectations for and
experiences of virginity loss by drawing on social scientific research corresponding
to the metaphors they invoked.
In the pages that follow, I present findings about interpretations and experiences
of virginity loss in turn; each section is organized around the three primary interpre-
tive frames—gift, stigma, and process—invoked by study participants.

FINDINGS

Interpretations of Virginity Loss

When describing what virginity loss meant to them, study participants drew pri-
marily on three distinctive metaphors, or interpretive frames, variously comparing
virginity to a gift, a stigma, or a step in the longer process of growing up.8 These
interpretive frames are best understood as ideal types (Weber 1946). In practice, the
boundaries between the frames, and the experiences of the people who used them,
were somewhat indistinct. Moreover, about one-third of respondents told me that
their perspectives on virginity had changed over the course of their sexual careers,
most often in response to new experiences.9 Although women and men favored dif-
ferent interpretations on average, their approaches to virginity loss were far from
dichotomous.
Half of the people I spoke with said that at some point in their lives, they had
thought of virginity as a gift. To Danielle Rice (27, heterosexual, white) (all names
are pseudonyms), virginity loss meant “that you’re willing to give up something pri-
vate of yourself. . . . [It’s] something of mine that I choose to give up, that I can only
give up once.” Danielle and the other respondents in this group saw virginity as a
highly valuable gift, due to its nonrenewable nature and their sense that it was part
of the self that would be forfeited on giving. They moreover described the ideal
virginity-loss experience in terms that reflected conventions of gift giving more
generically. In particular, they believed that a person receiving the gift of virginity
352 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002

was obliged to reciprocate with a gift of similar value (Gouldner 1960; Mauss 1925;
Schwartz 1967). Brian Meyers (18, heterosexual, white) explained,

[There] definitely has to be just trust and most importantly reciprocity. . . . I think that
there has to be a mutual amount of giving on both behalves, because . . . [if] somebody
thinks that I do so much more or I feel so much more or . . . if you feel as though you’re
not loved as much as . . . you love this other person, and you actually decide to have sex
with this person, I think you kind of feel slighted.

Brian’s emphasis on reciprocation through love and commitment was typical,

although he and many others in this group said that it would be ideal if partners
could also give their respective virginities to one another. They did not, however,
believe that a return gift of virginity alone would suffice; rather, they saw commit-
ment and affection (often, though not always, love) as the keys to proper reciproca-
tion. This (perhaps counterintuitive) emphasis follows from what Mauss (1925)
described as the ultimate goal of gift giving: establishing an ongoing chain of
exchange, every round of which strengthens the bond between the givers. Indeed,
identical gifts are typically discouraged because they effectively nullify the obliga-
tion to reciprocate and bring the ongoing exchange, along with the social ties it fos-
ters, to an end. To many of these women and men, the gift of virginity seemed to rep-
resent a particularly special (nonrenewable) instance of the gift of love, to which the
appropriate response was enhanced love and commitment (which could be continu-
ally exchanged and intensified as the relationship continued).
Seeing reciprocation as crucial and potentially endless—for the norm of obliga-
tory reciprocity entails that every gift must be returned—women and men who
interpreted virginity as a gift stressed the importance of choosing one’s virginity-
loss partner carefully. Ultimately, however, even the most selective of givers cannot
force a recipient to reciprocate against his or her wishes.10 The very structure of gift-
exchange relationships thus effectively ensures that givers are always somewhat at
the mercy of recipients.
A second way of interpreting virginity—as a stigma—was mentioned by
slightly more than one-third of study participants. Ettrick Anderson (19, gay, Afri-
can American) recalled,

The first time I actually heard the word virgin would have to be elementary school.
And it was used as a way to, like—especially with the guys, it was the cut-down of the
period. . . . Virgin equals bad, laughed at.

Although many kinds of stigma are basically permanent, like physical deformities,
virgins need not retain the stigma of virginity (Goffman 1963). Consequently, men
and women who had seen their own virginity as a stigma had been intensely con-
cerned with expunging it, preferably as soon as possible. Many had tried to conceal
their virginity from peers and potential sexual partners, a typical reaction to all
manner of stigma.11 People in this group stressed the importance of not incurring
any additional stigmas, such as a reputation for sexual ineptitude, during the quest
 Carpenter / GENDER AND VIRGINITY LOSS 353

to lose virginity. Marty Baker (26, heterosexual, white), for instance, remembered
worrying about “whether or not I was going to do it right.” Stigmatized people are
relatively powerless, for they perpetually face the possibility that others will iden-
tify and expose their stigma, sanction them for it, and even confer new stigmas on
them. The sexual partner of a virgin may be especially well situated to identify sex-
ual inexperience, which is stigmatizing both in itself and as the ostensibly telltale
sign of virginity.
Finally, more than half of the people I interviewed likened virginity loss to a step
in the longer process of growing up. Said Tim Davis (18, heterosexual, white), “I’d
say virginity loss sort of meant just another experience. . . . It was, like, a different
experience, I mean something, something special. But it’s not as profound as you
would think [laughs]. I mean, it’s just sort of another experience.” Women and men
in this group expected virginity loss to resemble other familiar transitions from one
social status to another, such as high school graduation or marriage. Referring to
generic features of such rites of passage, they said that virginity loss would increase
a person’s knowledge (about sexual activity or about themselves) and transform
them in certain ways (as from a child into an adult) (Turner 1969; van Gennep
1908). Jessica Tanaka (27, bisexual, Japanese American) quipped, “It was just sort
of one of those things that eventually would happen, and then we would know.”
Status passages vary in terms of desirability, inevitability, duration, and rate
(Glaser and Strauss 1971). Despite perceiving virginity as essentially neutral in
value, virtually every participant who framed virginity as a step in a process
described the transition to nonvirginity as inevitable and desirable in physical, emo-
tional, or intellectual terms. Opinions were divided as to whether the passage from
virginity to nonvirginity was rapid and dramatic—“the year zero in between the
part of life before sexual activity and . . . the one after” (Jason Cantor, 24, heterosex-
ual, white)—or gradual and incremental—“not like, one epiphanic moment, it’s
part of a process, even” (Jennifer Gonzales, 25, heterosexual, Latina). If knowledge
is power, then partners who are both virgins differ little in power, while a virgin will
have less power than a nonvirgin partner. Yet because virgins who see virginity loss
as a step in a process can achieve the fundamentally internal goal of gaining knowl-
edge merely through losing their virginity, they are, in practice, not greatly subject
to power wielded by nonvirgin partners.12
Consistent with the sexual double standard, women tended to approach virginity
as a gift, whereas men tended to see it as a stigma. Three-fifths of women in the
study saw virginity as a gift, compared with one-third of men (see Table 1). Con-
versely, slightly more than half of the men interpreted virginity as a stigma, com-
pared with one-fifth of the women. (Women may be more apt than men to approach
all sexual encounters as gifts; Gilfoyle, Wilson, and Brown 1993.) Women were
about twice as likely as men to view virginity loss as a step in a process—a perspec-
tive neither distinctively feminine nor masculine—at the time of virginity loss;
however, men were slightly more likely than women ever to draw on the process
frame (61 percent compared with 52 percent). The substantial increase in the pro-
portion of men favoring the process frame stems from the tendency of people who
354 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002

saw their own virginity as a stigma to revise their understanding after virginity loss.
Eleven of the 15 men and 3 of the 4 women who interpreted virginity as a stigma at
the time of virginity loss subsequently adopted the process frame. They did so in
part because, once relieved of their own stigma, they felt free to reevaluate virginity
and in part because they had come to believe, through experience, that sex improved
with practice (i.e., that sex evolved as a process).
Gender differences in interpretation were more pronounced among older (ages
26 to 35) than younger (ages 18 to 25) participants (see Table 2). Two-thirds of older
women but only one older man spoke of virginity as a gift; however, younger
women and men were equally likely to describe virginity as a gift (56 percent and
53 percent, respectively). Similarly, older men were more than three times more
likely than older women to frame virginity as a stigma (64 percent compared with
18 percent), whereas younger men were only twice as likely as younger women to
employ the stigma frame (53 percent and 25 percent, respectively). The propensity
to interpret virginity as a step in a process varied little by age. The contrast between
older and younger participants and the fact that gender-atypical and gender-neutral
understandings, while relatively rare in previous studies, were fairly common in
mine suggest a possible convergence between women and men in the past 10 years.

Experiences of Virginity Loss

Although understandings of virginity varied by gender, women and men who

shared an interpretive frame told very similar stories about virginity loss. They
made similar choices about sexual encounters and drew on shared expectations to
assess their virginity-loss experiences.13 The one aspect of virginity loss that dif-
fered appreciably by gender, among people who shared a frame, was the sense of
having exercised sexual agency. Structural features of each interpretive frame gave
one partner power over the other, as we have just seen. When people lost their vir-
ginity with a partner of the other sex, these frame-based power dynamics interacted
with gender-based differences in power to produce frame-specific patterns of gen-
der subordination.

Virginity as a gift. The 17 women and men who lost their virginity seeing it as a
gift all believed that virginity loss should take place in a committed love relation-
ship with a partner who would recognize the significance of, and appropriately
reciprocate, the gift of virginity. All 17 recalled carefully considering whether
potential sexual partners were likely to return the gift of virginity. To underline the
importance she placed on reciprocity, Danice Marshall (28, heterosexual, African
American) told me about her flirtation with one young man when she was 15:
I would ask him to give me a reason why I should have sex with you. . . . And, he could
not give me a valuable, you know, like [he said], “It would feel good.” And [I said],
“But you can’t guarantee me, give me something concrete.” . . . I knew that I didn’t
want to have my first experience with a guy that would view me [as] a notch on the
bedpost.
 TABLE 1: Interpretations of Virginity at Time of Virginity Loss and Ever, by Gender

At Time of Virginity Lossa Ever

Women Men Total Women Men Total
Interpretation % n % n % n % n % n % n

Gift 47 14 12 3 30 17 61 20 36 10 49 30
Stigma 13 4 58 15 34 19 21 7 57 16 38 23
Process 40 12 19 5 30 17 52 17 61 17 56 34
Otherb 0 0 12 3 5 3 6 2 11 3 8 5
Total 30 26 56 33 28 61

a. Figures are for nonvirgin respondents. Of those who remained virgins at the time of the study, two men interpreted virginity as a gift, two women saw virginity
as part of a process, and one woman understood virginity as a way of honoring God.
b. Three men, all of whom were gay, lost their virginity thinking of it as irrelevant to their own experiences. Two heterosexual women who were devout evangeli-
cal Christians interpreted maintaining virginity as a means of honoring their commitment to God.

TABLE 2: Interpretation of Virginity Ever, by Gender and Age Group

Younger (Ages 18 to 25) Older (Ages 26 to 35)

Women Men Women Men
Interpretation % n % n % n % n

Gift 56 9 53 9 65 11 9 1
Stigma 25 4 53 9 18 3 64 7
Process 56 9 59 10 47 8 64 7
Total 22 28 22 15
355
356 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002

Danice felt her cautious approach had been amply rewarded. When, a year later, she
decided to give her virginity to her first serious boyfriend, Jerry, he responded by
giving of himself emotionally as well as giving her his own virginity. Exchanging
these gifts seemed to strengthen their relationship, Danice said, noting that they had
dated for almost a year afterward.
Danice and the seven other women and two men whose partners returned their
gifts described their virginity-loss encounters in glowing terms. Yet, losing virgin-
ity with a nonreciprocating partner did not preclude satisfaction for the two women
and one man who had actively chosen to do so. One woman, Karen Lareau (21, het-
erosexual, white) consciously decided, out of curiosity and a growing sense that it
was “weird” to be a virgin at 20, to give her virginity to a close friend, Chip, even
though “I knew that emotionally we weren’t in the type of relationship that was
really going to pay out.” Despite some sadness at having set aside her lifelong view
of virginity as a gift and missing the romantic experience she’d once dreamed of,
Karen said, “I don’t regret it.”
In contrast, intense dissatisfaction and feelings of impotence characterized the
stories of the five respondents who expected reciprocation, through enhanced love
and commitment, but whose virginity-loss partners failed to provide it. All five
were women who lost their virginity with men, and their inability to shape their
experiences stemmed from gender-based norms and differences in power. Of the
five, Miranda Rivera (29, lesbian, Puerto Rican) suffered most directly from men’s
relative power over women: A male acquaintance raped her after a mutual friend’s
party. The other four were affected by gender in more subtle ways. Julie Pavlicko
(25, heterosexual, white), for example, had decided to “save” her virginity for the
first boyfriend with whom she fell in love. That young man, Scott, pressured Julie to
have sex with him for the first five months they dated. She finally consented (at 15),
but when she did not bleed, Scott “was really upset . . . because he thought for sure
that I lied to him. And that he hadn’t been my first.” Julie felt betrayed by Scott’s
reaction: “It was like, ‘ . . . You think I lied to you.’So, you know, ‘Why, obviously it
didn’t mean that much to you, ’cause you don’t trust me enough to, to believe me.’ ”
Furthermore, contrary to her expectations, Julie’s gift failed to enhance their love or
strengthen the bonds between them. She said,

I think I thought it would make me maybe feel love for him that I knew I didn’t have.
Maybe it would, like, give us a fresh connection that we didn’t have. Whether it be
physical or mental or. . . . You know, there was, there was nothing added to the rela-
tionship. No more caring, no more nurturing, no more nothing.

In retrospect, she felt that Scott, not she, had controlled her virginity-loss
experience.
As a result of their carefully chosen partners’ failure to reciprocate, Julie and the
three women who told of similar experiences felt unable to exercise sexual agency
in subsequent relationships. Julie saw herself as so diminished in value after giving
her virginity to someone who did not appreciate it that she felt she no longer
 Carpenter / GENDER AND VIRGINITY LOSS 357

deserved to be selective about her sexual partners. For several years afterward, she
said, “I was pretty promiscuous.” Scott and the other women’s partners appear to
have used their girlfriends’ beliefs about virginity to their strategic advantage.14
Although gift giving is commonly understood to be voluntary, it is also held to be
obligatory in some circumstances, such as between romantic partners and on holi-
days and birthdays (Mauss 1925; Schwartz 1967). To someone who sees gift giving
as voluntary, pressuring a person to give her virginity violates the norms of gift
exchange. Yet the partners of these four women stressed the obligatory nature of the
gift of virginity, as when Scott told Julie, “If you do love me, then you will.” These
young women were, in effect, trapped between two contradictory understandings
of gift giving. Significantly, the constructions that prevailed were those promoted
by the women’s structurally more powerful men partners.

Virginity as a stigma. The 19 men and women who saw their own virginity as a
stigma all shared the goal of shedding the stigma of virginity without incurring a
new one. Many of them chose to lose their virginity at the first available opportu-
nity, often with relatively casual partners, such as friends or strangers. They also
often tried to conceal their virginity from those partners. For instance, when
Ettrick’s boyfriend of three weeks offered to fellate him on the very night Ettrick
had planned to break up with him, Ettrick, then 14, thought for a minute before
deciding, “What, you’re going to say no?” Ettrick ended the relationship the next
day, never having mentioned the embarrassing fact of his virginity. As far as he
knew, his boyfriend never found out. Like the other participants—10 men and 4
women—who lost their virginity without incident, Ettrick described his experience
as positive and himself as an active participant.
But for the three men whose female partners discovered their carefully con-
cealed virginity or teased them for being sexually incompetent, virginity loss was
deeply humiliating and disempowering. Bill Gordon (31, heterosexual, white)
recalled how his worst fears came true the night he, at 18, lost his virginity with
Diane, a young woman he had just met:

I was so nervous, it was my first time, and . . . I didn’t want to look foolish. . . . And we
had sex and I didn’t know anything about it. So all I did was I tried to, I tried to do what
I saw the people do in the porno movies. . . . And so I was, like, moving on top of her
really fast. She was saying to me, “There’s another person here,” you know. . . . She
was totally unsatisfied and I had no control, I didn’t know what I was doing.

Three years passed before Bill was willing to risk having sex again. A fourth man,
Ed Winters (28, bisexual, white) lost his virginity at age 16 when the daughter of a
family friend coerced him into having vaginal sex with her (ironically) by threaten-
ing to tell their parents that Ed had raped her. Despite regretting his lack of choice in
the matter, Ed was delighted to have shed the stigma of virginity.15 He explained,

I was put in a situation where . . . saying no would have been much worse than saying
yes. . . . It was one of those things where after it happened it was like, “Huh? What just
358 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002

happened?” And part of me was going, like, “Yes, Ed, you are no longer a virgin!”
And another part of me was saying, like, “I didn’t want that to happen.”

Although women and men in this group had similar experiences overall, social
norms about gender and sexuality tended to empower women and disempower
men. In fact, the 4 women who saw their own virginity as a stigma seemed to benefit
from the sexual double standard. Men’s relatively greater willingness to have sex
outside of dating relationships appeared to enhance these women’s ability to lose
their virginity fairly rapidly once they elected to do so. Emma McKay (24, hetero-
sexual, white), for instance, lost her virginity with a male friend she propositioned,
while Lisa Orlofsky (35, lesbian, white) attended a party for the express purpose of
losing her virginity with a stranger. Women in this group additionally profited from
the widespread belief that virginity is a positive trait in women. Despite personally
interpreting their virginity as a stigma, they believed that few others would concur
and consequently worried far less about being identified as virgins than did their
male counterparts.16 Emma and 2 other women told their partners that they were
virgins, thus avoiding the more shameful circumstance of having their virginity dis-
covered and ridiculed. (Only 7 of the 15 men did likewise.) Lisa decided not to tell
her partner about her virginity because he was a stranger but said that it would not
have mattered to her—or, she surmised, to him—if he had found out.
Popular stereotypes of women as sexually passive and men as sexually active
may help women disguise their virginity and sexual inexperience. Of the seven men
who actively concealed their virginity from sexual partners, four, including Bill,
found themselves accused of virginity or sexual inexperience (one man’s partner
reacted sympathetically). In contrast, Lisa hid her virginity easily, aided by the fact
that she bled little during coitus.17 She said, “I’m sure he had no idea I was a vir-
gin. . . . Like he just assumed that we were, that he was having sex with someone
who’d done this before.” Women cannot, however, take limited bleeding for
granted; many women in my study reported bleeding profusely the first time they
engaged in coitus (Weis 1985).

Virginity loss as a step in a process. The 17 women and men who lost their vir-
ginity interpreting it as a step in a process shared an understanding of virginity loss
as a desirable and essentially positive transition, which would give them knowledge
about sexuality or themselves. Gaining knowledge through virginity loss is a broad
goal, and every participant in this group achieved it. The 8 women and 3 men who
told of virginity-loss encounters that were physically or emotionally pleasurable
expressed deep satisfaction with the positive lessons they had learned. Meghan
O’Brien (22, heterosexual, white), for example, said that losing her virginity with
boyfriend Rich at age 18 was, despite some physical discomfort, “emotion-
ally . . . very enjoyable” and, moreover, “made me more aware of my sexuality. I
mean . . . once we had kind of decided that was where our relationship was going to
be, we were more sexually experimenting.”
 Carpenter / GENDER AND VIRGINITY LOSS 359

For the four women and two men whose virginity-loss encounters were unpleas-
ant physically and emotionally, the key to satisfaction was in finding some redeem-
ing quality in an otherwise negative episode. For instance, although Jason Cantor
(24, heterosexual, white) described losing his virginity (at 17) as physically and
emotionally “not very pleasant at all,” he and his long-time girlfriend, Melissa, felt
sufficiently convinced that sex would improve to try it a few more times. Happily,
their persistence was rewarded: “After the first time, when we went back and did it
more, it was actually good.” In retrospect, Jason felt positive about that first encoun-
ter because it played an important role in the process through which he and Melissa
learned about sex.
Gender differences were least pronounced among people who interpreted vir-
ginity loss as a step in a process. The process frame neither gave disproportionate
power to either partner nor interacted with gender differences in power. At base, the
goal of enhancing one’s knowledge about sex is achieved internally, albeit with a
partner’s assistance. Therefore, a person who felt he or she learned something posi-
tive from virginity loss could find satisfaction independent of his or her partner’s
conduct. Although sexually experienced partners could theoretically have wielded
power over virgins, none appeared to do so (half of these respondents lost their vir-
ginity with another virgin). Nor did gender appear to affect the degree to which part-
ners were supportive or sympathetic after unpleasant encounters.
However, the extent to which people in this group experienced physical pleasure
at virginity loss did differ somewhat depending on the sex of the virgin and her or
his partner. Although a perhaps surprising proportion of men—three-fifths—did
not find virginity loss physically enjoyable, even more women—three-fourths—
recounted physically unpleasant experiences. Sex-specific physiology may limit
the physical pleasure of women who lose their virginity through vaginal sex and of
men who lose their virginity through receptive anal sex.18 For example, the 2
women in this group who lost their virginity via cunnilingus with other women
described their encounters as very pleasurable physically, compared with 1 of the
10 women who lost their virginity through coitus. This gender difference had little
impact on overall satisfaction with virginity loss, however, because these respon-
dents emphasized emotional and intellectual concerns over physical pleasure.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The women and men who took part in my study tended to assign different mean-
ings to virginity loss. However, gender differences in interpretation were less pro-
nounced among younger participants, and men and women who shared an interpre-
tive approach experienced virginity loss in very similar ways. The one exception to
this pattern of gender similarity within interpretive frames concerned the ability to
exercise sexual agency. One interpretive frame—virginity as a gift—consistently
disempowered women; another—virginity as a stigma—disempowered men; and a
third—virginity as a step in a process—did not disempower either gender.
360 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002

These findings suggest that the relationship between gender and virginity loss is
more complex than previous research has indicated and, moreover, that gender may
be diminishing in importance as a determinant of sexual meanings and experiences.
Earlier studies found a small but increasing number of women and men adopting
gender atypical beliefs and behaviors, even as traditional gender differences in
notions and experiences of virginity loss persisted. My research indicates a further
erosion of traditional dichotomies. Gender-neutral and -atypical interpretations of
virginity, relatively rare in previous studies, were quite common among my infor-
mants, and gender differences in interpretation were far less pronounced among the
younger men and women I interviewed than among their older counterparts. More-
over, when women and men in my study shared an understanding of virginity, they
made similar choices about virginity loss and experienced it in similar ways. These
findings suggest that due to changes among both men and women, gender may be
losing salience as an aspect of identity shaping virginity loss and perhaps early sex-
ual careers more generally. (However, because my data are cross-sectional, these
findings should be taken as strongly suggestive rather than definitive.)
My research also paints a more complex picture of the relationship between gen-
der and sexual agency at virginity loss than do previous studies, which have found
that young women seldom experience themselves as sexual agents whereas young
men typically do (Holland, Ramazanoglu, and Thomson 1996; Horowitz 1983;
Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994). In my study, disempowering virginity-loss
encounters were relatively rare among both sexes, and women felt able to shape
their experiences only slightly less often than men. More than four-fifths (47) of
nonvirgin participants recounted virginity-loss experiences over which they had
control. Of 30 nonvirgin women, 5 (17 percent) described themselves as lacking
agency during virginity loss, compared with 4 of 26 nonvirgin men (15 percent).
Notably, every respondent who reported a disempowering encounter lost his or her
virginity with a partner of the other sex. (This is not to suggest that power politics
are absent from sexual relationships between same-sex partners; see Renzetti and
Miley 1996.)
Whether a specific individual enjoyed agency at virginity loss depended on the
interaction between his or her gender and understanding of virginity. Each interpre-
tive frame features structurally different—and differentially powerful—roles for
the virgin and her or his partner. When people lose their virginity with partners of
the other sex, these differentially powerful roles interact with gender differences in
power (which typically favor men) to produce frame-specific patterns of gender
subordination. Among participants who interpreted virginity as a gift, only women
(5 of 14) described themselves as lacking sexual agency or being taken advantage
of by their (men) partners.19 Conversely, among those who saw virginity as a
stigma, only men (4 of 15) recalled virginity-loss encounters in which they felt at
the mercy of their (women) partners, whereas women seemed to enjoy enhanced
power and agency. None of the women or men who approached virginity loss as a
step in a process characterized themselves as lacking control over their own virginity-
loss experience.
 Carpenter / GENDER AND VIRGINITY LOSS 361

These findings can help guide public policy on adolescent sexuality. The gift
frame tends to reproduce current patterns of gender inequality by intensifying
women virgins’ lack of power relative to male partners. In contrast, the stigma
frame tends to empower women and subordinate men. Yet we can no more condone
the loss of sexual agency among young men than we can among young women. The
process frame does not systematically allow either partner, regardless of gender, to
control the other and thus shows the greatest promise for policy initiatives intended
to promote equitable and satisfying virginity-loss experiences for all young people.
Before concluding, a brief overview of the ways sexual identity influenced inter-
pretations and experiences of virginity loss is merited (for more details, see Carpen-
ter 2001). Understandings of virginity loss were, like definitions, patterned by sex-
ual identity. Lesbians and gay men were considerably more likely than their
heterosexual counterparts to have ever seen virginity loss as a step in a process (73
percent and 46 percent, respectively); conversely, heterosexual men and women
were more likely than their gay and lesbian counterparts to have ever viewed virgin-
ity as a gift (54 percent compared with 31 percent). Bisexual women and men fell
somewhere in between, with two-thirds ever interpreting virginity as a gift and two-
thirds ever perceiving it as a step in a process. The propensity ever to see virginity as
a stigma varied little by sexual identity. Many gay and bisexual participants inter-
preted virginity loss as a step in a process because, for them, virginity loss was
closely intertwined with the process of coming out.
As with gender, experiences of virginity loss differed very little by sexual iden-
tity among people who shared a frame. However, when partners were of the same
gender, frame-based differences in partners’ relative power were not magnified by
gender-based differences in power. This finding confirms those of studies showing
that women who begin their sexual careers with other women appear to enjoy
greater sexual agency than women whose first partners are men (Brumberg 1997;
Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994). These patterns correspond imperfectly with sex-
ual identity, however, insofar as many people who ultimately self-identify as les-
bian, gay, or bisexual lose their virginity with partners of the other sex.
Caution should be used when extending findings from this study to young
Americans overall. Given study participants’backgrounds and the manner in which
they were located, the patterns described here may be specific to economically
secure women and men living in metropolitan areas. Poor and rural Americans
were underrepresented in the sample, as were gay men and lesbians who conceal
their sexual identity. The relatively small sample size also precludes any but the
most tentative conclusions about the ways race, ethnicity, class, and religion inter-
sect with gender and sexual identity to shape virginity loss.20 Studies focusing in
depth on the subjective aspects of virginity loss among members of specific social
groups (e.g., working-class Latinas, middle-class African American men) would
greatly enhance scholarly understanding of early sexuality. Other aspects of the
relationship between gender and virginity loss also merit further research. Exam-
ining the processes through which young people come to prefer one interpretation
of virginity over the available alternatives could help explain why some young
362 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2002

people adopt gender-traditional interpretations of virginity loss while others do not.

A project assessing the prevalence of the patterns reported here in a large, prefera-
bly national, probability sample would be especially useful in the development of
public policy.
The people who participated in this study gave their time and shared their stories
in the hope that doing so would ultimately help ensure more positive virginity-loss
experiences for future generations. None of the meanings these men and women
assigned to virginity is inevitably disempowering. But interpreting virginity loss as
a step in a process holds the most promise for enhancing the ability of all people,
regardless of gender or sexual identity, to experience virginity loss in ways that are
empowering, health-enhancing, and consonant with their desires.

NOTES

1. This study relies on a view of sexuality and gender as socially constructed. On the former, see
Gagnon and Simon (1973), Stein (1989), and Vance (1991). On the latter, see Lorber (1993) and Rubin
(1975).
2. Scholars disagree as to whether the changes of this period represent a true sexual revolution or
the culmination of gradual changes beginning in the 1900s; for example, compare D’Emilio and Freed-
man (1988) and Seidman (1991).
3. Physical and emotional reactions are intertwined. Men’s greater pleasure at first sex is partly due
to higher rates of orgasm; first coitus is painful for many women (Sprecher, Barbee, and Schwartz 1995;
Weis 1985).
4. Horowitz (1983) focused on heterosexual sexuality. Laumann et al. (1994) gathered data on first
same-sex encounters but excluded these from their chapter on first sex. Herdt and Boxer (1993) analyzed
gender’s effects on the sexual careers of gay and bisexual youth but did not explore the dynamics of first
intimate sexual experiences in detail. Scholars’ silence as to how gender might influence virginity loss
among gay and bisexual youth stems from both the neglect of gay and bisexual experience in conven-
tional sex research and the pervasive assumption that virginity loss is by definition heterosexual (see
Raymond 1994).
5. Young people whose own first sexual encounters diverge from the dominant definition do not
appear to be abandoning the notion of virginity loss but rather actively developing new definitions of vir-
ginity loss that better reflect their own circumstances. This phenomenon suggests that virginity loss is a
remarkably durable concept, even in the rapidly changing sexual landscape of the contemporary United
States (Carpenter 2001).
6. One-fourth (eight) of the women in my study had been the victims of forced sexual encounters at
some point in their lives, as had one of the men. None of these nine respondents believed that virginity
could be lost through coerced sex, although two (paradoxically) reported losing their own virginity
through acquaintance rapes.
7. Class background was measured by parental education and occupation; 55 percent were white
and middle class.
8. I use the terms interpretation, understanding, approach, and frame interchangeably. Goffman
defined frames as schemas that enable people to “locate, perceive, identify and label” occurrences in
their lives (1974, 21).
9. Figures in this section refer to people who ever employed a given frame. In my discussion of
virginity-loss experiences, I group people according to the approach they favored at the time of their own
virginity loss.
 Carpenter / GENDER AND VIRGINITY LOSS 363

10. In societies more homogeneous and/or traditional than the contemporary United States, it may be
easier to bring successful sanctions against partners who fail to reciprocate (Lindisfarne 1994; Rubin
1976).
11. Respondents who lost their virginity when they were relatively young felt less stigmatized than
did those who remained virgins relatively late (especially after age 18). One consequence of this increas-
ing stigmatization with age was that as virgins grew older, they put increasing effort into concealing their
virginity from others.
12. If an experienced partner attempted to exercise power by delaying the passage, most virgins
could find another partner. Virgins in this group generally accepted their sexual inexperience and did not
stress commitment (as did adherents to the gift frame) and so worried relatively little about being stigma-
tized or abandoned by a partner.
13. Satisfaction was closely related to the sense of having exercised agency at virginity loss.
14. These young men may have drawn on specific knowledge about their girlfriends’beliefs or on the
common assumption that women cherish their virginity.
15. The contrast between Ed and Miranda highlights the chasm between the gift and stigma frames.
Miranda was devastated that a rapist “took” the gift of her virginity (such that she could never give it
voluntarily).
16. Virginity might be seen as discrediting in a woman who is unusually “old” to be a virgin or whose
virginity is closely related to another stigma, such as obesity (see Goffman 1963). Ironically, avoiding
the stigmas of discovery and being labeled sexually inept often depended on admitting one’s stigmatized
status.
17. Another woman who successfully hid her virginity from a stranger-partner was Tricia Monsano
(20, heterosexual, white), who saw virginity as a step in a process. Younger virgins were also relatively
successful at concealing their virginity, often because their partners were likewise young and sexually
inexperienced.
18. For women who lose their virginity through coitus, the partner’s sexual expertise may also be
important.
19. These women closely resemble the young women Thompson (1984) saw as stressing the roman-
tic aspects of virginity loss so much that they could only be disappointed, given the transience of youth-
ful relationships.
20. African American women and men, respectively, tended to interpret virginity as a gift and as a
stigma. I discerned no patterns by social class. Fundamentalist Protestant men and women tended to
view virginity as a gift or, rarely, spoke of maintaining virginity until marriage as a way of honoring their
commitment to God.

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Laura M. Carpenter holds a Ph.D. in sociology and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in aging at
the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. Her current research focuses on gender
and sexuality in midlife and on policy debates surrounding male circumcision and female genital
cutting in the United States.