VBB 283 Virgin Mind

Intro [00:00:01]:

Virgin Beauty Bitch Podcast: inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear of being defiantly different. Your hosts, Christopher and Heather.

Let's talk, shall we?

Christopher [00:00:19]:

Welcome. If this is your first time, we are in week two of a four-part conversation about the Virgin. It's the first word in our podcast name, but virgin is also the first deeply stressful decision many women face in their lives. One reason why we are hosting these conversations is we believe women are oversold on how daunting their physical virginity is and undersold on how devastating the mental and psychological reality of virginity can be over a lifetime. Last week, we spoke about the origin and history of the Virgin and its physical measure, which in many parts of the world begins and ends with a woman's hymen being preserved. This week, we go from the body to the mind, which opens the door to this question: is virginity less about what comes between a woman's legs and more about what is planted between her ears, her beliefs? To help sort through all these questions, we are truly privileged to have two absolutely amazing guests. First, Dr. Pauline Mortas. Pauline has published works on the history of social representations and practices regarding women's deflowering in 19th-century France, analyzing various discourses from medicine and anatomical sciences, religion, literature, and pornography.

Christopher [00:02:05]:

She is the author of a book that expands on these themes, titled A Thorn Rose. Welcome, Pauline, to Virgin Beauty, bitch.

Pauline Mortas [00:02:14]:

Thank you. Hi. I'm glad to be there.

Christopher [00:02:17]:

Also joining us is Laura M. Carpenter, a sociologist known for her work on virginity and the author of a groundbreaking book on that particular topic. And it's called Virginity Lost, an intimate portrait of first sexual experiences. Laura's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, The Social Science Research Council, and The National Institutes of Health. She also received the Margaret Cunningham Women's Center Mentoring Award in 2018. We are truly privileged to have Laura join us. Welcome, Laura, to Virgin Beauty, Bitch.

Laura Carpenter [00:03:00]:

Thank you. I'm delighted to be here with you.

Christopher [00:03:02]:

I guess the place to start is making the transition of virginity from a physical act to a moral responsibility, a belief. What would you say is virginity more about what a woman does or does not do with her body or more about what she has been conditioned to believe it means or says about herself and her identity? Laura, you want to start?

Laura Carpenter [00:03:34]:

So when I was interviewing people about virginity and virginity loss, one of the things I asked people was what they thought of a person's first sexual experience of the type of sex that they would define as virginity loss. And that, of course, varies, but if that was not consensual, if that was forced, would that constitute virginity loss or not? And this was before the MeToo movement, I will say. So. I think there wasn't as much public awareness of issues around non-consensual sex at the time, but it was really striking that women were more likely than men to speak of virginity as a state of mind or as something voluntary. So, women were more likely. The women I interviewed were more likely than the men to say if you had not chosen to have sex and it was rape, then that would not constitute virginity loss. Although there were some women and some men who really believed first penal vaginal penetration, no matter under whatever context, would result in virginity loss. So there's certainly variation there in what people think as one example of how it's in many ways more intellectual than perhaps physical.

Christopher [00:05:05]:

In addition to that, Pauline, what are your experiences in your research?

Pauline Mortas [00:05:10]:

Yeah, well, in my research, it's like a big deal to know if virginity is a physical reality or more moral traits or something like that. It's actually, for centuries, it was mainly seen as just like chastity, for example. So, as a moral quality, especially by the church, the Catholic church, What I have noticed in my work is that there's a shift in the 19th century where doctors started to increasingly insist on the physical aspects of virginity. So, this physical conception tends to overcome the moral aspects. And even if you didn't want it, or if it was like a rape, you lost your virginity. Whereas in the church, there could be the idea that if one was raped, you don't lose the virginity, which is a state of mind more than a state of the body. So, yeah, I think maybe the 19th century had done a great deal in changing our perception of virginity in that respect.

Laura Carpenter [00:06:37]:

If I can follow on that, I think it's also we see sort of a new version of this changing, with sort of the rise of born again or secondary virginity, which has been mostly associated with a conservative and evangelical Christian movement, at least in the United States, the idea that one can have had sex, understood oneself as to not be a virgin anymore, and then, for religious or other reasons, readopt a virgin, become chaste, stop having sex again, however defined, and resume one's virginity. And so that's maybe the last 1520 years in the US, which has not been a majority experience. And I certainly spoke. I spoke to some people who thought it wasn't for them, but they believed other people could do it, and some people who kind of dismissed that possibility out of hand.

Christopher [00:07:38]:

But it's interesting that the two are still linked together. Even though they are thinking of it as something holier-than, they're still now not having any sex in order to support that. So, the two are still linked together. It's not transcended in the mind, and you can do what you will with your body. Right.

Heather [00:08:03]:

So, in your research, I think that some of the conversations that we've had, and we had a lovely chat with Laura, saying a lot of the terminology that we hear is around losing your virginity. I'm wondering, what are your personal thoughts on that? What other language have you heard used? Because I think the way that we've conceptualized this losing of one's virginity has implanted a very sincere psychological imprint that we carry with us even after that act.

Pauline Mortas [00:08:44]:

Yeah. Okay, well, I would say that. Well, it makes me think about the fact that I think it's the same in English, but in French, when you describe a sexual act, you say that the man takes the woman, and there is always, like, this very patriarchal or matchist way of talking about sex. And I think that it's the same about the virginity. In my work on virginity and its representations, I studied pornography, like pornographic books from the 19th century, and I was amazed at the vocabulary used to describe the act of defloring. It was always like the conquest of a city or a sacrifice or very violent terms, which we can still find nowadays. But, yeah, it's always about taking power over someone, and so the woman is always the one who loses something. And I think it's really a narrative that we need to change because, yeah, you can say that you lost your virginity, but you also maybe gain an experience or gain pleasure.

Laura Carpenter [00:10:01]:

You took the words right out of my mouth, Pauline. No, I think that that was one of the things that I found sort of remarkable and kind of frustrating. And I tried to get people to. I asked them questions. So if not, virginity losses are another term, but not many people kind of saw where I was going with it. But to me, the idea that this is a loss depends on, and maybe it's a good loss.

Laura Carpenter [00:10:30]:

Bye, I don't need you anymore. But instead of why virginity loss? Instead of experience gained, knowledge gained, pleasure gained, hopefully, I noticed that you're using the term deflower. 

Pauline Mortas [00:10:52]:

Right.

Laura Carpenter [00:10:53]:

Taking away the flower. Right. That there's something beautiful, wonderful, special that's being taken, as opposed to maybe something either neutral or not so wonderful being removed. So we can take bad things or neutral things away, as well as good ones.

Christopher [00:11:17]:

But I think that just doubles down on this idea that virginity is a physical thing. It can be taken away. Right? As opposed to something that is transcendent from the physical and can't be taken away. I think that the way that we associate our words with it anchors it in the physical and tries to keep it in the physical.

Laura Carpenter [00:11:45]:

I also think maybe we are not; although there are virtual ways to have sex, we have a residual understanding of sex as needing to involve body parts together in person, in place, or at least quote unquote, virginity, lost sex. Right? Sure, you can masturbate, but that's not virginity. Or at least that's a common definition. I'm sure you could find people out there who think that masturbating or having online sex or phone sex could be tantamount to virginity loss. But the idea that we define sex generally as with at least one partner and in person, to quote-unquote count.

Heather [00:12:30]:

I just want to explore with you kind of almost new terminology for us to think around this moment, if we want to call it that, even though we're seeing, as you said, more and more evidence over time around, people kind of seeing it in its own light and giving it new meaning. Or perhaps if the first experience wasn't a great one, they've reclaimed it and made their first good experience that moment for them. But one of the things that Christopher said that I really love is it's the first time that a woman has an orgasm, which I really appreciate because I feel that so much historically has been around the fact that a man had an orgasm with a woman, rather than whatever her sexual experience truly was, and hopefully with the end goal being her understanding her own pleasure, knowing that her pleasure is important and vital to her own sense of self; however, she chooses to define that. So I'm wondering if, in your work and in the conversations that you've had with people, rather than deflowering or knowing, you already came up with some great ways of looking at it. Laura, but are there other ways that you've thought about? I'm lost for words because I'm so accustomed to saying losing virginity, but something other than that that you found kind of empowering or different.

Laura Carpenter [00:14:05]:

I've got to say I struggled with even using the term virginity or virginity loss, but then I didn't know what else to call it. It's the cultural term we use, and using other terms like first vaginal penal intercourse, then already defines virginity loss for people or defines whatever this thing is. Right? So even just, we're stuck in the language, but orgasm, you mentioned I spoke to quite a few women who said that their first orgasm was a bigger sexual turning point than virginity loss.

Heather [00:14:41]:

Yes, true that.

Laura Carpenter [00:14:46]:

And I should underline. And often, they were not even remotely the same moment, time, or place; sometimes, orgasm earlier, sometimes orgasm later. But generally, there was not this sort of mythical first-partnered sex and wonderful orgasm and et cetera, et cetera.

Pauline Mortas [00:15:05]:

Yes.

Heather [00:15:06]:

All those things to align on the first time, I find, is a very rare story if I've ever heard one. Pauline, have you found ways that people have spoken about it that you find empowering or different?

Pauline Mortas [00:15:19]:

Well, in the 19th century, not much empowerment for women. What I was thinking when you were saying, for example, the first orgasm, is that it's interesting how we put a focus on the first penetrative sex between a penis and a vagina, whereas there are so many first times that we can have, like first masturbation, for example, first orgasm, first kiss, or even the first time you have sex with a new person, which is a first time in itself. So, yeah, maybe many first times rather than one big first time could also be less pressure for women to see that as a continuum rather than one big ordeal.

Laura Carpenter [00:16:17]:

I find that.

Heather [00:16:19]:

Sorry, go ahead.

Laura Carpenter [00:16:22]:

I love the idea of sort of thinking about, I mean, that there's this bigger continuum of sexual experience that people have, and there are many things around in either before and after virginity loss or first sex usually. So, thinking about these as steps or some kind of layering can be really helpful. Certainly, the people I interviewed who seemed the most content were the ones who had seen virginity loss as a step in the process. And so if it was awkward, if it was goofy, if it was painful if it was silly, and if it was maybe not so successful, they nonetheless felt they'd learned something. They didn't feel devastated because this supposedly spectacular moment hadn't happened. Right. But they had learned something, and they were going to get better at it. But I think, even culturally, we differentiate between zero and one and one and two in very different ways.

Laura Carpenter [00:17:23]:

Right. So you go from never having done something to having done something once, and it's a change in status, but going from having done something once to having done something twice, we don't think about the same way, even though it's the one unit increase if you will. Right. But we don't talk about second times so much.

Heather [00:17:43]:

Well, I find both of what you've said here so refreshing because in our first conversation around the Virgin as a series, the fact that this moment has been so patriarchal and, as you said, a zero to one rather than everything after. It has obviously a lot of weight in that moment for however society or our specific culture has made us feel about that moment. But then the psychological impacts for the rest of our sexual life thinking around again like chastity tied to purity, tied to worthiness, that so many of these other underpinnings have and continue to affect a woman throughout her sexual life. So when I think about the excitement of the first time with a new person or trying something new with a new person, or even, maybe even going deeper into connection, deeper into understanding each other with that individual that you've been with, for however long, all of that actually reminds me of how new it can be, depending on how you want to reframe that in your mind. So I got a lot out of what you said there, and I think it's actually very beautiful and very releasing for how much we kind of hold ourselves to this account. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you think this ties to chastity as purity, as worthiness. How have you seen in your research that affects a woman over time?

Christopher [00:19:29]:

I want to add to that before you answer. As you said, Laura, this binary idea of how we think about things, and I don't know how many people know this, but Sigmund Freud is the one who came up with this division of Madonna whore, right? And I think that is the gilded cage that so many women live in beyond the moment of the first time, and then they take through to the rest of their lives just to add to what Heather has put on the.

Laura Carpenter [00:20:09]:

I mean, I think that's a wise connection to make. So what I saw is for women who. viewed virginity as a special gift. So, people had different ways of thinking about virginity. Some saw it as a special gift to give to somebody else. Some saw it as a horrible stigma to get rid of. Some people saw it as a relationship with God. Some people saw it as part of growing up. But the women, women were disproportionately likely to see virginity as a gift, and that's a cultural trope that has existed. I'm sure Pauline is familiar with it from centuries before that one's been around a long time.

Laura Carpenter [00:21:01]:

The women who saw virginity that way often felt, particularly if that first relationship, or the relationship they lost their virginity in, wasn't successful, then they were no longer worthy of being careful and cautious and being picky about who they had sex with because they were already soiled, or it was already gone, or that was already passed. And maybe the saddest story I heard was a woman who was with an abusive partner, but because these would have been her words, because he had that part of me, I didn't feel like I could leave him. And that just broke my heart. But it makes sense that somebody might think that in a cultural context where virginity is treated as so very special and as something if you see it as part of a gift that's exchanged, you see it as belonging to the other person, maybe even more so than you. But to feel ruined or unable to make different choices because of that was heartbreaking to me. Wow.

Heather [00:22:13]:

Does that ever kind of line up with some of the age-old tales? I feel that, at least for me, I was fed, growing up, with finding the one. And when you give that special gift to the one. I've heard similar stories that are heartbreaking, that women stay in abusive relationships or even relationships that aren't necessarily abusive but aren't great or good to them or about their vibrancy or their aspirations, but they'll stay because perhaps it's because I've already been soiled, and who else would want me after I've already given this part of myself away? Or if this is the one, then it's the one forever, no matter what.

Laura Carpenter [00:23:04]:

And I don't think we hold men. I mean, maybe in some segments of society, I think in certain very conservative Christian traditions, there's talk about holding men to a similar standard. But I don't think that happens in practice. I think this is something that is applied to women disproportionately.

Christopher [00:23:24]:

How does that add up? Pauline, in your research?

Pauline Mortas [00:23:28]:

Well, yeah, I was thinking about the double standard regarding virginity between men and women. Yeah, the 19th century is all about double standards. So, yeah, sexual experience is definitely encouraged in men, whereas it's obviously prevented for women. But what I was thinking about when you were talking about how women did conceptualize their virginity or their chastity, I've been looking through some personal diaries of young bourgeois women from the 19th century, and it's kind of fascinating because I wouldn't say they have a conception of their virginity because they are mostly raised in a context where sexuality does not exist. Their mother doesn't talk to them about virginity or sexuality. And so I would say they don't even know they're virgins because they don't know that sex exists. So that's, like, the big paradox.

Christopher [00:24:43]:

Is that possible?

Pauline Mortas [00:24:46]:

It appears to be. So, like most of these young women, they were writing their diaries when they were young, waiting to be married. And so sometimes, very rarely. But sometimes you have the pages of the diary before and after the wedding. And mostly, yeah, you can see that they had no idea what was going to happen during the wedding night. And at the very maximum of knowledge that they might have had is, like, just before the wedding, the mother who says, do whatever he tells you, and that's it. So, you can imagine how traumatic it would be for young women to encounter a man who, most of the time, had already had sexual experience in brothels.

Pauline Mortas [00:25:34]:

With prostitutes, et cetera.

Pauline Mortas [00:25:35]:

So, it's not the type of sexuality you would want for a young girl who wasn't experienced in that. There's one journal that is really interesting because you have it. Well, the husband's journal was kept, and so was the wife's. And so she says that it was horrible. She's so traumatized, really, because she leaves it as an offense to her chastity, to her modesty. She's really appalled by what happens during the wedding night. And, yeah, she says, you really must love him so much to endure all that suffering. And the man writes like, yeah, well, we went to bed late, but a bit sooner than what I expected.

Pauline Mortas [00:26:34]:

He's disappointed that he didn't have such a great night of sex. So, yeah, there is really a discrepancy, which is a bit appalling, really, between the two experiences.

Laura Carpenter [00:26:48]:

I would love to have been able to interview people who had been partners. Not necessarily. At least one of them would have been considered fairly rare for both people to have been virgins or lost virginity together in my research, anyway. But it would have been really interesting to get sort of both sides of the story.

Pauline Mortas [00:27:12]:

Yeah. Did you interview men and women about certainty or only women?

Laura Carpenter [00:27:17]:

Men and women of various sexual identities. Okay. Mostly gay, lesbian, or bisexual. There are a few people who identified as queer a while back, so nobody at the time that I knew identified as nonbinary or trans or gender nonconforming. That would be really interesting.

Heather [00:27:43]:

Also, what did you find there around their thoughts of virginity? I know that's a very big question, and it would be so different for all those different types of people. And I am part of that community as a pansexual. So I've had certain conversations around folks saying that the first time they were with a partner, it was based on love. It wasn't because society expected them to be in a heterosexual relationship that that was what they feel is their real moment. So, just any stories about what that experience was like in your research for those different communities?

Pauline Mortas [00:28:26]:

I'd love to hear it.

Laura Carpenter [00:28:27]:

That was something I was really fascinated by. It was actually just one of the things I wanted to know. People who identified as heterosexual were a lot more likely to think that vaginal penal intercourse was virginity loss sex, as they would say, and exclude, say, fellatio or anal sex from their definition of virginity loss. People who were part of the LGBTQ community were a lot more likely to think that the first time you had partnered genital sex of any kind with somebody, which could be two women, two men, women, men, various combinations that some kind of genital sex. What would be virginity loss? It was the first thing that you had. However, people, and generally people, didn't think that there would be a straight virginity loss and a queer virginity loss, for example. There would just sort of be one. Interestingly, though, people did not go back and redefine their experiences.

Laura Carpenter [00:29:39]:

So if somebody said, I believed that I lost my virginity the first time I had a woman, would say the first time I had sex with a man. But then, when I figured out I was a lesbian and started having sex with women, it was a lot better. I don't consider that a virginity loss, but I would also say that I know some people who would. So, I think it varies quite a bit. I would be interested to know if I were doing this research now. It was certainly true at the time that heterosexual people who had good friends who were gay or lesbian or queer were more likely to think about oral sex and anal sex as, quote-unquote, real sex that could result in virginity loss. And people who were less familiar with sex outside of a heterosexual context kind of didn't think that way. But I think there's so much more awareness about gender diversity and sexual identity diversity now.

Laura Carpenter [00:30:46]:

I wonder if there would be more variation in what people thought about virginity laws.

Christopher [00:30:51]:

Yes, I think the history of why we even have the word virginity as part of our DNA as human beings now. Right. I don't know that we could ever transcend what it was meant to represent this idea. And I think you've talked about it lore as this owning of women's sexuality. I mean, that word is part of that ownership of women's sexual expression. Do you think we can ever transcend that in a patriarchal social construct?

Laura Carpenter [00:31:36]:

There has been a lot of pushback. These old, old meanings are all around us, and I agree they are very hard to transcend. On the other hand, I think people's minds are really powerful, and I think people are surprisingly good at sort of saying, no, wait, a second. I don't believe that anymore. I think for some people, it's hard to escape these lingering or persistent beliefs. But I also think particularly of people who sort of felt like, okay, once I got the virginity loss thing over, then I owned my own sexuality. And if somebody wants to think that they have a part of me, that's their business, but they don't. So there.

Laura Carpenter [00:32:34]:

So I hope more people will end up with that. Women and men end up thinking about that as their own experience and transformation, as opposed to something that belongs to whoever the partner was. But the legacy of virginity loss mattered because you were trying to figure out if women's offspring belonged to the male spouse. There it goes. That's the backstory.

Heather [00:33:05]:

What do you think, Pauline?

Pauline Mortas [00:33:07]:

Yeah, it's definitely linked to the fact that today, we have effective contraceptive methods. So, yeah, definitely. It can enlighten why female virginity has always been such a big deal compared to male virginity because, yeah, there's this question of the offspring, really. If the woman is a virgin when she marries, the man has the warranty, really, that his child will be his child and not another man's child. But, yeah, well, we have been having contraceptions for quite a while now, so maybe we can try to detach from those conceptions and maybe go towards a more equal conception of virginity between men and women. Because, yeah, I think there are positive values that can be attached to them to this, and it doesn't have to be limited to women. I think anyone can reflect on what benefits or positive values can be attached to virginity and sexuality in general.

Christopher [00:34:24]:

I want to ask you both a personal question, and that is, I'll start with you, Pauline.  It's why this topic engrosses you so much that you've spent so much of your life researching it and sharing and educating about it. What brought you here?

Pauline Mortas [00:34:42]:

It's a great question. I think it's like a mix of personal experiences and also feminist ideas. I really wanted to work as a historian on topics that concern women and that can be talked to by anyone. And while sexuality is a great topic because, of course, it doesn't speak to everyone. It's kind of a broad topic that can resonate with everyone's experience. I would say that this particular topic of de-flowering seemed interesting to me because it was a way to see women's history, but it was also a way to look at the gender relations between men and women, and something that I was not expecting to find out when I started this research, but that I found out is that declaration also has a huge importance for the definition of virility of masculinity. What I found in medical discourses is that the man has such a big role in that big moment.

Pauline Mortas [00:36:05]:

It's like, you don't have to be clumsy because it can result in sexual pathologies like vaginismus, for example, or stuff like that. Or if you are too brutal, your wife can be traumatized and then have. Be forever frigid or cheat on you or whatever. So, yeah, there's also a lot of pressure on the men in these medical discourses. And I found that really interesting, how maybe it's always a men's business, after all, if a woman is a virgin or not, or taking a woman's virginity.

Laura Carpenter [00:36:44]:

For me, I think it came out of generally growing up in a culture, in the broadest sense, growing up in a culture where people had really, really different ideas about women's sexuality. Women are supposed to go out and have sexual fun and be liberated. Oh, no, they're supposed to be virgins. Oh, no, they're supposed to. And that all of these things were brewing together and bumping up against each other and, okay, so what? I grew up, my mom was very proud to have been a virgin when she married, and she didn't have a good marriage and was messily divorced from my father, I'm pretty sure. Don't listen to this. Mom didn't enjoy sex. And I thought I didn't want that.

Laura Carpenter [00:37:40]:

If that's what virginity gets you. No, thanks. Or virginity until marriage. I wasn't sure I wanted to ever get married, but. So, I was never supposed to have sex. None of that made sense. So I think there's this sort of personal. The family conflict over my wayward ways, but then also just being in a culture where there's so much disagreement.

Laura Carpenter [00:38:08]:

And I will say my mother has been very sweet about the book, and the book has cherries on COVID. My mother was the one who's been giving me all kinds of cherry-themed gifts ever since the book came out, and I dedicated it to her.

Heather [00:38:25]:

I think that actually is quite profound in its own way because I have a similar experience with my mother. I think it's a profoundly sweet gift because when I talk to my mom about sexuality, those confines of what makes a good woman are so rigid, and they're almost self-deprecating, but it's painted in a way that is supposed to maintain your sacredness, your worthiness. And so, in her mind, the ways that she talked about sex to me were meant to protect me and meant to keep me as safe as possible. But until I kind of unlearned some of the things that were taught to me when I was younger, it ended up just hurting me immensely and my sense of self and how I thought about my own body and my own exploration of sexuality. So I think that's quite marvelous that she's a fan of the book and now sends you cherries. I think that's amazing. One of the bigger realizations for me in our last episode was that on this podcast, we like to explore what's feminine. What does feminine mean to you? Because it's been such a man-made construction for so long in that women have a lot of women that I know, I would say a majority have a negative connotation to the word and almost are either repulsed or uncomfortable, or they really feel that it's weaker or lesser or all of those things.

Heather [00:40:09]:

And for me, in this former episode, it became very clear that some of the things that we've prized about the now thinking more around the Virgin Mary rather than the goddesses who are a virgin, who is more about having their own lives and their own sense of self, and they're not reliant on the gods to do their bidding, that this parallel between the feminine and how it's been constructed in the patriarchy and the virgin, I've seen a lot of commonalities between the two, whether that's sweet, untouched, naive, soft spoken. I feel like there's just so many parallels between those two. And I'm just wondering if anything comes to mind for you, Laura, when you hear that kind of comparison.

Laura Carpenter [00:41:09]:

I love it; I mean, I think I probably had the same sort of ideas. I don't want to be feminine. Feminine is weak and pink. On the other hand, it's, I mean, we think about Athena, and it was almost the idea that women, goddesses, rulers, or whoever had to be virgins because otherwise, their attention would be too split. They'd be having babies and taking care of them. Joan of Arc. Right.

Laura Carpenter [00:41:43]:

But I think sort of the kind of earth mother cultural feminism kind of gets a bad rap, and it's complicated in certain ways. And I certainly don't agree with this idea. I think that women and men are utterly, by nature, different. I think that's cultivated. But one thing that that strand of feminism really did was to try to revalue or to point out the values of things that we consider feminine. And women, including my mother, are pretty strong and badass when we want to be or need to be.

Christopher [00:42:21]:

So, do you now identify with that word as part of your feminine identity?

Laura Carpenter [00:42:27]:

Yeah. Yes and no. Right? I mean, I certainly feel like a woman. I identify as a woman. I think I'm not feminine, maybe in a conventional sense, I don't know about that. But femininity, I think we all have some femininity and some masculinity in combination.

Christopher [00:42:49]:

Well, let me narrow it down a bit. So, for instance, in a relationship with a man, I don't know your sexual orientation, but I'm just assuming. Right? In a relationship with a man, do you identify with the traditional interpretation of feminine in that kind of relationship?

Laura Carpenter [00:43:11]:

Not really. The joke is that my spouse is a man, but the joke for my stepmother is like, isn't it so nice that you found somebody who likes to cook? I'm like, I would not have married him if he did not. Yes. Does that make him feminine and me masculine? No.

Christopher [00:43:40]:

But that is the point of our discussions, and our purpose with this show is that masculine and feminine are not these outcomes that we have been taught are masculine or feminine. It's not about that. It's something internal that is not necessarily expressing itself the way that we believe it should, that the woman should cook and the man should not in a relationship, in a married relationship, these are trivial, yet so powerful images that we live by that we expect from each other. And that's not reality. You've just expressed that you are with a partner, and you're not necessarily following the rules of femininity the way that it's set out. But you know that that is part of you. That's the point.

Heather [00:44:39]:

I think that's the beauty of how things are shifting; it's that the traditional ways of looking at gender roles are almost separate, too, but connected to the concepts of masculine and feminine. They're so limiting and so not, to me, the essence of what these energies are that we're pushing them.

Laura Carpenter [00:45:05]:

Right?

Heather [00:45:05]:

We're pushing them because the way that it's been rigid actually isn't serving us, not as individuals and not in relationships or not with family, friends, or intimate partners. And that gives me hope for where we head, not only with understanding the feminine within but also with understanding our sexuality here.

Christopher [00:45:27]:

Before you go, Laura, before we let you go, I want to get your experience of the huge chastity movement and the education of that movement and how it impacts and how it has impacted women and their own identity around this topic of sexual expression. And hopefully, at some point, being able to free themselves of the guilt and shame that comes with a lot of this education.

Laura Carpenter [00:46:01]:

Guilt and shame and lack of knowledge. I think it is the lack of knowledge and deliberate misinformation that gets taught in states, counties, and municipalities that don't mandate, but the opposite of mandate, comprehensive sex education. But in fact, I'm in a state where abstinence-only until marriage sex education is what is taught. Where it's taught very unevenly because different schools implement things differently. Kissing is supposed to be taught as a gateway to sexual things you are not supposed to do because you'll ruin your life if you have sex before marriage. Using the language of these programs.

Laura Carpenter [00:47:02]:

I'm seeing in my students, young adult students who come from, who are raised with purity, culture, chastity education, lack of sex education, I think everybody should be able to find their own values about sex. So, if you do believe personally that you don't want to have sex until you're in some kind of marriage, that's great. If that works for you. Imposing it on everybody else, I think, is a problem. And not teaching people, I have students who really don't feel tremendous guilt and shame because they were told that having sexual feelings was something that was bad if you did it outside of whatever special context. And it's like people are sexual, and they have feelings, and you can act on them or not. Right? So the guilt and shame, and particularly for women, I think, is a lot to unlearn. But the stuff that my student, the misinformation about how contraception works or that it does work, and I've interviewed women and certainly talked to women who were surprised that they didn't get pregnant, and you were using the pill.

Laura Carpenter [00:48:11]:

They're like, yeah, but the pill fails all the time. The pill does not fail all the time. The pill is really effective. Condoms are really effective. And that people don't know these things or don't have those tools to use; it's just so hard. That's become so value-laden, particularly in the United States and particularly in the Southern United States. So, the amount of sex education that people have to end up seeking out if they want to as adults. I mean, I'm glad people do seek it out, but it stinks that we miss that boat when they're young.

Christopher [00:48:49]:

You know what it reminds me of, and sadly, so is what Pauline was talking about, about these young women who had no idea of their own sexuality. And one night after marriage, boom, there it is in your face. And now you have to deal with that your whole life with no education. No knowledge, no experience whatsoever. That's what it reminds me of. So, have we advanced at all in these hundreds of years?

Laura Carpenter [00:49:17]:

We've advanced, but there's at least a sizable community that would like us to forget that we have or would think that we could roll back the clock.  History might rhyme, but it really doesn't repeat like it's not the same water. I think it would be very hard to turn things back that much despite our efforts.

Christopher [00:49:39]:

Laura, this has been a cherished moment to talk to you. When I was writing my book, Virgin Beauty, Bitch, your book was part of the research I had to indulge in order to understand what it is I was talking about. I cannot tell you how privileged it is to have you here and talk to you and for you to say yes, to come on and talk with us. We are so blessed to have you here. Thank you so much.

Laura Carpenter [00:50:10]:

I am honored. Christopher and Heather, it has been a delight to meet you and get to chat with you.

Heather [00:50:16]:

The feeling is so mutual. A huge thank you to Pauline and to you, Laura. Honestly, the ways that you've opened up a concept that Christopher and I have devoted so much of our lives to, and I know you have as well, really means a lot to my soul and my understanding of this big topic. So, thank you for joining us today.

Laura Carpenter [00:50:43]:

Thank you so much.

Christopher [00:50:44]:

And you've been listening to the Virgin.

Heather [00:50:47]:

The Beauty and the Bitch.

Christopher [00:50:50]:

Come on back next week as we take another step up the rung of understanding virginity and what it means overall to especially women in their lives beyond that one event. So come on back, let's talk some more.

Christopher [00:51:08]:

To become a partner in the VBB community, we invite you to find us at Virgin Beauty. Bitch, Like us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and share us with people who are Defiantly Different like you. Until next time, thanks for listening.