Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (37 page)

Ultimately, although the women and men in my study undoubtedly highlighted some aspects of their experiences and downplayed others, I

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feel relatively confident that the stories they told me reflected the basic contours of their experiences, as they currently understood and inter- preted them. Merely agreeing to participate in such a study implies a cer- tain willingness to share details of one’s sexual history. Moreover, I in- formed everyone I interviewed that they could decline to answer any of my questions. Very few exercised this option; in fact, many of them shared extremely unpleasant stories and some cast their own behavior in profoundly unflattering light. A few even appeared to recall events spon- taneously as we conversed. The fact that most of the interviews took place several years or more after virginity loss may have enhanced par- ticipants’ willingness to reveal the less savory aspects of their experiences. I also asked everyone with whom I spoke to consider whether, and how, their understandings of virginity loss had changed over time. The format of the interviews may have encouraged candor as well, since it is difficult consistently to misrepresent one’s beliefs and experiences over the course of a one- to three-hour conversation. This is not to suggest, however, that the men and women with whom I spoke would not have told a different version of their stories to a friend, parent, or another interviewer, or at another point in time.

In my analysis, I describe the various ways that people in my study had interpreted and reinterpreted their experiences up to the time of our in- terviews. These women and men will undoubtedly continue to reinterpret their experiences as time goes on; indeed, some appeared to begin rein- terpreting virginity loss during the interview itself.

Interviewing Style: A Feminist Partnership

One of my goals as a researcher was to make the interviews as much like conversations as possible. Conversational interviews enhance rapport, making it easier for people to share the intimate details of their lives. They also help to counteract the inequality that too often characterizes schol- ars’ relationships with their informants. Almost by definition, researchers enjoy a position of power vis-à-vis the people whose lives they study. They decide which issues should be studied and determine what infor- mation is to be revealed, when, and by whom. In most studies, informa- tion flows solely from participant to researcher. Scholars who prefer to keep their disclosures to a minimum while data are being collected do so

Methodological Appendix
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for several reasons. Not least, they fear (quite reasonably) that revealing the guiding hypotheses or preliminary findings of a study will encourage study participants to respond in ways intended to “please” the inter- viewer.

Yet many ethnographers and feminist scholars contend that re- searchers who refuse to share information—for example, declining to an- swer direct questions during an interview—are taking advantage of their more powerful position vis-à-vis the people on whose participation their investigations depend.
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Sharing this concern with inequity, I decided to conclude every interview by inviting participants to ask me questions and to respond to midinterview queries as best I could (the semistructured in- terview format I used tends to encourage such queries). Many of the women and men I spoke with did ask questions. Most common were in- quiries about what kinds of encounters or beliefs were “normal” and questions about my own virginity-loss experience. I answered the first type of question by stressing the extent of variation I saw among study participants, and replied to the latter type of question as honestly as pos- sible, but with a minimum of detail. People who asked me questions dur- ing the interview often seemed to be “testing” my trustworthiness and re- ceptivity to their experiences. For example, after I spoke with Lavinia Thompson, a 30-year-old, heterosexual, African American paralegal, I wrote the following note:

Although she answered me when I asked how old she’d been when she lost her virginity, she really opened up after I answered her question about how old I was—and it turned out we’d been the same age.

I believe that my willingness to respond frankly to such questions en- hanced, rather than compromised, the quality of my research. When it came to sharing my own
opinions
with women and men whose beliefs appeared to differ substantially from mine, I confess that I was less forth- coming — without lying outright — for fear that being entirely open would “poison” the interview and destroy my rapport with the respon- dent.

I include here a table summarizing key aspects of study participants’ backgrounds and current lives, as well as three tables showing how in- terpretations of virginity were patterned by gender, sexual identity, and generation.