Why Women Have Sex (27 page)

A study conducted in the Meston Sexual Psychophysiology Lab of more than four hundred Canadian university women showed that 72 percent of women of European ancestry had engaged in premarital sex compared with a much lower 43 percent of Southeast Asian women, most of whom were ethnic Chinese. The age of first intercourse also differed among Canadian ethnic subgroups. European-ancestry women lost their virginity at age seventeen, on average, and Southeast Asian women at age eighteen. A study just completed in the Meston Lab among more than nine hundred American university women also found differences, although less pronounced, in rates of premarital intercourse based on ethnic group. Seventy-six percent of European-ancestry, 71 percent of Hispanic-ancestry, and 66 percent of Asian-ancestry women reported having had premarital sex.

North America is not the only place where sexual liberalization is taking hold. Among Chinese women living in Shanghai, a recent survey of five hundred single men and women discovered that only 60 percent said virginity was a requirement for a spouse. While this number is still high compared to Western cultures, it is substantially lower than earlier findings. In fact, results from a cross-cultural study published in 1989
indicated that Chinese women and men both viewed virginity as indispensable in a spouse. At the other end of the continuum were Swedes, who thought virginity was irrelevant or unimportant. The cultural differences are probably caused by differences in women’s economic independence. In 1989, women in Sweden were much more economically independent than Chinese women and thus, not having to rely on men for resources, they were freer to explore their sexuality. For women, more economic freedom translates into more sexual freedom.

A recent legal case in France demonstrates the extent to which culture and religion can still influence a woman’s freedom to engage in premarital sexual activity. The case involved a young Muslim couple whose marriage was annulled in 2008 because the groom discovered that his bride was not a virgin. According to Muslim tradition, the couple is to consummate their marriage during the wedding night party, after which the groom proudly displays a blood-stained sheet as evidence of his new bride’s purity. Much to this groom’s dismay, he left behind in the bedroom a pure white sheet—one of those few instances in which purity and whiteness do not go hand in hand with virginity. So the groom sued for an annulment. The case created a furor throughout Europe with feminists, women’s rights activists, the media, civil rights organizations, and some government officials. Some argued that it was unacceptable for the law to be used to repudiate a bride on religious grounds. Those in support of the court ruling claimed it had nothing to do with religion, but rather that the bride’s nonvirgin status qualified as a “breach of contract.”

Cultural pressures to remain a virgin prior to marriage may be especially difficult for immigrant women who feel conflicted between the sexual norms of their new culture and those of their culture of origin. In cultures where virginity remains a prerequisite for marriage, single women who are not virgins may face dire consequences, not just from their would-be husbands, but often from their fathers, brothers, and sometimes their entire communities. When the virginity stakes are high, a woman’s word just doesn’t cut it. Definitive proof is required. This has led, throughout history, to all sorts of cockamamie “virginity tests” such as measuring a woman’s skull, timing the duration of her urination, assessing the shape of her breasts or the clarity of her urine, and testing the
effect of male earwax on her vulva. In the Middle Ages, if a woman was covered with a piece of cloth and fumigated with the best coal but she didn’t smell it, she was declared a virgin. (At least this test gave women a 50 percent chance of giving the right answer.)

For at least the past five hundred years, a broken hymen has been the standard marker for lost virginity. The word “hymen” is Greek for “membrane,” and in the past, the term referred to any membrane in the body, but at some point it became uniquely associated with the membrane in a woman’s vagina. Some people think the hymen is a tightly stretched piece of skin that covers the entire inside vaginal opening. Not so. Hymens like this do occasionally show up in gynecologists’ offices, but they are deemed “imperforate hymens.” Such hymens are considered to be birth defects that require minor surgery in order to open the vagina for sex and other health reasons.

The truth about hymens is that they are membranous tissues that cover only part of the opening to the vagina—sort of like a flap of skin. They come in many different shapes and sizes, and they change in dimensions as a woman ages—whether or not she has had intercourse. Some are tough, some are weak; some have blood vessels and bleed when torn, and others do not. Weak hymens can break relatively easily during activities such as bike or horseback riding (tampons may stretch a hymen, but tearing is unlikely), and sometimes they even disintegrate on their own during childhood. The bottom line is that our modern-day “test” of a woman’s virginity may not be much more reliable than measuring the size of her skull.

But people are not likely to give up on the “bleeding hymen test” anytime soon. In fact, the latest craze in gynecological surgery is “hymenoplasty”—a thirty-minute operation that repairs a woman’s torn hymen. In France, following the case of the Muslim woman who had her marriage annulled, a flurry of Muslim women sought out the surgeries. Medical tourist packages in France offered deals whereby women could go to Tunisia and have the surgery performed for about half the usual 3,500 euros. Having minor surgery is, perhaps, a bit better than inserting blood-filled bags of bird innards into a vagina (an earlier virginity “restoration” technique). But some say that allowing medical
doctors to “bring a woman’s odometer back to zero,” as it is referred to in the Italian movie
Women’s Hearts
, is only going to perpetuate the myth that an intact hymen is a reliable test of virginity. Others argue that if a minor surgery means avoiding severe beatings or an acid attack—not uncommon forms of punishment for nonvirgins in societies that place a very high value on a bride’s virginity—and allows a woman to be accepted within her community, then it is a good thing.

After I broke up with the first person that I had sex with, I wondered if sex with different people was dramatically different, so I had sex with another boy that I knew and . . . yeah, it was definitely different.

—predominantly heterosexual woman, age 18

Women of all ages in our study reported having sex simply out of curiosity. Some were curious about what a certain person was like in bed or whether the person would live up to their sexual reputation. Some met expectations:

In college, I was friends with a guy who had a reputation for being good in bed. After we had been drinking, I brought up his reputation to him. He asked me if I wanted to find out if it was true (we had always been flirtatious with each other). To his surprise, I said yes. It was one of the best sexual experiences I had!

—heterosexual woman, age 27

Others did not do so:

I met someone while in college and heard [good things] about his sexual behavior. I began to date him, mainly because of what I had heard from a friend. We had sex one time in the first week we were dating. I was disappointed, but glad that I had found out for myself. I ended the “relationship” after that.

—heterosexual woman, age 26

Some women reported being curious about what sex would be like with someone of a gender they had not had sex with before:

After my first long-term romantic relationship (two years, ended when I was eighteen), I still had only had one sex partner and a heterosexual one at that. I felt it was time to explore my sexuality and sought out several female partners to do so with. I did that not only to see what it felt like with another person, but another gender as well.

—predominantly heterosexual woman, age 20

or with a person of different ethnicity:

I was about eighteen . . . and the thought that went through my head at the time was “Um, wonder what an Arabic or Italian guy is like in bed?” I guess I wanted to know how each race was in bed. Thinking about it now, I know that was stupid. But at the time I [had] slept with two Puerto Ricans, two white boys, and I wanted to try something new.

—heterosexual woman, age 22

Does having sex with a member of a different race or nationality make a difference between the sheets? There are certainly many racial stereotypes about who the greatest lovers are, but they are based solely on movies, romance novels, and popular folklore. There has never actually been any scientific investigation into whether people of a certain race make better lovers than those of a different race. There is substantial variability in sexual attitudes and abilities among people of any race, as well as huge variability between women in what they enjoy sexually. That said, people of different races and ethnicities look different, accents make them sound different, and different diets can even make them smell different. Put together, these qualities offer a bounty of novelty for the senses, and when it comes to sex, novelty can be very sexually arousing.

One dimension of novelty is gender, and studies show that gender affects sexual satisfaction. Women who have sex with women are more
likely to have orgasms during sex than women who have sex with men. There are several possible explanations for this. First, sex between a man and a woman generally involves intercourse, and intercourse is not the easiest way for a woman to experience an orgasm. Second, in many heterosexual relationships, it is the man who wants sex more often than the woman. As a result, women often go along with sex to please their partners with no aspiration of attaining an orgasm for themselves. This is less likely to be the case among lesbian couples. According to a study by sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson that compared the sexual repertoires of homosexual and heterosexual couples, women may actually be better than men at knowing how to sexually satisfy another woman. Women know women’s bodies. If they are sexually experienced, they know what, where, when, and how to touch to make a woman feel good sexually. Masters and Johnson called this “gender empathy.”

Hands down, the main thing women in our study were sexually curious about was whether penis size made a difference, and if so, what difference it makes:

The first person I had sex with was not well endowed. I figured it couldn’t get any worse than that. The second guy I had sex with was very well endowed. I wanted to experience the difference.

—heterosexual woman, age 22

I have a friend [in] whom I have absolutely no romantic interest. We don’t even have a whole lot in common, but he’s a generally nice person. One night, probably 3 a.m. or so, we were bored and hanging out in my room when he started scratching my head and neck, which is one of my bigger turn-ons. Things sort of escalated, mostly because it was something to do. I’d never had plans to have sex with him, but he was constantly talking about how his very large penis had put a damper on his sex life because girls were afraid of it. I decided to see for myself what it was like. It was a purely curious thing because I’d only had sex with average (or very below average, in one case) sized men. It was, indeed, the largest penis I’d seen outside of pornography, probably nine inches long and three inches in diameter.
I can see how some girls might have been intimidated. I figured, what the hell, and went for it. It took some effort to get it in, but once it was there it could barely move around. It was probably one of the least satisfying sexual encounters I’ve had because it’s hard to hit the right spots when it’s stuck in one place.

—predominantly heterosexual woman, age 24

A three-inch by nine-inch penis is definitely outside the normal range. According to most surveys, the average penis ranges from five to six inches in length when erect and three to four inches in length when flaccid, or nonerect. Contrary to popular belief, penis length is not closely related to height. In Masters and Johnson’s study of over three hundred flaccid penises, the largest was 5.5 inches long (about the size of a bratwurst sausage) and belonged to a five-foot-seven-inch-tall man; the smallest nonerect penis was 2.25 inches long (about the size of a breakfast sausage) and attached to a stocky five-foot-eleven-inch man. If a woman enjoys having her cervix stimulated during sexual intercourse, then size can matter. For most women, it is going to take a good five or six inches in length to reach the cervix when a woman is sexually aroused.

When people talk about penis size, they are usually referring to penis length. But according to one study, penis width may be more important in determining if a potential mate “measures up.” Psychologist Russell Eisenman and his fellow researchers at the University of Texas in Edinburg asked fifty sexually active university women whether penis length or penis width was more important for their sexual satisfaction. A surprising forty-five out of fifty women said that width was more important. Only five said length felt better, and none said they were unable to tell the difference. A wider penis could provide greater clitoral stimulation during sexual intercourse as well as more stimulation of the outer, most sensitive portion of the vagina.