average age of loss of virginity today?

[sheson-fire.livejournal.com]

ok...so i looked through the memories and found only what i had found on my own quick research...i just want someone to tell me im not crazy.
i could have sworn that in the past year..at the most... i read in the newspaper as well as hearing about it on radio talk shows..that the average age u.s. kids lose their virginity now is 12..
im having a debate about it with my husband..because all we can find is articles with no links to studies or surveys saying its around 16...
I KNOW I READ SOMEWHERE THAT IT WAS 12..
but i guess maybe its not...
anyone have any links that show like legit numbers...or at least have heard this number too?
thanks!

Comments

[rockstarbob.livejournal.com]

Good call--you took the words right out of my mouth fingers!

The other thing I was thinking is that it also depends on how virginity is defined.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Yes, "virginity" is a social construct and can have a variety of meanings. In particular, there's a fashion I've noticed, mostly in the US, for kids to have non-penetrative sex together and claim that they're still virgins (which leaves the lesbians grumbling, "Oi, it doesn't have to involve a penis in a vagina to be called sex!"), and to keep doing that for some time before they have penetrative sex, even years. I know a woman who's doing this at the age of thirty, but it's a very messed up situation, she's pretending that it doesn't count as sex (there's nakedness, orgasms and sex toys involved) so that it won't count as a) a real relationship (because she wouldn't date a non-Jew) and b) infidelity (the guy she's sleeping with has a girlfriend), plus the idea that c) she's saving her virginity for finding her True Love or whatever.

[oboegoddess.livejournal.com]

Yes, THANK YOU. This is one of my pet peeves actually. I mean, people can define virginity for themselves however they want, but it really bugs me when people are doing everything but PIV intercourse and say they are still virgins or that they haven't had "real" sex. So what, the sex I have with my girlfriend isn't real unless we have a threesome with a man or somehow get a penis involved?

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I know, it's insane. I knew of someone who said to a couple she'd once had a threesome with (actually, at the time of the threesome, she was going out with the man and the other woman was in fact in a relationship with another woman whom she was cheating on, they were a very incestuous foursome), "I'm getting married in white, because I deserve it." Unsurprisingly, the woman she was talking to was furious.

One of the things that really annoys me about the friend who's having an affair and claiming she isn't (because it doesn't include penetration and hey, she wouldn't be dating him anyway as he's not Jewish - GRRRRR) is that she's therefore minimising the emotional impact of her own relationship by denying that it's a sexual one. Not to mention the cheating, of course.

Also, restricting concepts of sex and virginity to penetrative sex devalues non-penetrative sex in a ridiculous manner, even with an opposite-sex couple. Particularly ludicrous since lots of women prefer non-penetrative sex. I don't count the first time I slept with my boyfriend as the first time penis entered vagina, I count it as the first time we leapt into bed, pulled off each other's clothes, and got to it! Incidentally, if you only count heteroerotic PIV sex as real sex, the sum total of our sexual partners (his and mine) pretty much halves.

I believe that one reason why lesbian sex is frequently not counted as "real" sex is the Pirie-Woods case, which was, hmm, early 20th century, maybe 1930 or so. They were two schoolteachers who were a couple and who were overheard having sex by a pupil; the girl told her grandmother, who instantly withdrew her from the school and got loads of other parents to remove their girls from the school. So the teachers took the grandmother to court for libel, which you'd think was a bloody stupid idea considering the Wilde case not too long beforehand. After much weirdness including notions about overgrown clitorises in India, the case was dismissed because the judge decided that a) no such thing as sex without a penis; b) no respectable middle-class women would do such a thing anyway. After that, lesbians became invisible in British law.