Is it EVER acceptable to write a novel in which a main male character is a virgin at the time of marriage? I am talking mid-19th Century (1860s-1870s) American midwest here, where presumably some guys were, but is that only boring guys who no one would ever want to write, or read, a book about?
How does an author even pull off such a thing without the MC coming off as a wimp, a prude, or something else bad the reader can't respect? It doesn't bother me so much with the female characters but with the guys it's driving me crazy. Much obliged for any input here, thanks.
I don't think there are any aspects about a character's background that are mandatory. Usually a detail like that is completely unimportant. If it is important, or at least relevant, in your story, you could probably just state it.
As a reader I can't imagine classifying a character as one not worth reading about simply because he was a virgin until he got married.
If you are writing some sort of romance, there might be some conventions I'm unaware of. For any other genre, I'd wager it makes no difference one way for the other.
Anyways, what's more of a "wimp"? A person exercises self-control
or one who gives into his urges? And why is it an either/or situation, either a person has lax morals or he is a prude?
[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited August 26, 2006).]
cll
I can't think of anyone who thinks Superman is a wimp.
Of course, in the newset series -- Smallville, teenage Clark has sex with Lana, but that was stupid and never should have happened.
I don't see why not. I'm assuming his virginity (or lack of it) is in some way important to the plot. But I don't see why it couldn't be worked in.
With Superman / Clark Kent pairing off with Lois Lane (or Lana Lang), they're two different species...so who'd be worried about virginity when there's bestiality on the table?
Just like with any other facet of a character, there has to be a reason for this one. Why is he a virgin? 1: Does he want to have sex but can't? Why? Does he lack certain social skills? Is he unattractive to the opposite sex for some reason? Has he had an injury that prevents it? Is he watched all the time by people who wish to prevent it? Does he get together with a woman and at the last moment, um, loses his "confidence", so to speak? 2: Has he remained a virgin by choice? Why? Religious principles? Family influence? Does he have some power that will be lost if he experiences sexual gratification? Does he fear offspring from accidental pregnancy?
Bottom line: If we understand the reasons for this detail and how it has affected the character, he'll be readable. If it's a detail with no explanation for it (assuming it's important to the plot) then we won't be convinced.
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Cage's character is not a virgin like the protagonist from the original film, as it was thought that the idea of a grown-up virgin was too farfetched.
Ugh. I'm not even going to comment on this, because it would be a tirade.
[This message has been edited by sojoyful (edited August 26, 2006).]
Pluse aren't there studies that show insecure guys lie about their sexual status? Chances are, there are/were a lot more virgins out there who are just lying about having done "IT." I wouldn't consider your story a stretch in the least.
There is also nothing to say that a virgin male hasn't been TEMPTED before, especially in the teen years. I think that is something EVERYONE can relate to on some level.
Kudos!
Religion. Morals. High standards, as in waiting for the right woman. Peer pressure the other way -- to be chaste. There are still places like that. There are even real-life nerds who don't even think about sex unless the right moment confronts them and that right moment doesn't happen till quite late. I know a few of those nerds, myself. Like how can sex compare with working with NASA to get to the moon/Mars/up there SOMEWHERE , or with math or whatever their life's interest is--?
[This message has been edited by arriki (edited August 26, 2006).]
If you are in a society (or subgroup) in which chastity is considered normal, the chaste aren't unusually prudish, wimpy, or unusually anything -- *they're* the norm. It will be the unchaste that are unusual. Don't worry about it.
And in our current society, there's the novel Getting It Right, about a 30-year-old man trying to break into the world of romance. Yes, he was wimpy, but that's a valid character trait too.
As for examples in other fiction, keep 'em coming! I can't possibly read even all reviews, let alone full works, of everything out there, and really appreciate being informed! Thanks so much for the encouraging discussion!
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited August 27, 2006).]
But, yeah, I can suggest you read Enchantment and also Anna Karenina (with a focus on the story of Levin telling his fiancee about his past.)
I'm writing a story, the MC - a male - is a virgin. It's part of his background, but only warrants a couple of brief mentions (until his future wife becomes a romantic interest). But the story isn't ABOUT his virginity. It's about their journey. Putting too much focus on sex would undermine the other tale I'm trying to tell.
Just tell your story. Let his status as a virgin/non-virgin remain at an appropriate level that depends on how much of the story is focused on sex. If, like the movie "The 40 Year Old Virgin" that's ALL it's about, it's worth worrying about. If it's just a blip in the story, mention it and move on.
"Offers" back then would usually come from women who were soliciting to be paid for it (even if they did find the guy attractive, which will be clear) or maybe the occasional lonely widow woman or something. My particular MC, I just don't see as being the romantic seducer type--that is, out to "get some" from a woman he had no intention of marrying. If he got an offer that wasn't lowering his standards TOO much, coupled with other factors, is the scenario I'm considering--if it's MANDATORY that he not be a virgin at marriage. Even then, I'm very suspicious of "you can't do that, it's not done" in fiction--after all, the essence of being original is doing something different.
You may as well know the main thing I'm trying to get away from is characters, for some reason particularly in historicals, who are both obsessed with sex and very casual towards it--not thinking much of consequences, standards, or morals, either before or after. There must have been some of this in history as there's record of it, but there's way too much in fiction, it seems. In that way it might almost be better if he did do it--he is the type to take action, and, if totally miserable about being a virgin, probably would at some point--then feel almost equally bad about having done it. (I know, I know, some people can't be happy.)
Okay, "Offers" back when? In the temporal milieu of your story?
MC not a seducer type...I get that, but why even mention it? I mean...he's waiting for marriage, right?
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If he got an offer that wasn't lowering his standards TOO much, coupled with other factors, is the scenario I'm considering--if it's MANDATORY that he not be a virgin at marriage.
What? I thought his standard was marriage. So are we talking...elopement? That is, running off to a country vicar because the father would never have given permission? And why would it be MANDATORY that he not be a virgin? That just sounds crazed.
I think that it's very common, when somebody is really obsessed with just one thing, to start ignoring even things that seem closely related. A person obsessed with sex is likely to start ignoring things like social mores and disease and pregnancy and so forth. That's what we mean when we say someone is "obsessed" with something. It means that one thing is crowding out all other considerations.
Or do you simply mean that you want to do at least some characters who are not obsessed with sex? Because I think that having at least a few non-obsessed characters is normal. I'm afraid I'll be a little skeptical if none of your characters is obsessed with sex, it's an even more common obsession than money or social status, after all. But if there aren't too many characters and none of them seem like the type, I'll buy it.
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"Offers" back then would usually come from women who were soliciting to be paid for it (even if they did find the guy attractive, which will be clear) or maybe the occasional lonely widow woman or something.
Errr.....WHAT? Are we talking about a time in the history of MANKIND because I don't believe this has ever been true!
Yes, the MC has two brothers and a cousin obsessed with sex, so maybe in a way he becomes obsessed with not being obsessed, but then wonders, wait a minute here, I'm not wimping out, am I? Because he's obsessed with not wimping out. *Very* competitive. Like, if your cousin jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too? He'd sure think about it.
Now, I'll explain the REAL dilemma I've set up just to make things difficult for myself. This MC is cool and smooth to the point that others would even admire and wish to emulate him. (I have NEVER been like this, neither are most of the people I know well, that's why it's so difficult.) The reason I keep using the word "mandatory" is it would be CW (conventional wisdom) in our day and age, time and place (probably even 50 years ago let alone now!) that such a person would almost certainly be sexually experienced at a relatively young age because they would have no problem attracting the opposite sex and getting really good offers. (As opposed to nerdy, wimpy "bottom feeders.") But that WASN'T necessarily CW for his time and place! In polite society, QUITE the opposite! So I wonder how much time he would waste feeling some sort of reverse guilt (gee, I'm not experienced enough, I must be a wimp) or explaining himself (truthfully or otherwise) to other guys who would make assumptions and might want to ask him questions.
I guess what I'm asking is what does he say to his friends? One scene you see quite a lot in books (and in some people's descriptions of real life situations) is where a group of friends all decide to go to a brothel or to some woman of easy virtue or whatnot. Once in awhile a guy doesn't want to go through with it--Holden Caulfield in "The Catcher in the Rye" is one of the best examples--except that he was alone and didn't have friends to impress. I guess what a character would do in such a circumstance would depend on his nature and the nature of his friends, and I'm wondering whether to include any such scenario.
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Midwestern America in the Victorian era. Maybe it got a little more Puritanical back in Colonial times or something and I'm not even sure about that. It's a time and place of repression hard for modern sensibilities to imagine.
No, there are always places for the sex obsessed to get away to. Even the puritans had neighboring colonies where you could escape to get some, or native tribes to rape if one were that obsessed. The problem has never been access to extra/pre-marital sex. It has always been the desire to be perceived as normal despite obsession.
I liked Chuck Norris jokes, but I was always astonished at the ones that would seem to work better with "Bill Clinton once..." The point of the jokes seemed to be making an exagerration of a paragon of masculinity. To me, lack of control over sexual impulses is not the paragon of masculinity. To have sexual impulses that require inner strength to control is masculine, but acting on them is not. Of course, I am a female so maybe I'm foolish about such things.
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To have sexual impulses that require inner strength to control is masculine
I would ammend that to read "is traditionally considered masculine." It is a very outdated idea that only men have such strong sexual impulses. Plenty of women have them too, and they have to work just as hard at self-control and discipline.
[This message has been edited by sojoyful (edited August 28, 2006).]
What exactly is your setting?
Is this guy a "gentleman" in any sense of the word?
Why is it "MANDATORY" that he not be a virgin?
And on to the stuff that doesn't get separate paragraphs for each sentance. Like, if this guy is so cool, why the hell would he compete with his loser cousins? Cool guys don't waste time trying to be "better" than total jerks. You might not have ever been "cool", but surely you've observed genuinely cool guys (or girls, at least). The really cool people don't care what the climbers and wannabe's think, that's what defines cool. And cool people in any era are used to turning down offers as a matter of course. It's an essential part of being cool.
To his friends, the simple truth is fine. They admire him for it, and if they weren't also the type to regard chaste behavior as an admirable adherence to an ideal (whether or not they have the same ideals), then they wouldn't be his friends. Cool guys, who can easily attract more potential friends, don't compromise their own values to keep "friends" who don't qualify. That's why we call it "cool" rather than "warmth". If you don't know a lot about cool guys, try to think of this guy as if he were one of those "too good for anyone" girls. Cool guys and girls have a lot in common, one reason they tend to click with each other rather than with everyone else 
(And no, I'm not talking about the recent movie. I'm not even really talking about the books. I'm talking about the original radio program. The voice actor is *fabulous* at portraying that character. I'm sure you can find it on the internet somewhere...)
One day, he asked one of his top writers to help get his movie out of a plot jam.
Producer: "I've got this boy and girl, see, and I need a good reason to keep them out of the sack."
Writer: "Well, suppose they both devoutly believe that a man and a woman should wait until they're married before they have sex with each other, and are willing to wait until then."
Producer: (after a lenghty pause in thought) "Get out of here with your radical ideas! Nobody'd ever believe that!"
Setting: midwest before Civil War and then various areas during the war. The story could be a lot about the nature of temptation, I guess the big question being: why do some people give in to it, KNOWING the risks? (Otherwise quite intelligent people?) It's been well-documented that they do. Actually, a lot of people concerned in the health field would love to know the answer to this. I guess there are stupid people in almost any area--"famous last words" often consist of "hey, watch this"--but sometimes otherwise rational people can be really reckless regarding sex. I guess that's why I wonder whether some essential quality is either "missing" from my MC, or has to be elaborately "explained"--he acted such-a-way because...? And I don't think he's either an atheist OR devoutly religious.
CoriSCapnSkip, I will answer your latest question with one word: hormones. Some people can resist them, some people can't. Intelligence is not a good predictor of a person's ability to resist. I mean, seriously. Let's ask Bill Clinton if he thinks it's a good idea for the President of the United States to have an affair with an intern in his office.
Also, being impregnated is not a behavior. It's a side effect of a behavior. (But I know what you were trying to say.)
Because covert sex is a huge biological temptation. I'd remove pregnancy from the list, because the entire point of covert sex is a pregnancy where you hide the identity of the father. But since the biological impulse towards covert sex is largely subconscious, while the fear of pregnancy is largely conscious, I'll grant that they can both be motivating a person's behavior at the same time. Anyway, the conscious fear of starting a pregnancy will always lose to the subconscious desire to start a covert pregnancy. The same is true of conscious desires for social approval or avoiding impeachment. The subconscious versions of both those desires are fully in favor of covert sex.
Only the fear of death is a serious competitor with the desire for covert sex, and even that will lose out eventually. Because all you stant to lose (biologically) as a result of early death is additional chances for sex. If your fear of death is causing you to miss significant chances for sex, then your biology will step in and rearrange those relative desires.
That's why control of sexual impulses has always been the province of morality. People who choose to gamble on covert sex aren't being dumb, they're being dishonest and unchaste. Men who pass up opportunities for covert sex have to be motivated by something more than their personal welfare. Because when you look at it rationally, covert sex is definitely the highest benefit you can enjoy in this life.
Back in the old days, most people believed that sex outside of marriage was immoral, just like stealing or murdering or whatnot. All those activities did occur, of course, but it was a tiny minority of the population who engaged in them. It wasn't because the law was so strictly enforced, or because people lacked the imagination to see how doing these things could be of personal benefit, but because most people wanted to do what they considered to be right rather than what was profitable. A notorius robber might take pride in his offenses against chastity, just as he'd boast of how many men he'd killed. Though, to be fair, it was considered low to sully a woman's good name after she'd done good to you. A wicked man might take pride in his conquests, but only a total jerk would boast about them.
As I understand it, your idea that it would be "MANDATORY" for this guy to lose his virginity is based entirely on the demands of Hollywood as a market. Two points come to mind. First, it isn't yet mandatory even in Hollywood that guys have to lose their virginity before marriage in order to be heroes, particularly in period pieces. True, losing their virginity is commonly taken as a heroic attribute, but it's on par with steely blue eyes. Second, you're probably not selling this book to Hollywood. Thinking of how you'll get your book turned into a movie before you've actually got it written is utterly pointless. Even the vast majority of bestsellers don't become big-udget movies.
In the setting you describe, it would be common for men to remain chaste till marriage. Exactly how common and how chaste they would remain is a subject for debate, because almost nobody would admit they'd been unchaste. The free-wheeling life of the cowboy, as well as the coining of the term "hooker", was still in the future. Catching a man in the act of adultery was considered just cause for killing him on the spot, it was about equal to murdering a baby. Not that nobody murdered babies...it was about as common as adultery. Prostitution was illegal most places, though of course it occured as well. More importantly, nobody wanted to become a prostitute or see anyone they loved take up that life. It was considered the worst degradation possible.
Is your hero the kind who would get into a baby-killing competition with his cousins? I'm hoping the answer is no, but it's up to you. Is he, perhaps, the kind of guy who would never kill a baby, no matter what? Might he have the sort of character that would lead other people to admire him? Maybe he's the kind of guy that would want to be in love with a woman rather than just screwing her?
As far as I can tell, you are the only person who has any problem with the idea that it would be possible for male chastity to be anything other than a horribly embarrassing character defect. None of us can fix that for you. So don't bother with what we think. Write this the way you want to write it.
[This message has been edited by CoriSCapnSkip (edited August 30, 2006).]
I'd say the period first mentioned (1860s to 1870s), the term "hooker" was in use. The claim that it derived from calling camp followers of the Union Armies "Hooker's Division," after General Joe Hooker, seems believable, but the term may have been in use before he became prominent. (In my old home town, we had a "Hooker Avenue," which might have been named after the general (I never knew one way or another). Sometime after I left, reactionary forces tried to rename it, but failed---but then they also failed to rename all the names that had the archaic Dutch "-kill" (stream) in them as well.)
As for psycho-emotional motives to sex, that varies by individual certainly. Society traditionally rewards women for being risk-averse more than men, so that may be the whole source of the difference. It's kind of too bad, since society encourages men to be risk-seeking, but the actual rewards for risk-seeking are not that widespread so it seems to me that a majority of men are risk-seeing to little avail. But because we still have parents of both sexes, a mixture of risk-relating persists in both sexes. Boy, the possibilities that brings up for my cloning/monkeymen world...
[This message has been edited by pooka (edited August 30, 2006).]
Mostly, though, it's all about the chocolate -- ice cream for me. Maybe with a warm gooey brownie and some hot fudge.
Anyway, I don't know if I made this clear before...back in the antebellum mid-west, men generally did not brag about having illicit sexual relationships. It was the sort of thing you didn't talk about with anyone unless you knew he visited the same women as you did, and knew he knew about you.
The whole "this guy knows other guys who are doing this" thing could only happen if he were doing it himself. The Civil War changed a lot of things, and this is one of them. After the war, you had a lot of guys that had seen a lot of things, and their migration into the west created a dramatically different culture.
This guy would know of some loose women and where the prostitutes could be found in his local city. But he wouldn't know any of his friends were involved unless he were going himself. He would know that someone had to be visiting these women, and he might even have a fair idea of which of his aquaintances (not his friends, not if he were an upstanding guy who would never kill a baby) were so depraved. But if he weren't among them, he simply wouldn't know.
You've got to understand, the midwest prior to the Civil War did not approve of prostitution. Visiting a prostitute was a shameful act, on par with how we currently view necrophilia. And the prostitutes themselves were the walking dead. Any respectable family would prefer a daughter's death (not an uncommon hazard in those days) to her loss of virtue. If the family couldn't prevent her from becoming a prostitute, they'd simply disown her. Even if you lived someplace like New Orleans (which is not the Midwest), it would be a dark sort of "respectability". Even there, a prostitute was a prostitute, not a shopkeeper.
Reminds me of a discussion on another forum regarding the topic of how female honor was treated back then: http://tinyurl.com/ozamh
[This message has been edited by CoriSCapnSkip (edited September 01, 2006).]
[This message has been edited by Second Assistant (edited September 03, 2006).]
Which cousin are we talking about? And how did this cousin become a Unitarian?
To the extent that Unitarianism began to distinguish itself from identifiably Christian beliefs, they gained an increasingly "bad rep" on morality. But it would be inaccurate to say that they regarded sexual immorality as being acceptable. Associating with persons of low social standing for any other purpose than "uplift" would be out of character for the Unitarians of that period. They would probably be more uptight about "social" morality and class distinctions than members of most other denominations. At that time, Unitarianism was still very close to its roots as an "intellectual" religion (not that it is no longer an "intellectual" religion, but in that era the concept didn't embrace association with prostitutes).
I'm just curious about how this cousin would have become one. And having become one, what he was doing making friends with a prostitute living in the Midwest?
He may have joined it through being anti-slavery, or having fallen out with conventional religion for various reasons.
Anyone with an agenda will be able to provide "evidence" that any time period was full of, say, promiscuous transvestite pedophiles. Ignore them. The time period you're writing about was probably much more sexually restrained than we are now.
Regards,
Oliver
It occurs to me that if you need more evidence, maybe you could do some research on crime at that time, to see what types of sexual offenses were prosecuted, and how heinous they were seen at the time. Some things that get alluded to on prime time TV today were criminal not that long ago.
Having said that, vigilante justice may have made criminal prosecution unlikely if someone defiled a man's sister/daughter/niece/whatever.
I don't know the era well enough to say; but some criminal investigation might turn up some good information on attitudes.
(This might be the longest it has ever taken me to say, "I don't know what the heck I'm talking about." )
[This message has been edited by oliverhouse (edited September 05, 2006).]
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the virginal MC is no longer considered plausible
I don't understand why a virginal MC isn't considered plausible. If I'm not mistaken, 100% of all men who have had sex were virgins at one point in their lives?
(Just a few pages ago in my current novel project, scenes set in a cemetary---I pan back a little in the picture and realize it's a rural cemetary where some of my relatives are buried, complete with duck pond in the middle. I'll probably rewrite some of the details in the end.)
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so no matter what you write someone will always "know better."
In Renaissance Florence, for example, homosexuality was sufficiently rife that laws were passed against sodomy in 1415.
And again in 1418.
And then in 1432, 1494, and 1542. Clearly people weren't paying attention. At one stage, Florence even had state-run, subsidised brothels, with the explicit purpose of trying to ensure that young men turned their minds to heterosexuality.
I know that isn't hugely relevant. But it is interesting.
Fornication used to be against the law in nearly all of the contiguous states. I didn't know it was possible to not know that. It's kinda like not knowing that abortion used to be against the law in a lot of states. And soliciting prostitution is still against the law most places. Those laws weren't very well enforced, because that would require the police to do things that would be considered immoral, like pretending to be prostitutes or perhaps observing the act of fornication
Really, think about that for a moment. Illegitimacy and abortion both used to be ranked as social ills on par with incidental (second degree) murder. Yet the morality of the time was strict enough that the police wouldn't even have considered having officers dress up as women (and no, they didn't have female officers back then) or spy on the act of fornication. An individual policeman might do either (or both), of course, but not because it was his job. He'd be fired on the spot if he were caught.
Protestantism in America took a more extreme form where, even now, streaks of Puritanism keep emerging--that is, heavy and presumably non-enjoyable guilt. Many Americans from different religious traditions can't unburden/share/brag about their sins as someone in their circle is sure to condemn them. It's a matter of pondering for me, and I'm sure an issue for my main character, how much of appearance of abstinence was real, true abstinence, and how much was the moral code to not "kiss and tell"--that a gentleman should always protect a lady's reputation, and it was not class to talk about certain things no matter what went on. Remember that Paul wrote it was also important to have the appearance of doing right, which to a lot of people has to be more important than actually doing right.
On the one hand, my main character KNOWS he would DIE if he crossed certain lines and certain members of his family found out. That's obviously not *all* that's preventing him, as if it was just family pressure he'd simply move. I think he's struggling with basic issues, like what he really believes is right or wrong vs. just what he's always been told, and hypocrisy. He doesn't want to make a bad mistake and do something really wrong, but on the other hand he doesn't want to miss out on something he *should* do, to "grow up" or whatever, and would be a wimp if he didn't. He's also not a particularly indecisive person--he is fairly deep-thinking, with a tendency to brood, but takes quick and direct action--and I don't want readers forming the impression he's indecisive AND a wimp! That's why this is such a big problem to write!
So Catholics see "sin" as "something some guy in a funny hat says is wrong", while Protestants see "sin" as "something that I prayerfully considered and feel to be wrong."
Which relates to your story only in the sense that fornication was against the law because most people personally believed that it was wrong, rather than because some guy in a funny hat said it was wrong. Whether or not they actually abstained...I've observed that many humans have difficulty believing something to be really wrong if they do it themselves. I'd guess that even if it were usual for young men to have had an extra-marital affair, it would generally be remembered with genuine regret and very few would take it up as a life-style.
Sorry about mistaking Florence for France...I guess that the French and Florentines can now complain that I'm persecuting them. Maybe I'll nuke Florence when I'm done with Paris....
By the way, in the case of my main character, I consider religion to be a factor, but not the only factor at work.
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just shocking considering the amount of people in America professing to be religious
Keep in mind not all religious denominations consider pre-marital sex to be a "sin." By the way, the Greek word hamartia that was translated into the New Testament as "sin" is a term that means "missed the mark," not "you are going to burn in hell."
Author Elaine Pagels explores this concept in her book Adam, Eve, and the Serpent."
Publisher's Weekly had this to say about Pagel's book:
The disgust felt by early Christians for the flesh was a radical departure from both pagan and Jewish sexual attitudes. In fact, as Princeton professor Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels) demonstrates, the ascetic movement in Christianity met with great resistance in the first four centuries A.D. Sex became fully tainted, inextricably linked to sin under the teachings of Augustine. This troubled sinner invoked Adam and Eve to justify his idiosyncratic view of humanity as permanently scarred by the Fall. Instead of being dismissed as marginal, Augustine's grim outlook took hold, according to Pagels, because it was politically expedient. Now that Christianity had become the imperial religion, Rome wanted its imperfect subjects to obey a strong Christian state. This highly provocative history links the religious roots of Western sexual attitudes to women's inferior status through the centuries.
The horrified attitude of puritan cultures regarding sex is considered perverse, if not perverted, by other cultures who accept it as a natural and enjoyable bodily function.
[This message has been edited by Elan (edited December 23, 2006).]
Christians probably should be horrified by the way that other cultures claim that if everyone does something, that means it's okay. But generally, being human, they're subject to the same kind of fallacious reasoning employed by pagans on this topic.
I'm not sure that I've ever met or read any serious Christian thinker who was horrified by sex per se. Marriage is a Christian sacrament, after all, and enjoyment of intimate sexual relations within marriage is a commandment reiterated multiple times in the scriptures and occasionally discussed from the pulpit where you have a widespread problem of husbands and wives who aren't having sex anymore. Anyone that characterizes the Christian attitude towards sex as "horrified" has either made no real effort to look at Christian society and thought or has an axe to grind.
Most Christians probably have experienced sex outside of marriage, and those who report this honestly generally also admit that it caused them lasting grief, sorrow, regret, and was generally not won them a lot of self-respect. A lot of non-Christians refuse to admit that sex outside of marriage caused them to suffer, but a look at how screwed up their personal lives usually are kind of tells you all you need to know.
In pragmatic terms, I'll take the Christian position any day. Sex inside of marriage is healthy, sex outside of marriage isn't. And I'll leave it at that.
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A lot of non-Christians refuse to admit that sex outside of marriage caused them to suffer, but a look at how screwed up their personal lives usually are kind of tells you all you need to know.
That's EXACTLY the problem I'm having with my main character, or ANYONE about whom I'd choose to write, because caring that much about a character generally means I have to respect them. "A word to the wise is sufficient." My MC is very competitive and adventurous, which would cause conflict, but really, ya know--I mean, how do I show he isn't a coward but emphasize "he ain't stupid"?
And yet the homocidal impulse is there, a fundamental part of human psychological make-up. Everybody feels like killing somebody now and then. Yet we are horrified at the idea of "repressing" other impulses because of how "damaging" that could be.
A little hint here, you don't absolutely have to outlaw all private homocide the way we do here in America. Many societies have functioned reasonably well despite allowing otherwise up-standing citizens the right to occasionally kill somebody. In fact, it could be argued that the consenting adults rule should make dueling legal, certainly I believe that our society would be far better off if dueling were reinstituted as a serious option. Do you think that celebrities would be half so obnoxious, or corperations even a tenth so rapacious? And imagine what it would do for the level of discourse in politics!
Okay, so maybe repression really is unhealthy. I got me a new fighting knife and a ceremonial dagger for Christmas too....
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Everybody feels like killing somebody now and then.
I can honestly say that I've never felt a desire to kill someone.
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I can honestly say that I've never felt a desire to kill someone.
Talk about unbelievable characters in stories...
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I can honestly say that I've never felt a desire to kill someone.
Talk about repressed.
Anyway, who says that winners are supposed to like "sex". What particular acts, and under what circumstances, can we include in this rather broad statement. Does that mean that winners are supposed to like, say, having sex with animals? How about dead bodies? How about children? How about dead, immature, animals?
As I was just saying, the prohibition of certain sex acts doesn't imply any general prohibition against enjoying sexual activities within the bounds of "common" decency. At the time in which you are setting the story, "common" decency would imply within marriage to a respectable woman. There would be nothing wrong with enjoying sex in that context, though you would still be expected to keep your mouth shut about it (back then they had this rule about kissing and telling, even when the woman in question wasn't exactly respectable, nobody in his right mind would encourage other men to think such things about his wife or the woman he intended to marry).
I actually support this level of circumspection. I don't want my wife's friends thinking about what I do in private, and if she feels differently then she should feel comfortable speaking for herself. Note that I would still be uncomfortable with that.
Sexual intercourse is not that difficult, there aren't a lot of special things that you need to know. Yes, in an age where most sexual partners have only the most superficial feelings for each other, we make much of techniques that enhance stimulation of erogenous zones. But the secret to making sex a joy has always been to feel like you really, really want to make babies with your sex partner.
This much should be obvious. How it is possible for anyone to not know this is a sad, long story, and it isn't the point of the current discussion. But think about it without all your modern prejudices. For several billion years, organisms which were really bad at choosing good mates either didn't pass on their genes at all or passed them on to basically defective off-spring. Sexual attraction is the mechanism by which humans choose their mates, partners in reproduction. Sexual pleasure is the biological reward for choosing a sexual partner whom you instinctively feel will make a wonderful parent for your children. This biological reward can be tricked to some extent, just like you can fool your tongue with imitation sweetners and so forth, but it really does respond best to the stimulus for which generations of natural selection have best suited it, a sexual partner who seems like excellent parent material.
Now, exactly what an individual will deeply believe to be an excellent parent is highly personal and significantlly affected by culture and upbringing. There are some biological constraints. Men will always want women to have noticible hips and breasts. They will also always find women near the beginning of their child-bearing years more sexually attractive than women past menopause. These features obviously dramatically impact a woman's ability to bear and nurse a healthy infant in the first place, and the millions of years of selection working in that direction aren't going to be undone overnight even if medical science makes it irrelevant tomorrow.
But mental and social characteristics are just as important once it comes time to start raising and protecting the children. The exact social characteristics that will provide the best for a child vary from culture to culture and even within a given culture depending on things like social class and level of wealth. And the idea of what is "best" for children varies too. But a sexual partner chosen with an unconscious assessment of being a great potential parent will reward the instinctive drives of any organism at a very fundamental level. In other words, the sex will always feel wonderful. Unfortunately, we all have days when having children with a particular partner doesn't seem like a wonderful idea. That feeling makes sex considerably less enjoyable if you're relying on your instincts.
My point is that a society where sex and child-bearing are fundamentally assumed to be connected at every level isn't unheathy or repressed in any meaningful way when it comes to sexual expression. And almost all organisms instinctively "know" everything they need to know about how to enjoy reproductive sex. You just have to find someone you'd like to reproduce with.
Your personal hang-up on "cool" and "uncool" is getting tiresome, also. Let it go. It isn't helping you get laid, and it isn't helping you to write either. More to the point, in a society where a woman's chastity was genuinely believed to be of significant value, men who ever settled for cheap sex simply weren't "cool". Yes, it was easy enough to find women who could be had for a few minutes of fun. It has never been difficult, really. But I think even today it isn't really considered "cool" to simply buy or extort sexual acts outright.
Survivor said:
quote:THANK YOU. Not just women, either.
More to the point, in a society where a woman's chastity was genuinely believed to be of significant value, men who ever settled for cheap sex simply weren't "cool".
Calling a promiscuous female a "slut" is still an insult, and men who focus on maximizing the number of sexual partners they have still aren't considered "cool".
Earlier, CoriSCapnSkip said:
quote:Some of the most successful anti-AIDS programs in Africa are abstinence-based. Even if _some_ people give in to temptation, many people will not. But you have to believe that not giving in is an option. One of the objections to condom-based AIDS prevention programs is that they seem to imply that "you're just going to give into it anyway, so you may as well give in safely."
The story could be a lot about the nature of temptation, I guess the big question being: why do some people give in to it, KNOWING the risks? ... It's been well-documented that they do.
The Sexual Revolution got its name because people overthrew the social order with respect to sex. If you want to talk to people who lived through those "repressed" times, you don't have to go back much more than 50 or 60 years. Did they feel repressed? Not from what I've heard. Did men think about women all the time, and vice versa? No doubt. But did they think about sex with them all the time? Not from what I've heard.
This might help you get in the right mindset: "it" means "drug use" in the following paragraph.
In the right place and time, it's a godsend. In the wrong contexts, it can be disastrous. The person who obsesses over it in the wrong context is dangerous to himself and to society; the person who engages in it inappropriately is (or should be) a criminal. Sometimes people consider these ideas about it outmoded, and people who _don't_ engage in it were seen as square or repressed, but we recognize now the dangers those people faced, and wise people choose not to abuse it.
Now back up and have "it" mean "sex", and you'll get the sense of people before the Sexual Revolution -- and of a growing number of people now.
To be clear: sex itself wasn't bad (that idea's actually a heresy in the Catholic Church), as shown by the fact that people often had larger families then, but it had its place.
Survivor's discourse on sex and family, and how those things relate, was spot on.
Sex becomes dysfunctional when disconnected from childrearing. This took me a long time to understand, but I think it's true. My attitudes were much different when I was younger, on premarital sex, contraception, "open" marriage, and gay marriage. (I even called it "marriage" instead of "civil union".) But I discovered that I was wrong. And these things aren't bad because the Pope says so; the Pope says they're bad because they are.
The point is, I don't dislike sex (I have six children and a seventh on the way), but I think it has its place, and that's in a marriage that's open to having children.
A century ago, the majority of the population thought this way: Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, American, European... There were some circles that did not, but the vast majority of the population did.
_You_ don't need to think that way; but until you understand that people did, I don't think you'll understand why "sex=cool and liberated / no-sex=uncool and repressed" equations don't work. You'll continue to project your own biases onto the time you're writing about.
Which doesn't mean it won't sell -- Lord knows we've seen some travesties of historical misunderstanding out there -- but it won't be right.
-----
Setting all that aside, most things said about Catholic attitudes and positions in this thread so far has been wrong. If you're trying to create a Catholic character, you can make them whatever you want; but I want to state for the record what the orthodox (lowercase "o") Catholic position is, so you know where you're deviating from it.
The worst statements were these:
quote:That was Publisher's Weekly in their review of Elaine Pagels. Either they're misreporting what she meant, or she's wrong. She's been wrong about a lot, so I'm willing to give PW the benefit of the doubt.
Sex became fully tainted, inextricably linked to sin under the teachings of Augustine.
The Gnostics and Manichees (and their variants) believed that the world was created by the Bad God of the Old Testament, and that everything made of matter was inherently evil; sex, being linked to procreation, was also evil. Only the Christ of the New Testament was good, and wholly spiritual; his body was an illusion.
Gnosticism and Manicheism were heresies. Augustine fought specifically against them. He certainly also fights against lust and intemperence, and when he argues against someone he often makes his case so strongly in one direction that you have to review more than one book to see what his real opinion is, but to say that "sex was inextricably linked to sin" is just false.
Here are Augustine's own word on the subject, from Of the Good of Marriage (found here):
quote:
Marriages have this good also, that carnal or youthful incontinence, although it be faulty, is brought unto an honest use in the begetting of children, in order that out of the evil of lust the marriage union may bring to pass some good. Next, in that the lust of the flesh is repressed, and rages in a way more modestly, being tempered by parental affection. For there is interposed a certain gravity of glowing pleasure, when in that wherein husband and wife cleave to one another, they have in mind that they be father and mother.There is this further, that in that very debt which married persons pay one to another, even if they demand it with somewhat too great intemperance and incontinence, yet they owe faith alike one to another. Unto which faith the Apostle allows so great right, as to call it "power," saying, "The woman has not power of her own body, but the man; again in like manner also the man has not power of his own body, but the woman."
He also points out that "be fruitful and multiply" implies that we would have had sex even if Adam and Eve had never fallen.
Now remember that this is a theologian's position, not a Church dogma; but he's such a well-known theologian and this is such a common topic that you would hope Pagels would know better.
Elan's point -- that some religions don't see extramarital sex as benign or even worthy of celebration -- still stands, but don't take Pagel's word for what Christianity is or does or has been.
CoriSCapnSkip said:
quote:If "it" means determining what's right and wrong, or what's dogma and what's not, then this is basically false. People my parents' and grandparents' ages (60's and up) remember well the Baltimore Catechisms, which included versions that went from rudimentary for schoolchildren through highly sophisticated for adults. "But," you might say, "adults who wanted to go more deeply into religious thought and debate were discouraged." That's not entirely so, either: the "lay fraternities" of the Dominicans and others allowed lay people to, in essence, become religious people.
[Catholicism] is so EXTREMELY elaborate as to be confusing to lay people, so it is left to religious people and the lay people don't have to, and often don't, bother with a lot of stuff.
(There's also some irony in that post, in that Catholics are stereotypically known for their guilt, and Protestants tend not to be.)
Survivor said:
quote:
So Catholics see "sin" as "something some guy in a funny hat says is wrong",
See above. Sin is sin because it's wrong, and the guys in funny hats just point out that it's wrong. A more accurate distinction between Protestants and Catholics would be to say that Catholics believe that there are definitively wrong and right ways of interpreting the Scriptures and Traditional teachings, and they don't depend on who's reading them; while Protestants believe that their job is to understand Scripture. Among Protestants, the issue of who has final say over which interpretations are right or wrong either never comes up, is abdicated to historical authorities (e.g., Martin Luthur), or is not definitively resolvable.
Some of the historical perspective in Survivor's post was out of whack, too.
Why yes, I _am_ a blast at parties. How did you know?
Regards,
Oliver
[This message has been edited by oliverhouse (edited December 28, 2006).]
Yes, I realize it's necessary to write about people different than myself, but in order to write about them I still have to understand them, and believe in the plausibility of what I have written enough to defend it when it inevitably gets attacked and tromped through the mud by people who call it "unrealistic" and "must have been written by a woman because a real man would never think that way." This is one major reason I ask!
Think of it this way. Your character, as nice a guy as he is, wouldn't even hesitate to kill a man who did certain things to his little sister. He lived in that sort of time, when being nice and Christian simply didn't mean what people think it means today. And, if you want to give him that sort of integrity, he wouldn't hesitate to kill himself before doing those things to someone else's little sister.
That's a man. Nobody will think, even for a moment, that he's a woman.
quote:And I know you do, or you wouldn't ask and I wouldn't waste my time replying. Sorry if that came off as snitty; that wasn't the intent.
Yes, I realize it's necessary to write about people different than myself...
quote:A blast at parties, specifically...
Oliver, you are something else!
quote:Put [/QUOTE] after the material you want to quote, and [QUOTE] before it. (That sounds funny, and normally I'd say that in the opposite order, but that would have quoted the phrase "before the material you want to quote, and" instead of showing you the square brackets and all that jazz.)
How did you make the post with all the quotes from other posts?
If you ever want to see how someone did something in a post, click on the edit button (the pencil and paper) as if you were trying to edit it. You won't be able to actually edit the post, obviously, because you don't have that person's password, but you'll be able to see precisely what she did to get the effect you're looking at. Good stuff.
By the way, this post has a bunch of good tips in it -- to which I just added these. Guess I should have done that earlier, but there it is...
[This message has been edited by oliverhouse (edited December 29, 2006).]
quote:
To be clear: sex itself wasn't bad (that idea's actually a heresy in the Catholic Church), as shown by the fact that people often had larger families then, but it had its place.
Thanks, I didn't know the Catholic Church's position on this. My church teaches that the Catholic Church views sex as a "necessary evil," not a good. If this is not the Catholic Church's position, either the Catholic Church's position has changed, or my church has got it wrong. So the clergy who take vows of celibacy do so for other reasons, not because sex is viewed as evil?
quote:
_You_ don't need to think that way; but until you understand that people did, I don't think you'll understand why "sex=cool and liberated / no-sex=uncool and repressed" equations don't work. You'll continue to project your own biases onto the time you're writing about.
They aren't my biases, they are my insecurities based on OTHER people's biases which are pronounced enough to become part of the culture. What's more, my insecurities just got a great big boost from having it confirmed in the last few months that I have a unique brain configuration making me see things differently from well over 99% of people living on this planet. THIS is what's "keeping me from getting laid"--PERIOD. I AM CONVINCED OF THIS! I am not, REPEAT NOT, gay, frigid, religious fanatic, or man-hating radical feminist, and I'm not even ugly, so that limits possible explanations!
As far as actual relationships I've about given up but I am EXTREMELY WORRIED ABOUT MY WRITING due to the fact of being so very different from other people. If I am really *that* different, can I understand people enough to write about them, or is anything of interest to me going to be of enough interest to enough other people to even bother? Yet, look at someone like J. M. Barrie who some actual very VITAL physical and psychological differences. Okay, he was never going to write about sex--or want to. But he did write things that had meaning for many other people.
quote:
Which doesn't mean it won't sell -- Lord knows we've seen some travesties of historical misunderstanding out there -- but it won't be right.
Actually, I am out to be the anti-John Jakes, but it won't do simply to write about people who happen to behave differently than his characters. I have to BLOW THEM OUT OF THE WATER, DAMMIT! To do this I need proper ammunition.
quote:
The Gnostics and Manichees (and their variants) believed that the world was created by the Bad God of the Old Testament, and that everything made of matter was inherently evil; sex, being linked to procreation, was also evil. Only the Christ of the New Testament was good, and wholly spiritual; his body was an illusion.
THE ALBIGENSES ARE COMING! THE ALBIGENSES ARE COMING! Sorry, couldn't resist that, and had to get it out of my system. A lady I knew worked in a nursing home where an old lady patient regularly yelled that phrase. Now, having done a bit of reading on the crusades, I had an idea what Albigenses were. She had to look it up! And her question was: why in the world was an elderly nursing home patient in the American midwest worrying about attacking Albigenses?
quote:
Gnosticism and Manicheism were heresies. Augustine fought specifically against them.
Well, the pope led a couple of crusades against them. Much as burning people at the stake isn't really nice, it's just as well these ideas no longer thrive, not that they would anyway in today's hedonistic climate.
quote:
(There's also some irony in that post, in that Catholics are stereotypically known for their guilt, and Protestants tend not to be.)
That is darn ironic, as Catholics regularly confess their sins, which you'd think would be a good way of dumping them, rather than just brooding over them indefinitely. Maybe Protestants don't brood, just figure Jesus has their sins all bought and paid for, so why worry? Both kind of dangerous positions, really! A Catholic figures, well, it doesn't matter what I do because I can get pardoned for it, a Protestant, well, it doesn't matter because God forgives me--so why not do what I want? I guess I'm looking to write about a person who expects high standards of HIMSELF--and needs to have REASONS and rationale for holding the standards that he does, and what he considers right and wrong. I know fear of disease is a biggie, but can you write a whole book where one of a person's major motivations is not getting sick?
Nowadays they have abstinence support groups. Back then, I suppose there were no such things as social standards "expected" people in the "right" areas of society to remain virgins until marriage.
Just wondering if one can create a true maverick hero who isn't a rebel on this point! (OF COURSE he doesn't do other really antisocial things such as steal, either!)
(I haven't been in a Catholic church to worship since I was eight---and, all things considered, I'm not sorry.)
Celibacy of priests was instituted for multiple purposes: because of the superiority of virginity to marriage; because of the ability of the unmarried priest to be free to serve his congregation rather than a wife and children; and, much later, to avoid inheritance issues with respect to "sees", or parishes. But it is only a practice, not a dogma; the Pope could theoretically eliminate it. It is also specifically Roman Catholic. There are churches "in communion with" the Roman Catholic Church, acknowledging the Pope as leader (with reciprocal acknowledgements by the Pope) without using the same traditions, rites, and so on; and some of these churches have no prohibition against married priests. The Eastern Orthodox have married priests, and although they are not in communion with Rome, the married priests does not form a barrier to reconciliation.
That's probably more than you wanted to know, but there it is. Get me started...
quote:
As far as actual relationships I've about given up but I am EXTREMELY WORRIED ABOUT MY WRITING due to the fact of being so very different from other people.
I wouldn't worry that much. I don't know how you're different from other people, or which other people you're different from, but if you're really that different then you've got a built-in stereotype breaker: just make the character think like you do!
quote:
THE ALBIGENSES ARE COMING! THE ALBIGENSES ARE COMING!
Okay, that's either really weird or really funny. Not sure which yet...
quote:
> Gnosticism and Manicheism were heresies. Augustine fought specifically against them.Well, the pope led a couple of crusades against them. Much as burning people at the stake isn't really nice, it's just as well these ideas no longer thrive, not that they would anyway in today's hedonistic climate.
When there were actual battles against heretics, it was generally because they were perceived as a threat to the social order, not the spiritual one. They may have been blessed by the Pope, but they were called for and run by the temporal power. If you read the history of the Albigenses, for example, you see that people like St. Dominic tried to evangelize the Albigenses first -- the goal is to save soul, not kill them -- and only when territories got out of control politically did the troops start marching.
My history isn't perfect, so don't trust me on it, but from what I've been able to read, there's a lot more to European history than people tend to see on cursory examination.
quote:
Maybe Protestants don't brood, just figure Jesus has their sins all bought and paid for, so why worry?
I was talking stereotypes, not people -- you'll find all types in all denominations. People are still people. But for stereotypes, Jews have mothers, Catholics have Priests, Protestants have only their direct personal relationship with Jesus.
That said, yes, I've been accused, by virtue of being Catholic, of not believing that Christ died once and for all. The attitude of those Christians was "once saved, always saved." And yes, it can be a dangerous position for them to hold.
And yes, Confession, abused, can be as bad. From my perspective, it has the benefit of requiring you to acknowledge what you've done wrong to another person -- you can't sweep it under the rug -- and that person assigns you a penance that is generally supposed to help you keep from doing such things again.
quote:
I guess I'm looking to write about a person who expects high standards of HIMSELF--and needs to have REASONS and rationale for holding the standards that he does, and what he considers right and wrong.
I think you can write that person as almost any type of character, Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, or anything else. The Catholic who expects high standards of himself doesn't go to confession to eliminate guilt -- he does it because he knows he's gone below his standard, and he avails himself of the sacrament for support to live up to his ideals. The Protestant might latch onto Jesus's statement, "Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect". The Atheist might see himself as the latest product of evolution, with an obligation to ensure that the earth continues to move in the right direction instead of enduring catastrophes and having to start over (not that that fits your current story).
People of all stripes hold themselves to high standards. I don't think you need to explain it so much as just show it.
Regards,
Oliver
quote:
"Heresy" is what one side in a religious argument calls the other side.
I prefer Hilaire Belloc's definition, which you can find given and discussed in his book, _The Great Heresies_, here:
"Heresy is the dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein."
It has the merits of still matching what people mean when they use the word in non-religious situations, of implying more than an arbitrary he-said-she-said sort of disagreement, and of implying that the argument is crucial to the systems of thought involved. More importantly for everyday conversation, it means that the Gnostics were heretics, but Buddhists aren't.
More to the point, Belloc is right to focus on "the introduction of a novel denial" of some existing scheme, but there is no need for the scheme to be complete and self-supporting, or for it to be substantially dislocated by the denial. The existing scheme need only be orthodox.
To learn everything that there is to be known about UBB codes enabled on this board (and a few that aren't), click on the *UBB Code is ON link next to the text entry box on the "Reply to Topic" page. A little below that there is a link to the Smilies Legend.
Becoming an actual writer will make you different from 99% of the population at large. That's okay, because the percentage of people who actually read for pleasure on a regular basis is pretty small as well. Which brings us closer to the point. If your audience is receptive to reading a book about some antebellum fellow who believes (despite not being a Catholic) that sex outside of marriage would merely be disgusting and wrong, much like how we would consider sex with small children, then they are not going to have a problem with the character on that basis. That's what everyone here has been telling you.
That doesn't prevent there from being a problem on some other front, but you need to let go of your obsession with extramarital sex before you can deal with the real issue.
quote:
I wouldn't worry that much. I don't know how you're different from other people, or which other people you're different from, but if you're really that different then you've got a built-in stereotype breaker: just make the character think like you do!
He may well agree with me on some points, but my basis for thinking he doesn't think like me is that he doesn't have the same condition I have. So I worry, well, what does he think and why? That's why I ask so many questions--to see how my character agrees with or differs from normal people and their accepted standard.
I do think he has one REAL ADVANTAGE over anyone who's trying to remain a virgin *now*--sex not only wasn't as acceptable then, it simply wasn't as available.
Survivor, good point on requiring context to determine what heresy is. Relative to Christianity, no form of Buddhism is a heresy; relative to the Buddha's teachings, no doubt there are Buddhist heresies (though I'm not in a position to know).
I might agree with you on "complete", but the "self-supporting" aspect is important because there are plenty of times when novel ideas don't undermine the existing scheme. Thomas Aquinas's synthesis of Augustinian and Aristotelian thought is a good example; and although some people initially thought that Aquinas was a heretic, it was shown over time that his novelties didn't preclude any dogma (that is, it didn't go against the intellectual content of the religion). So in a sense, you're correct: the heresy undermines the scheme by being unorthodox; however, it's the self-supporting nature of the scheme that enables one to determine what is and what isn't unorthodox in the first place.
quote:
Even if you have a condition, you might be able to have the character think like you without having to explain why he thinks as he does. For one thing, lots of people have had "conditions" (loosely defined as "things they can't control that make them different from most other people") over the centuries. My father, for example, was borderline autistic, but nobody diagnosed that in those days.
Geez, I'd never guess you were related to anyone like that. (lol)
You make me feel SO much better!
quote:
That depends on what you mean by "available".
I mean, nowadays men have women practically attacking them to the point where they give in just because they get tired of fighting them off, whereas back then if a woman solicited a man for sex, she was either looking to make money, way desperate, or both.
quote:
I mean, nowadays men have women practically attacking them to the point where they give in just because they get tired of fighting them off,
If any women are doing that, they sure aren't doing it to me...
Anyway, as RN and ww indicate, this isn't something that happens to all men, and there's never been an age of this world where it didn't happen to some men. The difference is that in some ages it was perfectly acceptable for someone to reject such an advance obliquely and that severely limited the options of the aggressor. The point is that when everyone has greater freedom from undesireable sexual overtures, there is a lot more time to spend on negotiating desired matches that will lead to permanant relationships. In other words, socially accepted sex was more available, as well as being rather more discrete.
If your character is a "good prospect", then he'll be likely to seriously court a young lady he likes. One of the things he'll probably like about her is her chaste demeanor, which at the time was (interestingly and not entirely inappropriately) referred to as "virtue". I say it's not entirely inappropriate to call it "virtue" because I think that having sex with any guy who happens to come along is distinctly unmanly
Anyway, back to the subject. Nobody here has any problem with showing a man in antebellum Chicago acting like a man from antebellum Chicago. If it's simply not going to be possible for you, then ask yourself why you're trying to write about that period.
Anyhow, I've set up several problems for myself with this particular story. Might as well keep them all in the same thread. Not only is my character living in a time and place requiring a lot of research for me (I've visited Chicago, but not lived there and certainly not in 1860) but he is a very good-looking and generally smooth, cool sorta character. (Again, a way I can scarcely imagine being.) If I were writing about a guy who looks like Woody Allen I wouldn't even raise these questions, but--
--he is attractive to the opposite sex
--they are attractive to him
--he has enough social skills to interact with them fairly well.
Yes, three things of which I have virtually NO experience! I do understand that it was less common to go on "dates" back then--a couple wasn't as likely to spend a lot of time exclusively alone unless engaged or thinking of becoming engaged--which should keep him out of at least some potentially bad spots. And any nice woman would be discreet even if the guy was totally hot, which should also keep him out of some awkward situations. Still, interactions with the opposite sex is a factor with which I'll have to deal. Meaning--I'm having enough trouble writing about his courtship and marriage, without dealing with previous girlfriends, but a guy like that is pretty likely to have at least had girlfriends before being married!?!
quote:
quote:That depends on what you mean by "available".I mean, nowadays men have women practically attacking them to the point where they give in just because they get tired of fighting them off, whereas back then if a woman solicited a man for sex, she was either looking to make money, way desperate, or both.
I second the aboves. Who are these women, and where can I find them?
"Who are these women, and where can I find them?"
If you are a student at almost any university you will soon discover that getting an education can quickly become a secondary pursuit should you follow the urgings of your hormones. Should you give in to that urge, you will find it requires little to no effort. In fact the real effort is in rejecting these chances so that your GPA does not suffer.
As odd as it sounds, I know a number of guys who have successfully trolled for women on Sunday services at local churches. In fact women in the congregation often make a target
(according to a minister I know) of the bishop/priest/minister ofthe congregation. Explain it? You tell me. I've long since given up trying to make sense of it at all. In fact I've noticed that alcoholics, abusers and other dysfunctionals seem especially appealing to women. This sounds crazy, but others have noticed this as well.
Courtship was much easier back in a day when most of the troublesome details were handled by third parties...man, when's the last time that someone tried to set me up with her daughter? I must be getting old or something. Anyway, I'll point out that being too popular with the ladies would be a strike against your character back when marriage was the primary focus of courtship. That is, he wouldn't want to be popular with "the opposite sex", he'd want to make himself acceptable to a specific girl and her family. Particularly her father, though if he were smart he'd realize that impressing her mother was a very good idea.
Every single romantic interaction with a different female would have to be considered a failure, at a couple of different levels. For one thing, his lack of exclusivity would be a serious mark against him for any other prospect. And if he was serious about a girl in the past but didn't marry her, then he must have been dumped, right? Either that or his first pick turned out to be so horrible that he dumped her, which doesn't exactly count as "success in dating" either.
You might give this guy an outstanding reason that he hasn't ever been drawn into a match, despite his being attractive. He could be "married to the sea" or something like that (okay, not particularly likely in Chicago, but hey). In other words, he could be the kind of guy that isn't looking. Because if he was looking, and he's all that attractive, he'd be hooked up fairly quickly. Of course, that's a good way to give us some extra tension in the story, if he's already basically affianced. And since the competitive aspect would be worked out by third parties in that day, he'd probably be matched pretty well.
If you're talking about simple social interaction, like at events and such, then it's enough to have him be polite.
Still, if you want to do a character who's a social outsider or who simply isn't interested in marriage yet, then do that. Lots of guys didn't get married till much later in life back then. Sometimes a guy didn't become particularly "eligible" till after showing himself to be successful in other fields, like business or war or whatever. And there wasn't any stigma attached to it, as long as he wasn't playing around in the meantime.
Does this solve the issue a little *too* easily? It's not a romance book or about a guy looking to get hooked up. Just wondering if readers will wonder, if he's so damn attractive, and doesn't have major serious personality flaws, why aren't the women hitting on him? I do have to have them hit on him a little, or something, as a third-party means of getting it across that he is so outrageously gorgeous--it certainly wouldn't do to either have him looking in the mirror, or have other guys making such remarks, as a way of ascertaining this.
Oh, one funny real-life anecdote here. I went to a dance once with this guy in high school. He was a little older, possibly a senior or even a college man, and I swear to God asked me to the dance because he was sorry for me, seeing me knock myself out decorating for this dance that no one asked me to and even fellow decoraters were ignoring me. The guy was SERIOUSLY OUTRAGEOUSLY GORGEOUS--I mean, for people attracted to the preppie football player hearty Ken doll type, whereas I go more for the thin, dark, brooding type. I had this friend who asked numerous times to see the dance photo, then would look at it and say she couldn't believe it, then later ask to look at it again. Well, years later I asked what became of this guy. He had a respectable job as a minister, but someone told me he was not married. He must have been at least late 30s by then. When I asked why not, this person said, "He tries too hard." Seriously, this is life with a true-life example!
"Sure they're funny...but they don't happen in real life."
]
Ya right. Just ask Mary Laterno - and since then there have been a rash of male students seduced by a teacher.
In the corporate world the number of suits filed by male subordinates against their female supervisor/managers is growing quickly. The reason for the charges? The men are often given a simple ultimatum - sex or face being demoted or even fired.
Of course, my big problem with all my writing is obsessing about the things I don't know, or "might get wrong," rather than what I do know and feel is right about it.
[This message has been edited by CoriSCapnSkip (edited January 04, 2007).]
Thus, if you didn't want to get married, all you had to do was avoid the attention of older female relatives with genetic agendas. There were serious drawbacks to this system, mostly for those young women who didn't have good chaperones to find them a fiance. But that was the system.
Why are you trying to set your story there if you know absolutely nothing about the most basic social customs of the era? I'm really wondering by now.
As for my own story--the hero is an outsider--back and forth--from a prominent family, but estranged from them. And the girl he ends up with is an orphan "or something," living in someone's house as a poor relation or servant. No living, responsible, older female relatives. I'm still working out where she came from and what happened to them. It is my most difficult problem right now. I DO know of the people she is living with, the LAST thing they'd be thinking about is setting her up!
On the subject of heresy, I'll throw in a plug for the book "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton.
It's pretty damned good, even though G.K. (a catholic) consigns protestants (specifically Calvinists) to the pit of eternal damnation. At least he's intellectually honest about the implications of his belief in orthodoxy, unlike the effete prevarications of other catholics I know, who insist that the catholic church constitutes the only body of Christ, but at the same time lack the courage to admit the logically compelled collorary that protestants like me are therefore not part of the body of Christ. G.K. ain't afraid to follow his ideas to their logical endpoint, and for that I admire him.
On the topic of sex, and particularly on the topic of not getting laid because of being substantially mentally different from everyone else, I say "use what you've got." My thought processes have been shown to be substantially different in kind than everyone elses, and at first that hindered my romantic endeavors. As I grew older and wiser (or wilier), I used my mental uniqueness as an asset, and had to beat them off with a stick until my wife came along. Now she beats them with the stick if they even look at me, then beats me for good measure. ; )
And humans do lie about stuff. Call it false memories if you will.
Culture is highly variable. My own ancestors on both sides had all sort of marriage arrangments. If you were writing about 19th century Chinese petty nobility...but you aren't. But the personal histories of early Mormons were probably more illuminating. Establishing the practice of plural marriage took great effort. It wasn't easy to get upstanding men to accept it...often it was far easier to get upstanding women to embrace the concept. These guys were not looking for chances to get extra helpings. Of course there was a highly selective oversight process in place, generally the kind of man who would be looking for license would not be permitted to exercise it through these marriages, which had to be authorized by the Church. But while they may not have been representative in a statistical sense of a general population, they did represent the confrontation of an established sexual morality with a non-monogamous practice.
The resistance was not superficial. These men had lived fundamentally monogamous lives, they were not ready to accept anything else. Nor were they readily able to maintain the practice in secrecy, rumours of polygamy were abroad before anyone actually entered a plural marriage. The lesson is clear. Not only were upstanding men of their previous cultural affiliation not eager to explore past the bounds of monogamy, they were not easily able to do so secretly. Taking them as a sample, it seems abundently clear that a lot of antebellum Americans were not getting any on the side.
As for the particulars of your story...I think it's necessary to understand why and in what sense he's estranged from his family. There are various reasons for that kind of thing, and some lead naturally to the interpretation of an iconoclastic outlook with regards to contemporary sexual morality.
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I can't think of anyone who thinks Superman is a wimp.
yeah his clothes make him a wimp and so do those green rocks... long live batman!
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited January 07, 2007).]
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited January 08, 2007).]
Assuming there were only about three ways sex outside of marriage was "available" in the given time and place:
--Guy is so desperate he seeks the services of prostitutes.
--Has an affair with a "kept woman" not of his class or whatever.
--Desperate older woman pulls a "Mrs. Robinson" on him, and no, sorry, I don't know names and numbers of these women!
So my problem is, when he gets to the war, and a group of guys is going out whoring and invites him to go along, certainly he says, "No, thank you," but what is he THINKING?
As he's not a religious freak, I'm pretty sure he's NOT thinking, "I would, but God's gonna burn me if I do."
If he's *not* thinking, "Geez, I really want to," is he a total wimp?
If he's thinking, "The only reason I don't is fear of sexually transmitted disease," is he sensible or just shallow?
If he's thinking, "You guys are sorry losers, reckless, etc., to suggest such a thing," is he an insufferable prig? (I have to make it clear he is NOT!)
So, I have to get inside his head. I think he is confused on some levels. He is not the only one!
I would barely be able to register the concept that it was supposed to be "sexual activity". It's POO!, would be my reaction. Yes, I know that there are individuals who claim to derive some kind of sexual satisfaction from eating poo or watching others do so, but it's sort of like the hot wax right on the genitals thing...I've heard of it, but that doesn't mean I really believe it.
Of course "actual sex" should be fundamentally different. Even if he's disgusted by the thought of a prostitute, I'd think that his instincts would have some say in the matter should he be confronted with a reasonably healthy woman offering sexual gratification. He might still feel horrified, but he'd probably feel tempted. There's also the question of whether he's an officer or not. If you're talking about the Civil War, they were handing out commissions to pretty much anybody who had any higher education at all. It would be very...demeaning to visit the same prostitutes as the enlisted men. Even among the enlisted men, the volunteers would probably feel distinct shame about patronizing the same whores as the draftees. Also, units were drawn from localities, so you would know the other men from back home...it wouldn't be very anonymous. It took years for the war to change the rules as much as it did, and it didn't change the existing society so much as affect the moral culture of the frontier.
If he went to fight somewhere in Europe (for some fool reason), it would be very different. It would take a serious attachment to definite moral principles to resist the various influences he'd encounter, whether as a junior officer or enlisted (and traveling to Europe to enlist would make him one hell of a damnfool, besides). The class structure meant that prostitution was far more common, and even rape was considered a normal part of pretty much any investment of a populated area, the question was whether you restricted rape to the servent classes and left the upper class women alone.
Also, you need to consider what kind of loner he is. Is he somebody that simply doesn't enjoy ordinary companionship that much? That would tend to immunize him against peer pressure, and it would make him less likely to seek out sexual gratification from common women. Those two factors combine powerfully in the event, he might really not be interested in having sex even if a healthy young female was presented. On the other hand, perhaps he's out of step with conventional morality...no, I think you already foreclosed that option.
Anyway, why are you suddenly sending him to war?
He goes to the Civil War only because he's interested in the issues at stake and feels it's his duty to be there--not because he gets off on shooting people or thinks he'll be away from family influences and more able to do things he wouldn't at home.
It would be hard for me to write about a VERY social person as I'm not one myself. I do think he is extremely smart, and impatient, unwilling to suffer fools gladly, or quietly! This would work towards waaay cutting down on any close regular circle of friends.
So this is why it can be true that an awful lot of women are desperate to get with guys AND many guys are lonely. All the women want the dude with a peacock's tail. While they don't like to compete for competitions sake, they do absorb what this "peacock's tail" is from their friends.
Does that make any sense? 'Cause honestly, not everything ya'll are saying is connecting with my brain.
Is understanding all these permutations of catholic this-and-that really essential to this character?
Has you're question at the start been answered? If not, then, as you well know there are plenty of mormons on this site and it's not uncommon nor considered unmanly to be a virgin at the time of marriage. To that last point the opposite applies, you know the old saying 'only those who resist temptation know it's real power'.
So in the mind of some religious men, the preservation of virtue -- whatever that virtue may be -- in the face of temptation, opposition or trial, is a mark of true manhood.
That idea is an important one. The old 'he who rules his tongue is greater than he who takes a city' scenario.
PS: It seems this character is guided by his assurance of the correctness of his inner vision rather than by external pressures. This is a fantastic insight into what most men would consider true manhood. Though now considered schmaltzy the sentiment in Rudyard Kipling's If is what I am alluding to.
this 'standing fast' quality. The ability to weather the tumult and emerge undiminished.
I know you probably a well aware of this poem, but here's a link anyway if you're interested in a genuine late Victorian take on manhood. IF.
PPS: In my opinion in the above scenario he would just be thinking, 'That's wrong.' or 'I'm not like that.' and try not to think about it at all after that. The worst trial a man like this can face is having a companion who has morals just as high as his own and whom the MC holds in high regard, but who then chooses to ignore those standards and knows exactly what arguments to produce in order to undermine the MC's objections.
I don't know if that last paragraph makes sense.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited January 18, 2007).]
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PPS: In my opinion in the above scenario he would just be thinking, 'That's wrong.' or 'I'm not like that.' and try not to think about it at all after that. The worst trial a man like this can face is having a companion who has morals just as high as his own and whom the MC holds in high regard, but who then chooses to ignore those standards and knows exactly what arguments to produce in order to undermine the MC's objections.
Yes, that is relevant and exactly the situation he is facing. If the person closest to him was supporting his ideals, he wouldn't have such a struggle. But neither is this person trying to make "converts" to the "dark side"--just justify his own actions. Very confusing for the main character with all the equivocating!
Yes, he does enter the conflict primarily due to the slavery issue, with perhaps preservation of the union second. And, I am not suddenly throwing him into the war--it was always my intention to write about the war but I am writing things that happen before and after it as well.
People in that time had other stuff to worry about. I don't know what it was, that's your job. Sexual literacy was not one of them.
--He is under 18 (five months to be exact) when the war breaks out. You had to be over 18 to even (legally) join, and, remember, everyone thought the war would be over in a month. I doubt he even went into combat until his 18th birthday--may have been in training, in the home guard or whatever--then extremely unlikely someone at that age even with a perfect record would become an officer right away.
--He has an extreme temper--enough to clash with superiors without particular fear of the consequences--cares a lot more about being "right" than staying out of trouble. He would, for quite some time at first, not be promoted, or, if promoted, be demoted. If he left the war as an officer, he certainly did not go in as one.
The fear of not knowing whether, in your extremity, your friends will stick by you or abandon you is very real and may cause him to act differemtly than he would normally.
The last thing he would do would be to ask them that question. He would be likely to receive a 'what sort of blokes do you think we are?' style response and that would make his position more precarious, exposing his weakness/insecurities and introducing additonal doubts/reservations into the minds of his companions.
What he does not realise is that once he has proved himself by sticking to his principles a few times, a group of blokes will usually begin to stick up for him too.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited January 21, 2007).]
I do find it unlikely that the whole group would go looking for prostitutes. It would be a smaller group within it, probably a group with a nucleus of one or two men.
However survivor's point about social isolation is not necessarily true in all cases.
In the event that the character was already an outsider at home, the fear for him would be that of a return to social isolation.
The MC could in theory migrate to another small group of friends but if he had little rapport with his fellows in the first place then acceptance is far from guaranteed.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited January 22, 2007).]
I've recently read an article, printed in 1880, telling how in 1879, the downtown business district burned to the ground... all seven blocks of it.
I mention all that for this reason: the aforementioned newspaper article lists the businesses that replaced those that burned. Of the long, long list of newly constructed businesses, there were 13 saloons and two liquor stores... in a seven block area. This doesn't count the high-brow hotels that had "billard rooms" for drinking and smoking. A fair number of those saloons had bordellos in them that were active until they were shut down in the 1930's. I remember reading once there were 20 bordellos in the red light district in our town. Keep it all in perspective... this would have been a community of probably less than 10,000 people. It ain't New York.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the services of a prostitute were easy to access. Mountain men, gold miners, soldiers, laborers, seamen, railroad workers... you name it, in an old west boom town, "fallen women" were a dime a dozen.
dunno if that helps in the discussion or not, but them's the facts from the Old West.
If you look at the psychological research, the easiest way to get a strong, attractive man who's a virgin in his twenties is to give him a mother in your story. If he sees his mother as beautiful, loving, and strong, if he respects her as a person, he's much less likely to see the girls around him as sex toys, more likely to treat women as human beings, as equals. The same qualities that keep him from having casual sex will make him a more desirable catch. But then, of course, the only woman he'll want to mary must be beautiful, loving and strong.
By the way, even in romance novels, the mere fact that he's a virgin doesn't mean he can't please her. Let his father, or a father figure, or even his mother, have the "marriage talk" with him, where they tell him to concentrate on her desire, her fears, her pleasure, before he lets himself be carried away. This was a common talk to have with young men at least through the 1950's.
Strong, attractive men can remain virgins if they respect women, see them as equals, and are waiting for sex to mean more than momentary gratification. Of course, then you're going to have a problem. If it's madatory that he NOT be a virgin when he marries (though I can't concieve of how this could be), you'll have a hard time getting him to visit a whore before his wedding, since this would be a betrayal of his values. Which makes him less desirable, less a lovable MC.
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Thanks, I didn't know the Catholic Church's position on this. My church teaches that the Catholic Church views sex as a "necessary evil," not a good. If this is not the Catholic Church's position, either the Catholic Church's position has changed, or my church has got it wrong. So the clergy who take vows of celibacy do so for other reasons, not because sex is viewed as evil?
Cori, dear, do your research! Don't ever just accept what one group says about another's beliefs! You're online here, so I KNOW you can do searches on yahoo or google. As for your "unique brain configuration", I'm not sure as to which configuration you refer, but most of us here aren't your average joe or jane. That's why we write!
I'm an ex-mensa member. Being eligible for mensa puts me outside 99% of the population; having decided that mensa folks were boring as hell puts me god knows where! Add my ADD and my obsessive-compulsive tendencies, my world-view being shattered at the age of three by a mother who explained how light and sound travel at different speeds, fracturing my world into bits carried by different senses, leaving me wondering in what other ways the world wasn't as it seemed . . . Add, too, my photographic memory, and the songs that always play in my head (audiographic memory), and tell me I'm more normal than you are, hon.
The Catholic clergy take vows of celebacy because of Paul's letters to the churches (New Testament) where he tells them that a man would be hard-pressed to be a decent husband and a good pastor, too, given the times they lived in.
If you must have Christian grounding for what your characters do, #1, read your Bible. I mean really read it, as though it were a novel or a history, which it is. But always do your research where the background of your characters differs from your own.
Education: very good up until age 16 or so, then interrupted by some trouble he got into. Unless he skipped a grade earlier, he didn't have a high school diploma, or earned it after the war.
As for worrying whether he'd look weird in comparison to other men, average or not: it's a manifestation of my own obsession. Will I look weird in front of other historical novelists, particularly male ones obsessed with casual sex? (Think John Jakes.)
As for my brain, I missed being eligible for Mensa by nine lousy I. Q. points!
Kidding, kidding. Though one does get the feeling that Mensa is culturally dominated by its 98th percentile members...at least that's how I always felt about them. Boy, how's that for effete snobbery?
What about his father?
I don't think CSCS needs to agonise over this. Make a decision and you can justify it a million ways. OSC reckons you can do anything so long as you're willing to pay the price, ie either the price of developing an appropriate back-story or the price of letting the plausibility slip and risk losing some readers.
Clearly you want to produce a book, but what outcome do you wish to achieve? Flattering peer review? To tell a story? The widest possible readership? Knowing the answer to those sort of questions and what outcomes are your priorities will help define what price you should be willing to pay and, in comparison, whether you are paying too much or too little.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited January 23, 2007).]
Low-end objective: be better than John Jakes!
High-end objective: take my place among the literary greats in producing works towering and immortal.
Super-short explanation: I was judging by "What might modern readers think of an author who writes such things in fiction?" NOT by "What might characters living in that time and place think of such a character?" I can see certain readers, particularly male, picking up my book and thinking, "Who is this naive small-town unsophisticate who is so stupid as not to KNOW that 95% of people have sex before marriage AS A MATTER OF COURSE? What kind of nonsense is she trying to pull here?" I also worry not what other people, real or fictional, might think about my character, but what he might worry they are thinking about him--since I must understand *his* thoughts.
[This message has been edited by CoriSCapnSkip (edited January 25, 2007).]
Like I've said, anyone that is so culturally unsophisticated as to believe that the sexual revolution changed nothing about sexual activity in this country and that no culture has no impact on personal relationship choices isn't going to be interested in reading anything remotely historical. So you have nothing to worry about. Write to the readers who might actually read your book.
My main character's role models are Grandfather and Uncle, with Father and two Brothers as bad examples.
Someone mentioned Kinsey. An article in the "Reader's Digest," also not the most trustworthy source, still REALLY provided food for thought. It alledged that Kinsey gained most of his information from a very few people, the main one being a sex pervert who had served time for his crimes. He then wrote that "most people" indulge in certain activities (sex with kids, animals, multiple partners, etc.) Many people read the study and said, "Oh, GEE, what kind of chump am I to have been missing out on all this great stuff that 'most people' do? Gotta get busy!" Hence, the "Sexual Revolution" occurred largely due to this.
In case I didn't explain enough about my characters, the reason the question of this specific subject is important, in their particular case, is we're talking about adventurous people (hunter/explorer/soldier types) who didn't stay put in civilized settlements or necessarily just take other people's word for anything. I wonder if it is unrealistic to portray such people behaving in a [S]sensible[/S] conservative manner regarding sex. I can even write to some extent about a character who is reckless--I just have trouble writing about one who is stupid or takes unnecessary risks with himself and others--in other words, one I don't respect. Also, I understand men are MUCH less discriminating than women, but this doesn't necessarily apply to all men. Even if I write about a character with either high standards (respects women) or just shallow (won't do it with anyone not as good-looking as he is, and he's in the top 1%, so--) wonder if readers will respect or believe him if he's not like something I wonder whether I can write about at all. It's a real problem.
What's got me all rattled is the vast chasm between "Casanova" and "total virgin." It seems to cover a LOT of territory! Also, not talking about a guy who would ravish a virgin or really hit on any woman who wasn't asking for it--well, I guess that would take care of a lot of potential situations right there-- 
--we don't even have to "assume" opportunities were way less in the 1860s, that's a GIVEN--what I'm asking is a little more complicated. Would the character question his OWN manhood for not going out and looking for it, knowing others do--and I assume this would apply more to a naturally sociable person than a total loner? And, if he did question his manhood, what would he do? Give in to what he knows has serious dangers and was taught was wrong? Prove his aggression in other ways, like getting in a lot of fights and beating up guys? Or, not say anything till someone said something to him first, then skewer them with sarcasm? My MC is what you might call defensive without being insecure, if that combination makes sense at all. By the way, this is an EXTREMELY honest person who would NOT lie or brag about anything he hadn't actually done, or encourage another person through any sort of deceit to do anything he wouldn't himself--I do know THIS much for FACT. Thanks for your consideration.
[This message has been edited by CoriSCapnSkip (edited May 19, 2007).]
Good luck
destiny
edited because I really can spell....
[This message has been edited by I am destiny (edited May 25, 2007).]
[This message has been edited by CoriSCapnSkip (edited May 26, 2007).]
Thank you for thinking of it and to everyone else thanks for the lively support of the subject.
[This message has been edited by jeffrey.hite (edited June 14, 2007).]
So sure, have your male MC be a virgin if you wish. It shouldn't even be an issue.
Matt
I would like to know when loss of virginity became a rite of passage for males and that one was not really considered grown up until it happened. I am GUESSING American popular culture starting in the 1920s, but that's just a guess. Not saying stuff didn't happen before then, just wondering when it became the expected "norm."
Also _Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences_, by Laura M. Carpenter (2005) covers this very issue.
[This message has been edited by CoriSCapnSkip (edited June 18, 2007).]
Matt