Is the idea that the girl should hold out still pretty prevalent in today's society?

I don’t exactly look at it that way. For me, personally, I need to know (or at least to think) that a man is interested in a real relationship for me to want to get involved with him sexually. I may be physically attracted to him, but for me, being in a real monogamous relationship is the only way the sexual thing is going to work for me. For me, there is no such thing as casual sex, although I know it works out perfectly fine for some people. There’s nothing inherently wrong with casual sex, but for me, the love and the sex and the comittment stuff all need to go together.

Oh so many issues..I do hate how people think that if she ‘gives it up’ (as if sex by her is something to give and sex by him is something to take) LATER, that it makes a differene as if the ONLY reason why he’d stick around longer is if she makes him wait longer…as if there is nothing beyond sex in a relationship or anything else worth waiting for…

The reason why the advice is on the lips of those women is because they know that women, to this day, are only as worth as their sex and so to hold off sex is to have power, any power, in a world where women don’t have power (shut up Beyonce, with your ‘girls rule the world’ song)...it’s a vicious circle…whether this is wisdom or not…eh…conventional wisdom, I suppose…based on sad experiences…

Instead, we should not raise boys who think they’re entitled to sex or that they should only care about scoring or that that’s how you measure your manhood. Maybe people need to think about how sex is not about trapping or tripping or sneaking or whatever and just be. Of course that’d be harder than this bs war of the sexes everyone plays.

It’s probably suggested, but I doubt if it’s prevalent.

Actually, I hope so. Not because “I don’t think females should be independent and free sexual beings”. No. But because it keeps both “sides” honest.

I think men should be the same way.

I encourage girls and boys to remain virgin till marriage. Besides the obvious risk of pregnancy, they is a lot of nasty STD’s out there, and some are incurable. It is true that a virgin has an innate value (male or female) part of it is that their partner can be assured they are 100% STD free.

I think so but with a slight twist from decades before. Once, women were told to keep their virginity or at least keep their sexual escapades hidden so that they’d be more appealing as possible wives for men who would want to believe and everyone around them believe “they were the first ones there”.

Anymore, when women (like me) counsel others to hold out, it’s not for any thought of virtue or to think they’ll catch better husbands. It’s the idea that holding off for awhile and getting to know if the motives of the guy/girl she wants to have sex with are in line with what she wants out of the experience also. In this way, there can be less frustration, less letdown, less hurt.

@DrBill Sex is not the only way you can get STDs, especially AIDS. There are many virgins out there who have it because their mother had it.

@Aethelflaed

staying virgin will drastically reduce the odds of them contacting STD’s including AIDS

I don’t think so. Yes, I think that you should wait if you’re looking for a serious relationship, but I don’t see anything wrong with fooling around here and there so long as you’re careful. Sex is infinitely more than just a sign of love, and that should be noted as far as “waiting” goes. For there are times where the world has dealt you such a bad hand that you need to find a release in somebody to cope. Even spiritually. I’ve heard of meditative sex where you feel as your partner and become more in tuned with their body and their mind through intercourse.

However, women shouldn’t be considered loose or spoiled if they do have sex, because it is perfectly natural. The deciding factor should take more of the circumstances ie “was she careful”, “why did she have it”?, and the same should be said for men. After all, sex is a duality, so both parties should be considered. Unfortunately, it isn’t always the woman’s decision to give up their virginity, and that should be considered, too.

Either way, it is only the business of the person who’s body it is. Whether or not a man or woman has sex should only be the concern of those partaking. Our society judges so much upon it, even today, but it shouldn’t be for them to judge. And there is much more to this matter, since how one goes about partaking in such things is more reflective of one’s personality, but those are matters for another thread.

That advice is still out there, and I hate it because it implies that sex is the only thing women have to offer- it’s the only card we have, so we have to play it at the right time. What if we thought of men, and marriage, as a bonus or an extra in an already-fulfilling life? That advice wouldn’t be relevant anymore.

I’ll be perfectly honest and say that having lost my virginity at 22 to my first boyfriend still seems incredibly old-fashioned, and I often wish I had fooled around in my younger years, as seems to be the trend. Everything wundayatta says is perfectly legitimate. I actually do feel a little out of place sometimes. I feel like most girls lost it way before me and had more partners. It’s just hard to explain why I never wanted to fool around. I think I just have a very old-fashioned mentality. I wanted love and all that crap to come with sex. But it’s different for all women. But don’t criticize those of us who maybe decided to wait for a good guy. We’re starting to get a bad rep lately.

Lol.. I know if I hadn’t waited as long as I did (I don’t consider a month and a half long) to have sex with him he’d still be around for me. I just enjoyed pulling his chain a little.

@Haleth Don’t forget cooking, doing his dirty laundry, picking his socks off of the ground, raising his children…

I think everyone should do what they feel comfortable with so long as they’re safe, and emotionally stable.

Nobody is emotionally stable. There are arguments for and against both ‘loose’ women and women who need relationships. As for me, I’ve seen a FWB destroy a friend’s emotional state. I’ve seen her degraded. I’ve seen her practically fall in love with a man (not a man, a boy) who wouldn’t even walk her out to the subway. I have another one who has 2 or 3 guys every week and always deliriously, with a cracked voice, tells me she’s happy (and then tells me she wants her ex back). As for me, I’m incredibly overprotected, too comfortable, afraid of change, clinging to stability too much, not open-minded enough, tending to be self-righteous. So there is probably more wrong emotionally with me than with these girls.

Eh, I see what you’re saying. maybe I mean: emotionally aware vs. emotionally stable. ...

I guess I’m aware of being emotionally unstable. :D

Hahaha <33 well, when you know something, at least it’s something that can be addressed if so desired. I’m sort of up and down as well at times i suppose but I’m fairly intune with myself.

I’m not a highly emotional person really- but i definitly think way too much :

@thesparrow It sounds like you’re just cautious, having seen what your friends went through. I’ve made mistakes and gone for the wrong person, and it can be a shitty experience, but it’s a learning experience. I wouldn’t want to do it again and it’s definitely understandable to want to protect yourself from that.

Thank you, Haleth. But I feel these experiences are rudimentary to human life, and who knows what will happen in the future, right?

Anybody, male or female, who can’t keep their pants on outside of marriage ought to be considered loose.

@Nullo I’d rather be loose than have my panties in a bunch. :p

I don’t think society has ever changed its opinions on this subject. Women now are less secretive about their sexual experience but they are still and always have been judged differently than men. Mostly on the number of partners, men with many partners are still studs and women still loose.

I agree with @Neizvestnaya and tell all young people to be damned careful and selective because there is no form of birth control besides abstinence that is 100% foolproof. There are other ways to be intimate and explore, don’t go the “whole way” unless you are ready to be parents. Both girls and boys should have this hammered into their heads!

Interesting question.

I think “holding out” prevents this situation from arising: guy likes girl enough to sleep with her, but isn’t all that interested in her. Of course, that situation is just fine if the girl only likes the guy enough to sleep with him and isn’t all that interested in him.

And I think the stereotype of women getting more emotionally invested after sex holds some truth. I have seen it go the other way (the guy gets invested and the girl doesn’t) but that seems to be rarer.

I kind of “held out” with my current partner, in hopes of avoiding that situation. It was probably unnecessary, but our first time together ended up being pretty awesome as a result.

Same here, nikipedia, but it seemed to get better as we progressed. Maybe because I was a virgin. The first time was short and unspectacular. Now it’s through the roof. I’m very happy with my sex life.

Yeah, it’s back. I don’t think it ever went away. There was a time when women had the pill and they could be sexually adventurous, but then AIDS came about and shoved it all down the crapper. Recently, the move towards abstinence-only sex-ed brings it back a lot, because not only does it say that the only way to not get pregnant or STDs (which, obviously, not entirely true), it also reinforces traditional gender roles and female virginity as a commodity. Gems like “Your body is a wrapped lollipop. When you have sex with a man, he unwraps your lollipop and sucks on it. It may feel great at the time, but, unfortunately, when he’s done with you, all you have left for your next partner is a poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled sucker” come up a lot, as does pledging your virginity to your father until he can hand it off to your husband. There’s actually a really good book on this entire issue, The Purity Myth (also good, Yes Means Yes which talks about this issue as well and issue of consent and moving away from an absence of no to actively having a yes). So while I’m disgusted by it, let’s not discount the power of the Christian Right. Or, for that matter, how many older women who once thought that the idea of holding out was crap have now become more conservative with age, and have become disillusioned and things haven’t worked out, so they aren’t so sure that not holding out isn’t the way to go. And it is really hard to move away from the idea of virginity and sex as a commodity when it’s been steeped in our culture for thousands of years – way more than a couple decades of some groups saying “nah-uh!”.

But, I’m totally with you. The idea that my vagina is milk, and why would any guy ever buy me/the cow (nothing turns me on like talking about me like I’m property) is vile. I’ve never gotten the idea that if a man just wanted sex, I could be assured he wouldn’t dump me once he got it so long as I waited x number of dates to put out (and I think waiting till marriage to have sex is like buying a car without test driving it). And why on Earth would I want to marry a man who only cared about my reproductive system, and not me? I don’t want to trick someone into being married; I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life than be in a marriage where I didn’t know if he actually liked me or just the access to my womanly parts. But, the idea is out there, in “science”, in the media, in liberal tv shows that you’d think wouldn’t dream of putting it in there…. There was an article I read awhile ago that said that a possible reason that people who hook up sooner in a relationship don’t have relationships that last as long is because so many don’t necessarily want to. So all the people who are just looking for one-night stands, or 2 week flings, or just a casual relationship but marriage/babies/etc is off the table tend to make the statistical number of long-term relationships lower. But that that lower number doesn’t mean that the people in those relationships, however short they may be, are unsatisfied with them or wouldn’t call them a success. And it said that if both partners are looking for a long-term thing and are compatible, whether they have sex on the first date or the twentieth isn’t really going to have an impact on if they work out or not.

I think so. I don’t think that a lot of girls do hold out, but I definitely think it’s the widely established perspective that they ‘should.’

I still hear guys being applauded for having sex with lots of girls, but girls being condemned (by girls and guys alike) for either having sex early in a relationship or for having sex when they’re not in a relationship.

If anyone’s interested, I finally found that article/study about hooking up early in a relationship. Also, my research skills and Google-fu are pretty much unstoppable, if I do say so myself. :)

Ya, but people shouldn’t be judged either way. I am a monogamous person, a ‘clinger’ one might even say (i.e. when I find a man I think seriously, not in terms of a fling or a casual affair). I think long-term. Some of my friends think this is out of the picture for them. I have friends who like to sleep around with randoms just to have fun, and I know because of my emotional makeup THIS is out of the picture for ME. I don’t judge them. They are just what they are, just as I am what I am.