Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 2: “Are We Having Fun Yet?

Chapter 2, Section 1 Summary and Analysis: “Why Do You Think They Call It a Blow ‘Job’?”

Orenstein observes that the vocabulary for romance and sex among adolescents has changed, as it often does between generations. In the first phase of a relationship, a girl might be “talking” to someone. “Hooking up” means anything from kissing to intercourse. “Catching feelings,” which girls try to protect themselves from, happens when she develops an emotional attachment to another person. The proverbial “bases” have changed too: First base is still making out, but second base is manual stimulation, and third base is oral sex.

Oral sex used to largely be considered more intimate than intercourse, but it’s become more common and less meaningful for younger generations. This has led to what Orenstein refers to as “blow job panic” among adults. Blow jobs are one step past making out, and teenagers tend to not consider them as actual sex. The number one reason girls perform oral sex is to “improve their relationships” (53). Yet, in Orenstein’s exchanges with her interviewees, she learns that the girls gave blow jobs as a way to emotionally distance themselves from their partners, seemingly protecting themselves from the investment they feared would arise from intercourse. For girls, oral sex was for their partner’s happiness; for boys, it was for physical pleasure.

Orenstein finds that girls often give oral sex to avoid feeling guilty about not having intercourse with a boy. There was no physical pleasure for the girls she interviewed; instead, they experienced blow jobs as a kind of chore, and any satisfaction came from a job well done. “The concern with pleasing, as opposed to pleasure” (55) showed up throughout Orenstein’s interviews. Performing oral sex sometimes made the girls feel empowered as active partners in sexual situations, but giving oral sex just as often came from feeling threatened, pressured to comply, or like they had no choice. As one girl made clear about time spent alone with any of her guy friends, “It’s not that they’d force themselves on you; it’s that there would be pressure. There would be disappointment. And there might be tension in our relationship if it didn’t happen” (57).

In our patriarchal society, girls have long been our culture’s sexual gatekeepers, responsible for boys’ sex drives and satisfaction. Orenstein’s interviews reveal that today, blow jobs are a fallback solution: a way for girls to satisfy and please a partner without having sex or otherwise involving themselves too far. Beyond appeasing boys, though, Orenstein concludes that oral sex is just another way that girls continue to be compromised when it comes to sex.

Chapter 2, Section 2 Summary and Analysis: “It’s Sacred Down There. Also Icky.”

Most sex education programs teach about only the internal, reproductive parts of the female body, and no one teaches teenage girls about desire and pleasure. The girls Orenstein interviewed mostly had never had an orgasm with a partner, and only about one-third masturbated. Orenstein finds that most girls feel insecure about their vaginas, and they can’t enjoy oral sex because of that. She cites a study that shows women who don’t feel comfortable with their genitals are less sexually satisfied, have fewer orgasms, and are more likely to engage in risky, sexual behavior. Likewise, girls who gave blow jobs at younger ages tended to be less sexually satisfied over time, while girls who received oral sex earlier tended to be more sexually satisfied.

Chapter 2, Section 3 Summary and Analysis: “The Psychological Clitoridectomy”

According to Debby Herbenick, an associate professor at Indiana University’s School of Public Health, young women’s genital self-image is worse than ever before. Young women now wax, shave, decorate, or otherwise groom their vulvas before sex so they won’t be judged. There’s a sense of shame about vulvas in their natural state. Girls claim to do it for themselves—for comfort, hygiene, and practicality—but they also do it to avoid humiliation. Meanwhile, hairless vulvas are more vulnerable to STDs. More young women are getting cosmetic labiaplasty, which is the surgical clipping of the labial folds.

Orenstein reports that anal sex among young adults is on the rise, largely due to pornography. According to studies, boys tend to push for it in a sense of competition with other boys. Anal sex has taken oral sex’s place as the new “will she do it or not?” (71). Despite its increased presence in casual sex, girls consistently report anal sex as painful. Herbenick says:

It’s a metaphor, a symbol in one concrete behavior for the lack of education about sex, the normalization of female pain, and the way what had once been stigmatized has, over the course of a decade, become expected (71).

After decades of being stigmatized, anal sex is becoming more common among teens. Orenstein notes that it’s become yet another way girls’ desires get lost in the sexual culture of teens as it can be painful for girls if not done properly, and, since sex education classes focus on anatomy and reproduction instead of pleasure, there’s nothing about anal sex or how to do it safely in most classes.

With this, Orenstein cites that women are four times more likely than men to engage in sexual acts they don’t want or like to do. Women are also more likely to use negative language and describe pain, depression, and degradation when recounting unsatisfying sex. A problem with these studies, though, is that men and women have different experiences of what sexually satisfied or unsatisfied means: Women tend to base their satisfaction on whether their partner is satisfied, whereas men base their satisfaction on their orgasms. In general, young women don’t consider their pleasure, and “absence of pain” is a low bar for girls when it comes to sex.

By the end of Chapter 2, Orenstein has laid out the cultural context for teenage girls and sex today: Girls engage in sexual activity with little concern for their own sexual pleasure. Sexual acts are mostly about pleasing their partners, preventing a partner’s disappointment or frustration, and wanting to be liked. At worst, girls’ sex lives include pain; at the best, girls feel empowered by giving pleasure or looking good to others. The sexual landscape for girls puts them at the receiving end—as objects to be looked at, consumed, and used for others’ pleasure rather than sexual subjects.