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STRAIGHT TALK:

DISCOURSE, NARRATIVE, AND THE CONSTRUCTION

OF MALE ADOLESCENT HETEROSEXUALITY

MARK COHAN

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2002

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like many things in our culture, the production of a Ph.D. is a process that
involves the collaboration of many, yet only one gets the credit. The "acknowledgments"
page, which is the culturally appropriate avenue for identifying other contributors, makes
the roles of the people I am about to mention seem far too incidental, and it has become a
vapid stock phrase to say that I could not have done it without them. Language and
convention fail me, but perhaps it will help to avoid "I could not do it with them," and
say quite frankly we did it. The work that I did (e.g., analysis, writing) in isolation was
made possible by the work I did (e.g., learning, planning, agonizing) with a host of
amazing people that deserve far more credit than my mere acknowledgment conveys.

Above all others, my parents, Barry and Ellie Cohan, supported me emotionally
and financially far longer and more completely than I could have ever hoped or expected.
I love them. They are the foundation of whatever measure of success I achieve, and.
more than anything, I want to share it with them.

Randi Lincoln, my beloved fiancee, deserves more thanks than I can give her for
the patience, attention, love, and concern she has given me over the last three years. I
thank her for making a life with me. I never lose sight of how lucky I am to be with a
woman of such intelligence and compassion.

My research was supported financially by two generous grants, one from Mr.
Gary Gerson, through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship
Program, and the other from the Department of Sociology. I am grateful for their

willingness to support graduate research and for the confidence and interest they showed
in my work by giving me these awards.

I am thankful to all of the young men who agreed to talk with me. Their candor
and poise were critical to success of this project. I am also grateful to the parents who
granted me permission to talk with their sons who were minors in the eyes of the law.

I am indebted to Bill Marsiglio for the opportunities, financial support, advice,
and guidance he has given me throughout my graduate career. It is my privilege to be
able to call Bill my coauthor, mentor, and future colleague. I am also indebted to Jay
Gubrium for convincing me that I belonged in academia, fostering my academic
development, and for giving me insight into the professional world. I have the thrill of
working on a cutting edge of sociology, and I owe that to Jay's instruction. I am also
thankful to Rodman Webb, Felix Berardo, and Hernan Vera, who served on my doctoral
committee and contributed their own expertise, interests, and concerns in the interest of
making my work better.

Throughout my time as a graduate student in the Department of Sociology, the
department staff has been helpful and supportive every step of the way. I am especially
indebted to Sheran Flowers, Mary Robinson, Nadine Gillis, and Kanitra Perry for guiding
me through the perils of the university bureaucracy. I would not have made it without
their friendship and commitment.

Mike Podalski, Gary St. John, and Dr. Ellen West provided critical assistance to
my recruitment efforts. Their assistance truly was at the art of making this research
happen, and I am thankful for their support.

I am grateful for and humbled by the constant love and support of my Aunt Faith,
sister Dawn, brother Rick, brother-in-law Chris, and future sister-in-law, Stephanie.
Knowing all of them were out there pulling for me (even if some of them occasionally
had sarcastic ways of showing it) was always a comfort. I promise, particularly to my
siblings, that becoming "Dr. Mark" will not mean that, along with my many attributes, I
develop a big head.

Max Wilson and Audra Latham, Lisa Gay, Martin Watson, Karen Conner, Larry
and Laurie Rounds, Eve Sands, Jim Doherty, and Sandra Lorean are very dear friends
who have been invaluable to me even before I started graduate school, and I will cherish
them long after this current work fades from memory.

My very survival during the lean graduate school years was ensured by the
economic support of a host of kind souls, including Bo Beaulieu, Suzanna Smith. Monika
Ardelt, Dan Perkins, Beverlyn Allen, Mike Radelet, and John Scanzoni. I appreciate the
confidence each of them showed in my abilities and the opportunities they gave me to
learn from them while subsisting.

Lara Foley; Dean Dabney; Goldie MacDonald; Goldie King; Deena, Ben, and
Sidney Benveneste; Laurel Tripp; Chris Faircloth; Toni McWhorter; Julian Chambliss;
Dan Barash; Joe Straub; Sheran Flowers; Marion Borg; Terry Mills; Joe Feagin; and
Wendy Young are among the other graduate students, friends, and professors who have
taken time to show me the ropes, disentangle me from the ropes, or keep me from using
the ropes for self-injurious purposes. I owe them many thanks, and I owe thanks and an
apology to the many others whom I have neglected to mention here.

Lastly, I have to acknowledge the pets who comforted me with unconditional
love, even when they had to battle with my work for my attention. The regal Natasha and
unpretentious Chloe have been my everyday companions through the writing of this
dissertation, but in days past, Hester, Bella, and Chance shared their essential "catness,"
and Frisky was the best friend and mascot any family could have.

The phrase "it takes a village to raise a child" is in vogue these days. Apparently,
it takes a zoo for me to get a Ph.D. Thanks go to all for being a part of the wonderful,
unpredictable, absorbing delirium.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii

ABSTRACT x

CHAPTERS

1 NARRATIVE AND IDENTITY 1

Method and Data 3

Active Interviewing 4

Data Analysis 5

Theory 7

Discourse as Power/Knowledge 8

Discourse and Descriptive Practice 10

Perspective on Masculinity 16

Chapter Organization 20

2 QUANTITATIVE LITERATURE 23

"When?": Age at First Intercourse 25

"Why?" (and "Why Not?"): Antecedents and Correlates to First Sex 32

Testosterone 33

Socioeconomic Status 36

Family Structure 37

Education 39

Substance Use 40

Dating/Peers 41

Attitudes/Knowledge About Sex 42

Religiosity 44

Self-Esteem 45

Other Factors 45

Reasons for Delaying First Sex 46

How?" and "How Was It?": Context and Consequence of First Intercourse

Experience 49

Sexual Scripts 50

Dynamics of Physical Intimacy 50

Emotional Response to First Intercourse 51

"What?": Virgin Sexual Practices 54

Conclusion 56

QUALITATIVE LITERATURE 59

Naturalistic Studies of Adolescent Sexuality 63

Interviews 63

Ethnographies 68

Masculinity as an Interpretive Lens 72

Narrative Analysis 76

The Narrative Quality of Experience 76

Narrative and Identity 77

Defining Narrative 78

Examining Narrative: Analytical Strategies 80

Narrative Studies of Adolescent Sexuality 87

"Where the Boys Are" 87

"School Talk" 89

Conclusion 91

THREE DISCOURSES 94

Giving Form to the Formless: The Pitfalls of Describing Discourses 95

The Discourse of Piety 98

Articulating Others 98

Articulating Self 101

Articulating Virginity and Sex 102

Articulating Girls/Women 104

The Discourse of Conquest 106

Articulating Sex 106

Articulating Virginity 1 1 1

Articulating Virgins 1 14

Articulating Women/Girls 1 16

Articulating Others 121

The Male Fraternity 122

The Discourse of Relationship 124

Articulating the Link Between Relationships and Sex 124

Articulating Relationships 127

Articulating Others 130

Articulating Virginity 131

A Fourth Way: Worry as an Horizon of Meaning 133

Conclusion 138

NARRATIVE STRATEGIES 140

Identifying Narrative Strategies 141

Telling 144

Stories 145

Hypothetical Narratives 151

Habitual Narratives 153

Collaborative Narratives 154

Presenting Selves 158

Identity Claims 159

Distancing 160

Biographical Work 163

Contrasting 167

Categorizing 169

Parroting 172

Quotations as Adjectives 172

Speaking for Collectives 173

Quotations as "Straw Men" 175

Conclusion 176

MEDIATING THE DISCOURSE OF CONQUEST 178

Narrative Challenges 178

The Three Mediators 180

Masculinity, Mediation, and Hegemony 183

The Relationship of the Discourse of Conquest to Hegemonic

Masculinity 185

Constructing the Importance of Belonging Within the Discourse of

Conquest 186

Male Fraternity 187

Virginity Status Tests 190

Navigating Narrative Challenges Related to Masculinity 194

Avoiding a Spoiled Identity 195

Managing Partial Commitments to the Discourse 205

Navigating Threats Implicit in the Discourse 208

Reconciling the Discourse of Conquest with Other Discourses 214

Reconciliation with the Discourses of Conquest and Piety 215

Reconciliation with the Discourses of Conquest and Relationship 223

Conclusion 227

MEDIATING THE DISCOURSES OF RELATIONSHIP AND PIETY 232

Navigating Challenges to Belonging 233

Discourse of Piety 234

Discourse of Relationship 237

Vlll

Navigating Challenges to Masculinity 239

Commitment to "Weak" Relationships 240

Commitment to Virginity 245

Independence and the Discourse of Piety 250

Conclusion 253

8 REFLECTIONS ON NARRATIVE AND IDENTITY 256

Reorientation 256

Discourse and Narrative 260

Masculinities 262

The Interplay of Multiple Masculinities 262

The Construction of Adolescent Masculinities 264

Masculinities and Method 268

Adolescent Males' Sexual Decision Making 270

Interviewing 275

Limits to Storytelling 276

Power Dynamics 280

Final Thoughts 283

REFERENCES 285

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 296

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School

of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

STRAIGHT TALK:

DISCOURSE, NARRATIVE, AND THE CONSTRUCTION

OF MALE ADOLESCENT HETEROSEXUALITY

Mark Cohan

August 2002

Chairperson: Jaber F. Gubrium
Major Department: Sociology

This study combined elements of discourse and narrative analysis to examine how

adolescent boys construct and present accounts of (a) their decision-making with respect

to heterosexual sex; and (b) their own identities in relation to those decisions. Seventeen

boys completed one-on-one, face-to-face interviews. Questions addressed participant's

own sexual experiences (or lack thereof); the meaning and importance of sex; others who

influenced the participant's view of sex; and the participant's perspectives on virginity,

virgins, girls, sex talk, and manhood. Analysis targeted (a) the interplay between

available discourses of sexual decision-making and the narrative strategies the boys

employed and (b) the narrative challenges that arose as this interplay was mediated by

three identity concerns specific to adolescent boys — masculinity, independence, and

belonging.

The primary available discourses reflected three divergent orientations to sexual
decision-making. The "conquest" discourse emphasized the importance of gaining
sexual experience; the "relationship" discourse treated sex as appropriate only as an
extension of a relationship; and the "piety" discourse oriented to sexual decisions on the
basis of religious principles. Narrative strategies for managing discourses and presenting
identities included telling stories and pseudo-stories, presenting selves, creating rhetorical
contrasts, categorizing in purposeful ways, and speaking for others for rhetorical effect.

The conquest discourse had a preeminent position among the boys, and
masculinity was the most pressing of the mediating identity concerns. In confronting the
narrative challenges associated with masculinity, the boys variously constructed,
reinforced, and challenged a hierarchy of masculinities that was topped by a conquest-
based, hegemonic standard. Committed virgins faced the greatest difficulty constructing
their masculinity against the conquest-based ideal, but even boys who accepted the ideal
often found it riddled with contradictions. Whatever specific rhetorical demands they
faced, the boys managed meanings by harnessing the power of language to make
distinctions, introduce shades of gray, and control which elements take the foreground
and which recede into the background.

This analysis reveals the power of narrativity to affect the presentation of identity,
demonstrates that discourses are relational, and raises questions about mechanistic
interpretations of life-course transitions that do not account for the importance of
language and meaning-making to these processes.

CHAPTER 1
NARRATIVE AND IDENTITY

I am a cop show junkie. Actually, it is not cop shows, exactly, that I love, but
those gritty police dramas like Law and Order and NYPD Blue that feature homicide
detectives snooping around for evidence, making subtle connections between clues, and
grilling suspects. I would be lying if I said that I watch them for academic purposes, but
there is no doubt that they involve an abundance of what I might call "social
psychological intrigue." In one Law and Order episode, for instance, a doctor struggles
to explain to the detectives why he falsified information on a patient's medical chart. He
provides the details of what happened the night the patient died, but also emphasizes that
as a native from Pakistan working in an American hospital, he cannot afford to appear
fallible. He has to be twice as good as his peers just to be considered competent. He
urges the detectives to understand his actions in light of who he is: a foreign-born
professional who faces prejudice in his work place.

With its interrogations and legal maneuverings on behalf of the accused, these
detective shows are rife with stories like this one that, to the sociologically minded,
highlight the interconnection between story and identity. They provide anecdotal
evidence again and again that we create ourselves in talk and that when we speak of
events in our lives, our selves are always at stake. Whether we realize it or not, when we
talk about our experiences an inevitable by-product of our talk is a picture of who we are,
what type of person we are or would like others to think we are.

The other thing that "grabs" me about these shows is more disturbing. It's the
portrayal of men. With a few minor exceptions, the men in these shows, whether "good
guys" or "bad guys," are stereotypical "manly" men. They are tough, unemotional,
competitive, noncommunicative, homophobic, and always ready to fight. It is as if most
of them are cut from the same cloth, and those who are not are treated as different at best;
deviant or less-than human at worst.

Although the men in these shows and the words they speak are fictional, they
intrigue me precisely because the dynamics of narrative, identity, and masculinity they
portray are quite real. But where detective dramas address these issues indirectly, often
unintentionally, in an effort to entertain, I have worked throughout my graduate school
career to find ways to give them deliberate, systematic sociological attention. As part of
my master's degree work, I conducted interviews with males who had been involved in
political activism on so-called women's issues (e.g., abortion rights, the prevention of
violence against women, the Equal Rights Amendment) (Cohan 1997). These interviews
revealed how the activists used narrative to variously construct the political landscape in
which they were involved and explored the consequences their constructions had for their
place as males in the political struggles they had joined.

In developing my current work, I wanted to delve deeper into the intersections of
narrative, identity, and masculinity, but I needed a new focal point. The activist
community that I had studied had gone into a lull, with many of the most active males
moving away, and, anyway, I wanted to address a topic that would target men's sense of
masculinity in a more urgent way. I remembered how tortured I sometimes felt as a
young man, watching important rites of passage go by — high school graduation, college

graduation, my 25th birthday — and knowing that I was — gasp !— still a virgin. Although I
was clearly an adult, I felt that I was not quite a man, and I believed that, despite my
secrecy, everyone could somehow see my "immaturity." Surely, I could not be alone in
my experience. Sexuality and sexual behavior have always been important means by
which males have marked their masculinity, and I resolved to study this marking of one's
self as masculine, as a man, where I presumed it might start or start to become
problematic, with the notions (and experiences) of virginity and virginity loss.

Method and Data

Concern with virginity, in turn, directed my attention to adolescence, a time when
issues of masculinity are a critical aspect of males' development. I conducted semi-
structured interviews with a racially and ethnically diverse sample of 1 7 adolescent males
between the ages of 14 and 19, all of whom purported to be heterosexual. The
convenience sample was recruited via an ad in a local monthly newspaper, contacts with
youth ministers from local churches and high school principals, and word of mouth. In
all, nine of the recruits came from a local dropout retrieval high school, three were
introduced to me by church youth ministers, three answered my ad, and two heard about
the research through word of mouth. Six of the young men identified as virgin (i.e., had
never had vaginal intercourse), nine said they were nonvirgin, and one, who described
himself as a "born-again virgin," said that he had had intercourse once but had since
vowed to stay abstinent until marriage.

Informed consent was obtained for interviews with all of the males older than 17.
The minor adolescents gave their assent after informed consent was obtained from a
parent or guardian. Participants were paid $10 for a single interview that was not to last

more than two hours. Interviews took place in various offices on the University campus
and were audio taped for later transcription. I transcribed the audio tapes of all but two of
the interviews, and I reviewed and corrected the transcripts that were done by an outside
source. Interviews typically lasted between 30 and 120 minutes. In one case where
additional time was needed, a second interview session was scheduled and the participant
received another payment.

Over the course of each interview, I directed the respondent to describe his
experiences with respect to dating and sex and explain the rationale for the decisions he
had made. Regardless of his virginity status, I questioned with an aim toward
discovering the meanings he attached to virginity, virgins, virginity loss, sex, dating, and
relationships, and I explored how these meanings interrelated and intersected with his
understandings of females, masculinity, religion, and the significant others in his life
(peers, parents, clergy, or others). In presenting excerpts from the boys' narratives in this
report, I have protected their anonymity by creating pseudonyms for them and any places
to which they refer.
Active Interviewing

Because I was interested in the construction of identities, I took as my model the
active interview described by Holstein and Gubrium (1995). This model springs from a
particular conception of the interview as a research mode that has implications for how
interviews are conducted and analyzed. Traditionally, interviews are thought of as
occasions when interviewers ask respondents questions in an effort to get appropriate
information "out of them." The assumption is that the answers to the interviewer's
questions reside somewhere within the respondent even before the interview occurs. The

interviewer's job is simply to extract those answers without contaminating them with
methodological problems such as leading questions, and interviewer bias.

When interviews are treated as active, in contrast, they are understood as sites of
meaning construction, not response extraction. Respondents do not come preloaded with
answers to questions. Rather, they collaborate with interviewers in the construction of
responses that satisfy the specific rhetorical demands posed in the interview. In terms of
how the interview is conducted, an active approach thus precludes the use of a strict
interview schedule. Interviewers enter interviews with a series of topics they wish to
address, but both interviewer and interviewee are involved in determining which issues
are most relevant and how responses to interview queries take form.
Data Analysis

In terms of data analysis, an active interview approach directs researchers away
from code-based thematic analyses that extract interview excerpts from the context in
which they are embedded and toward narrative analyses that focus on what respondents
are saying and also on how they are saying it. In fact, Holstein and Gubrium encourage
researchers to think of data from active interviews in terms of whats and hows. The
whats are the substantive aspects of the meanings being constructed; the people, places,
and events that respondents speak of in the course of the interview. The hows are the
ways in which these substantive elements are put together to convey meaning. Putting
words in other people's mouths (Cohan 2001), signaling that certain comments are to be
heard in certain ways (Gubrium 1993), assembling stories in particular ways (Riessman
1993) — everything that respondents (and interviewers) do with words can be examined as
a how of meaning construction. Taken together, examination of the hows and whats of

interview data produces narrative practice, a particular analytical scheme that remains
true to the notion of the interview as an active site of meaning construction by attending
to both the product and process of interviews. Analyzing my interviews in terms of
narrative practice allowed me to highlight how the boys explained their sexual behavior
(or avoidance thereof) and also how they constructed their identities in relation to those
behaviors.

What I discovered as I began to examine the interview data, however, was that
their experiences were not my experience. While some were 17 and 18 years old and had
not yet had sexual intercourse, none of them felt their virginity to be as burdensome as I
had at age 25. I came to believe that my experience was different precisely because I had
remained virgin long after adolescence, and a recent anonymous internet study of long-
time virgins provides evidence to this effect (Donnelly et al. 2001).

Without the comfortable lens of my own experience to see through, I took a fresh
look at these young men's narratives and became intrigued with them in their own right.
First, it became clear that I could not study virginity or virginity loss in isolation. While
notions of sexual initiation could be a starting point and organizing principle, the
narratives that my respondents and I collaborated in constructing were as much about
females, sexual decision making, and the emergence of the young men's sexuality as they
were about virginity, abstinence, and avoiding stigma. Second, I noticed that when these
young men talked, they constructed narratives that were not entirely their own. As all of
us do when we narrate experience, these boys conveyed themes, concerns, even stories
that others offered them as resources for making meaning and making choices about
sexual behavior. They were drawing on multiple discourses of sexuality and sexual

decision making as resources for their accounts. But the boys were not "cultural dopes"
(Garfinkel 1967/1984), mindlessly parroting the ideas of elders, peers, or popular culture.
Since they were constructing narratives about their own experiences, thoughts, feelings,
and expectations, who they were was continually implicated in the talk. Like the suspects
confronted by the wily homicide detectives, their selves were always at stake, and the
interview was as much an occasion for identity work through narrative as it was for the
replication of particular discourses of sexual decision making.

Theory

Fair enough, except that established notions of discourse do not leave room for
the kind of agency necessary for identity work. From this viewpoint, discourse "trumps'*
narrative, so if I argue that the boys I interviewed are articulating existing discourses of
sexual decision making, I cannot simultaneously suggest that they work at the narrative
presentation of self in the process. The discourse establishes the subjectivity of its user,
so it is nonsensical to suggest that speakers can construct unique identities in relation to
the discourse that, presumably, already articulates who they are. Despite occasional
challenges, this understanding of discourse has been in vogue for at least a quarter
century. It is time, I think, to look more closely at alternative formulations of the
relationship between discourse and narrative, particularly those that offer some place for
individual agency in relation to discourse. Such an examination begins with a better
understanding of exactly what constitutes a discourse.

Discourse is one of those elements of the language of contemporary social science
that everyone uses but almost no one bothers to define. Reading some works that draw
on the concept, it is easy to get the idea that a discourse is some sort of amorphous entity

lurking behind texts, speech, and social action, silently manipulating them. My sense is
that it is not nearly as mysterious (or as powerful) as all that. I think of a discourse as a
more or less unified way of thinking about, talking about, and understanding a
phenomenon that, at least at some point in history, has had a group of proponents and
users. For instance, "child welfare" is a prominent contemporary discourse that has
implications for everything from the discovery of child abuse (Pfohl 1977), to the
responsibilities of governments with respect to children, and the relationship between
families and the state. The discourse offers a language that includes terminology such as
"child abuse," "cycles of violence," "the best interests of the child," and "children are the
future," which encourages a particular "take" on reality and facilitates certain types of
actions. Put simply, a discourse is a discursive framework and has consequences for the
actions of those who use it.
Discourse as Power/Knowledge

Michel Foucault brought the notion of discourses and their power to shape
people's perceptions (and experience) of reality to the forefront of social and political
thought in the 1970s. In Discipline and Punish (1979), for instance, he argues that
between the mid- 18th and mid- 19th centuries, penal systems in the United States and
Western Europe underwent a radical transformation. During that time, the philosophy of
criminal punishment shifted from punishing the body as a means of exacting revenge for
transgressions against the "body politic" to a strategy of imprisoning and regulating the
body as a means of converting or reforming the troubled soul of the individual criminal.
The change signaled more than a growing distaste for the spectacle of torture. Foucault
asserts that it represented the emergence of a new discourse of punishment that

fragmented the power to judge criminals. No longer the sole province of judges,
involvement in determining the status of criminals was now open to anyone who could
claim expertise in matters of the internal motivations of their fellow human
beings — psychologists, therapists, and clergy, for example (Rose 1990). The soul.
Foucault argues, became the basis for a new, subtle means of social control that asserted
power through knowledge. People were "disciplined" because they learned new ways of
thinking about themselves, their nature, and their drives, ways of thinking that urged
them to police themselves. Here, then, is the notion that discourses construct
subjectivities for those who articulate them. People as diverse as criminals, students, and
religious believers learned to think of their behavior in terms of internal, sometimes
unconscious, motivations-that is, they took up the discourse of the soul — and became the
kind of people who would accept interventions and judgments based on interpretations of
these motivations. They even became adept at producing interpretations and imposing
relevant interventions on themselves. In other words, through what they learned, they
were transformed into able subjects of the discourse.

Foucault' s novel depiction of discourses as knowledge/power conduits remains an
influential one. And his attendant suggestions that (1) knowledge is inseparable from
politics; and (2) the "kindler, gentler" face of humane punishment may mask strategies of
social control that are as aggressive as their "barbaric" predecessors, cannot be ignored.
Still, with respect to the possibility of social actors being active agents in the production
of their lives, their selves, or their reality, Foucault's treatment of discourses raises again
the specter of cultural dopes. In his formulation, discourses operate so pervasively that
they leave no room for social actors to categorically recognize, resist, or reformulate the

perspectives made available to them. We are left with the impression that people dumbly

or passively, yet deftly, acquiesce to the discourses they learn and that permeate their

lives.

Discourse and Descriptive Practice

Other scholars, while appreciating Foucault's demonstration of the importance of
discourse to the organization of social worlds, have rejected his totalizing vision of it.
Two important figures who have developed this view are Jaber F. Gubrium and James A.
Holstein. They have been working in tandem for years, producing numerous monographs
that explore the relationships among language, discourse, and people's everyday lived
experience. One of their earliest works that wrestles specifically with the impact and
implications of discourse is What is Family? (1990). In it, they argue that a confluence of
contemporary discourses of family has exposed the fallacy of a number of commonplace
assumptions about the ontological status of "the family." Paramount among these are
that family is physically anchored in the home and that family members have privileged
access to the meaning of what happens in their domain. In words that echo Foucault,
Gubrium and Holstein insist that "the everyday reality of the familial is produced through
discourse" (pp. ix-x). And since discourse can be produced anywhere, so to can the
reality of the family.

Yet Gubrium and Holstein are too concerned with keeping their analyses
anchored in lived experience to employ a notion of discourse as all-pervasive as
Foucault's. From the start, they distinguish between a kind of abstract Foucauldian
discourse and discourse in practice. The former, as described by Gubrium and Holstein,
surely carries all of the "reality-structuring" qualities Foucault attributed to it:

[Family] discourse, then, is both substantive and active. In terms of
substance, we can think of its terminology, ideas, models, and theories as
resources for both naming and making sense of interpersonal relations. . . .
[Family] discourse is also active. Used in reference to concrete social
relations, it communicates how one intends to look at, how one should
understand, or what one intends to do about what is observed, (pp. 15-16)

These qualities exist only as latent potential, however, until discourse is put into practice

by people in concrete situations. This "activation" of discursive potential in the language

use and meaning-making activities of social actors in specific contexts, which Gubrium

and Holstein refer to as descriptive (or, sometimes, discursive) practice, is the true source

of their interest in discourse: "Descriptive practice is the situationally sensitive,

communicative process by which reality is represented. . . . Descriptive practice is our

field of data — [family] discourse in use" (pp. 26-27). So although Gubrium and Holstein

recognize the potential of discourse that Foucault emphasized, they reject the implication

that discourse somehow operates independently of the sense-making practices of

everyday life. By doing so, they offer a conception of discourse that is less oppressive

than Foucault' s, one in which individuals actively construct and elaborate how the

language, ideas, models, and such of a discourse "play out" in particular situations of its

use.

This insistence that individuals interpret and articulate discourse, rather than

simply being positioned by it means that, among other things, people do have a say in

how they present themselves, even when they articulate elements of an existing

discourse. While a given discourse may offer particular resources for the construction of

identities, how individuals will manipulate those resources for the purposes of describing

their selves is by no means given. Locally available discourses provide "useful moral

options for defining, judging, and cataloguing conduct and identity" (Holstein and

Gubrium 2000b, p 226; emphasis in original), but social actors recognize options. They
can, for instance, draw on other discourses to construct competing identities to the ones
offered by the dominant discourse, or they can self-consciously play the part offered
them, without committing to that part. Such strategies do not completely reconstruct the
local context so that, for example, the prisoner becomes the guard, but they do mitigate
against the totalizing tendencies of discourse and the likelihood that identities are
imposed, rather than constructed, negotiated, and, in some cases, contested.

That said, we must also recognize that various forms of stratification affect the
social distribution, availability, and malleability of discursive resources. It is a well-
established fact in sociology that race, ethnicity, social class, and religious background
affect one's life chances (Giddens 1996), and this influence extends to boys' exposure to
the images, lore, understandings, and role models associated with various discourses of
sexuality. A few diverse examples will serve to make the point. Boys who grow up with
conservative, Christian backgrounds are more likely than those who are raised in more
secular or liberal environments to be taught religious interpretations of sex that
emphasize abstinence until marriage. As part of being taught how to survive in a racist
culture, African-American boys are likely to be raised with a greater awareness of how
race and sexuality intersect (e.g., the stereotype of the hypersexual Black man) than are
Whites. And finally, economically disadvantaged boys are less likely than their more
affluent counterparts to have ready, private access to the varied material about sex, STDs,
and contraception that is available on the Internet.

The stratification of knowledge, resources, and capacity for understanding and
shaping one's sexuality is not limited to macrosociological domains, however.

Differential conditions exist even within groups and across different contexts. For
instance, a boy who is small, unathletic, and shy is likely to be less successful than others
in his own friendship group in enacting a discourse that focuses on physical prowess and
popularity. Likewise, a boy who is successful in presenting himself to his peers in terms
of a particular discourse may not meet with the same success within the context of
interactions with his older brother's peer group. Being cognizant of this possibility, he
may intentionally alter the discourse he articulates or the way he articulates the same
discourse to accommodate his lesser standing in this other group.

The fact that boys' choices and articulations of discourses can be context-
sensitive also raises an important question for this study: How can I be sure that the boys
I talk to will not adjust their descriptions of their sexual decisions and their gender
performances to reflect how they interpret my presence? The answer is that I cannot;
indeed, I anticipate that they will make such adjustments. However, I do not see this
eventuality as a threat to the study. To begin with, I understand all self-presentations as
occasioned events. The notion that the self a guy presents in an interview with me is
somehow an "adjustment" from some "true self that I have failed to access is antithetical
to the underlying assumptions of the active interview. No one self-presentation is more
or less "true" than any other; each simply serves different contexts. Those scenarios that
we associate with self-presentations that are more or less authentic (e.g., a session of
psychoanalysis versus dinner with one's boss) call for different types of selves. In the
conduct of the interview, I can actually take advantage of this occasioned quality by
asking participants to orient to different contexts.

In addition, the situated nature of the interview is always kept to the fore. While
this does not mean that I am able to treat participants' responses to me or the interview
context with the same transparency as interview transcripts, it does mean that the
interview dynamic is open to examination and discussion. It also means that I analyze
the narratives not as documents of self, but as articulations of self that serve a specified
purpose. Put coarsely, that purpose might be described as answering personal, sex-
related questions posed by an older, intellectually oriented White male in such a way as
to ensure the receipt of the ten dollar incentive.

Some might argue that this purpose, with its financial inducement, is an invitation
for complete fabrications. However, I believe that all of these guys participated in the
interview in good faith. Certainly, this particular interview context may have prompted
some boys to censor certain stories or use different language than they would in the
presence of their peers. But the goal of the interviews was never to guarantee that guys
mimic their locker-room talk. And the relevant analytical issue is how they constructed
themselves in relation to the purpose at hand, not how this purpose may have "perverted"
their participation in the study.

The story that you will read in these pages, then, is a story about the use of
narrative to articulate (sexual) identity in relation to discourse. What all of that means
outside of the fancy sociological dressing is this: I believe that when we talk to youth
about virginity and their sexual decision making, they make use of preexisting viewpoints
or frameworks (discourses) to tell the story or stories of their sexual life as it has
developed to that point. These perspectives on virginity and sex may come from their
parents, their church, their friends, the media, or some combination of these, and the boys

may use these perspectives with varying degrees of understanding of and commitment to
their tenants.

But even though they are drawing on other people's ideas, the story each young
man tells is his own, for three reasons. First, a discourse is not a template. Each person
who draws on the same discourse does not tell an identical story. They each draw on
similar story-telling resources and the story is likely to have a similar moral, but each
teller includes his own unique experiences and links them to the resources made available
by the discourse in a unique way. In sociological jargon, each respondent articulates the
discourse differently. Second, a single person may draw on multiple discourses in the
course of an interview. For instance, a young man might explain his view of females in
terms of a discourse of sexual conquest, yet describe the scenario in which he lost his
virginity in terms of a love discourse. And finally, the young man's sense of self is
always implicated in the act of narrating his experiences, and this is no less true when a
great portion of his narrative draws from established discourses. Indeed, as we shall see,
each of the discourses that these boys articulated in their narratives had the potential to
create their own challenges to the selves of the boys who used them. In these cases, it
may be reasonable to speak of the "strategic articulation" of a discourse, whereby a
respondent assembles elements of a discourse in his narrative to convey particular
meanings, while simultaneously engaging in identity work that neutralizes or
"inoculates" him from implications of that discourse that he believes may be damaging to
his self-presentation.

Perspective on Masculinity

Sometimes the sense of self implicated by a discourse used by the boys is a
gendered one, bringing concerns about masculinity to the fore. Thus, the current research
affords me an opportunity to explore the relationship between narrative and discourse,
and also the relationship between adolescent sexuality and modes of masculinity. To this
end, I have incorporated a theoretical perspective on masculinity into my interpretivist
narrative framework.

The perspective rests on five propositions that have been advanced in previous
work by men's studies scholars. They are as follows:

1. There is no one way to be a man (Connell 1995). Since what it means to be a
man varies over time and across social groupings (defined, for example, by age,
race, social class, and geographic region) it is more appropriate to speak of plural
masculinities than a single masculinity that provides the only acceptable standard
for all men.

2. The relationship between multiple masculinities is hierarchical and
competitive (Connell 2000). In most societies, including those in the
contemporary Western world, there is one hegemonic or dominant form of
masculinity. This form need not be (and rarely is) the most common or most
comfortable, yet it is considered the most honorable and desirable. It provides the
benchmark against which all other masculinities are typically measured. Other
masculinities are subordinate to it, and the hegemonic form protects its status
through active and sometimes violent marginalization of other forms.

3. Masculinity is an ongoing interactive accomplishment (Coltrane 1994).
Masculinity is not a static state that one achieves and never relinquishes, it is an
aspect of identity. As such it must be continually claimed through ongoing
identity work that involves both broad aspects of lifestyle and a multitude of
everyday minutia, from speech and bodily habits to interests, opinions, and
decisions. Further, claims to the identity are subject to the social confirmation of
others.

4. Traditional, dominant modes of heterosexual masculinity define themselves
against the feminine (Herek 1 987). To be a man, in this mode, is to avoid and
denigrate activities (e.g., sewing, baking, cleaning) and ways of being (e.g.,
emotional, sensitive, nurturing, cooperative) typically associated with women,
while simultaneously embracing and accentuating their presumed opposites (e.g..

rationality, competition). In patriarchal societies, such as our own, these men's
devaluation of the feminine is consistent with the sexism of the culture, so it pays
a patriarchal divided in terms of social power and privilege.

5. The greatest threat to a man's masculinity comes not from women, but from
other men (Kimmel 1994). It is other men who most closely scrutinize a man's
gender "performance" and are most likely to question another man's manliness.
Since other men are the ultimate arbiters of what is acceptable masculine
behavior, interactions among men carry the constant threat of emasculation if
one's behavior is deemed unmanly. By characterizing a man as uncool, weak,
or — at worst — gay, traditionally masculine heterosexual men prey on other's
insecurities about their own masculinity to construct and reinforce behavioral and
ideological boundaries. Thus homophobia is a phenomenon that does more than
connote fear and rejection of homosexuals; it represents the central means by
which heterosexual men police one another's adherence to the strictures of
particular masculinities: "Homophobia is the fear that other men will unmask us,
emasculate us, reveal to us and the world that we do not measure up, that we are
not real men" (Kimmel, p. 131).

The integration of these five propositions into an active interview approach that
emphasizes the constructive qualities of narrative depends on a commitment to avoid
imposing the relevance of gender categories artificially. In most contexts in our gender-
conscious society, gender is readily available as a meaning-making tool, but it is not
always drawn upon. As Holstein (1987) asserts, we must recognize that gender is like
any other narrative resource: speakers make use of it when it is relevant to the particular
meanings they wish to construct. My analytical framework allows me — even compels
me — to be cognizant of gender's "occasioned character" (Holstein, p. 141), and thus
gender becomes relevant to my work only when it becomes part of the rhetorical activity
of the interview.

Of course, given the nature of my research interests, it was common for me to use
gender distinctions in directing the interview, and thereby encourage respondents to use
gender as an interpretive framework when constructing their narratives. In this way, I
exploited two qualities of the active interview context. The first quality is that

respondents are capable of articulating positions on interview topics from multiple
subjective positions. The second is that questions that are posed and interactions that
occur during interviews can condition how respondents orient to interview topics
(Holstein & Gubrium 1995, p. 41). By introducing gender. I deliberately incited
respondents to be active and to orient to the topic at hand from a gendered perspective.
For instance, while a respondent might begin talking about his experience of virginity
loss in a way that highlighted his status as a high school student, I might eventually ask
what the experience meant for him as a young man. In so doing, I intentionally elicited a
response from a standpoint that gave relevance to gender categories.

Participants, too, can make gender categories relevant, although often
unintentionally, by the way they "do gender" (Schwalbe & Wolkomir 2002). Cultural
prescriptions that men present themselves in indentifiably masculine ways, which
frequently means in ways consistent with hegemonic masculinity, make these strategies
of self-presentation — these enactments of masculinity — important data for researchers
interviewing men. Schwalbe and Wolkomir note, in particular, that the desire to be seen
by others as possessing traditionally masculine qualities, such as rationality, control, a
propensity toward risky behavior, and heterosexuality, may make men more likely than
women to struggle to control interviews, resist emotional disclosure, and exaggerate the
level of rationality or control with which they approached situations they discuss in
interviews.

Given that the participants in the current study are only on the cusp on manhood,
some of these ways in which masculinity can impose itself upon an interview may not be
especially relevant. For instance, I would not expect many adolescent boys to exhibit

exaggerated rationality or try to control the interview when I, as the interviewer, am twice
their age and a representative of a university. On the other hand, the male "need" to
demonstrate heterosexuality, which Schwalbe and Wolkomir note often insinuates itself
into interviews, is at the core of this research. Also, my concern with the presentation of
masculine selves through talk puts into practice their notion that how participants do
gender is data as rich as answers provided to interview questions. In this project, my
interest in the boys' narratives of sexual decision-making is mated to a concern with how
the boys signify themselves in those narratives.

I believe that approaching the study of young men's understandings of virginity,
sex and sexual decision making from a narrative perspective that highlights (gender)
identity work offers a number of possibilities not available via traditional interview
studies or large-scale surveys of adolescent sexuality. First and foremost, the approach
offers a clear indication of the ways in which the meaning of sexual activity for these
youth is linked to their sense of themselves and the resources that they draw on to define
themselves. Second, it provides evidence that the development of a sexual self (i.e., the
sense of oneself as a sexual being) among adolescent males does not occur in a
conceptual vacuum but is instead linked to the boys' views of females, religion, and
masculinity. Third, it highlights the struggles that young men face in making sexual
decisions and presenting their sexual selves when they feel drawn toward the conflicting
messages of multiple discourses. And lastly, it provides insight into the moral reasoning
by which they account for their sexual behaviors and evaluate the behaviors of others.

Chapter Organization

The chapters of the dissertation are organized into three parts. The remaining
chapters of Part I provide the necessary background for my examination of the
intersection of identity, sexuality, and discourse in the narratives of heterosexual
adolescent males. Chapter 2 examines the quantitative literature on adolescent sexual
decision making by asking when, how, what, and why questions that relate primarily to
the issue of adolescents' initiation of first intercourse. Some survey researchers have
tried to address issues related to sexual decision making directly, and those studies are
reviewed here. For the most part, however, quantitative analyses have focused on the act
of intercourse rather than the cognitive and identity processes related to it. I have chosen,
therefore, to focus on the initiation of intercourse because it has received widespread
attention and because it can be seen as a kind of proxy indicator of at least a de facto
decision to have sex. Chapter 3 examines qualitative research on adolescent sexuality,
with particular emphasis on ethnographic and narrative studies. This body of work is
reviewed not just to explore what has been written previously about adolescent sexuality,
but also to demonstrate the sociological value of studies, such as this one, that examine a
small number of cases. The case study has a long tradition in sociology, but it perhaps
requires some explanation since it satisfies different research aims and should be
evaluated by different criteria than quantitative research and even some qualitative
studies. Finally, I include in this chapter work that demonstrates the impact of
constructions of masculinity on the lived experience of adolescent males, as analyses of
this type provide the groundwork for arguments I will make regarding the influence of
discourses of masculinity on my respondents' narratives.

In Part II, I delve into the construction of the young men's narratives. I begin, in
Chapter 4, by considering the culturally available resources for the boys' meaning-
making with respect to sexual decision making. The discussion is organized around three
discourses that were each articulated by several men: a discourse of love, one of piety,
and one of conquest. I make the case for the existence of these different discourses and
support my argument with evidence from the interviews. I point out patterned
differences in the boys' constructions of various aspects of sexual decision making and
link these to various discourses.

In Chapter 5, 1 turn from narrative resources to narrative strategies. Again, my
evidence comes from the boys' narratives, but this time the focus is the common,
strategic ways the boys manipulate discursive resources to suit their individual rhetorical
interests. I identify five major narrative strategies: telling, presenting selves, contrasting,
categorizing, and parroting. In presenting the strategies, I not only demonstrate how they
represent unique ways of manipulating language and managing meaning-construction,
but I also show how the boys enlist them in the production of their sexual selves.

The final two chapters of the section highlight the interplay of narrative resources
and narrative strategies. Both chapters are grounded in the premise that the boys* use of
the three discourses is mediated by three identity concerns of male
adolescence — masculinity, independence, and belonging. In other words, as the boys
describe their orientation to sexual decision making in our interviews, they are
simultaneously managing their self presentation in light of their understanding of
expectations for males of their age — namely, that they be masculine, independent, and
accepted by others. Chapter 6 examines how these three identity agendas mediate boys'

articulations of the discourse of conquest, while Chapter 7 addresses the mediation of the
discourses of piety and relationship.

The final section, Part III, consists of a single chapter. Chapter 8. "Reflections on
Narrative Identity," concludes the dissertation by suggesting some possible implications
of these adolescents' articulations of sexual selves for public policy related to sexual
education, the relationship between narrative and discourse as it is represented in this
study, and adolescents' ability to articulate identity through narrative. Modes of
masculinity and their relationship to adolescent males' sexual decision making are
implicated in two out of three of these elements, and I offer some final thoughts about
masculinities as lenses for understanding young men's constructions of sex and self.

CHAPTER 2
QUANTITATIVE LITERATURE

Most of what is known about male adolescent sexuality has been learned from
quantitative research. Though I argue in later chapters that qualitative research offers a
powerful, underutilized way of seeing the phenomena that we might collect under this
rubric, understanding the story that survey researchers have told about male adolescent
sexuality is an important starting point for our investigation.

Because virtually all of the survey research on adolescent sexuality over the past
quarter century has been motivated by a desire to prevent teen pregnancy, the literature
tends to treat sex among youth as problematic and be oriented toward the questions: Why
do teens have intercourse? And what can be done to delay or stop them from doing so?
Also central in many studies, though not as pertinent to the review at hand, are the
questions: Are teens using contraception when they do have sex? And how can we
ensure that, if they do have sex, they use contraceptives during their first sexual
encounter and reliably in future encounters? The actual research questions and policy
implications are frequently more involved than that; nevertheless, a certain amount of
simplification can be useful in comprehending this vast and multifaceted area of research.

To this end, I find it helpful to organize the literature on this topic according to
four basic questions: what, how, when, and why. The "why" question is as follows: Why
do adolescents have sex? Studies that address this question investigate the potential
impact of a host of antecedents or correlates suspected of affecting the probability that

youth will experience sexual intercourse for the first time. The "when" question concerns
the timing, particularly in terms of the adolescent's life course, of first intercourse
experience. A smaller number of studies address the "'how" and "what" questions. Those
that ask "how" are concerned with the interpersonal and logistic circumstances under
which youth experience first intercourse. And finally, the "what" question is asked by
the few investigators who attend to the fact that being sexually active is not synonymous
with having sexual intercourse. Research in this vein explores what sexual behaviors
youth are engaging in in lieu of or prior to losing their virginity (i.e., having sexual
intercourse).

As we begin to look at this literature, it bears noting that not all of the authors
have been entirely clear or consistent about terminology. For instance, some researchers
studied adolescent virgins and used the term "virgin" interchangeably with the notion of
being nonsexual, failing to attend to the fact that people can be involved in sexual acts
(e.g., oral sex, mutual masturbation) without having lost their virginity (i.e., had sexual
intercourse). In this context, even the term sex can become confusing, since it may not
be evident whether it refers to any sort of sexual activity or to vaginal intercourse
specifically. To avoid such confusion, I use the terms "sexual intercourse" or, simply,
"intercourse" to refer to heterosexual vaginal intercourse and the terms "sexual activity"
and "sexually active" to refer to the broader array of behaviors that may include, but are
not limited to, sexual intercourse. In the rare case that I use the word sex, it refers
specifically to vaginal intercourse.

"When?": Age at First Intercourse

There is a widespread belief that many youth become sexually active at ages that
are presumed to leave them ill-prepared to appreciate or respond to the consequences of
being sexual (Marsiglio 1995). Though virtually anyone can cite anecdotes about "kids
having kids" or 14- and 15-year-old boys bragging about sexual exploits, social scientists
have tried to amass reliable, factual evidence that demonstrates how many youth are
having intercourse and at what ages. These efforts typically involve nationally
representative samples of adolescents self-reporting about their sexual behavior. Given
the sensitive and private nature of sexual behavior, few alternative strategies of data
collection exist. But questions have been raised about the reliability of these data
(Lauritsen & Swicegood 1997), so our discussion of the available research must begin
with the caveats sounded by others.

To date, the most systematic effort to examine the value of adolescents' self-
reporting of age at first intercourse has been undertaken using the six waves of the
National Survey of Youth, which were collected annually from 1977 to 1981. with an
additional wave in 1984. At the time of the first wave of data collection, the adolescents
in the sample were between the ages of 1 1 and 17. During the final wave of the survey,
the 1 ,405 respondents were asked how old they were when they first had sexual
intercourse. This response was compared to their responses in each of the first five years,
when they were asked if they had had intercourse during that year (Lauritsen &
Swicegood 1997). Overall, the age at first intercourse that respondents reported as adults
was nearly 1-1/2 years younger than what their responses as adolescents would indicate
(16.27 versus 17.61), and 32% of the sample were calculated to have given inconsistent

reports. White females were least likely to give inconsistent reports (24.5%), followed by
White males (28%), Black males (36.4%), and Black females (43.4%). Adolescents who
were older at the time of the first interview were more likely to report a younger age at
first intercourse as an adult than their reports as adolescents suggested. Compared with
White females, Black males were fives times and White males were two times as likely to
report an older age at first intercourse as adults than they had as youth.

Despite the apparent pervasiveness of inconsistencies, the authors suggest that,
statistically speaking, they are benign. When researchers controlled for them in their
analyses, estimates of age at first intercourse were unchanged, except in the case of
comparisons between Black females and White females, where the high levels of
inconsistent reports among Black females raised uncertainty about differences in age at
first intercourse between the two groups. Still, the fact that inconsistencies were found
and the fact that they were correlated with factors such as age, led the authors to raise a
red flag regarding comparisons of age at first intercourse over time: "Given the predictors
of inconsistency and their levels found here, we believe that any statements about
historical changes or subgroup differences should be made with caution" (Lauritsen &
Swicegood 1997, p. 220). Recent research has indicated that computer-assisted
interviewing may hold some promise in increasing adolescent response rates (and,
presumably, the reliability of responses) in surveys of highly sensitive behavior (Turner
et al. 1998), but this technology has yet to provide data on the specific question at hand.
It is with appropriate prudence, then, that we now begin to look at studies of age at first
intercourse among males, including analyses that make historical comparisons.

National trend data on age at first intercourse has come chiefly from a
combination of the 1979 National Survey of Young Men (NSYM), and the National
Survey of Adolescent Males (NSAM) and the National Survey of Family Growth
(NSFG), both fielded in 1988 and 1995. Between 1979 and 1988, the proportion of
males between the ages of 17 and 19 who had had intercourse increased from 65.7% to
75.5% (Sonenstein, Pleck, & Ku 1989). More recently, however, adolescent males* rate
of transition from virgin to nonvirgin appears to have declined. The proportion of never-
married adolescent males aged 15 to 19 who were nonvirgin was 60.4% in 1988. but it
fell to 55.2% in 1995 (Sonenstein et al. 1998). The primary reason for this decline was a
decrease in sexual activity among White males, as the rates for Blacks and non- White
Hispanics remained fairly constant.

In 1995, the largest increase in the proportion of sexually experienced males
occurred between 15 and 16-year-olds and between 18- and 19-year-olds (Alan
Guttmacher Institute 1999). Whereas only 27% of 15-year-olds had ever had sex, 45% of
16-year-olds were sexually experienced. Sixty-eight percent of 1 8-year-olds had had sex,
but by age 19 the proportion was 85%. These findings are, for the most part, consistent
with those from a longitudinal study of data from the National Survey of Children that
reported the age range of greatest risk of first intercourse among males who date was
between 15 and 18 (Miller et al. 1997).

Surveys drawing on regional or specialized samples have reported widely
divergent findings. A cross-sectional survey analysis of 1,228 parochial students found
that although the proportion of students who were sexually active was substantially lower
than the national rate, many of those who were nonvirgin lost their virginity at an earlier

age (de Gaston, Jensen, & Weed 1995). Twenty percent of the 131 sexually active boys
in the sample said they had lost their virginity by age 1 2 and over 66% had lost it by age
14. In contrast, a recent longitudinal study of males, aged 12 to 17, from Los Angeles
County (Upchurch et al. 1998), reported ages of first sex that were largely consistent with
national surveys. The median age at first intercourse for males was 16.6 years. Black
males had the earliest age of sexual onset (median age of 1 5), followed by Hispanics and
non-Hispanic Whites (16.5 and 16.6, respectively). Asian- Americans, a group neglected
even in the more recent national surveys, showed the greatest trend toward delaying
transition out of virginity, with a median age at first intercourse of 18.1.

Racial differences in the timing of initiation of first sex have shown up
consistently in the sociological literature. The percentage of Blacks who experience first
sex at an early age is consistently higher than that of other races, and studies conducted
during the 1980s showed that the differences remain, even when possible mediating
factors, such as socioeconomic status, are controlled. Some researchers have suggested
that the difference may be attributable to a de-emphasis of the importance of marriage
among Blacks relative to Whites and greater tolerance of sex outside of marriage and out-
of-wedlock births among Blacks (Moore & Peterson 1989; Moore, Simms, & Betsey
1 986). For the most part, however, the question that continues to occupy researchers is
the extent of racial differences. The issue has been addressed by all studies that report
data on timing of first intercourse, whether they be cross-sectional or longitudinal,
regional or national. Racial differences in timing of first intercourse have even been
examined in a meta-analysis of longitudinal surveys of adolescent sexual behavior. In the
remainder of this section I review this extensive literature.

A cross-sectional analysis of data from Wave I of the National Longitudinal
Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) found the relationship between race and first
sex to be highly significant (Conley 1999). The author reported that African-American
adolescents were three times more likely than other races to have had sex before the age
of 1 6. Another cross-sectional study — this one using a regional sample (n=3 1 5 ) — found
that Blacks ages 15 to 18 were significantly more likely to have had sex than Whites or
Mexican- Americans of the same age (Sugland & Driscoll 1999).

In a longitudinal analysis of 10 years of data (1976-1986) from the National
Survey of Children (NSC), Dorius et al.(1993) found that Blacks were 1.2 times more
likely than Whites to have sex, but this relationship was not statistically significant until
the measures of life events during adolescence (e.g., parental divorce or remarriage; drug,
alcohol, tobacco use; becoming employed; dating) were controlled. Another study using
the same NSC data set, but investigating different variables, reported that Black males in
the sample had a younger age at first sex than their White counterparts, but this
relationship between race and first coitus did not reach the level of statistical significance
(Miller et al. 1997). This second NSC study included many variables that were not part
of the life events study, including religious attendance and more involved measures of
education, family processes, peers, and dating.

Perhaps the best means of evaluating the extent of racial differences in transition
to first intercourse among youth aged 15 to 17, however, comes from a recent meta-
analysis of nationally representative surveys (Santelli et al. 2000). The authors compared
and contrasted the estimates of adolescent sexual activity in three longitudinal
surveys— the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG, 1988 & 1995), the National

Survey of Adolescent Males (NSAM, 1988 & 1995), and the Youth Risk Behavior
Survey (YRBS, 2-year intervals between 1991 and 1997) — and the first wave of the
Adolescent Health (Add Health) survey. Because of differences in the intent and
methodologies of each survey, specific subsamples had to be isolated so that the data
considered across surveys would be comparable. Consequently, the meta-analysis was
limited to "respondents aged 15 to 17 who were enrolled in high school at the time of the
interview" (p. 157).

Both longitudinal surveys that included males (the NSFG includes females only)
reported significant declines in the percentage of males who reported ever having
intercourse between the period of the late 1980-early 1990s and the mid- to late- 1990s.
In the YRBS, the decline was nine percentage points, from 56% in 1991 to 47% in 1997;
in the NSAM it was eight percentage points, from 49% in 1988 to 41% in 1995.
Interestingly, these declines among all males were accompanied by parallel statistically
significant declines among all the racial and ethnic categories examined (White, Black,
and Hispanic) in the YRBS, but in the NSAM significant declines were found only
among Whites. Rates of intercourse experience declined six percentage points among
Hispanics between 1988 and 1995, but the trend was not statistically significant.

Comparing the 1995 point estimates from the YRBS, NSAM, and Add Health, the
researchers found that the estimates of males who had ever had intercourse were
significantly higher in the YRBS (53%) than in the NSAM (41%) and the Add Health
(45%). This pattern of differences between the estimates remained when only White
males were considered, but no significant differences were found between the estimates
for Blacks, even though there was an eight percentage point difference between the Add

Health (73%) and the YRBS (81%) estimates. Among Hispanic males, the YRBS
estimate (63%) was significantly higher than the NSAM estimate (47%).

Taken individually, each survey confirmed the general pattern of racial
differences found in cross-sectional and single longitudinal studies: Black males have the
highest rates, followed by Hispanics and then Whites. Specifically, in the period between
1988 and 1991, the surveys put the rate of intercourse experience among Whites at
between 44% and 50%, among Hispanics in the range of 54% and 66%, and at between
78% and 87% among Blacks. In the late 1990s, the rate for White males is reported to be
between 39% and 48%, between 47% and 63% for Hispanics, and the range is 73% and
81% for Blacks.

Trends in the relationship between race and extent of intercourse experience
among males in late adolescence (ages 17-19) have been reviewed by Ku and colleagues
(1998) using data from the three waves of the NSAM. Conducted in 1979 (then called
the National Survey of Young Men and focused exclusively on urban males), 1988, and
1995, the surveys involved the completion of in-person interviews and self-administered
questionnaires about heterosexual and contraceptive behaviors by a multistage national
probability sample of adolescent males. Because of limitations in the demographic
information collected in the NSYM (1979), comparable data across the surveys only
exists for late adolescents from urban areas and can only be compared in racial terms as
Black or non-Black. Within this somewhat restricted sample, however, notable racial
differences in intercourse experience are still evident. The percentage of all urban males
aged 17 to 19 who had ever had sex increased significantly from 1979 to 1988 (65.7%
versus 75.5%), decreased back to near- 1979 levels by 1995 (68.2%). Among Blacks,

however, the percent who were sexually active remained significantly higher than the
overall rate across all years (from a low of 71.1% in 1979 to a high of 87.8% in 1988)
and did not decrease significantly in 1995 after the sharp increase between 1979 and
1988. Given that the primary goal that motivated this analysis was to examine the
relationship between AIDS education, sexual attitudes, and sexual behaviors, the authors
did not attempt to control other factors to isolate the degree of correlation between race
and the initiation of intercourse. However, they did find evidence that more conservative
sexual attitudes and AIDS education were significantly associated with the overall
decrease in sexual activity between 1988 and 1995 among non-Blacks. Although Blacks
during this period also reported more conservative sexual attitudes and received AIDS
education, they did not experience a concomitant decrease in intercourse experience.

Age at first intercourse thus appears to exhibit moderate variance over time and
substantial variation between races. For all males, the proportion aged 15 to 19 who have
had intercourse varied between 55% and 60% between 1988 and 1995. While nationally
representative surveys indicate that more than half of all males are likely to have lost
their virginity by age 17 (Alan Guttmacher Institute 1999) , the age at which half of all
Black males would report being nonvirgin is likely significantly younger. Collection and
analysis of additional nationally representative survey data are needed to track more
recent trends and to improve our knowledge of intercourse rates among other racial and
ethnic groups, particularly people of various Asian nationalities.

"Why?" (and "Why Not?"): Antecedents and Correlates to First Sex

In this section, I review those studies that have tried to determine what factors
either precede (i.e., are antecedents to) or are frequently associated with adolescents

making the transition from virgin to nonvirgin by having sexual intercourse for the first
time. This literature spans over 30 years and includes perspectives on adolescent
sexuality that range from the biosocial, focusing on the influence of hormones, to the
sociological and social psychological, emphasizing the role of psychosocial and
demographic factors, such as self-esteem and socioeconomic status. Although a number
of the studies reviewed here address these domains of influence simultaneously. I have
tried to tease out the purported influence of individual factors. In this way, I am able to
present a picture of the role each individual factor has been reported to play as the
literature has evolved. From a biosocial perspective, the sole factor that I address here is
testosterone, a singular focus that is consistent with the literature. The psychosocial and
sociological variables that must be reviewed, however, are legion. They are
socioeconomic status, family structure, education, substance abuse, dating/peers,
attitudes/knowledge about sex, religiosity, and self-esteem. I also give passing mention
to other variables and concepts that have been addressed in isolated studies, and I
conclude by examining studies that have addressed why some students consciously
choose to delay first intercourse. Race/ethnicity are not treated here, as they receive the
most attention with respect to the timing of first intercourse. Because of the particular
focus of my work, I restrict my attention primarily to research and results that bear on the
heterosexual behaviors of adolescent males (ages 13 to 19 years).
Testosterone

The examination of possible hormonal predictors of transition to first intercourse
has been virtually the exclusive province of J. Richard Udry, Carolyn Tucker Halpern.
and their colleagues. In 1985, they reported on a cross-sectional study that showed a

strong, positive association between testosterone levels in adolescent males and sexual
activity. The authors asserted that these findings provided definitive evidence that male
hormones exert a strong influence on the sexual motivation and behavior of males (Udry
etal. 1985).

In a subsequent regional, longitudinal study (Udry & Billy 1987), they tested the
combined effects of biological and social factors on initiation of first sexual intercourse.
The conceptual model for that study grouped independent variables into three broad
dimensions — motivation, social controls, and attractiveness — with motivation having
both biological (hormonal) and social components. Among the 264 white males who
completed both rounds of the survey, seven different variables, most of them relating to
motivation, were found to be significant zero-order predictors of transition to intercourse
between rounds 1 and 2. In a multivariate model testing all interaction effects, however,
only a boy's popularity with the opposite sex (as reported by friends) and his intentions to
have sex in the future remained statistically significant predictors. These findings
differed greatly from those for white females, where a multitude of variables were shown
to predict transition to intercourse. (Comparable tests involving Black males could not be
conducted because their numbers in the sample were too small to allow the necessary
statistical manipulations.) Considering these results in light of the earlier study that
showed the importance of androgens to male adolescent sexual behavior, the authors
concluded that motivational hormonal effects and social attractiveness are the factors
most at work in White males' initiation of intercourse in early adolescence.

In the 1990s, the efforts of the biosocial scientists concerned with adolescent
sexuality shifted to trying to demonstrate the effects of testosterone on sexual activity

over time. In the early part of the decade, a 3 -year longitudinal study involving one
hundred 12- and 13-year-old White boys did not find significant correlations between
boys' reports of sexual experience and semiannual measures of testosterone from blood
samples (Halpern, Udry, Campbell, & Suchindran 1993). Several years later, however,
Halpern, Udry, and Suchindran (1998) revisited the issue by looking at more the frequent
measurements they had gathered: weekly behavior checklists and monthly salivary
measures of testosterone. They found that increases in testosterone did predict
meaningful increases in what the authors called "partnered activity" (i.e., intercourse and
other noncoital sexual acts that involve another person), a statistical relationship that
remained when pubertal development was controlled. The authors took these findings as
confirmation that testosterone does, in fact, have a direct effect on sexual activity, not just
an indirect one through the visible pubertal changes it produces.

An ancillary finding with regard to this sample involved the relationship between
testosterone, religiosity, and sexual behavior (Halpern, Udry, Campbell, Suchindran. &
Mason 1994). Using the semiannual blood measurements of testosterone and the surveys
completed semiannually, the authors divided the sample according to dichotomous
measures of church attendance (where low attendees were those who reported going to
religious services less than once a week) and testosterone (high and low based on a
median split). Some intriguing findings from that analysis were that (1) in a risk ratio
analysis, higher rates of testosterone doubled the risk of first coitus; (2) higher rates of
church attendance reduced the risk by two-thirds; and (3) church attendance, not personal
commitment to religious beliefs, appeared to be the critical predictor of sexual behavior.
Involvement with religious institutions demonstrated a protective effect against sexual

behavior and sexually permissive attitudes regardless of how the attendees rated the
importance of religion in their lives. An important statistical footnote is that there were
no significant interactions found between testosterone measures and religious attendance
measures, indicating that the two predictors operated independently of one another.

As in the other study that used this protocol, the results from this investigation
leave the impression that testosterone levels are operating through pubertal development,
not having a direct hormonal effect on behavior. However, given the findings from the
most recent study of testosterone effects that used more frequent, salivary assays, it is
possible that direct effects of testosterone might be documented here if the same methods
were used.
Socioeconomic Status

In most studies investigating the correlates to first intercourse, family income and
mother's education were used as proxy measures of socioeconomic status (SES). One of
the longitudinal NSC studies (Dorius et al. 1993) found a statistically significant inverse
relationship between mother's education and sexual intercourse. Every year added to
mother's education decreased the odds of the adolescent having sex by .086. As with
race, however, the authors who conducted the other NSC study (Miller et al. 1997)
reported different results. First, they found no effect of family income on age at first sex.
Second, they, too, found an inverse relationship between mother's education and sexual
intercourse; however it was statistically significant for females but not for males. Aside
from the fact that one study controlled for gender and the other did not, one reason for the
difference may be that Miller and associates reported the effects of independent variables
in terms of changes in age at first sex, rather than odds of having first sex. Yet the

general notion that propensity for early transition to sexual intercourse increases as SES
decreases has been supported by studies from the 1980s (Hogan & Kitagawa 1985;
Moore, Simms, & Betsey 1986).

Other contemporary studies that have measured SES differently only complicate
the issue. Conley (1999) reported that adolescents whose mothers have received welfare
were significantly more likely than others to have first intercourse before age 16. But a
recent study that used household income, parental education, and parental employment to
create a dichotomous SES variable (low/working class versus middle/upper class) found
that the summary variable was not a significant predictor of virginity status among the
15- to 18-year-olds in the sample (Sugland & Driscoll 1999).
Family Structure

A number of studies indicate that family structure has a substantial impact on
adolescent sexual behavior. Hogan and Kitagawa ( 1 985) reported that adolescents who
grow up in a single-parent household and those who have an older, sexually active sibling
are likely to initiate intercourse at an earlier age than their peers. Another early study
found that having an older brother was positively associated with an adolescent's risk of
early transition to intercourse (Rodgers 1983).

Echoing some of the findings of Hogan and Kitagawa, an investigation focusing
on the older teens (ages 17 to 19) involved in the 1979 NYSM found that both Black and
White males from single-parent families were significantly more likely to have sex than
those from two-parent families (Young et al. 1991). A regional, cross-sectional survey of
more contemporary adolescents in a similar age range (15 to 18) replicated these findings
(Sugland & Driscoll 1999). The latter investigation also found that adolescents whose

mothers worked full time were significantly more likely to be nonvirgin than their
counterparts whose mothers did not work or worked only parttime.

A study using a 10-year span of the NSC to explore the effect of life events on the
likelihood of adolescents' first intercourse experience found that if a teen's parents
divorced in a given year, the odds were 1 .5 times greater that the teen would have first
intercourse that year (Dorius et al. 1993). Risk of first sex also varied by the family
structure that the adolescent had just prior to adolescence (i.e., at age 12). Adolescents
who had a parent who was widowed ran the highest risk of having sex. while those whose
parents were married were the lowest risk group. This investigation also reported that the
effects of family structure did not vary by race.

A final, intriguing finding of this study was that if an adolescent's parents were
divorced before the child reached age 12, the divorce had little effect on the youth's risk
of sexual initiation. This last finding, however, is contradicted by a later study using the
same data set (Miller et al. 1997). The authors of this later analysis insist that their
analysis shows a significant negative effect of marital disruption at exactly the ages that
the authors of the earlier study present as benign. For males, they report that each change
in parents' marital status when the child is between the ages of 6 and 1 1 results in an
increase in the risk of intercourse of about one-third. As in the case of other
contradictions between the findings of these two studies, some, if not all, of the
difference may be attributable to the operationalization of concepts. In this particular
case, while the more recent analysis by Moore and colleagues would document multiple
disruptions if a parent divorced and remarried several times during a child's first 12
years, the older study by Dorius and associates would show the same parent simply as

"remarried." Without additional analyses, however, the exact period in an adolescent
male's life in which marital disruption is most likely to put him at risk for early sex
remains an open question.
Education

Though different studies provide different forms of evidence, the literature is
virtually unanimous in asserting that an adolescent's level of investment in education has
a strong, negative correlation with his or her likelihood of initiating sexual intercourse at
an early age (Miller & Sneesby 1988). Behaviors that have been reported to be
significantly associated with risk of early onset of sexual intercourse include failure in
one or more core subjects, trouble with teachers, and having been expelled (Conley
1999). In one recent study, fighting in school was significantly associated with early age
at first intercourse for males (Miller et al. 1 999), and Black males were significantly more
likely to have sex before age 16 if they had trouble with teachers (Conley 1999). In the
extreme case, males who drop out of school are at greatest risk of having sex in the years
following the year they drop out (Dorius et al. 1993).

Commitment to academics, on the other hand, is associated with a reduced
likelihood of early sexual intercourse experience. For instance, Sugland and Driscoll
(1999) report that the older adolescents that they studied were significantly less likely to
have had sex if they expected to go to college. Similarly, a study of Canadian youth of
high school age found that virgins spent significantly more time than nonvirgins on
homework (Feldman et al. 1997).

Substance Use

Most studies have found that, statistically speaking, the use of legal and quasi-
legal substances (all of which are now illegal for minors in most U.S. states) is positively
associated with a greater risk of youth having their first sexual experience. Cross-
sectional studies have linked cigarette use, marijuana use, drinking and driving, and
heavy drinking to being nonvirgin (Conley 1999; Feldman et al. 1997). A 10-year
longitudinal study dating back to 1969 suggested that early onset of sexual intercourse is
among a host of behaviors, including cigarette smoking and alcohol use, that tend to
occur among the same teenagers and therefore may constitute a "syndrome" of problem
behavior (Donovan and Jessor 1985; Jessor, Costa, Jessor, & Donovan 1983).

A more recent longitudinal study, while not picking up on the notion of a deviant
syndrome, supported the finding of a positive association between early sexual
intercourse and substance use (Dorius, Heaton, & Steffen 1993). The authors reported
that males who smoke, for instance, were most likely to have sex if they started smoking
between the ages of 12 and 14. Marijuana use showed a stronger relationship to sexual
activity than alcohol use or cigarette smoking. Users were 2.2 times more likely than
nonusers to have intercourse, though females were more likely than males to have sex if
they were marijuana users. As with cigarette smoking, the highest risk group was
adolescents ages 12 to 14. The next highest risk group was 15 to 17. This study found
no significant effects of alcohol use on risk of first intercourse. Among a sample of 1228
parochial students between the ages of 12 and 18, 15.6% of the sexually active males
reported that drugs or alcohol use was part of their first sexual experience (de Gaston,
Jensen, & Weed 1995).

Dating/Peers

Whether or not an adolescent dates and how frequently he or she dates are clearly
factors that influence the likelihood of transitioning to the status of nonvirgin. In one
study, adolescents who dated were seven times more likely than those who did not date to
have sex some time during the ten year span covered by the research (Dorius et al. 1993).
While females' level of risk was more effected than males, there were age effects for the
entire sample. A greater than average likelihood of having intercourse was associated
with beginning dating early (between the ages of 12 and 14) or late (after age 1 7). The
increased risk associated with an early start to dating was also found in an analysis of
Add Health data (Conley 1999).

In terms of frequency of dating, going on dates one to two times per week was
reported to be positively associated with onset of first sex, while dating less than once per
month appeared to statistically lower one's risk of having intercourse (Miller et al. 1997).
A cross-sectional study in Canada found a significant inverse correlation between being
involved in a serious relationship and being nonvirgin (Feldman et al. 1997).

Dating alone does not account for the influence of peers on adolescents' sexual
behavior, however; friendships are also important. An important finding from research in
the 1 980s related to race and sex differences in the impact of same-sex friendships on
initiation of first sex. Evidence from a longitudinal study indicated that White girls were
the most influenced by their friends' sexual behaviors (Billy & Udry 1985). White
female virgins were more likely to lose their virginity between waves of the study if they
had sexually experienced friends. White males were not influenced by friends' sexual
behavior, but they appeared to pick their friends based on who was sexually active and

who was not. Black youth of either sex did not appear to be influenced, as were white
females, nor did they use sexual experience as a basis for developing friends, as white
males did. Echoing these results, to a degree, a 1986 Harris poll of adolescents age 12 to
17 found that 73% of females and 50% of males believed that social pressure was a
reason why adolescents did not wait until they were older to have intercourse (Harris and
Associates 1986).

Finally, a youth's assessment of him or herself relative to peers may also be
relevant. Adolescents aged 16 or younger who rated themselves as better looking than
their peers and had friends that they believed were sexually active were found by one
study to be significantly more likely than others to initiate first intercourse (Miller et al.
1997).
Attitudes/Knowledge About Sex

There is surprisingly little research that attempts to link adolescents' attitudes
about sexual matters to their likelihood of becoming sexually active. A recent study
reported that adolescents who said their friends place a high value on avoiding risky
behaviors, such as drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and sex, were themselves less likely to be
involved in sexual relationships (Sugland & Driscoll 1999). Along the same lines, youth
who perceived that drugs, alcohol, and sex were rampant at their school were less likely
to have sex. An adolescent's risk of sex appeared to increase as his or her knowledge of
sex increased. However, given that this finding comes from a cross-sectional study, it is
difficult to determine the direction of the relationship. Does being knowledgeable about
sex lead to sexual experimentation, or are those who are sexually active simply more
likely to be knowledgeable?

Evidence regarding the effect of parental attitudes on adolescents' sexual behavior
is mixed. One study using a national data set found that adolescents were more likely to
have had sex before age 16 if they reported that their fathers were accepting of youth
having sex in the context of a steady relationship (Conley 1999). On the other hand.
Sugland and Driscoll (1999) reported that parental opinion had no significant effects on
the likelihood that youth in their sample had had intercourse.

Multiple studies have also looked at whether parents can reduce their teen's
likelihood of having intercourse at a young age by communicating with them about sex.
The results, again, are mixed and suggest that communication in and of itself is not a
panacea. Rather, it matters who does the talking and what they say. A couple of studies
found communication to be associated with a lower probability of sex or greater use of
contraception (Fox & Inazu 1980; Furstenberg, Moore, & Peterson 1985). However,
another study reported that while communication with the mother was associated with a
prohibitive effect on sex, boys who discussed a larger number of sexual topics with
fathers were more likely than other boys to have had premarital sex (Kahn, Smith, &
Roberts 1984).

One of the earliest examinations of adolescents' transition from virgin to
nonvirgin sought to distinguish youth who had made the transition from those who had
not in part on the basis of their general attitudes, rather than their attitudes specifically
related to sex (Jessor, Costa, Jessor, & Donovan 1983). The researchers responsible for
this 10-year longitudinal survey, which dated back to 1969, reported that early onset
groups (those that had intercourse earlier) demonstrated "greater proneness to engage in
transition-making behavior" (p. 613) on 1970 measures. Compared with those who made

a later transition to sexual intercourse, early transitioners placed a higher value on
independence and a lower value on academic achievement. They also had higher
expectations of independence and lower expectation for their own academic achievement.
They held more socially critical beliefs about society, were more tolerant of deviance,
and were less religious.
Religiosity

A number of studies in the 1980s (Forste & Heaton 1988; Miller & Olson 1988;
Thornton & Camburn 1987) advanced the notion that religiosity had a protective
influence against early onset of sexual intercourse among adolescents. Three key
findings relating to religion and its prohibitive effect on teen sexual activity were that (1)
An adolescent's devotion to religious teachings and customs were more important than
any particular religious affiliation; (2) Adolescents in churches that teach abstinence
before marriage were less likely to have had intercourse than youth in churches with
other teachings; and (3) the highest rates of premarital intercourse were found among
adolescents with no religious affiliation. Furthermore, one study reported that the effects
operated in both directions: Religious adolescents were less likely to have sex, and
adolescents who had had sexual intercourse were less likely to be religious (Thornton &
Camburn 1989).

A study from the late 1990s reported the surprisingly result that, among Black
males, those who said that religion was very important in their lives were significantly
more likely than others to have first sex before age 16 (Conley 1999). At about the same
time, however, a longitudinal study based on the National Survey of Children offered a
more conventional result, showing that religious involvement had a negative but not

significant correlation with early initiation of coitus among males (Miller et al. 1997).
Interestingly, the authors reported that it was not so much the males' commitment to
religious ideals, but rather their mere presence at services, that was linked to their
delaying first intercourse.
Self-Esteem

A few studies have tried to untangle the relationship between self-esteem and
sexual behavior. The results have been mixed. One study in the mid-1980s found that
self-esteem levels did not differentiate female adolescents who became pregnant from
those who did not (Vernon, Greene & Frothingham 1983). However, another study from
the same time period reported a more complex dynamic. Self-esteem was positively
related to sexual intercourse experience among adolescents who believed that premarital
sex was usually or always right, but negatively related to intercourse among those who
believed it was wrong (Miller, Christensen, & Olson 1987). More recently, Conley
(1999) found that both male and female adolescents were more likely to start sexual
intercourse early if they felt unwanted or unloved.
Other Factors

A coupe of additional concepts that conventional wisdom might suggest are
correlated with adolescents' initiation of first sex have been included in a limited number
of investigations but have not, as yet, received the degree of attention given to the
elements discussed earlier. For instance, much has been written about the impact of
family structure, but researchers have not seemed inclined to question how the quality of
parent-child relationships might influence adolescents' sexual behavior. The lone
exception is the inclusion of measures relating to the mother-child relationship in the

National Study of Children. Researchers examining the relationship of these measures to
reports of adolescents sexual behavior report that the mother-child relationship showed
no significant association with age at first sex for boys. For girls, receiving intrinsic
support from and feeling closeness to mothers showed bivariate correlations with a higher
age at first sex, while mothers withdrawing love from daughters was associated with
early transition to intercourse (Miller et al. 1997).

Employment is another underexamined variable that may be associated with
adolescents' initiation of intercourse. The lone study I found that addressed this variable
indicated that taking a job actually increased the likelihood that a teen would have sex
(Dorius, Heaton, & Steffen 1993). The relationship between employment and first sex
that they found was weak, however, and its causal direction was uncertain.
Reasons for Delaying First Sex

In contrast to the many studies that have investigated possible correlates and
antecedents to adolescents' initiation of first sex, a small number of researchers have
taken a different tact and asked why some youth do not lose their virginity. The
groundbreaking work of this type was a survey conducted in the early 1980s that focused
on a sample of 16- to 22-year-old high school and college females (Herold & Goodwin
1981). This study began a radical transformation of how researchers thought about
virgins. Whereas most scholars of adolescent sexuality had considered virgins a single
homogenous group, Herold and Goodman instead painted a picture of two "camps." In
one camp were potential nonvirgins, females who tended to be younger and date less
frequently than nonvirgins. They were accepting of premarital sex, and most of them
said they had not had intercourse because they had not found the right person yet. In the

other camp were adamant virgins, females whose reason for abstaining was most likely to
be religious or moral in nature. There was some common ground: One-quarter of each
group said they had not had sex because they were not yet ready to do so. Also, neither
group appeared to be terribly concerned about pregnancy. Only 15% of the potential
nonvirgins and 7% of the adamant virgins gave fear of pregnancy as a reason for being
virgin. The overall picture, however, was that some females had made a deliberate
decision to remain virgin, while others were open to having sex eventually, given what
they considered the right circumstances.

In the first half of the 1990s, Sprecher and Regan (1996) revisited the question of
long-term virginity with a survey involving 289 college-age (mean age: 1 9.2 years), self-
identified virgins. These researchers improved on the earlier design by (1) including
men; (2) treating the likelihood of becoming nonvirgin as a continuous, rather than
dichotomous variable; and (3) attending to respondents feelings about, as well as their
reasons for, being virgin. The authors also transformed the scheme for categorizing
reasons for being virgin. The category "moral beliefs," which in the earlier study had
encompassed three reasons~"against religion," "parental disapproval," and "premarital
intercourse is wrong" — grew to include not feeling ready for sex and was renamed
"personal beliefs." A fourth category of fear-based reasons, involving pregnancy and
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), was added.

As might be expected, young men's responses differed substantially from
women's, illuminating meaningful gender differences in young people's experience of
virginity. Paramount among these differences was that long-term male virgins were
likely to be troubled by their sexual status, while females who were long-term virgins

tended to regard their status positively. Males were less likely than females to explain
their virginity using reasons associated with love or the status of their relationships, and
more likely to attribute it to perceived insecurities, inadequacies, or the unwillingness of
a partner. Sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy were prominent concerns for all
of the youth, but women generally indicated more worry, particularly with regard to
pregnancy. Men were not as likely to cite personal reasons than were women; however,
for the men who did, virginity was perceived in a positive light, just as it was by women
with similar convictions. Men who reported relationship length or not having found the
right partner as reasons also tended to view their virginity positively. In some cases,
men's reasons for or feelings about being a virgin were correlated with their future
expectations. Specifically, men whose reasons for virginity related to inadequacy or
insecurity or who felt either guilty or anxious about being virgin were likely to indicate
that they expected to become nonvirgin in the near future.

More recent studies have shed some light on abstinence among younger youth.
The results of one survey of a predominantly White sample (mean age: 14 years) that
included 282 self-identified male virgins indicated that fear of STDs and pregnancy were
the most common reasons given for abstinence (Blinn-Pike 1999). Males reported lower
degrees of fear than did females; unfortunately, the author provided no additional gender
comparisons of the results.

Another investigation provided a cross-sectional look at the sexual and romantic
relationships of a racially diverse (i.e., White, African- American, and Mexican-
American) sample (mean age: 16.7 years) (Sugland & Driscoll 1999). The authors
identified a subsample of 205 youth who said they had not had intercourse with their first

romantic partner. Among males, the most common reasons were that they were not ready

or they feared STDs or pregnancy. Males were significantly less likely than females to

indicate that they abstained because their feelings for their partner were not strong

enough or they believed premarital sex was wrong.

Among these younger samples, then, fear appears to take a more prominent role

than among the older group; however, comparisons are difficult to make because the

newer studies do not raise the issue of inadequacy or insecurity as directly as did

Sprecher and Regan (1996), if indeed they raise it at all. Across all age groups, however,

it seems clear that males are less likely than females to refrain from first intercourse

because of concerns about the strength of their relationship with their partner or the

presence, absence, or amount of love they feel.

"How?" and "How Was It?":
Context and Consequence of First Intercourse Experience

In addition to examining the predictors and timing of adolescents' transition to

nonvirginity, researchers have also wondered how, exactly, the incident of first

intercourse comes to pass. What is the nature of the relationship between the partners?

How intimate, interpersonally and physically, do partners typically become before

actually having intercourse? Do adolescents usually plan their first intercourse

experience in advance? Do they use alcohol, drugs, or other external factors to facilitate

the incident? These and related questions are relevant to a broad conception of the

context of adolescents' first sex, and it is to this issue of context that we now turn. We

begin by examining what some have called "sexual scripts": the interpersonal and logistic

circumstances under which first intercourse occurs. Next, we focus on the dynamics of

physical intimacy that may precede intercourse, and we conclude with a brief look at
adolescents' emotional response to their first experience of intercourse.
Sexual Scripts

Based on retrospective accounts from 1,659 Midwestern college students, one
team of researchers assembled what they call a "typical" sexual script for adolescents"
first intercourse experience (Sprecher, Barbee, & Schwartz 1995). Their data indicated
that a common scenario would be for adolescents to be between 16- and 17-years-old
when they lost their virginity. It would be unlikely for drugs or alcohol to be involved in
the event, but, more than likely, contraception would be used. For the most part, this
picture is consistent with other studies; however, this group may be more conscientious
about birth control than others (DeLamater 1987; de Gaston, Jensen, & Weed 1995).
Also, it should be noted that the sample for the Midwestern study was nearly 90% White.
Multiple sources also suggest that first intercourse typically is an unplanned event that
occurs in the home of one of the partners (de Gaston, Jensen, & Weed 1995; Harris and
Associates 1986; Sprecher, Barbee, & Schwartz 1995)
Dynamics of Physical Intimacy

For both males and females, first intercourse most often occurs in the context of a
dating relationship, but females typically describe their relationship with their partners as
more intimate than do males (Sprecher, Barbee, & Schwartz 1995; Sugland & Driscoll
1999). Among a sample of predominantly White parochial school students, 43.6% of
males, compared with 63.8% of females, described their relationship with their first sex
partner as "going steady" (de Gaston, Jensen, & Weed 1995). More than 20% of males,
but only 14.5% of females, said their partner was a stranger or someone they had just

met. Another indication of males' tendency to experience lower degrees of relationship
or emotional intimacy with their sex partners than females is the finding from a recent
study that males were significantly more likely than females to have had a nonromantic
sexual relationship (Sugland & Driscoll 1999). This same study also reported that Blacks
were more likely than Whites and almost twice as likely as Mexican- Americans to have
had a nonromantic sexual relationship.

When first intercourse happens in the context of an on-going dating relationship,
studies indicate that it is often the endpoint of a predictable pattern of escalating physical
intimacy. One team of researchers has described a broad "normative developmental
pattern" of adolescent heterosexual behaviors that begins with hugging and kissing,
progresses to fondling and petting, and culminates with sexual acts that may include
intercourse (McCabe & Collins 1984). Another study delineated a more detailed pattern
(Smith & Udry 1985). In a typical scenario, necking is followed by feeling breasts
through clothing, then feeling breasts directly. The next steps are feeling sex organs
directly (the female's vagina?), the female feeling the male's penis directly, then
intercourse. This sequence was found to be common among sexually experienced White
adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15, but it was not as consistent with the
experiences reported by Black youth. Apparently, Black adolescents are much more
likely to diverge from this sequence and engage in intercourse prior to or without
engaging in some of the intermediate physical acts.
Emotional Response to First Intercourse

In recent years, attention to the path that youth take to reach their first sexual
experience has taken a back seat to concern about how adolescents feel about their

experience of virginity loss. One attempt to address this question asked a sample of
1 ,659 nonvirgins the degree to which they felt pleasure, anxiety, and guilt when they first
had intercourse (Sprecher, Barbee, & Schwartz 1995). While it is no doubt a
simplification to distill the range of emotions aroused by first sexual intercourse down to
two relatively unpleasant and one pleasant one, the authors, nonetheless, reported some
notable patterns in adolescents' emotional reactions. For both sexes, the greater the
anxiety they felt, the greater the pleasure they reported. Conversely, the greater the guilt,
the less pleasure they felt. Also, those who were 1 7 or older reported more pleasure than
those who were younger. Both males and females also reported greater levels of pleasure
if their partner was the same age or older. Males reported more pleasure and more
anxiety than females, but less guilt. They were also much more likely than females to
have an orgasm, which may provide a partial explanation for their greater pleasure
ratings. The strongest emotion that males reported was anxiety, followed closely by
pleasure. Females, on the other hand, typically felt anxiety most strongly, followed by
guilt, and then pleasure. The guilt that young women felt was mitigated somewhat if they
were still in a relationship with their first sexual partner.

Other researchers see such an examination of adolescents' feelings about first
intercourse as a gross oversimplification, however, because it treats those feelings as
though they are immune to gender power dynamics. Drawing on feminist perspectives,
they argue that females' feelings about their first sexual experiences are inseparable from
the degree of control they feel they have over intimate encounters and, specifically, the
decision to have intercourse. A pioneering effort to examine how females' factor control
issues into their evaluations of intercourse experiences was conducted by Abma, Driscoll,

and Moore (1998). They examined how 2,042 females aged 15 to 24 who participated in
Cycle 5 (1995) of the National Survey of Family Growth rated their first intercourse
experiences on two scales — whether it was voluntary or involuntary, and degree to which
it was wanted (scale from 1 to 10, 10 being most wanted). Their most distressing finding
was that fully 9% of the females described their first sex as nonvoluntary, including 25
women who described their experience as rape. Nearly as remarkable, however, was the
fact that just over 25% of the women rated the wantedness of their first sex on the lowest
end of the scale (between 1 and 4). Black women were more likely to rate the
wantedness as "one" (13%), than were non-Hispanic Whites (6%) and Hispanics (4%),
while Hispanic women were more likely than their counterparts to give the highest rating
for wantedness (21%, compared with 14% for non-Hispanic Whites and 12% for Blacks).
Younger women are often believed to have less control of sexual encounters, and
this research provides support for that contention. To begin with, 24% of the women
who described their first intercourse as nonvoluntary or rape were 1 3 years old or
younger. This percentage represents the largest proportion of women of a single age who
experienced nonvoluntary first intercourse. Even if first intercourse was described as
voluntary, younger women were most likely to rate its wantedness as low. Thirteen
percent of women whose first intercourse occurred at age 13 or younger rated the
wantedness of that intercourse as "one," compared to only 5% of those who had first sex
between the ages of 19 and 24. Even if we assume that many of these women are being
victimized by males who are substantially older than they are, the conclusion is
inescapable that coercing or forcing intercourse is a hidden but salient aspect of the
experience of a minority of adolescent males.

"What?": Virgin Sexual Practices

Often lost in discussions of the incidence, timing, and correlates of adolescents'
first experience of intercourse is that youth may be sexually active long before they first
have intercourse. Being virgin, in other words, is not synonymous with an absence of
sexual activity. The distinction is important for a number of reasons, including the fact
that noncoital sexual activities, such as fellatio, cunnilingus and anal sex, carry a risk of
STD transmission, and messages about the safety associated with abstinence may be
miscommunicated if adolescents associate it solely with refraining from intercourse.
Researchers have been slow to recognize the importance of the distinction between
sexual activity and virginity loss, but a few have begun to attend to it and provide some
sense of the type and pervasiveness of noncoital sexual practices among virgins.

Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s few surveys addressed the noncoital
sexual behaviors of adolescents, and some of those that did limited their analyses to
specific sex acts (i.e., oral sex) (Newcomer & Udry 1987) or populations (i.e.. low-
income, urban Blacks) (Stanton et al. 1994). One exception was a study, discussed
earlier, that documented the differences between the sequence of sexual behaviors that
Black and White adolescents typically engage in prior to having intercourse (Smith &
Udry 1985). Even this analysis, however, did not attend to anal or oral sex, the two types
of noncoital practices that carry the greatest risk of STD transmission.

More recently, one U.S. study has taken virgin sex practices as its primary focus
(Schuster, Bell, & Kanouse 1996), and two others, one based in Canada, have made
contributions. The U.S. study involved over 2,000 9th through 12th graders from Los
Angeles County schools. Of the 952 self-identified virgins in the sample, more than one-

third (35%) reported involvement with at least one of a range of noncoital sexual
activities that encompassed masturbation of or by a partner, heterosexual cunnilingus.
fellatio with ejaculation, and heterosexual anal sex. Thirty percent of the males said they
had experienced masturbation of or by a partner; 1 1% had experienced fellatio with
ejaculation; and 9% had performed cunnilingus. There were no significant differences
between males' and females' levels of involvement in these noncoital acts; however, the
level of involvement reported among males in this sample was twice as high than that
reported among males in a Canadian sample (Feldman et al. 1 997).

Consistent with the notion of the "syndrome" of problem behavior (Donovan and
Jessor 1985) that characterizes adolescents at risk of initiating intercourse, the virgins in
this study who reported having engaged in higher risk non-coital sexual activities (i.e.,
fellatio, cunnilingus) were more likely than virgins whose sexual activity was low risk
(i.e., complete abstinence or mastrubation with a partner) to have used alcohol, drugs, or
marijuana in the past year (Schuster, Bell, & Kanouse 1996). They were also more likely
than their counterparts to have a problem with unexcused school absences, staying out
late without parental permission, stealing, or running away from home.

Another U.S. study using a regional sample provided data on some of the
noncoital sexual behaviors that adolescents engaged in with the person they described as
their first nonsexual romantic partner (i.e., a person with whom they were in a
relationship but did not have intercourse) (Sugland & Driscoll 1999). The percentage of
males in this sample who reporte

d giving or receiving oral sex was comparable to that from the L.A. County study;
however, the more recent investigation found that males who had talked with their

partner about sex reported higher levels of physical intimacy with them. For instance.
27% of males who had talked to their partner about sex had engaged in oral or anal sex,
compared with only 4% who had not talked with their partners about sex. Indeed, having
talked with one's nonsexual romantic partner about sex was associated with higher levels
of noncoital activity for all social class, gender, and racial subgroups, except Whites.
Unfortunately, there is no way to determine how many of the adolescents who reported
these noncoital behaviors are actually virgins since being a virgin was not presumed in
the notion of one's first nonsexual romantic partner. Any or all of them may previously
or simultaneously have had another partner with whom they had intercourse.

Conclusion

The literature on adolescents' sexual behaviors, particularly initiation of sexual
intercourse, is extensive and covers a vast array of issues. In my review, I have tried to
bring some coherence to this enormity by focusing on four fundamental questions: Why
do adolescents have intercourse? When (i.e., at what age) do they do it? How does the
scenario in which first intercourse happens develop, progress, and conclude? What sort
of sexual activity, if any, do youth engage in prior to having intercourse for the first time?

From an exceedingly complex collection of sometimes contradictory and
sometimes incomparable research findings, the broad outlines of a story can be seen, the
story of what is common, if not predictable, in the development of
adolescents — particular boys and young men — as sexual beings. One part of the story is
that age, gender, race, testosterone levels, attendance at religious services, family
structure, commitment to academic achievement, and dating behaviors all influence the
timing of first intercourse. Many White youth experience first intercourse as the climax

of a progressive escalation of physical intimacy within their relationship. Black youth
appear to be less bound to this pattern, initiating intercourse after only limited physical
contact of other kinds.

When it does happen, virginity loss typically occurs in the context of a dating
relationship, but, based on their own reports, males experience these relationships as less
intimate than the ones in which females lose their virginity. But then, one must ask how
important intimacy is to males when they lose their virginity, as a noticeable proportion
of them have their first intercourse experience in a nonromantic relationship. Even so,
males tend to get more pleasure from their first experience of intercourse than females,
partly because they are more likely to have an orgasm and partly because they experience
less guilt. Having intercourse for the first time tends to provoke more anxiety among
males than females, but this anxiety level seems to add to, not detract from, the pleasure
of the experience.

On the whole, young men do not like being virgins, unless they are among a
select group who have chosen abstinence as a result of personal beliefs. Those who have
not tend to blame lack of opportunity or some form of insecurity or perceived inadequacy
for their having not had sex. Like their female counterparts, however, males who are
virgins — more than one-third, according to estimates — may nonetheless be sexually
active. According to estimates, more than one-third of all virgins have engaged in
noncoital sexual acts. While most of these are masturbating with partners, a substantial
number are participating in acts, such as oral or anal sex, which carry a risk of STD
transmission.

Surveys of adolescents' sexual behavior thus gives us a start, a story that
introduces us to some of the themes that are common to broad multitudes of adolescents.
But it is an impersonal story, one that extracts those elements of the youths' unique
experiences that fit particular data collection schemes and discards the rest. As I will
begin to show in the next chapter, my narrative analysis offers a new perspective on these
familiar themes and some unfamiliar ones, a perspective that highlights their saturation in
and emergence from the moral web in which the self is embedded.

CHAPTER 3
QUALITATIVE LITERATURE

The story of what qualitative research contributes to our understanding of
adolescent sexuality, particularly as it relates to heterosexual males, is necessarily a
fragmented one. It must be told by describing relevant aspects of several different
literatures and assembling these pieces in a way that suggests a whole that has male
adolescent sexuality at its center.

This somewhat tortured approach is required for a number of reasons. First,
"qualitative research" is an umbrella term that subsumes a diverse array of
methodological approaches and theoretical commitments. Researchers that may be
similar in that their work is considered qualitative may nevertheless be quite different in
how they view the world, social science, and the relationship between the two. These
differences lead them to conduct research with widely divergent background
assumptions, methods, aims, and "real-world" implications. The heterogeneity of what is
commonly referred to as "qualitative research" virtually demands, therefore, that I
address multiple aspects of the literature separately.

The second reason for approaching the larger story by means of smaller loosely
associated ones is that, frankly, there is not much of a unified larger story. There are, to
date, very few qualitative studies that focus specifically on the sexuality of adolescent
males. Adolescence has received its share of attention from qualitative researchers, but
the focus tends to be on institutional contexts, particularly the school (Simmons & Blyth

1987; Thorne 1993; Willis 1977), not experiential milestones, such as virginity loss.
Qualitative researchers have certainly not ignored sexuality either, but their concern has
not been with the commonplace experiences or development of adolescent male
heterosexuals. Problematic or controversial realms of sexuality, such as sexual
harassment, violence, and transsexualism, have received attention. Adolescent males
whose sexuality falls outside of the heterosexist norm of "compulsory heterosexuality"
(Rich 1980) are the subject of one recent qualitative study (Savin- Williams 1998). And
in recent decades a number of feminist researchers have turned their attention to
adolescent female sexuality (Lees 1993; Lees 1986; Thompson 1995; Tolman 1994), an
interest driven by both the problematic consequences of females being so closely
identified with their sexuality in a patriarchal culture and the tendency for women's
sexuality to be silenced, undervalued or pathologized, particularly in the early years.
In sum, both sexuality and adolescence have been explored using qualitative
methods, but, consistent with the pragmatic tradition that underpins much qualitative
work, attention has been reserved for those intersections of adolescence and sexuality that
have proven to be problematic in the everyday lives of groups of individuals. Adolescent
male heterosexuality, as the early or developmental phase of a sexuality (male,
heterosexual) that represents the standard against which other sexualities have been
judged, has remained beyond the pale of immediate concern of researchers, provided that
it has not been expressed in forms considered deviant (e.g., gang rape) (Lefkowitz 1997).
With this "invisibility by default" seemingly blinding qualitative researchers to the need
to write stories with male adolescent heterosexuality at the center, what story there is to

be told must be culled out of portions of other work where it resides as a tangential
concern.

Yet one might well ask why I would not extrapolate about male adolescent
sexuality from qualitative research that includes both genders, as I did, where
appropriate, when examining the quantitative literature. Why all of this insistence on
studies that specifically target male sexuality? The answer is simply that, where
qualitative methods are used, extrapolation from a kind of collective or "nongendered"
position is frequently not appropriate. This point rests on a fundamental difference in the
aims of qualitative and quantitative methods. Where quantitative studies typically strive
to homogenize data by reducing instances of behavior or attitudes to decontextualized
numerical units that can be compared easily, qualitative research thrives on difference
because its ultimate concern is the meaning behind experiences and behaviors. So, for
example, if survey researchers report data on the timing of virginity loss for adolescents
without discriminating between results from males and females, a broad sense of the
timing of the event among adolescents still makes sense and has limited utility. On the
other hand, it would be problematic for a qualitative researcher to present findings
regarding the meaning of virginity loss without differentiating results by gender because,
at least in the context of contemporary America, the meaning of the event is likely to vary
substantially by gender. This particular strength of qualitative strategies (i.e., their
recognition that diverse meanings can and do underlie outwardly identical events) thus
makes the issue moot. Qualitative research simply does not lend itself to the kind of
undifferentiated generalizing— in terms of gender or any other category relevant to the
issue at hand — commonly associated with quantitative work.

It is thus against a backdrop that includes theoretical and methodological
diversity, gaps in the literature, and issues unique to qualitative research that this review
of the literature must be organized. Although there are probably a multitude of ways to
accomplish this, I have chosen an approach that gives equal attention to the substantive
contributions of qualitative research to the study of adolescent sexuality and the (mostly
untapped) relevance of narrative analysis to the topic.

I begin with nonnarrative, naturalistic qualitative work on virginity and adolescent
sexuality because these studies provide the strongest thematic link to the quantitative
research discussed in the previous chapter. In the same context, I then focus on work that
addresses adolescent sexuality specifically through the lens of masculinity. For the
remainder of the chapter, I turn my attention to narrative. Here, I first briefly explain
how narrative analysis differs from other qualitative approaches, then I locate my notion
of narrative and my analytical strategy within the broad spectrum of existing theoretical
and analytical approaches to narrative. These two tasks together will demonstrate the
importance of, and unique contribution offered by, narrative studies. With that
foundation set, I turn to a brief survey of narrative studies involving sexuality, and an
examination of the rare existing study that addresses male adolescent sexuality using a
narrative approach. Organized in this manner, the chapter begins with substantive
concerns, delves at length into matters of narrative that tend to be more theoretical in
nature, then returns again to the substantive as seen from a narrative viewpoint. My hope
is that this strategy puts emphasis in the proper places as I try to tell the related — but as
yet not integrated— stories of qualitative research, narrative, and male adolescent
heterosexuality.

Naturalistic Studies of Adolescent Sexuality

The studies subsumed under this broad category are similar in that they do not
problematize the relationship between language (narrative) and reality. They assume that
language is a reflection of reality, not an element in its social construction. They differ,
however, in that some are interview-based studies and others are ethnographies.
Interviews

For the most part, the interview-based studies focus on virginity. (The sole
exception — Marsiglio, Hutchinson, & Cohan 2001 — addresses males' reproductive
ability as an aspect of the construction and transformation of masculine identities and is
thus considered in a subsequent section.) Among a sample of 29 British youth (ages 16-
29; male and female; heterosexual, gay, and lesbian), Mitchell and Wellings (1998) found
that virginity loss (i.e., first intercourse experiences) tended to occur in silence,
particularly if intercourse occurred at an early age. (Unfortunately, the authors did not
specify what constituted "intercourse" for the participants of various sexual orientations,
nor did they quantify ages that would be considered "early.") In lieu of verbal
communication, sexual encounters were primarily advanced through nonverbal
communication, which, in some cases, superceded any verbal communication that took
place. The authors believe that many young people resist preplanning intercourse with
their partners because they do not wish to spoil the spontaneity and because they realize
that at their age there is a taboo against assuming or expecting sex.

Regardless of why it happens, this dynamic may be particularly problematic for
young women. A number of the female respondents reported that they had been
ambivalent about having intercourse, but found themselves unable to communicate their

unwillingness directly. In other cases, women appeared ill equipped to interpret
contextual and nonverbal clues that signaled that their partners believed intercourse was
imminent.

It appears, furthermore, that some young men take advantage of silence and.
particularly with female partners, an imbalance in power, when seeking first intercourse.
While a young man's intent may not be malicious or deceptive, by not talking about sex
beforehand, males may not provide their partners the opportunity to object, and females"
socialization to be accommodating and avoid conflict may compel them to "go along"
with the scenario as their partner advances it. Alternatively, the sexual initiator, who is
typically male, may respond to their partners' mild protests or excuses with verbal silence
and nonverbal behavior that ignores the protests. Essentially, the young man challenges
his partner to resist more directly, and gets what he wants when the partner does not.

Clearly not all adolescent males exploit silence or ignore females' resistance to
get sex. But this study alerts us to the fact that these scenarios can occur and that
communicative and power imbalances are ever-present features of the context within
which adolescent males become sexual decision makers.

Another recent study (Carpenter 2001) addressed the meanings that young people
attributed to their experience of virginity loss when they reflected back on it. Carpenter
found that the 61 men and women (ages 18-35; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual)
made use of three distinct "interpretive frames" (p. 127) to assign meaning. The "gift"
frame cast virginity as something special and valuable that one offers to one's partner as
a token of love. Seen through the "stigma" frame, on the other hand, virginity was
something to be hidden and escaped when possible. Occupying a sort of middle ground.

the "process" frame interpreted virginity loss as simply one step in a broader
developmental journey or rite of passage.

These interpretive frames "profoundly shaped respondents' expectations,
experiences, and retrospective evaluations of virginity loss" (p. 137). In other words, as
the respondents talked about losing their virginity, it was evident that the meaning they
attached to virginity at the time influenced their behavior and the experience they had.
For instance, among men in the sample it was most common to regard virginity as a
stigma. Respondents who interpreted virginity in this way often took intentional steps to
protect their "secret," either by lying about their sexual histories or allowing others to
assume they were sexually experienced. Many of the respondents in this group lost their
virginity to relative strangers, who were less likely to know or question their sexual
status.

Fear of "exposure" also may have kept many of these people from using
contraception. Respondents who saw virginity as stigma were least likely among all
participants to have used contraceptives when they lost their virginity, and at least one
adherent to the "stigma" frame reported that he did not use or discuss contraception
because he feared looking inexperienced. By contrast, the group that used the gift
frame — a group which included half as many men as women — was most likely to use
contraception during virginity loss.

It should be emphasized that what Carpenter documents are tendencies, not
statistical trends. Her goal is not to predict, for instance, the degree to which men are
more likely than women to use particular interpretive frames. Rather, she identifies the
variety of frames that respondents employ and notes differences across groups (e.g., men

and women; heterosexuals and nonheterosexuals). What is important for my purposes is
the interpretive terrain that Carpenter's findings suggest for male adolescent sexuality.
Young men may orient to virginity as a gift, as a stigma, or as a process, but heterosexual
men may be most likely to see virginity as stigma. The assumption of particular
orientations is likely to have consequences in terms of the degree of openness or
deliberateness in the communication they have with their partners, the likelihood that
they use contraception during virginity loss, and their subjective evaluation of their first
intercourse experience. Just as important, the meanings these males attribute to the
experience may change over time. A full one-third of all the respondents in Carpenter's
study (men and women) said their perspective had evolved, which meant that they drew
upon more than one interpretive frame over the course of the interview.

Another important finding of Carpenter's study was that multiple definitions of
virginity loss exist and that definitions tend to vary according to group membership. For
instance, 59% of nonheterosexuals believed that one would cease to be a virgin after
experiencing vaginal, oral, or anal sex, but only 18% of heterosexuals believed each of
these acts was equally capable of resulting in virginity loss. In terms of heterosexual sex
acts, three-fourths of respondents believed that a person who engaged in oral sex with an
opposite sex partner would not have lost his or her virginity. This high proportion is
consistent with the notion that, since the 1920s, it has become increasingly more common
for Americans to engage in all sorts of sexual acts and, provided that they stop short of
intercourse, still consider themselves "technically" virgin. In fact, it supports Rubin's
(1990) assertion that the content of "everything but" coitus (e.g., the behaviors that don't
"endanger" one's virginity) has expanded over time and now, for many people, includes

oral sex. Although Carpenter does not provide a specific breakdown of how the
heterosexual men in her study defined virginity loss, the variation in definitions that she
documents point to the relevance of my decision to explore with my respondents what
sexual event they would or did define as virginity loss.

An anonymous internet study (Donnelly, Burgess, Anderson, et al. 2001) that
included 34 older virgins (26 male and 8 female; 85% aged between 1 8 and 34 years)
provides a kind of elaboration of the notion of the "stigma" frame used by some of
Carpenter's respondents to make sense of virginity. The open-ended responses to on-line
questions that these virgins provided suggest that as adolescents move into adulthood,
they are more and more likely to experience virginity as a stigma because they associate
it with being "off-time." Experiential ly speaking, they feel that they are lagging behind
others their age. Indeed, several of the virgins in this study described feeling immature or
childish because of their lack of sexual experience.

Information collected from the participants also illuminates some of the social and
social psychological factors that contribute to long-term, involuntary virginity. The most
common factors cited by respondents were shyness, lack of dating experience, and body
image concerns. Problems with work and living arrangements and with transportation
were also mentioned. For some male heterosexual virgins, masculinity also appeared to
have contributed to their troubles. By following notions of masculinity that emphasize
education and the "hard" sciences, they entered academic programs and professions that
were heavily sex segregated. As a result, their "manliness" became a barrier to their
ability to meet and date women.

Ethnographies

A number of ethnographies provide information that enriches our understanding
of adolescent male sexuality as a by-product of exploring adolescent or preadolescent
culture in various contexts. In her study of gender and play behavior among middle and
junior high school students, Thorne (1993) observes that when preadolescents first start
to experiment with the adolescent concept of heterosexual dating, their coupling tends to
be quite impersonal. While personal affections may be involved, such relationships are
almost inevitably also "a way of claiming status with one's peers, and a qualitatively
different, more mature ("teenage") form of femininity or masculinity" (p. 153). And, in
fact, the establishment and dissolution of "goin' with" relationships at this age is typically
a social process that is engineered as much by members of the partners' friendship groups
as by the boy and girl themselves. Later, in high school, the direct involvement of friends
in the management of couplings wanes, but the peer influence remains in the form of
informal rankings about the desirability of particular partners and collective assessments
of "how far" intimacies between couples should progress.

At the conclusion of this discussion about the progression from preadolescent to
adolescent, Thorne makes the following observation: "In middle school or junior high the
status of girls with other girls begins to be shaped by their popularity with boys; same
gender relations among boys are less affected by relationships with the other gender" (p.
155). Certainly her claim with respect to girls is consistent with others' observations of
shifts in the social landscape that occur once preadolescence gives way to the sexually
charged teenage years (Pipher 1994). The existence of such a dynamic is also supported
by studies of women in higher education (Canaan 1986 or 1987?; Holland & Eisenhart

1990). It may be to our advantage, however, to withhold judgment on Thome's claim
that boys relationships with each other are not similarly affected by their relationships
with the other gender. To be sure, the dynamic is not identical. But as we examine the
narratives of the adolescent males I talked to, we may find that among boys there is a
different, perhaps subtler, way in which relationships with girls figure into male-to-male
relations.

Two other studies, both of which are ethnographic in nature but do not rely solely
on traditional methods of participant observation, offer evidence of how young males
learn about sex. The first of these is the classic study of adolescence in a small
Midwestern town that A.B. Hollingshead (1949) completed with the help of his wife in
the mid- 1940s. The Hollingsheads complemented their observations with analysis of
secondary data, quantification of behaviors, structured and unstructured interviews, and
questionnaires in their quest to document relationships between the social behavior of
adolescents and the social position of their families. In terms of sex, the Hollingsheads
observed that information was passed from older kids to younger ones in homosocial
groups, with boys typically learning about sex beginning between ages 10 and 12. For
boys, becoming knowledgeable about sex included learning that girls can be "played" for
sex and that "girls are expected to be submissive to physical advances after the boy has
made the proper overtures by bestowing material favors such as a show, a ride, food,
candy, perhaps some small gift" (p 314). Some also learned about sex in other ways.
Nearly half of the boys who were high school dropouts admitted having sex with farm
animals, and some reported masturbating with a friend. (Leaving aside group
masturbation, none of the boys admitted having had a homosexual experience.)

Among both high school boys and dropout boys, dating below one's class was
much more common than dating within it or above it, and there was consistent evidence
that boys exploited girls of lower classes for sex. Some times males' youthful sexual
explorations took on a decidedly predatory cast in the context of male friendship groups.
According to the boys, it was common for groups of two or three boys to spend an
evening touring local hangouts with the express goal of finding girls and seducing them.
This cultural practice found its most sexist and extreme incarnation in a clique of boys
from the highest social class. The members' enormous pride in their ability to get girls
was announced in their group name, "The Five F's," which stood for "Find 'em, feed
'em, feel 'em, f— 'em, and forget 'em." The name also indicates that their predatory
sexual activity was central to their purpose and identity as a group.

This sort of predatory sexual behavior among adolescent males is not an
aberration or a relic of the era in which it was documented. Recent examples (Associated
Press 1993) and research (Lefkowitz 1997; Sanday 1990) confirm the persistence of a
particular, collective expression of adolescent male sexuality that denigrates women and
can culminate in sexual violence. Indeed, the research points to a number of social
circumstances and dynamics that often characterize the groups and group members that
approach sexuality in this manner. These males tend to spend most of their time among
other males. Their interactions with women are almost exclusively a means to the end of
sexual gratification, and they have few, if any, meaningful relationships with members of
the opposite sex. Among their male peer group, they receive recognition and status for
their sexual conquests. In fact, the members of the friendship group may engage each
other in friendly competitions regarding sexual "accomplishments." In its most extreme

expressions, the tendency for the youth's sexuality to be an exchange between group
members, with females as meaningless intermediaries, may become manifest in group
masturbation, collective viewing of pornography, and sexual episodes involving group
members, including gang rapes. Sexual activities may even be video taped for later
consumption by all group members.

An important theme that runs through the sociological literature on gang rape and
male sexual predation is that such behavior must be viewed as much as a product of the
social environment, as the aberrant acts of unstable individuals. Social historian Bernard
Lefkowitz (1993) recognized this fact after he completed his 7-year investigation of the
community of Glen Ridge, New Jersey. The quiet, affluent suburb had gained notoriety
in the early 1990s when a group of the most popular student athletes in the local high
school were convicted of the gang rape of a 17-year-old retarded girl. Using a mix of
ethnographic and other methods similar to what the Hollingsheads used, Lefkowitz
assembled a strong argument that the local culture of Glen Ridge championed modes of
masculinity that made the gang rape incident a tragic, yet almost predictable, extension of
community values. First, the social and political climate of the town rewarded masculine
athletic accomplishment to the point that male athletes developed a sense of entitlement.
Part and parcel of this entitlement was an ethos of "boys will be boys" that tended to keep
repeated incidents of delinquent behavior by these teens — from incidents of vandalism
and alcohol consumption to harassment of girls and sexual misconduct — below the
"radar" of official punishment or even recognition. The glorification of male sporting
accomplishments also served to marginalize females; women and girls achieved status
primarily by playing a supporting role to male athletic endeavors. Additionally, the type

of adult, upper-middle class masculinity cherished by the town's leaders facilitated a
"problem-solving" dynamic that privileged the image of the community over constructive
engagement with issues. It made troubles, such as their sons' incidents of drinking and
vandalism, "go away" (usually through the transfer of money) without their being solved.

Ethnographic studies that address adolescent sexuality, such as those by
Lefkowitz and Hollingshead, are important because they examine male sexual behavior
in its local cultural context in a way that is unavailable through interviews or surveys
alone. Not only does the research reveal aspects of sexual behavior that individuals
might otherwise prefer to keep hidden, it demonstrates how that behavior is fostered by
existing social conditions. One important aspect of these social conditions is, of course,
the ways in which boys are raised and the models of manhood they are given. Thus,
Lefkowitz's search to discover how the "perfect suburb" could be the site of a malicious
gang rape ultimately leads him to question the ways in which sexuality and masculinities
are linked in the values of the town.
Masculinity as an Interpretive Lens

Other researchers have long recognized that sexuality is an important part of how
contemporary males define themselves as men, and they have self-consciously brought
masculinity studies to bear on questions of sexuality. The findings of one recent study
(Mandel & Shakeshaft 2000) indicated that middle-class White boys as young as middle-
school age constructed their identities in the most polarized gender terms. They
consistently denied any aspect of femininity in their identities and defined their
masculinity in terms of avoiding the feminine and exhibiting machismo, athleticism, and
heterosexuality. The authors, who conducted both interviews and field observations at

two middle schools, contend that this hypermasculinity contributed greatly to the
atmosphere at the school, which was characterized by (1) sexually harassing and
disrespectful language; (2) homophobic attitudes toward those perceived to be lesbian or
gay; and (3) sexually intensive gender relations. Each of these aspects of the middle
school environment served to limit the identities available to both boys and girls. Girls,
for instance, felt pressure to date and to give in to boys' sex-related requests. They also
felt little power to counter sexually aggressive or inappropriate activity or comments by
boys. For their part, boys felt required to date, display heterosexuality. and exhibit
machismo around other boys.

These findings thus confirm some of the theoretical notions about masculinities
that I set out in Chapter 1 (e.g., masculinities being defined against the feminine;
masculinities operating through homophobia; masculinities displayed for other males),
and they are consistent with other studies that have documented the bind for girls that
emerges when adolescent femininity confronts adolescent masculinity (Mitchell &
Wellings 1988). But more than this, they also demonstrate the eagerness of very young
boys to articulate their identities in terms of gender discourses, and they point to the
strictures that certain enactments of masculinity can place on selfhood.

An innovative way of exploring the ties between sexuality and masculine
identities has been advanced by Marsiglio (1998). Combining elements from symbolic
interactionism, identity theory, and the scripting perspective, Marsiglio has developed a
conceptual model for examining what he calls the "procreative realm" of men's lives.
This realm encompasses the diverse array of physiological, social psychological, and
interpersonal experiences men can have with respect to pregnancy, birth control, and

procreation. Using procreation as the organizing principle recognizes that experiences

that had previously been considered in isolation are in fact related by their association

with a man's ability (or lack of ability) to sire children. Marsiglio offers a sense of these

connections when he provides a sampling of what falls under the purview of the

procreative realm:

The procreative realm includes such things as men's perceptions about
begetting or not being able to beget children, their contraceptive attitudes
and behaviors, their thoughts about and their actual involvement in their
partner's pregnancy, their reactions to various permutations of in-vitro
fertilization and artificial insemination, men's sense of obligation to their
offspring prior to and after their birth, and the symbolic meaning that men
associate with begetting and raising children, (p. 15)

In essence, the notion of the procreative realm concretizes examinations of sexuality
through its link to procreation.

Within this model of the procreative realm, two sensitizing concepts, procreative
consciousness and procreative responsibility, are central. The former references men's
attitudes, impressions, and feelings about themselves as individuals who are (presumably)
capable of procreating. The latter describes two related matters: (1) Men's perceived
sense of obligation related to paternity and social fatherhood roles; and (2) their thoughts,
attitudes, and behaviors with regard to the practical aspects of events in the procreative
realm (e.g., talking with a partner about contraception; choosing a contraceptive method;
accompanying a partner for an abortion).

In-depth interviews about procreative impressions and experiences with a diverse
sample of single young males (ages 16 through 30) have begun to elaborate how young
men recognize that they could impregnate a woman and become a father (Marsiglio,
Hutchinson, Cohan 2001). It appears that most males become aware of their fecundity

between the ages of 13 and 15, but some reported awareness as early as age 10. In their
minds, some boys immediately link this awareness to the possibility of paternity. Others,
it seems, require a more experiential connection to their own fecundity (e.g., first orgasm
during vaginal intercourse; pregnancy scare) before it becomes a meaningful part of their
procreative identity. Also, partners are often influential in determining how a male's
procreative consciousness becomes manifest in particular situations. For instance, a
partner who is extremely concerned about avoiding pregnancy may raise issues of
contraception before every sexual episode, thereby forcing the male to be conscious and
responsible.

Marsiglio's conceptual approach is important because it encourages us to think
about all of the multifarious ways that men can engage issues of impregnation, birth, and
fatherhood in terms of a more or less unified, more or less developed identity. In my
interviews, I did not specifically seek to "activate" the young men's procreative
identities, and discussions of procreative issues were uncommon. This is not surprising
because the stories I sought to elicit from my respondents were about sexual, not
procreative, decision making. Also, every time I oriented the interviews toward one of
the major organizing elements, virginity, I was literally asking respondents to speak from
a position nearly outside of the procreative realm. In spite of these contextual
"inhibitors," procreative issues did occasionally emerge as relevant to particular decisions
youth made about sexual behavior. This point is important because it remains to be seen
to what degree or in what contexts young men articulate a procreative identity when they
talk about their sexual behavior without specific prompting about pregnancy, birth
control, or paternity. The answer to this question may help to indicate the degree to

which young men experience their sexual selves and their procreative identities as linked
or integrated. For the most part, this issue is beyond the purview of the current study, but
to the extent that my respondents address procreative issues, Marsiglio's work warrants
attention.

Narrative Analysis

As I mentioned earlier, a narrative approach to qualitative research differs from
the traditional naturalist approach in that narrativists treat language, whether it be
interview speech or verbal exchanges observed in the field, as a constitutive element of
the data. Recognizing that what we say cannot be separated from how we say it,
narrativists are as interested in the way experience is "storied" as they are in the content
of the stories.
The Narrative Quality of Experience

The explosion of interest in narrative across academic disciplines in the past
decade is the result of a new (some would say, renewed) appreciation of the narrative
quality of experience. Recent proponents have hailed the impetus to narrate as a cultural
universal (Maines 1993, Richardson 1990), an intrinsic feature of human nature
(Plummer 1995; Sandelowski 1991), an engine of social life (Plummer 1995), and a
property of experience itself (Crites 1997). Possible hyperbole aside, there is a
conviction among those who study narrative that telling stories is a fundamental and
ubiquitous means by which people create meaning in everyday life (Reissman 1993),
experience over time (Richardson 1990), the world, ourselves, and others (Berger 1997;
Holstein & Gubrium 1995). Story telling is not simply "spinning tales," it is a way to
"impose order on the flow of experience to make sense of events and actions in our lives"

(Reissman 1993, p. 2). Examining people's stories, then, represents a powerful means for
sociologists to explore subjective experience. At the same time, the narrative quality of
social life beyond the everyday (e.g., the textual mediation of institutional processes;
cultural and organizational discourses) makes narrative strategies viable at any level of
analysis (Maines 1993).
Narrative and Identity

For social psychology, a particularly important implication of narrative sense-
making is that talk is crucial to the production of individual identity. In life stories or
stories of everyday life, we try to assemble pictures of our selves that make sense of our
past and are consistent with a future that we project for ourselves (Hinchman &
Hinchman 1997; Holstein & Gubrium 2000b). What's more, all this narrative identity
work must be done in accord with the contingencies of the storytelling moment. The
process is complex, and the stakes are high. Gergen and Gergen (1997) have
demonstrated, for instance, that effective narration of the self is an important social
survival skill. Social life demands that we convince others that we are certain selves,
such as a stable partner, a diligent workers, or a devoted father, and accomplishing these
depictions is largely a narrative task. But the social nature of identity construction can
work to assemble as well as compel stories. Mason- Schrock's (1996) work with a
support group for transsexuals showed, for example, that when the identity task is
particularly treacherous and the cultural resources for constructing relevant identities are
scarce, individuals may learn appropriate self stories from others. Selves and stories are
thus inexorably social, interrelated phenomena.

Defining Narrative

When it comes to identifying narratives for the purposes of analysis, notions of
what constitutes a narrative are as varied as narratives are ubiquitous. Most analysts use
the word "narrative" more or less synonymously with story. For these researchers, there
is consensus that, at minimum, stories are distinct segments out of larger sequences of
talk that are characterized by a selecting and ordering of past events in a manner intended
to be personally and culturally coherent and persuasive (Berger 1 997; Hinchman &
Hinchman 1997; Reissman 1993; Sandelowski 1991).

They differ on a number of finer points, however, such as the degree of emphasis
they place on two aspects of event ordering: sequencing and emplotment. Most
narrativists believe that a passage must place events in some temporal sequence to be a
true story (Berger 1997; Hinchman & Hinchman 1997; Maines 1993; Reissman 1993).
and some insist further on chronological sequencing (Reissman 1993). These
expectations are not surprising, since they are consistent with the way that Western
listeners are accustomed to telling and hearing stories. But some researchers have
specifically recognized these expectations as arbitrary cultural limitations and argued that
thematic sequencing — in which story episodes are tied together by theme, rather than
time— also be considered a legitimate way of ordering a narrative (Reissman 1993).

The other aspect of narrative order, emplotment, refers to the introduction and
arrangement of people, places, and actions in stories. It is essentially the narrative
production of the "drama" that a narrative is intended to convey. David Maines ( 1 993)
argues that what he calls emplotment — a story structure that involves plot, setting, and
characterization— is the most important, defining element of narrative. Echoing his

perspective, Seymour Chatman (see Sandelowski 1991) and Faye Ginsburg (see
Reissman 1993) have specifically examined emplotment across different narratives, on
the assumption that similar story elements, differently plotted, result in very different
narratives (and, by extension, very different meanings).

In other popular definitions of narrative, emplotment is implied but not
highlighted. For instance, William Labov's classic definition of "narrative as story" (see
Reissman 1993) asserts that "fully formed" narratives have six essential elements: an
abstract, which summarizes what is to come; orientation in terms of time, place, situation
and participants; complicating action; evaluation, which offers the narrator's
interpretation of and attitude toward the action; a resolution that tells what finally
happened; and a coda that returns the narrator's perspective to the present. Here, the
orientation and complicating action would most likely identify the place where
emplotment occurs. Likewise, in Kenneth Burke's description of narrative (see Reissman
1993) as consisting of act, scene, agency, and purpose, we can intuit which elements
would contribute to emplotment, but the ordering scheme emphasizes a dramatic
metaphor more than the meaning-making process.

Still other researchers retain the idea that narratives are discrete portions of talk
with a beginning and end, but they broaden the definition, in part by deemphasizing
emplotment. For instance, Reissmann (1993) recognizes several narrative genres, of
which the story is just one. She asserts that narratives can also be habitual and describe
events that repeat, with no peak in action like a story; hypothetical in that they depict
events that did not happen; or topic-centered, so that themes, not the passage of time, link
events. Of these alternative genres, the habitual and the topic-centered diverge most from

the more restrictive definition of "narrative as story." Habitual narratives diverge
because of the absence of culminating action, and topic-centered ones are not "story-like"
because the sequencing is not temporal.

The most liberal definition of narrative of all, however, puts much less emphasis
on the identification and deconstruction of structures within talk (such as stories and
hypothetical narratives) and instead focuses on what people do with talk and how they do
it. "Narrative" in this context becomes virtually any sequence of talk, whether it be the
discussion of a particular topic in an interview or an exchange between natives in the
field. While it may be a stretch to claim that this broad notion of narrative has active
proponents, it is implicit in the empirical (Gubrium 1993; Holstein 1993) and theoretical
(Gubrium & Holstein 1997; Holstein & Gubrium 2000b) work of Gubrium and Holstein.
Susan Chase (1995a) also draws on it in her study of women school superintendents
when she notes that she analyzed stories using Labov's definition of narrative in
conjunction with attention to "the entire linguistic event through which a woman
constructs her self-understanding and makes her experiences meaningful" (pp. 24-25).
Narrative, in this use, is more synonymous with talk or verbal interaction than with story.
Some authors (Reissman 1993) would even say that what is actually referenced here is
discourse, but I disagree. To conflate "narrative as linguistic event" with discourse, it
seems to me, is to ignore the sense of collective understanding — a particular, cultural
perspective on reality — that discourse connotes (Chase 1995a).
Examining Narrative: Analytical Strategies

Given that researchers hold different beliefs about what constitutes a narrative, it
should not be surprising that narratives are approached analytically in many different

ways. Differences arise not only in terms of what qualifies as narrative for the
researcher, but also how thoroughly narrative the analysis is. In some studies,
examination of talk as narrative is employed as a kind of supplement to the broader more
naturalistic strategies and aims of the project. These projects might be said to exemplify
a limited narrative approach. Other studies are designed, top to bottom, with narratives
and narrative analytical techniques at their centers. They represent what I call a
comprehensive narrative approach. These two distinctions do not represent the full range
of analytical approaches to narrative, however. A third, novel approach is Ken
Plummer's "sociology of stories" paradigm, which does not examine the construction of
meaning in individual instances of talk, but is nonetheless undeniably sociological and,
analytically speaking, as focused on narrative as anything that might be identified with
the comprehensive narrative approach. In the interest of providing a faithful survey of
the breadth of existing strategies for examining narratives, I begin with a brief description
of Plummer's sociology of stories. Next, I review an example of limited narrative
analysis. I conclude with two examples of comprehensive narrative analysis, both of
which inform my study of the sexual decision-making narratives of adolescent
heterosexual males.

According to Plummer (1995), "a sociology of stories seeks to understand the role
of stories in social life" (p. 31). Thus, the focus is not on stories as texts, but on stories as
"social actions embedded in social worlds'" (p. 17, emphasis in original). The questions
that such an approach generates include the following: Who is involved in story telling?
(Plummer identifies producers, coaxers/coercers, and consumers.); How are stories made,
told, and consumed?; How do ways of telling effect how stories are received?; And how

do stories "fit" within larger frameworks of power, including cultural hierarchies of the
acceptability or desirability of different narratives? The meanings conveyed in stories are
certainly relevant to answering these questions. As Plummer demonstrates, the stories
told about particular experiences (e.g., rape, "coming out") have a history and are
enmeshed in social and political webs with other, related stories. But Plummer' s aims are
too historical and macro-sociological to leave room for interest in the intricacies of
narrative structuring that characterize more textually oriented narrative analyses. At
base, he is trying to offer a glimpse of a new way that analysts interested in narrative can
address the interplay of narratives and the social world(s) in which stories are produced
and circulate.

In an examination of the life stories of pro-choice and antiabortion political
activists, sociologist Faye Ginsburg (see Reissman 1993) also shies away from in-depth
analysis of the construction of meaning in individual accounts, but for a very different
reason. Whereas Plummer eschews such analyses because they are too microsociological
for his project, Ginsburg seems to do so because she is committed to a naturalistic, rather
than a narrative, framework. As a result, she ends up conducting narrative analysis "lite."
The analysis is limited with respect to narrative in two ways: First, no attention is paid to
language use or narrative forms, such as stories or other narrative genres. In fact, the
entire interview text is considered the narrative. And second, for the most part, the
interview material is used in a naturalist way. She compares the life stories of her pro-
choice and antiabortion respondents and produces a traditional thematic analysis that
highlights differences in experiences and understandings between the two groups. What
qualifies this study as a narrative analysis in some sense is Ginsburg's attention to

narrative sequencing. Working from the recognition that cultural and narrative
conventions guide how women in contemporary America typically tell their life stories,
Ginsburg traces how both groups of activists construct and account for stories that
deviate from these conventions. Still, the attention to narrative in this project cannot be
considered comprehensive because the production of meaning is a secondary concern and
the treatment of language as constitutive of meaning is, at best, intermittent.

Now, as I turn to examples of what I call comprehensive narrative analysis, a
word of caution or at least explanation is in order. My criterion for designating
something as "comprehensive" is exactly what I mentioned earlier — putting the notion of
language as constructive of reality at the heart of the analysis. I suspect that
others — notably Catherine Kohler Reissman, author of the very influential and practical,
Narrative Analysis (1993) — would take issue with my standard as being too "loose," too
liberal. For Reissman and others, truly comprehensive examinations of narrative involve
transcribing that accounts for pauses and tries to use line breaks to mimic speech patterns,
and parsing (interview) text into segments of some kind, whether these be stories, story
segments, or stanzas, as in Reissman's own examination of poetic structures in talk
(1990). In some form or fashion, the analyst gets his or her "hands dirty" with the nitty-
gritty of word choice, speech patterns, speech units, metaphors, even word repetitions,
rhythms, and verb tense.

While I agree whole heartedly that these strategies are indicative of
comprehensive narrative analysis, I do not believe that they are requisites for it. To be
sure, any analysis that foregrounds the construction of reality through talk will make use
of at least some of these techniques. But Reissman's equation of "true" narrative analysis

with the intricate deconstruction of talk segments ties the analysis too tightly to the text
or speech event. While she does recognize the interview context as constitutive of
meaning, she leaves little or no room for the examination of the social conditions of story
telling, even at the level of local culture. In this view it seems that there is nothing but
the text (or speech), no recognition of the influence that cultural and biographical
particulars (e.g., discourses, personal histories, and material objects) have on the stock of
resources available for constructing particular narratives in particular contexts (Holstein
& Gubrium 2000b; Gubrium 1988). The examples of narrative analysis to which I now
turn are comprehensive, in my view, precisely because they never lose sight of the fact
that narratives are as much social as individual products.

Susan Chase (1995a) is very clear on this point in the introduction to her study of
the work narratives of women school superintendents. She argues that the narrative
process is at once personal and cultural because when the women tell their stories they
draw on existing discourses (Chase defines these as "meaning systems"). Indeed, her
contention is that narrative is an ideal avenue for exploring the relationship between
culture and experience because, for her, narrative represents "the embodiment of that
relationship in actual practice" (p. 6).

Her study involving women school superintendents brings the person-culture
relationship into sharp relief because the women are in a precarious social position that
complicates how they make sense of their professional standing. By virtue of being
women in a male-dominated, executive-level position, they have likely faced
discrimination in their pursuit and performance of their jobs. Yet their very presence in
these high-level jobs seems to testify to their individual abilities and argue against the

existence of discrimination. So when these women talk about their professional lives,
how much weight do they give to their experiences of inequality on the one hand and
their own abilities on the other? Her analytical method for answering this question is a
hybrid approach that combines a liberal definition of narrative with Labov's narrower
"story" definition. Beyond separating out excerpts that qualify as stories, she does not
parse the narrative into minute segments or transcribe it in a way that mirrors
respondents' speech. So in terms of the "depth" of the analysis of the narratives in and of
themselves, her approach might be called superficial. But Chase's analytical goal targets
something broader (and, I would argue, something more social) than the structure of the
narratives: She examines how, in their narratives, these women negotiate the implicit
tension between drawing from both a discourse of individual achievement and a
discourse of inequality to tell their stories.

Another approach to narrative analysis that is comprehensive yet not predicated
solely on the identification and explication of narrative structures is what Holstein and
Gubrium (2000b) call narrative practice. In narrative practice, as in Chase's work, the
social conditions of narrating are given equal footing with the production of meaning
within the narrative. This balance is a deliberate goal of the method, and it is achieved
through a recognition that all instances of narration involve both discursive practice and
discourses-in-practice.

The "discursive practice" part of this dyad refers to the interest that is common to
virtually all narrative studies — that is, the way language is used to make meaning and
persuade. The notion of "discourses-in-practice" brings in social and cultural elements; it
represents the authors' recognition that stories do not come out of thin air, but instead are

the result of people's artful appropriation and manipulation of existing resources for
meaning-making. Personal experience — writ as large as possible to include memory,
expectation, and imagination — is a vast narrative resource, but there are also
"impersonal" resources that can shape our stories. These "coherence structures" are
existing ways of knowing, framing, and talking about experience ("language games") that
make it familiar and malleable. Professional therapeutic models and self-help programs
are common examples, but virtually any organization, institution, or group that seeks to
sort, help, or control people develops a coherence structure that guides workers and
clients in constructing narratives relevant to the "going concern" (see Holstein &
Gubrium 2000b) of the agency. Group memberships, such as those based on race,
gender, or sexual orientation, can also shape stories, but for most people their influence
varies with the salience they have in particular contexts.

The important point here is that personal experience, personal choice, and
creativity are never the only ingredients that go into a "personal" story. Discourses of all
kinds facilitate, condition, and are otherwise "put into practice" in the telling of stories,
even (perhaps especially) ones of the most "personal" nature (Plummer 1995). In
practical terms, that means that narrative analysts must look not only at how a narrative is
put together (discursive practice), but also at the narrative resources it uses and how it
uses them. For instance, Holstein (1993) has explored the varied and situational
relevance that gender and age are given in legal proceedings concerning involuntary
commitment. As Holstein and Gubrium (1995) indicate, analysis of this type truly has an
"artful" aspect to it. The analyst must examine rhetorical elements (i.e., word choices.

bits of jargon, viewpoints expressed) throughout the interview and draw on her or his
own cultural knowledge to decipher what discourses are being put into practice.

Narrative Studies of Adolescent Sexuality

As my presentation of the various ways of examining narrative has no doubt made
clear, I believe that the most "comprehensive" narrative analyses are those that
investigate the ways in which narrative production is linked to its social context, rather
than those that most thoroughly deconstruct narratives and compare narrative structures.
Unfortunately, there is a dearth of narrative analyses of any kind in the literature on
adolescent male sexuality, never mind ones that take a comprehensive approach. In my
exploration of the literature, I have uncovered one that comes closest to offering a
comprehensive narrative analysis with regard to boys and sexual talk. The majority of
the "review" that follows focuses on this study. I begin, however, with a study involving
preadolescent boys that has something to say about how they use talk with respect to
sexuality. Although the boys involved in it are younger than my respondents, I present it
briefly because the issues it raises are relevant to my study.
"Where the Boys Are"

In the course of conducting participant observation in the late 1970s among
preadolescent boys in several Little League baseball teams in northern U.S. and New
England, Gary Alan Fine (1988) took note of how the boys used sexual talk and
occasional sexual behavior to present themselves in particular ways to their (male)
friends and teammates. He argues that, for the most part, boys of this age are unprepared
physiologically for sex and not particularly motivated to have sex. They are, however,
interested in earning the respect and awe of their friends that comes with demonstrating

that they are "sexually mature, active, and knowledgeable" (p. 88). Sometimes they vie
for this esteem by actually engaging in sexual or quasi-sexual behaviors, such as mutual
masturbation, homosexual experimentation, or comparing penis lengths.

Just as often, if not more so, however, the boys use talk to demonstrate sexual
competencies. One way of doing this is to tell "the guys" about intimate involvement
that one has had (or purports to have had) with a girl, such as kissing, necking, or
"making out." Since the act is not readily verifiable, the success of this strategy hinges
on the boy constructing a convincing narrative. Another strategy is simply to sexualize
one's everyday speech, peppering it with sexualized insults and talk about biological and
physiological processes. In this latter case, the mere fact of being able to use sexual
words and ideas in talk in a way that the other boys hear as competent achieves the goal
of identifying the speaker as "one of the guys."

Two factors that represent threats to the "mature," masculine identities that the
boys seek to claim with sex talk are girls and the ever-present potential for homophobic
taunts. With respect to girls, boys must walk a fine line with their male friends between
showing enough interest in the opposite sex to seem "adult" and not effeminate, and
showing "too much" interest and seeming "girl crazy." As Fine states succinctly, "Girls
can easily break the bonds of brotherhood among boys" (p. 89).

More often than not, when a threat of "eviction" from the brotherhood comes, it
arrives in the form of homophobic taunts. Fine argues that sexual orientation and sexual
behaviors are not really at issue when boys call one another "queers" or "faggots," rather
the taunt indicates that the target is immature. However, he goes on to say that, for
preadolescent boys, being gay is synonymous with being a girl. It signals that a boy's

speech, manner, interests, or behavior are not consistent with an idealized (and quite
traditional) notion of maleness. So even if preadolescent boys are not directing hatred
toward homosexual behavior when they use this sort of talk, they are certainly enforcing
a particular, rather stringent, code of acceptable masculinity.

In sum, Fine's work reminds us of the robust tie between talk and identity, and it
also provides evidence that, at a very young age, boy's interactions with other boys are
predicated on using talk to police boundaries between the sexes and assert heterosexual
masculinity as a prerequisite for acceptance. Although his observations are now some 20
years old, many of my respondents talked about girls and male friendship groups in ways
similar to those he described, suggesting that the dynamics he documented continue to
influence today's adolescent males.
"School Talk"

Support for my conviction is provided by an innovative narrative study conducted
in the mid-1990s. A four-person research team led by Donna Eder (Eder, Evans, and
Parker 1995) logged the collective equivalent of over two years of observations in a
Midwestern middle school as they explored how early adolescents construct peer culture
in everyday informal talk. Their observations, which were complemented by a number of
formal and informal group and individual interviews, focused on what the researchers
called speech routines, that is, ritualistic, interactive modes of talk. Study of insult
exchanges, teasing, collaborative storytelling, and gossip, illuminated many aspects of
adolescent culture, including how the youth reproduced and, in some cases, challenged or
altered traditional notions of gender and gender inequality.

Eder and her colleagues found, not surprisingly, that traditional norms of
masculinity held great sway in the developing adolescent culture. Dominance, disregard
for the feelings of others, and an orientation toward girls as "sexual property" and tokens
in competitions between boys were values that received continual reiteration and
reinforcement in boys' and girls' speech routines. The collective and constructive power
of these routines is evident when the researchers describe an instance in which interaction
with male peers encouraged one boy to alter his narrative regarding sexuality from one
that considered what was situationally appropriate to a more impersonal and aggressive
one. Eder and associates contend that examples like this one demonstrate how traditional
notions of masculinity come to dominate and constrain adolescents' constructions of
gender and sexuality and their notions of appropriate "sexual scripts."

Though all routines frequently served to reproduce and reinforce traditional
gender norms and hierarchies, some provided greater opportunities for the construction
and adherence to nontraditional gender dynamics. For instance, several male friends
telling a story together could support each other in the construction of a narrative that
subverted the traditional male stricture against showing fear in the face of danger. On the
other hand, insult exchanges among boys (and even among mixed-gender groups)
typically depended on traditional notions of hegemonic masculinity and were structured
in such a way that resisting them could easily cause relatively playful exchanges to turn
deliberately hostile.

While the decision by Eder's team to study adolescents primarily through field
observation has the advantage of addressing the children in their natural setting and thus
making the youth's everyday modes of interpretive practice available for analysis, the

interview-based approach that I have chosen provides equally important, though
different, analytical opportunities. First, it brings into focus entirely different forms of
talk. Rather than ritualized interactive speech routines that are produced as part of social
contact within peer groups, the unstructured interview allows investigation of how youth
respond to questions on potentially sensitive topics outside of the context of their peer
group. Routines of teasing, insulting, and collaborative storytelling are supplanted in the
analytical lens by accounts, stories, and biographical work. Second, talk in this context
does not presume the immediate relevance of the peer group to the issues at hand, rather,
if, when, and how peer groups are referenced in talk becomes an important analytical
concern. Indeed, the one-on-one interview scenario could provide a useful check on the
power of peer-group speech routines. In other words, it may be beneficial to investigate
to what extent young males rhetorically distance themselves from peer group norms when
they are physically separate from the groups.

Conclusion
Although I have tried, in the preceding pages, to bring some organization and
coherence to the qualitative literature on adolescent male sexuality, my earlier
characterization of the story told by this literature as fragmented and incomplete remains
apt. Few studies address the topic directly, so relevant findings must be culled from
diverse sources, including naturalistic studies of virginity and procreative issues,
ethnographies, research in the subdiscipline of masculinity studies, and narrative analyses
of adolescent and preadolescent sex talk. The scant existing literature provides a
tantalizing glimpse of what qualitative research methods could contribute, making the
current state of fragmentation and obvious deficiencies all the more frustrating.

Yet in spite of the patchwork approach I have had to take to assemble "a story" of
the literature, there are some surprisingly uniform threads that appear when the story is
considered as a whole. Unfortunately, some of these threads reveal problematic streaks
in the way adolescent boys learn about and practice being sexual. The research
consistently indicates, for instance, that boys often learn about and experiment with sex
in all-male friendship groups. Isolated from girls, they encourage each other to present
hypermasculine identities predicated on dominance, avoidance of feelings, compulsory
heterosexuality, and devaluation of the feminine. Ironically, these same boys may be
engaging simultaneously in homoerotic sexual experimentation. What's more, in
extreme instances, the centrality of the male friendship group to boys' masculine identity,
coupled with the construction of women purely in sexual terms, can lead the friendship
group to become a vehicle for predatory sexual behavior or even gang rape.

Although the literature is largely silent on the intersections of virginity and
masculinities, it is tempting to suggest that young men's orientation to their virginity is
influenced by early peer group experiences and the lessons about manliness they impart.
Could the tendency for males to regard their virginity as a stigma more often than
females reflect a form of gender identity work that equates manliness with sexual
experience? To the extent that it does, the negative impact it tends to have on male's first
sexual experience (e.g., lack of communication; hesitancy about using contraception)
may represent another problematic thread in the dominant story of males' development of
gendered, sexual identities.

The entire story of boys' emergence as heterosexual males need not to be so
harrowing, of course. In part, the prominence of troubling portraits is likely an artifact of

the tendency for sexual stories to be told (or sought by researchers) only when they are
sensational or subversive. As of yet, we simply do not have many pictures of adolescent
heterosexual masculinities that diverge from the hypermasculine model. Indeed, Thome
(1993) has criticized some ethnographic studies of boyhood precisely for their tendency
to privilege dominant males and their constructions of masculinity.

This fragmented, incomplete story of qualitative researchers* contributions to the
literature on adolescent male sexuality thus seems to suggest two trails that future
research ought to blaze. First, scholars should take heed of the not-so-subtle links that
seem to exist between boys' informal education about sexuality, the masculine identities
they strive to present, and their individual and collective expressions of contempt for
females. Second, studies need to be targeted toward the stories of male heterosexual
development that have not been told, those that lead to identities that are not inexpressive,
sexist, or bound to the male peer group. I believe that my project will contribute, in small
ways at least, to the opening of both these trails. And, as I have taken pains to
demonstrate in this chapter, comprehensive narrative analysis needs to be a primary
vehicle researchers use for this scholastic "trail blazing" because it illuminates the active
interplay of culture and experience at the level of narrative practice.

CHAPTER 4
THREE DISCOURSES

When researchers begin a project such as this one, they are often plagued with
worries about its usefulness. "Will we learn something?" they ask themselves. "Will
others be interested in what we learn?" Thankfully, I am free of these worries because, if
nothing else, my initial review of the interviews taught me a valuable lesson: Never

doubt the essential truth of the old adage: "The best laid plans "I expected that once

I had the interviews collected, I would have a wealth of stories about sexual decision
making to analyze. Indeed, that expectation is clearly evident in the context for the
research that I have set out in the previous chapters. Unfortunately, the boys I
interviewed did not rely heavily on stories to convey meanings in their experience.

The question of why stories were not central to guys' narratives is an important
one that I take up in a later chapter. But the immediate issue is that I had prepared to
conduct a narrative analysis, and I found myself with very few narratives, in the strict
sense of the word. Although I was dismayed at having my expectations so thoroughly
trounced, I knew that the minimal role of stories did not mean that these boys were not
"doing" something with language. On the contrary, their ability to convey quite
sophisticated ideas about sexuality and sexual decision making without relying on stories
suggested to me that they were doing something powerful and important with language.
If it is true, as so many narrativists insist, that life comes to us in the form of stories, what
are we to think of people who talk about their worlds with little reliance on them? My

thought is that they are artful minimalists, the communicative equivalent of painters who
work without brushes or potters who work without wheels, yet nonetheless manage to
produce substantive, meaningful pieces "by design."

The question for me was as follows: How do I analyze what these guys are doing
with talk, when so many of the analytical tools that exist are designed for work on
traditionally defined narratives? The answer, I realized, lie in the notion of
"comprehensive narrative analysis," which I introduced in the previous chapter. Implicit
in that concept is the realization that all instances of language use are expressions of and
interactions with cultural meanings, whether in story form or otherwise. The boys I
interviewed were active, creative meaning-makers, but their primary "medium" was
discourse— "meaning systems," in Chase's words (1995a)— rather than story.

In this and subsequent chapters, then, my focus is essentially narrative practice,
understood as the integrated examination of discursive practice and discourses-in-practice
(Holstein and Gubrium 2000). I examine what discourses the boys draw upon to make
meanings ("discourses-in-practice") and how they seem to "manipulate" those discourses
like tools in their efforts to present themselves in particular ways and respond to narrative
challenges raised in the interview ("discursive practice"). I still attend to the storied
quality of talk when it appears, but I do so always with concern for how stories represent
instances of narrative practice.

Giving Form to the Formless: The Pitfalls of Describing Discourses

It seems to me that the most logical way to start telling the story of these boys'
narrative practices is by describing the discourses that they use most widely, but this is
easier said than done. Discourses are slippery things by their very nature because they

represent narrative possibilities, not full-blown actualities. They might best be described
as linguistic and semantic stocks of knowledge, invisible narrative storehouses of what
we might say and how we might say it. We cannot see them or touch them, and the only
"proof of their existence comes in instances of language use, at which point what we
have are not discourses at all, but articulations of discourse, acts of speech or writing that
remind us that certain ways of making meaning are culturally available for use,
manipulation, and modification.

For all their elusiveness, however, discourses are identifiable from the traces they
leave behind. Confronted with a long series of articulations from the same discourse, we
recognize the consistency and interconnection of ideas and perspective that form a more
or less unified way of understanding some category of phenomenon. Training manuals,
position papers, and theoretical treatises provide some of the most tangible evidence of
the existence of discourses precisely because they are designed to delineate particular
ways of acting or thinking. By the same token, incompatibility of the meanings conveyed
by various articulations can signal the presence of competing discourses, as when public
policies are debated.

So although I cannot produce for inspection the discourses used by my
respondents, in the pages that follow I will reproduce excerpts from the respondents* talk
and explain why I see them as articulations of particular discourses of sexual decision
making. Presenting a series of articulations from various respondents may have the effect
of decontextualizing their comments, but such an effect is hard to avoid when the goal is
to point to a larger, textual entity. In subsequent chapters, where I focus on specific
narrative challenges faced by particular respondents, context receives its proper attention.

One benefit of a decontextualized presentation, however, is that it may reduce
potential confusion over the unit of analysis in this study. By presenting a quote from
one or another adolescent boy as representative of a particular discourse, I do not mean to
suggest that the discourse defines the person. As will become clear as the analysis
progresses, it was very common for a boy to articulate two and even three discourses over
the course of his interview. It is important to remember that my unit of analysis is
individual speech acts, not individuals. And thus the sample for study of these speech
acts is strikingly larger than the number of boys interviewed.

For the most part, three discourses dominate the interviews. One. which focuses
on religious teachings as the guide to decisions about sex, I have called the "discourse of
piety." Without exception, the message of articulations of the piety discourse involve
abstinence of some sort. The discourse most diametrically opposed to piety is one I have
called the "discourse of conquest," This meaning system is organized around an
articulation of sex as a goal or accomplishment that a guy must achieve, sometimes at the
expense of the humanness of his partner. The third discourse — the "discourse of
relationship" — asserts the interaction between partners as the paramount concern in
making decisions about sexual activity. It lies somewhere in between the other two in
terms of the emphasis it places on moral versus carnal values.

I present each discourse by identifying the four or five elements that assume
prominence within it and detailing how these are articulated. Because all of the
interviews focus on sexual decision making, the same elements are always available as
focal points for the boys' talk. Sex, girls, virginity, virgins, self, and others are common

elements of concern, but they receive different degrees of attention, depending on which
discourse is being articulated.

Also worthy of mention is the notion of risk as a factor in the guys' sexual
decision making. Although my interviews do not suggest that worry over pregnancy,
STDs, or both inform a system of constructions and interpretations so complete that it can
be called a discourse, it clearly exists as a fourth way of relating to some aspects of male
adolescent sexuality. I discuss it briefly at chapter's end as a distinct "horizon of
meaning" (Gubrium 1993) relevant to sexual decision making.

The Discourse of Piety

The organizing principle of the discourse of piety is the belief that youth ought to
stay abstinent until marriage because a higher, spiritual power decrees that they should.
In particular articulations, the boys may provide varying descriptions of what constitutes
abstinence or how their God's words should be heard or interpreted, but the fundamental
message is that premarital sex should be avoided because, in a moral and religious sense,
it is wrong. Given the preeminence that teachings and religious doctrines are given in
this discourse, it is not surprising that boys using this discourse place great emphasis on
the influence of others.
Articulating Others

The designation "others" is a catch-all category that includes everyone that the
guys might talk about besides themselves, partners or potential partners, and women in
general. As articulated within the discourse of piety, others encompasses two specific
entities and three broad groups of people. The specific entities are God and the

respondent's imagined future wife, while the three groups are mentors or authority

figures, nonvirgins, and like-minded friends.

Most of these others assume great importance within the discourse because of

their association with the provirginity message. Sometimes the guys say they receive the

message through prayer, and sometimes they reference God's Word as revealed in the

Christian Bible. More than a disembodied source, however, God is commonly articulated

with an identity in His own right. Both the importance of God as messenger and the

tendency to personify Him are evident in the answer Matthew (R for respondent) gives

when I (I for interviewer) ask him what virginity means to him.

R: To me it's just that, you know, you don't do anything, you know, that God
wouldn't want you to do, like sex or kissing. You know, kissing to some
people could be right, you know, if God tells them, "You can kiss that
person," or whatever. I mean, I don't really know. I mean, for me, I
wouldn't say it is. But, I mean, so just whatever God doesn't want you to
do or whatever, just don't do it.

I: And how do you, uhm, keep up with what God wants?

R: Prayer. I mean, pray and talk to my parents, that's the main thing. I guess
I've always thought, you know, if God wants me to really, you know, do
something, then he would tell my parents and me. You know, it'd be a
pretty bold thing. So I just pray and talk to my parents.

(Matthew: 15-year-old, White, virgin)

Mentors and authority figures, who are, by and large, parents and youth ministers,

gain their relevance within the discourse from their association with this religious

message about sex, as do future wives. Sean articulates these others when he talks about

a kind of "thought experiment" he took part in on a retreat with his church youth group.

My youth pastor on the [retreat], he made us, uh, write a letter, write a, write a,
write a letter to our, to the person we're gonna marry and, like, tell 'em if we
waited or not. And be, like, you know, I just wanted be a— just wanted tell you

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that I'm still waiting for you, I'm still waiting. And I was kinda — kinda hit home.
[That (?)] was kinda cool.
(Sean: 1 6-year-old, White, virgin)

Sean's description of his experience shows how mothers, fathers, and, in this case, youth
ministers are important to the discourse of piety because they teach and support the pro-
virginity message. They construct virginity as something to be valued and buttress that
construction with the idea that its untimely loss represents a failure not just to God, but
also to a flesh-and-blood (though as yet unknown) human being, one's future wife.

Within this discursive context, nonvirgins are foils that can either remind
committed virgins of the importance of their choice or stand as troubling lures toward a
more permissive view of sexuality or life in general.

R: You know, so they kind of look down on you, you know, like, you know,
"Are you gay?" You know, they'll say stuff like that a lot, but. So, yeah,
I mean, there's only — I mean, not a lot because I don't really hang out
with 'em anymore. I'm always with, you know, my group of friends, so.
Not as much any more, but it has happened.

I: How does it make you feel when they do that?

R: Nah. I, I really don't care. I'm like, "Okay," you know, "whatever. If

you say so." I mean, I think it's sad for them because, you know, they just
don't know any better. You know, they might, they're gonna regret it, I
would think, in the long run, but.

(Matthew: 15-year-old, White, virgin)

It's kinda I just get stressed out a lot and, uhm, and I just look at my other friends
who, who do drugs and who have sex, and they're just like so carefree. They're
like, "Oh, whatever," you know, "I'll go to school today, or I won't go to school
today, or," you know. And it's just like, it's just like, it's like, "Wow, I just wish
I could just blow everything off like them, just be like, 'Who cares.'"
(Sean: 16-year-old, White, virgin)

Regardless of how a religious virgin responds to the example of nonvirgins,
however, nonvirgins gain their relevance within the discourse by virtue of the contrast
they represent to virgin guys' commitments. Guys who articulate the piety discourse

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frequently counterbalance this mention of nonvirgins with reference to like-minded

friends who share their commitment to abstinence before marriage. The discursive effect

is to set up a traditional "good versus bad" struggle within which the virgin guy can

locate his identity and judge his decisions about sexual behavior.

Articulating Self

As they locate themselves within the discourse of piety, virgins try to construct a

favorable identity. By and large, the qualities they strive to portray are their interest in

self-improvement, resoluteness in their commitment to virginity, and independent-

mindedness. In the following interview extract, for instance, Matthew describes how his

commitment to virginity evolved from something he accepted out of blind faith to

something he has decided that he wants for himself in his quest to be the best person he

can be.

Over a length of time, you know I was, you know, I guess, you know, they were
saying, you know, "You shouldn't have sex before marriage." And I was, like,
"You know, okay," you know, "I won't do that" just because that was more of
like a rule to me. [Int: Right] You know, "You don't do that." And I was, like,
"You know, that's fine, whatever." And then, but then over a length of time a
started thinking, you know, I don't want a kid, so I don't want to do that just
because I don't want to. It's not that it's a rule, it's that I don't want to. I believe
that's what God, you know, wants for me. So that, you know, is over a length of
time.
(Matthew: 15-year-old, White, virgin)

For the most part, commitment to virginity allows these guys to construct a positive self-
image by identifying with religious and moral values. They are, in a sense, winning the
battle for the side of "good."

The overarching scenario of a battle makes the possibility of failure ever-present,
however, and selves sometimes appear susceptible to temptation or torn by the effort to
maintain virginity, as the following exchange illustrates.

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I: How does it feel to be 18 and be a virgin?

R: How do you mean how does it feel? Emotionally? Physically? What?

I: Emotionally.

R: Emotionally, because of my goals and beliefs, it feels right. Physically,
you know, I'm 18. I question it a lot. But I know that I know that it's the
right thing for me.

(Derrick: 1 8-year-old, White, virgin)

In this example, Derrick constructs himself as literally torn between his struggle with
sexual urges and his dedication to the values that moved him to commit to virginity until
marriage. His words demonstrate that the self can be constructed as fallible within this
discourse, but this portrayal is typically tempered, as it is in this passage, by the
reassertion of the importance and appropriateness of abstinence. Thus, regardless of how
Derrick or any of the other virgins behaves, the Tightness of the religious doctrines of
sexual decision making is affirmed.
Articulating Virginity and Sex

As I noted earlier, the unifying theme that distinguishes the discourse of piety is
that sexual decisions should be governed by religious teachings that exhort the
maintenance of virginity until marriage. In their specific articulations of this theme, the
boys are largely consistent in constructing virginity as a path for one's life that one
follows because it is consistent with God's wishes. It is also common for virginity to be
presented as a means of expressing love for one's future wife.

There are variations within the discourse, however, with regard to how virginity
relates to particular religious discourses and how the loss of virginity is reckoned. All of
the boys who claim a religious or church affiliation associate themselves with some form
of Christianity. But while some follow traditions that simply advocated abstinence

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before marriage, others couch their concern for staying a virgin within a larger religious
notion of spiritual, moral, and physical purity. Derrick and Matthew both speak in terms
of purity when I ask them about virginity, and their explanations of purity reveal how
much more it involves than simply one's sexual behavior.

I: Does it relate to mind, body, spirit? All three?

R: All three. And it's purity in, purity as your whole being. It's hard to be
pure when your mind is constantly on, you know, sex, just thinkin' about
that kinda stuff. But your spirit is thinkin' — It's almost impossible to have
one without the other.

(Derrick: 18-year-old, White, virgin)

To me it means that, you know, not to have sex before marriage, of course, and
just not even to, you know, I try not even to think about it or not even, you know,
do stuff like kissing. Don't, you know, don't even go anything near that.
(Matthew: 15-year-old. White, virgin)

Virginity references (largely unspecified) sexual actions, but purity encompasses one's

actions, thoughts, and emotions. In essence, virginity requires abstaining from sex, while

purity requires keeping one's entire orientation away from the sexual.

Given the large role that purity plays in how some of the guys articulate virginity,

it is perhaps not surprising that defining sex is less important in this discourse than

articulating how particular behaviors are interpreted in relation to one's observance of

religious dictates about sexuality. In some instances, virginity is the only issue, and it is

treated as an "all-or-nothing" quality that simply exists or does not, depending on

whether one has had heterosexual intercourse. In other articulations, virginity may be

maintained by avoiding intercourse, but purity is nonetheless compromised by other

thoughts and actions. Derrick, for instance, has had liaisons with girls, many of which

involved heavy petting and one in which he received oral sex. He still considers himself

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a virgin, but he sees himself sliding down a slippery slope of compromised purity that

threatens his virginity and his overall well-being.

Because I want to be pure for my wife. I want the relationship to not have any
baggage. But I know that things that I've done right now are not helping. So at
the same time it's like, "Okay, I've done this. Why can't I do that?" But it's
kinda like, you know, it's takin' another step in the wrong direction.
(Derrick: 1 8-year-old, White, virgin)

According to his own reckoning, much of Derrick's purity has been eroded by his

involvement with girls, but his depiction of his current course as "the wrong direction"

signals his continued desire to articulate his experience in terms of a discourse of piety.

One final, unusual way that virginity is articulated within a discourse of piety is as

a reclaimable commodity. Jordan, who admits to having had intercourse once, identifies

himself as a "born-again" virgin, and he draws on religious examples to stake his claim:

Borns again virgins? When you decide not to have sex no more. You just stop
having sex. [Int: Okay.] Uh, a lot of nuns, the nuns, the priests, same thing.
They're just born-again virgins. [Int: Okay.] They decide not to have worldly,
uh, relations.
(Jordan: 1 8-year-old, African- American, born-again virgin)

Jordan's case was an anomaly among the guys I interviewed, but it is important to
include as one of the ways in which virginity can be articulated within the context of a
discourse of piety.
Articulating Girls /Worn en

By and large, girls appear in this discourse as allies to boys in their quest to
remain virgin. For instance, Sean talks about how he appreciates dating girls who value
virginity because together they can support each other in moments of weakness:

I've only had two real relationships this year. Uh, with a girl named JJ. She goes
to my church, and I mean we both believe the same thing, you know, uh. And.
uh, then RH, uh, we both believe the same thing. So, I mean, I mean it's real easy
to be in a relationship who looking, looking for the same things 'cause that way in

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case, like, like, I don't know, I get sidetracked and I want to one night or one
afternoon or whenever. And she [Int: Right.] she can be like, "No," you know.
And then if she wants to, "No."
(Sean: 16-year-old, White, virgin)

Sean's depiction of girls as allies here further strengthens the sense that maintaining

virginity is constructed as a struggle within the discourse, albeit a pious one.

There is, however, another, less pervasive articulation of girls and women evident

within this discourse that does not cast them as allies. Among those who subsume

virginity within a larger quest for purity, the female body can itself become an indicator

of purity that confers religious status. Matthew provides an example of this articulation

of girls and women when he talks about some friends of his family:

Some of our family's best friends, the wife, nobody had ever seen her belly button
before. [Int: Wow.] Yeah. And I was like, "Whoa!" She was, you know, she
was like twenty-something when she got married, so until she was twenty-
something, nobody besides her family had ever seen her belly button before.
And, you know, he was like, "And I love that. She's that pure, where nobody's
ever even seen her."
(Matthew: 1 5-year-old, White, virgin)

As Matthew tells it, the woman's purity is demonstrated by the fact that most of her flesh

was hidden from view until she was married. Females are presented here as having a

very fragile purity, one that is linked to their physical bodies and one that can be

diminished simply as a result of that body receiving public display. Also implicit in this

construction is a kind of commodification of the female body, where religious credentials

are conferred on a male by virtue of the purity of his partner. In Matthew's story, the

husband exclaims his excitement that his wife was so pure when he married her. Her

purity is thus something that makes her valuable to him, and he "cashes in" on that value

by noting that he married someone who was that pure.

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In sum, the discourse of piety is defined by religious concerns that color how the
guys act and interpret their actions, what they expect from girls as potential partners, and
what meanings they attribute to aspects of sexuality as "advanced" as oral sex and as
"innocent" as kissing. My interviews, though limited in number, suggest that the
discourse is most frequently introduced, often quite deliberately, by significant others.
So parents, stepparents, and church leaders assume a large part of the responsibility for a
guy's acceptance and use of the discourse. At the same time, guys who interpret their
experience through the discourse take pains to assert that their decision to adopt it was an
independent choice.

The Discourse of Conquest

In sharp contrast to discourse that is organized around religious tenets, the
discourse of conquest coalesces around an achievement-oriented approach to sex.
Language events are identifiable as articulations of this discourse because they express or
contribute to a mode of sexual decision making in which the paramount concerns are
pursuing and consummating sexual encounters. The single-minded attention to sexual
conquest expressed through this discourse has a radical influence on how related factors,
like girls and the guys' sense of themselves, are articulated.
Articulating Sex

Within the discourse of conquest, sex is first and foremost an individual act that
serves individual ends. It is pursued to satisfy curiosity, accumulate experience, and
achieve sexual gratification.

You just, you just wanna experience it for the first time. See what it's like.
(James: 16-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

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R: Like a person that already had sex, they got, they kinda confident in they
self that they can go head and, like, get them. And add them to they
collection. That's all they wanna do.

I: So guys have collections?

R: [laughing] They keep a collection in the back of they mind. They know

who they had sex with.
(Grady: 18-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Well, like, sometimes I'll, like, I'll just be really fuckin' horny, and I'll want to
have sex. So I'll go out with that, like, that is my sole purpose for tonight. My
mission tonight is to find someone to have sex with.
(Drew: 18-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Sex is also understood as a powerful, potentially dangerous, means by which one

can exert control or be controlled, and an important way in which one conforms and gains

acceptance.

A guy'll become a cop, so he can feel up girls when he arrests 'em, and stuff like
that. I mean, I've read a lotta really weird "True Crime" stuff, and, uh, you know,
people, people do this. And it's because of ideas that have been put in their head
from childhood that they are — You know, the more women you have sex with,
the more dominant you are, the more powerful person you are. If you can control
another person and make them do what you want sexually, well then you can. you
know, control everything about them.
(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

I: Why do you think that you had sex when you did?

R: Because I could a did it. 'Cause I could a did it, and I would a been, like,

doin' what everybody else was doin'.
(Jamal: 16-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

None of the qualities of relationship or partnership often associated with sexual

interactions enter into articulations of sex within this discourse. Meanings are

constructed and arranged so as to have the bizarre effect of making acts that typically

involve coupling seem solitary.

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Adding to the strangeness, the sex act is constructed as solitary within the
discourse, but its consequences are presented as highly social. Having sex, especially for
the first time, is constructed as a transaction between males that facilitates belonging and
serves as a rite of passage to heterosexual manhood. Consider, for example, the scenario
within which Alvin had intercourse for the first time.

I: How did that happen?

R: Hangin' with my uncles. So, 'cause they just pushed me along, talkin"
'bout, "Just go head. Go head. Go head." Talkin' 'bout, "Be a man,"
basically.

I: Did they actually set it up for you?

R: Uhm-hm. It was like a little birthday present for me.

I : What did you think of it at the time?

R: I was scared. I got lost a mind. I didn't know what to do or anything like
that, at first. And then after a while, didn't bother me any more. Kinda
got used to it.

(Alvin: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Alvin' s story of virginity loss is particularly dramatic, but the sense that his having sex
was crucial to his standing among other males is typical of how sex is constructed as
social within a discourse of conquest. Most of the other guys who articulate their
experience in terms of this discourse speak of willingly pursuing sex, rather than having
it thrust upon them, but their pursuit derives its urgency from the importance imparted to
sex in male peer groups.

These androcentric constructions of the social meaning of sex raise a critical
question: Where are the girls who are, by definition, an integral part of guys' efforts to
accumulate sexual experience? By and large, girls as partners are rendered invisible in
this discourse by virtue of not receiving mention. They appear only to the extent that

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they facilitate or hinder the guys' goal of having sex. Morgan demonstrates this goal-
driven articulation of girls in his own inimitable style when I ask him to distinguish
between instances in which he did and did not heed his friend's advice that he "keep it in
his pants" (i.e., not have sex):

Times that I have is when there's people, like, they, like I said. Titanic size. I
ain't gonna mess with it. They'll squish me. I'll just let them go. We'll chill, be
friends, you know, whatever. And times that [aren't (?)], it's my girlfriend and
she looks really good and we're, "Choo-choo-choo. Go, go, go."
(Morgan: 17-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

In Morgan's explanation, the girl's relevance to his sexual decision making is limited to

whether or not he deems her attractive enough to be a sex partner. Similarly, girls enter

into Grady's talk when their "teasing" frustrates his attempts to get sex.

It's just like if the girl turns you on that much, you gonna wanna have sex. And if
she just playin' wit you, you gonna get really, really mad because the tes — all that
stuff runnin', you getting' all hot and stuff. So you just get mad if they don't
wanna have it. And you just sittin' there tryin' to, tryin' to get them to do it the
whole time.
(Grady: 18-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

When sex is viewed in terms of the discourse of conquest, it is distinct from partnership

or relationship, so girls merit mention solely in sexual, not relational, terms.

A final oddity of how sex is articulated within the discourse of conquest is how

remarkably blase guys can be about pursuing and getting sex. In the context of a

discourse that treats sex as a goal to be accomplished, the guys typically downplay that

they sought sex when it actually happens. Instead, they portray it as an accident of

circumstances, an unforeseen, spontaneous event that "just happened": "I don't know.

It's just kinda one of those spur of the moment type things. I've never really decided,

'I'm gonna have sex with that girl.' It's just, it just kinda happen, you know" (Evan: 1 5-

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year-old, White, nonvirgin). Indeed, a few of the guys, like James, presented their sexual

encounters as so accidental that they did not even involve physiological sexual urges.

R: I never really know what a sexual urge is. You know, I never really felt
anything. I know it's fun when you're doin' it. I just never really thought
about it until it comes up to that point, you know.

I: Okay, so you don't feel like, when you're not having sex, you have these

urges that you'd like to be having sex.

R: Right. I've never really felt that.
(James: 16-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

While it is not clear in James' case why he is having sex even though he apparently has

no urge to do so, others — like Alvin, whose uncles "set him up" so he could lose his

virginity — find themselves in this position because of the intense pressure that other

males place on them to be heterosexually active.

And although it is clear that getting sex can have enormous social benefits for

guys if they associate with other guys who interpret sex through a discourse of conquest,

the act itself is often described as essentially inconsequential. For instance. James brims

with frustration when I ask him what the importance of sex is to him:

Aw, man! I can't. I don't. The importance of it? I'm not really certain. I don't
know the importance of it. It's not like everybody has to have it to survive or
anything, but. There's not really any, like, really importance to it.
(James: 16-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

James' sentiments, which are echoed by other nonvirgins, suggests that, except as a

means of serving the physiological and social psychological needs described earlier, sex

is actively constructed as meaningless within this discourse. In essence the discourse

provides a blueprint for meaning-making by which guys (1) imbue sex with a great deal

of importance for their social lives outside of the coupling with girls that heterosexual sex

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requires; and simultaneously (2) minimize the reality of their sexual behavior and their
sex partners to the greatest extent possible.
Articulating Virginity

Through the lens of the discourse of conquest, virginity is seen as a vulnerability
to a myriad of ills, virtually all of them social. To begin with, peers, particularly male
peers, are a continuous threat to expose, ridicule, reject, and question the heterosexuality
of virgins or suspected virgins. Evan clearly has some of these risks in mind when he
describes what it might be like for him if he were still a virgin:

I: How do you think your friends would treat you?

R: Totally differently, I bet.

I: Like what?

R: They'd probably think I was gay or somethin'.

I: Why?

R: I have no clue. That'sjustkindahowit is, you know. It's just one of

those secret things that nobody tells you about.
(Evan: 15-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

And Del, who is a virgin, describes taunts he has heard directed at his friends: "Like.

'You're stupid. Man, you haven't had sex yet. God, you're stupid.' Stuff like that"

(Del: 14-year-old, White, virgin). Although many of the boys, virgin and nonvirgin

alike, say that the teasing about being virgin that they have heard or experienced is

inconsequential and not malicious, they all recognize it as a familiar part of growing

up — an indication of the pervasiveness of the discourse of conquest. Regardless of what

discourse of sexual decision making dominates a guy's thinking, he must reckon with the

"conquest" articulation of virginity.

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Furthermore, the vulnerabilities associated with virginity within this discourse are
not limited to susceptibility to others' taunts. Virginity is also presented as a direct threat
to the bearer's physical and mental health and his self-concept. It threatens the self
because guys internalize the message that it must be shed, preferably sooner rather than
later. Evan articulates this concern (linked to a presumed hyper-sexuality among people
in his generation) when I ask what it would be like for him if he had stayed virgin into his
late teens:

R: I would probably think something was wrong with me.
I: Why?

R: Because, I mean, nowadays more people are havin' sex than becoming
virgins. I think it used to be, back then, like in the olden days, like when
like my grandparents were around, it used to be more people were virgins
in the teenager- type thing.

(Evan: 15 -year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Virginity threatens physical mental health, according to this discourse, because guys find
it difficult to cope with unsatisfied sexual urges:

I: Do you remember anything about what it felt like to be a virgin?

R: Uhm, stressful.

I: Yeah?

R: It's like all I thought about.

I: For how long?

R: [laughs] I went to sleep thinkin' about sex. I woke up thinkin' about sex.

[Int: Okay.] It was on my mind all day.
(Drew: 18-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Here, the conquest of discourse fosters another strange irony: In an era of global concern

about the spread of deadly sexual transmitted diseases, virginity {not having sex) is

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presented as the primary health threat posed by sex. That is not to say that the boys who

articulate this discourse do not recognize the dangers associated with being sexually

active, only that this particular discourse foregrounds virginity and downplays STDs as

threats.

Finally, within the discourse of conquest, virginity is believed to leave a guy open

to control by girls. A guy's eagerness to have sex leads him to become enthralled with

the girl who gives it to him, which, in turn, exposes him to manipulation. This scenario is

often described by the term "pussy-whipped," a phrase that dramatically captures the

image of a male beat down by his addiction to the sexual availability and talents of a

particular female. As articulated within the discourse of conquest, the danger of

becoming pussy-whipped is everpresent, and it is believed to be particularly great for

virgins, who are new to the joys of sex. L.J. makes this point, and also articulates the

belief, consistent with this discourse, that some women and girls are quite deliberate in

their attempts to control males using sex:

The majority of the females I know, the grown women, they like virgins. They
like young boys 'cause they figure they could overpower 'em and like break "em
in, and like put the whipping pill, pussy whip 'em and have 'em like walkin'
around, have 'em like followin' the girl around doin' anything the girl want.
(L.J.: 17-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Although some guys, including L.J., argue that males, too, try to control their partners

with sex, virgin guys are constructed as particularly vulnerable, especially given that a

guys' attentions to a sex partner necessarily draw him away from his male peer group.

This point is a critical aspect of the discourse of conquest, in fact, and it will be explored

further in Chapter 6.

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Articulating Virgins

Consistent with the construction of virginity as a stigma or an obstacle to be

overcome, the articulation of virgins in the discourse of conquest is that they harbor

failings, best kept hidden, that explain their virgin status. Guys who are virgins are taken

to be scared, immature, ignorant of sex, inept at "hooking up" with girls (in the boys*

parlance, they have no "game"), or any combination of these. For instance, Grady

believes that both fear and lack of "game" are evident when a virgin talks to a girl:

If like a virgin just talks to a girl, he probably won't like really just try to talk,
speak game to 'em or whatever. They won't really try to mac to 'em or nothin'.
They just. They just might talk to 'em once or twice and be scared to talk again
because — I don't know.
(Grady: 18-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

With the potent equation "virgin equals failure" guiding the evaluation of virgins within

this discourse, both virgins and nonvirgins recognize the practical value for virgins of

secrecy about their status. In a comment that is perhaps a jab at religious virgins who are

vocal about their abstinence, Evan asserts the "stupidity" of exposing yourself as a virgin.

Not many people know, if you're a virgin, that you're a virgin, unless you
actually tell 'em. But, I mean, some people are that stupid where they go like
promoting it. And then that's when they get hit, you know. They get made fun of
and everything.
(Evan: 15-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Evan's statement is a brash but accurate expression of the perspective on virgins

promulgated by the discourse of conquest: Male virgins are people who have something

wrong with them. If you are a virgin, the least you can do is be smart and try to hide it.

Interestingly, guys appear to be much more circumspect about applying these

constructions when the subject is an actual person, rather than virgins in the abstract.

When asked directly about the treatment of virgins, guys who articulate this discourse say

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that being a virgin warrants little more than harmless ribbing, and they point out that they
themselves have friends who are virgin. The crux of this disparity — between the
pathologizing of virgins in the abstract and the relatively benign treatment of known
virgins — may be illuminated by a more "sophisticated" articulation of virgins that some
guys advance as part of the discourse of conquest. These guys argue that the meaning of
virginity is ultimately determined by the attitude and personality of the virgin. Thus,
there are good and bad ways of being virgin. If one is a virgin because of personal
conviction, that is good. But if one is a virgin because one has some of the failings
mentioned before, that is bad. Derrick, a religious virgin, and Drew, a nonvirgin, agree
on this distinction:

I don't think people perceive virgins, at least people that I run with ... do not
look at me, I don't think, any differently. They may look at me even with more
respect because I've done it. Because I'm not one of those people that, "Okay,
you're a virgin because you just can't meet chicks."
(Derrick: 18-year-old, White, virgin)

It really depends on who you are. Like, if you're just some, if you're someone
who's like, you're stupid and you're dorky, you don't have any friends and you
haven't had sex, just like ppphh! [exasperated sound] I'm not even dealing with
you. You're stupid. [Int: Right.] But if you're like anywhere decently self-
confident, it really isn't a thing. It's just like, "You haven't had sex? Whatever."
(Drew: 18-yer-old, White, nonvirgin)

This more context-dependent articulation of virgins allows for the acceptance of some
guys who happen to be virgins, yet still maintains the primacy of sexual accomplishment
that is the hallmark of the discourse of conquest. Certain virgins are okay because their
presentation of self demonstrates the potential for sexual conquest, the rest remain on the
"outs" because they are associated with a devalued masculinity that is believed to impose
involuntary virginity.

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Articulating Women/Girls

As I indicated earlier, girls are invisible within this discourse, except as suppliers
of sex. This limited role does not leave them short of attention, however. Through the
lens of "conquest," girls are divisible into categories based on their suitability as potential
sex partners, which is often inversely proportional to their perceived level of sexual
experience or interest in sex. (In this construction we see yet another manifestation of the
sexual double standard: The more sex males have, the better. But the more sex women
have, the more they are stigmatized.)

Although there is a seemingly endless inventory of names that guys use for types
of girls and some guys recognize several fine gradations within categories, in broad
terms, the categorization systems distinguish between "nice girls" and "nasty girls." The
term "nice" or "clean" girl is often, but not always, synonymous with "virgin." In any
case, it indicates a girl who, by virtue of having little or no sexual experience, is attractive
as a potential sex partner because she is believed to carry a low risk of STDs. Nice girls
are also physically attractive, and their dress and demeanor are reserved, not showy. Put
simply, they are demur, proper, even classy. In the following passages, James articulates
the link between comportment and sexual behavior believed to characterize "nice girls,"
while Grady provides an example of how guys associate a girl's physical attractiveness
with her suitability as potential partners:

R: You just can't go around school yellin' and acting like you're somethin'
all special like and everything. You gotta just carry yourself like a lady.
You can't just be— Like, it's alright to be a girl that's like got a loud
mouth and talks a lot and looks good. But at the same time isn't like
really sexually active a whole lot. It's alright, but.

I: What about the way they dress?

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R: Oh. That tells a lot, but at the same time you can't judge somebody by

how they dress. Like the more skin they show, the dudes are gonna think
like, "Oh, she's havin' sex a lot," and stuff like that right there. But the
girls that wear jeans and stuff like that right there, they're gonna think
like, "Oh, she's not havin' sex."

(James: 16-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

See, we like number the girls from, like, 1 to 10. And like we'll call 'em 8 or 7 or
6 or 5. They real, real nasty, they about a 3. So you can't mess with no real, real
nasty, ugly girls, 'cause you'll get clowned. But a dime, a dime is the finest girl.
Is a real, real — You just gotta find a dime. A dime is like the tightest thing that
you ever messed with, and the tightest thing that anybody else done seen. And
that's the one you like really get a relationship with and bring home to mom or
whatever.
(Grady: 18-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Notice that in both of these passages, the guys' assessments of girls are inextricably

linked to an anticipated response from other guys. James grounds his assessment of how

girls dress in what the "dudes" will think, and Grady notes that guys must pursue girls

who have a certain degree of physical attractiveness or risk getting "clowned" (i.e.,

mocked). These examples demonstrate that, like so many other aspects of sexual

decision making as articulated through the discourse of conquest, the designation of "nice

girls" is bound to the guys' peer groups.

The same is true of the other end of the spectrum, "nasty girls." Indeed, the

influence of others is perhaps even stronger here because identifying undesirable girls

and linking other guys to them feeds into some guys' seemingly insatiable desire to tease

and ridicule one another. Certainly, there is a more developed language for undesirable

than desirable girls in this discourse. The term "nasty girl" is more or less synonymous

with a range of designations, including freak, whore, scummy girl, and trashy girl. The

effect of placing a girl in one of these categories is first and foremost to designate that she

is undesirable as a sex partner. Sometimes a girl's physical looks contribute to her

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receiving this designation, but the key factor is virtually always that the girl is considered
to be overly interested in sex, sexually adventurous or promiscuous. Jordan makes the
point directly when he explains the term "freak," and Grady does so indirectly when he
rhetorically "manages" the sexual history one of his former partners in an effort to protect
her from the label "nasty":

R: A freaky girl? Like a girl that she's down for anything.

I: Do anything?

R: Menage a trois and —

(Jordan: 18-year-old, African-American, "born-again" virgin)

Yeah. She did somethin'. But she wasn't that serious. She wasn't all nasty and
stuff. She always in the house wit her mom, 'cause her mom was sick.
(Grady: 18-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Whether a girl is labeled nasty or nice, clean or a freak, the categories offered by the
discourse of conquest always orient to girls in terms of their presumed relationship to the
sexual realm.

The misogynistic bent of this sexualization of females is compounded by the host
of flaws, failings and faults attributed to girls when the possibility of partnership with
them is articulated in the terms of this discourse. From a "conquest" perspective, girls
and women have a panoply of traits that make them undesirable, even threatening, to
associate with or relate to in a meaningful way. The list of girls' supposed deficits runs
the gambit, from the unkind, which include their being materialistic, opportunistic, and
gullible, to the damning, which start with their being inferior and end with an insistence
that they are evil. The underlying danger that girls pose to the guys who partner with
them is evident in Jerry's characterization of girls as manipulators: "Cause girls do
play— I ain't gonna lie, girls do play games. They know how to mess up your head real

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good now" (Jerry: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin). Drawing on some rather

ironic evidence, Grady suggests that girls' faults include being untrustworthy and

promiscuous:

I learned to never really trust girls like I used to. I used to trust 'em and be quick
to fall in love with 'em all the time, but that made me figure out, [time time (?)]
like cra2y they are and how they think, how they act toward other people.
Because if a girl just like talkin' about you right in front of your face to other girls
and stuff, I mean, she's not anything. If me and my other homeboy is havin' sex
with her at the same time — we just takin' turns on her — she's not nothin' that
turns me off, to me. I just don't like that.
(Grady: 18-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

And finally, in a statement that synthesizes the attribution of failings to girls with the

concern for peer approval of one's sex partners that characterize this discourse. Drew

cannot even explain why he knows that a particular woman he finds attractive is

unacceptable as a sex partner:

R: There's this one girl, [pause] And, I mean, she's the kinda girl that I

would, like, I would have sex with her, but then the next day I'd realize
what I did, and I would feel bad about it and hope no one ever found out
'cause they would make fun of me.

I: Okay. Why? What's—?

R: I don't know what it is about her that people don't like, but she just isn*t

the kind of girl that you can hook up with and go tell everybody about.
(Drew: 18-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Drew's "dilemma" is in some ways the "logical" extension of the typical constructions of

girls in the discourse of conquest. Collectively, girls are associated with so much

nebulous negativity and subjected to so much judgment by (predominantly male) peer

groups, that ultimately neither guys nor girls can win. Guys like Drew are inclined to

relate to girls through a haze of negative, sexual preconceptions, even when those

expectations cannot be supported in particular instances. And girls are consistently

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handicapped in their relations with these guys by cultural constructions that demean them

and subject their behaviors to the least flattering interpretations.

Another consequence of this array of harsh constructions of females is that girls

are objectified and dehumanized, rather than spoken of as individuals or fellow human

beings. Indeed, if the comments of Andrew and Grady are any indication, the tendency

to objectify is ever-present when guys talk amongst themselves:

And then outside a school all my friends, you know, they were male. And, you
know, the whole conversations we'd ever have about girls are, "Oh, yeah, she was
fine." You know, "Nice set a tits on that girl. Oh Geez." You know, that's the
guys talkin' that I've always been with.
(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

[Guys] compare, like, sex and the face, the attitude, all that. They just all
compare it together. Is this girl doin' it better than this one did, and does she have
a better booty, titties or whatever.
(Grady: 18-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Girls are reduced to parts, mostly breasts and rear ends, as the guys use their ability to
objectify girls much as they do demonstrations of sexual experience — as a means of
relating to one another.

In some instances, however, the reduction of girls to their sexual potential takes
on a more ominous quality, and it becomes clear that this discourse offers guys the
rhetorical tools by which they can strip girls of their humanity altogether. Consider, for
instance, Jordan's description of girls with whom he had sexual encounters that he
intentionally stopped short of intercourse: "Really, they were just flesh to me, so. Pbbt!"
(Jordan: 18-year-old, African-American, "born-again" virgin). In this one damning
sentence, Jordan makes actual people with whom he was sexually involved
indistinguishable from cadavers.

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Another example is provided by James' assertion of how "everybody" — by which

I assume he means guys — expresses their sexual interest in attractive girls:

See 'cause most people whenever they talk about girls, they say 'whoes.' They be
like, "Man, that whoe's fine." And then somebody be like, "Man, I'll fuck that
whoe," or somethin' like that right there. And then you gotta — That's basically
how everybody talks.
(James: 16-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

In this hypothetical scenario, the guys convey attraction toward a girl by demeaning her
and intimating a desire to dominate her sexually. Describing a girl as a "whore" who is
to be "fucked" goes a long way to reducing her to mere flesh, yet James attributes this
way of talking to "everybody." This unabashed tendency to normalize such
dehumanizing language, which was demonstrated by others besides James, provides a
stark indication of the pervasiveness and power of the discourse of conquest among
adolescent males.
Articulating Others

As articulated by the guys I interviewed, parents and advisors — two of the
primary others in the discourse of piety — play a much smaller role in the discourse of
conquest. Affiliates of churches do not play a significant role as others in this discourse.
Where elders do appear in the guys' talk, they do so because they encourage the guys to
interpret their experience with girls in terms of sexual conquest, and they foster the guys'
ability to do so by providing the relevant rhetorical constructions and strategies for
meaning-making. In fact, some times they offer this "encouragement" whether the guys
want it or not. For instance, Donnie is committed to abstinence until marriage, yet he
cannot ignore the conquest perspective because it is consistently articulated by his uncle,
and it is part of his Latin heritage:

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Like my uncle is very machita, very into macho, very much into, you know,
women are — The term doesn't apply to his wife, but women are, you know, "Hey.
they're good. Gotta experience 'em." He used to ask me all the time, "How
many girlfriends do you have?" I'm like, "I have seven, one for each day of the
week. So in a year, I'll have, Thio" I call him Thio. "Thio, within a week I'd
have. Fourteen on a good week." And he's like, "That's my boy." I'm like.
"Damn right." And of course this was all bullshit, but I was like, "Damn right.
Yeah."
(18-year-old, Hispanic, virgin)

Donnie, who has committed to a different discourse of sexual decision making, does not

want to adopt his uncle's articulations of girls and sex, but he must at least have a

strategy (i.e., lying) for coping with them in order to save face.

By far the most influential "other" within the discourse of conquest, however, is
the male peer group, the importance of which I have highlighted at a number of points
during the discussion of this discourse. A guy's male friends — sometimes collectively
known as his "boys," "homeboys," or "homies" — are consistently intimated as the major
influence on or reference point for decisions about sex when the guiding discourse is
conquest. Whether the issue is the suitability of a girl as a sexual partner, the meaning of
virginity, the place that a female partner should play in a guy's life, or any of a multitude
of other matters relating to adolescent sexuality, the discourse of conquest consistently
identifies the male peer group as the arbiter of these concerns.
The Male Fraternity

The influence of other males within the discourse of conquest is so great. I believe
it is best understood as a distinct social form (Gubrium 1988) that I call the "male
fraternity." The notion of fraternity signifies both how close the bonds between members
can be and the immense loyalty that the association demands. The designation of the
fraternity as male once again calls attention to the exclusion of females from these

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friendship circles. More importantly, however, it emphasizes the gender-based interests
that bind the group. The friends act as a fraternity specifically to enforce ways of being
male. This interrelationship between masculinities and the male fraternity has many
facets and implications, many of which are taken up in Chapter 6. For the purposes of
the current discussion, it is sufficient to note the importance of the male fraternity as a
special category of "others" within the discourse of conquest.

For all the importance of the male fraternity, however, the unifying principle of
the discourse of conquest remains its advancement of the pursuit of sex as the concern
that should guide sexual decision making. Girls, virginity, virgins, even sex itself all gain
their fundamental character from the fact that the physical act of sex (usually left
undefined, but ultimately pointing to heterosexual intercourse) is given prominence. In
sharp contrast to the discourse of piety, in which spiritual concerns give sex qualities
beyond the physical, the conquest discourse emphasizes the act and its accomplishment
to such an extent that it can seem to be almost partnerless and without context (it just
happened). The discourse divides all guys into those who have and those who have not
had sex, and the identification of those who have not takes on the importance of a group
purification ritual, since virginity is associated with a host of unsavory characteristics.
And as harsh as the discourse can be on virgins, nothing compares to its articulations of
women and girls. They are judged almost solely in sexual terms, dismissed if they want
too little or too much sex, and treated as threats when they become sexual partners. So
although guys who understand sexuality in terms of the discourse of conquest may
achieve their goal of having sex, the discourse may exact costs in terms of the guys'

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understanding of their own sexuality, their relationships with females, and steep
obligations to a male fraternity.

The Discourse of Relationship

This discourse represents a kind of middle ground between the elevation of
decisions regarding sex to spiritual importance in the discourse of piety, and the reduction
of these matters to the physical act, as in the discourse of conquest. True to its name, the
key to sexual decision making as articulated by the discourse of relationship is the bond
between partners or potential partners. When a boy articulates this discourse, he
intimates one of two things, either that the existence of some degree of relationship with a
partner is the prerequisite for him to consider having intercourse, or that the affiliation or
connection he felt with a girl justified his decision to have sex with her. Other aspects of
sexual decision making, such as the meaning of sex and how guys should relate to girls,
are interpreted through this lens that emphasizes relating to one's partner.
Articulating the Link Between Relationships and Sex

Because concern for relationship guides sexual decision making in this discourse,
sex and relationship are inextricably associated. The fundamental meaning attributed to
sex (i.e., intercourse) is that it should be a compliment, extension, or expression of a
guy's relationship with a girl. Great variation exists, however, in terms of what sort of
involvement is construed as a relationship and what sort of relationship is advanced as a
prerequisite for sex.

At the "weak relationship" end of the spectrum, simply talking to a girl as an
individual and recognizing that she has a legitimate say in sex negotiations constitutes a

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relationship that can support sex. James articulates the discourse of relationship in this

way when he talks about how he negotiates sex with potential partners:

First, for me, I just get to know 'em on a real personal basis. And then after that,
if everything goes through, talk about everything. First, with most of the girls, I
talked about it first. I was like, whenever I walked 'em home or somethin', I was
like, "I don't wanna do it, if you don't wanna do it." And they were like, "Well,
it's up to you." "I wanna do it if you wanna do it." So, I guess that's basically
what I try to tell 'em before we, like, get into that type a situation.
(James: 16-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

When the notion of relationship that is acceptable is as limited as it is here, there can be a
sort of symbiotic relationship between the discourses of conquest and relationship. A
guy's primary interest may still be in getting sex, but he can at least relate to his partners
on a basic level and ensure that they consent to sex. As we move toward the opposite end
of the continuum, however, the incompatibility and even antagonism between the two
meaning systems grows.

At what might be considered the middle of the spectrum of articulations of the
relationship-sex dynamic, some elements indicative of relationship quality are treated as
requisite for sex. In some cases, the presence of mutual trust and respect or the
endurance of the relationship over a span of time, perhaps 6 months or a year, suggests
that the relationship is strong enough to become a sexual one: "Me and her had sex at,
like, at eight months into the relationship we had sex. We just figure everything was
pretty much square, so we had sex" (L.J.: 17-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin).
In other instances, the quality a relationship needs to have is love:

I: Uhm, so the ideal situation for you, to be with somebody and sexually

active would be what?

R: Like with my first girlfriend. I loved her a lot, and she loved me back.
(Drew: 18-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

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Not all of Drew's sexual decisions have been guided by the discourse of relationship. In

fact, he often articulates the discourse of conquest. But he indicates that to be considered

ideal, sex must occur in a relationship that has the levels of both quality and intensity

associated with love.

In still other instances — ones representative of the "strong relationship'*

articulation of the discourse — love is a necessary, but not sufficient, prerequisite for sex.

At this end of the spectrum, sex is constructed as such an intimate act that it is

inappropriate and perhaps even dangerous to engage in outside of a relationship that

promises love, long-term commitment, and mutual understanding. Consequently, the

perspective provides a nonreligious rationale for remaining virgin until one is married or

establishes a marriage-like, life-long commitment:

That's one of the most intimate things you can do. I mean, probably stay together
for almost the rest of your life if it works out.
(Del: 14-year-old, White, virgin)

I don't feel I'm ready for it. I personally think it implies three things: you love
the person, you're willing to commit, and you wanna have kids eventually.
(Donnie: 18-year-old, Hispanic, virgin)

With this particular construction of sex, the discourse of relationship resembles a secular
version of the discourse of piety. In both cases, the quest for sex is sublimated to a
greater, more valued interest. Within the discourse of piety it is the quest for purity or
spiritual rewards; in the relationship discourse it is the quest for "the one," the single
person to whom one can commit. In both discourses, too, sex is given sacred or near-
sacred status. In the context of the piety discourse, this status is God-given, while in the
relationship discourse sex is treated as near-sacred by virtue of its being, as Del said, "the
most intimate thing you can do."

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An interesting twist on this "strong relationship" scenario is presented by Andrew.
Like others who articulate the discourse of relationship, Andrew intends to stay abstinent
until he finds, "the one." However, he does not construct sex as a near-sacred act that
must be "confined" to a committed, intimate relationship. Instead, he attributes near-
sacred status to the nonsexual intimacy of relationships, and insists that sex is just one
expression of that intimacy, and a rather unimportant one at that:

Being able to be so connected with another human being that it doesn't even
really matter if you have sex. That you are so, just, happy and wonderfully in
tune with another person that, that sex is just a little, you know, a little thing on
the side, you know, a little perk [Int: Right.] of having another human being
mentally connect. You know, the chi, the mental life force, uh, flowing through
two people, you know, that whole idea. And I don't think sex really even ties in
at all.
(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

The understandings that guide Andrew' sexual decision making are clearly derived from
the discourse of relationship. But his commitment to relationships is based on an
articulation of sex that minimizes, rather than elevates it, as a form of intimacy.
Articulating Relationships

The notion that relationships are valuable is implicit in the fact that this discourse
constructs them as essential for the justification of sexual activity. But their value is
critical to the stability of this meaning system, so it should not be surprising that the
discourse also offers resources for articulating their value directly. These articulations,
for the most part, depict relationships independent of the link between relationships and
sex.

One way these boys articulate the value of relationships is by describing some of
their features that are important to them. Some speak of intimacy or having someone to
go home to. Honesty and trust are mentioned frequently, just as their absence is when

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girls and relationships are articulated through the discourse of conquest. But guys also

say that relationships are valuable because they provide companionship and a context in

which two people give support to one another — in the colloquial language, they are

"there for each other." Darryl hinted at the importance of these aspects of relationships,

albeit in a one-sided manner, when I asked him what role girls play in his life: "Hmm,

Someone, you know. Like, someone who's like a companion toward you. She's there

for you. Someone you can rely on, trust" (Darryl: 18-year-old, African- American,

nonvirgin). Another value attributed to relationships hinges on the notion of

understanding and being understood, and is often captured in the word "connection":

Me and her had a connection, like a serious connection. Like anything I would
talk about she agree with and she'll disagree with it, cause, you know, everybody
have their own opinion. She was cool like that. Anything I did she always just
tell me, "Let me know where you are at. Make sure you let me know who you're
with, so anything happen so I can let somebody know what is going on or where
you at when your momma call." And she was telling me that right there. We had
like a deep discussion. That let me know she was real down for me.
(L.J.: 17-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

I don't see how people can't put, you know, 98.5 percent of the emphasis on, you
know, being able to connect with someone mentally. And that little physical
connection should be in their somewhere because . . . if you're sexually attracted
to someone or not, you really can't just throw that aside completely, you know.
(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

"Connections," "being there" and the other features mentioned all buttress the discourse

of relationship because they suggest why one might chose to make the pursuit of a

relationship the guiding principle of one's sexual decision making.

The value of relationships is also articulated in terms of loss or absence. Many

guys describe breaking up with a girl or realizing that a prospective relationship is not

going to pan out as an emotionally difficult experience. Grady, for instance, presents

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most of his decisions about sexual activity in terms of the discourse of conquest, yet he

has experienced pain that is unique to the experience of having a "connection" severed:

R: Nah, she wasn't the first, but. I told her she wasn't the first, but she was
like the first person I really loved, fell in love with.

I: Well, it musta been tough, losing her then.

R: Yup. Very hard. I still think about her now.

I: And how long ago was, was that.

R: It was about two years ago.

(Grady: 18-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

In this passage, Grady does not focus on the loss of sexual opportunities, as we might

expect if conquest were the active discourse. Instead, he pines over love lost. In so

doing, he joins other guys who articulate the discourse of relationship when the

significance they assign to the dissolution of a coupling emphasizes the loss of emotional

or relational ties.

Finally, for committed virgins, the preeminence of the discourse of relationship is

indicated by the fact that relationships, not sex, are often the centerpiece of their fantasies

about girls. Donnie, for instance, mentioned that when he is attracted to a particular girl,

his thoughts are not lustful anticipations of sex acts, which he finds vulgar, but rather

they are expectations of talking and sharing experiences with her. Andrew also focuses

on intimacy instead of sex, as is evident in the relationship fantasy he shared:

Oh, you know, just seeing reactions from another person as to like, you know, uh,
wanting to treat somebody in a new way and seeing their, like, eyes light up to see

that they're meeting a new person I'd like to see their eyes light up and, you

know. I guess. You know, the whole like 'dinner and a movie'-type thing. I
know that's kinda cheesy. You know, you wanna cuddle up on the couch
afterwards and watch a movie in the dark, that type a deal. You know, that's
that's always been my idea of, like, getting intimate with somebody.
(Andrew: 17-year-old, White, virgin)

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Because they understand sexual issues in terms of the discourse of relationship,
nonreligious virgins like Andrew put a premium on getting to know partners, rather than
having sex with them. Consequently, it is this process of establishing intimacy, instead
of sexual acts, that becomes the subject of fantasies.
Articulating Others

Given the relative dominance of the discourse of conquest, the number of
articulations of others in the "relationship" vein is small. Even those whose sexual
decision making is dominated by the discourse of relationship are likely to encounter
others articulating the discourse of conquest. (Recall, for example, Donnie's uncle
quizzing him about the number of girlfriends he had.) But when guys do identify others
who espoused the discourse of relationship to them, they speak primarily of relatives,
especially mothers, and female friends. For instance, Donnie describes how female
friends he had in high school expressed their staunch commitment to virginity until
marriage:

At least the girls that I went to school with, ones that are my friends— they're like,
"If my boyfriend can't handle that I'm holding out, well then that's his problem.
Then he's gotta find someone else. Because I don't care how much, you know,
sweet nothings he whispers. I don't [care] how many roses he buys me. Could
give a shit. It's not happening. Until he slips the ring on my finger, and then he
can THINK about it. He can think about the wedding night. He can think." And
I'm like, "Right on!" They see it— at least my best friend, she sees it as
something special, same way I do.
(Donnie: 18-year-old, Hispanic, virgin)

Not all friends and relatives who articulate the discourse of relationship advocate the

"strong relationship" model expressed so forcefully by Donnie's friends. However, even

guys whose decision making is dominated by the discourse of conquest occasionally

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encounter someone who asserts the necessity of relating to females on more than a sexual

level.

One guy also noted that the discourse of relationship is articulated by some

alternative media sources. On the whole, Andrew is contemptuous of mass media

because he believes they flood the airwaves with messages that advance the discourse of

conquest. However, he also contends that most people's failure to look beyond the

surface keeps them from appreciating more obscure elements of the media that articulate

the discourse of relationship by advocating gender equality:

And the music I listen to now is, uhm, it's all punk, [laughs] And it's, they'll
sing about equality. They'll sing about, uhm, you know, treating women well.
They'll sing about these things, and everybody's like, "How do you listen to that
crap?" Because, you know, they're screaming and they're play in' their
instruments all sloppy and all that sort of stuff. But people don't look beyond,
you know, the cover. You know, they don't look at, uhm, the poetics of music.
(Andrew: 1 8-year-old, White, virgin)

Although Andrew' experience of being exposed to the discourse of relationship through

lesser known media sources was not shared by the other guys I talked with, it nonetheless

confirms the potential of media as another outlet for articulations of this discourse.

Articulating Virginity

Among guys who typically speak in terms of the discourse of conquest,

articulations of the discourse of relationship vis-a-vis virginity tend to be confined to

their views on male virgins. Some nonvirgins indicate that although virginity is not a

choice they would make for themselves, they understand or admire guys who commit to

virginity because relationships are important to them. These sympathetic reflections on

virgins aside, committed virgins are the guys most likely to articulate virginity in terms of

the discourse of relationship. They did so in a number of ways, several of which were

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mentioned in the earlier discussion of the link between sex and relationships. Guys who

commit to virginity for other than religious reasons tend to construct it in a way that links

it to one or more of the following interests: a concern for relationship stability; a belief in

the sacredness of sex; the need to preserve sex as a demonstration of love; or a desire to

promote equal sharing with their future partners. An excellent example of these

constructions is offered by Donnie, whose decision to remain virgin until marriage

factors in several of these elements:

But I don't necessarily base my morality on church guidelines or pedagogy, if
anything. I just think that marriage is sacred, and I think it's something special.
And it's gonna be kinda sad when you are with your wife the first time and
you've already done it. And you can just think of, "She's not as good as these
other girls I slept with." If she's gonna wait off and give her my virginity, I
wanna give her mine, equal sharing and whatnot.
(Donnie: 18-year-old, Hispanic, virgin)

As Donnie's comments suggest, the expectation that one's future wife will be virgin is

sometimes an implicit aspect of the construction of virginity in the discourse of

relationship. Whether that specific expectation is articulated or not, the discourse depicts

virginity as a gauge of one's appreciation of the moral significance of love, sex, and

relationships.

Committed virgins also make this moral aspect to their articulations of virginity

evident by constructing their choice as a struggle against others who promote the

discourse of conquest. Andrew describes the battle in abstract terms:

That's an ideal is that when you lose your virginity it's a, uhm, you know, you
know, it's a step forward. You know, you're conquering some — You're a new
person because of it, but. [sigh] I don't think virginity has anything to do with
anything, really. It has to do with whether or not you're gonna have sex with
somebody for the sake of having sex, or whether or not you're going to, you
know, be a part of another person.
(Andrew: 17-year-old, White, virgin)

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But he and other committed virgins also face the discourse of conquest as a direct
challenge to their beliefs. Donnie remarks that he has had people suggest that he should
"get laid," to which he simply replies, "Do you know me?" Thus, on both ideological
and personal fronts, nonreligious, committed virgins sometimes chose or are driven to
articulate virginity and their commitment to it in terms of its contrast to the discourse of
conquest.

As the preceding discussion illustrates, the semantic parameters of the discourse
of relationship are harder to define than those of the other discourses, given that so much
variation exists in how relationships are defined. Delaying intercourse until one's
connection to a partner has endured for six months and committing to abstinence until
marriage are both ways in which the notion of relationship can guide sexual decision
making, but they also clearly belong to different orders. The key to understanding this
discourse, I think, is managing this complexity. We must recognize that, for some,
relationships take on an almost sacred quality, which is entangled with and further colors
the meanings of sex, virginity, and marriage. For others, the concept of relationship is
less profound, and the interactions so named may be less enduring. Yet in spite of
variations in scope, each specific articulation conveys that it is the fact of relating,
however defined, that dominates decisions about the partnership or anticipated
partnership at hand. In this fundamental aspect, all the diverse representations of
relationships speak as part of a common language.

A Fourth Way: Worry as an Horizon of Meaning

As I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, the last distinct means of orienting
to sexual decision making that emerges from my interviews focuses on concerns about

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acquiring STDs or being responsible for a pregnancy. While these fears do not seem to
inform an entire discourse of sexual decision making, they do amount to a recurring
theme in some of the guys' statements. Gubrium's (1993) concept of a "horizon of
meaning" seems to best capture this sense of an array of meanings that is less than a
discourse, yet still a source of some unique interpretations germane to the sexual
decision-making process. In this vein, then, the notion of "worry" (about STDs and
pregnancy) warrants discussion as a fourth way that guys may organize at least some of
their thoughts and understandings about sex and its relevance to them. In the subsequent
discussion, I focus on the two articulations of worry voiced by guys I interviewed:
constructions of "others" who emphasize caution regarding STDs and pregnancy, and
constructions of sex.

When sex is constructed in terms of worry, the possibility that sexual activity
might lead to a pregnancy or the acquisition of an STD dominates guys' talk and provides
the rationale for a variety of specific strategies for approaching sex. Some guys'
strategizing is dominated by prophylactic behavior, such as developing a protection plan
with a partner before sex is imminent, wearing condoms, or getting regular exams for
signs of STDs. Some guys speak of developing and utilizing "folk methods" for
assessing the level of STD risk posed by potential partners. For instance, several guys
comment or intimate that they gauge a girls' sexual health— and therefore the kind of risk
she posed— by her reputation, particularly as promulgated by other guys. Still others
articulate their worry by describing limits they have deliberately imposed on their own
sexual activity. Jordan, the self-identified "born-again" virgin, places himself among this

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group when he tells me how he dealt with the risk of STDs he associated with those

partners he had called "just flesh":

I: Well, when you were dating some of the other — Well, not dating, but

when you were with some of the other girls, how do you decide what level
of physical contact there's gonna be?

R: Naw. I figured they were trifling and I didn't trust 'em. So I wouldn't
have sex, er, genital sex with 'em. But oral sex, there's really a low
chance of you getting diseases and stuff, so I figured "Ppbbbt! Hey."

(Jordan: 1 8-year-old, African- American, "born-again" virgin)

Jordan's approach to protecting himself differs from the others because he actually
abstains from certain activities (with certain girls), but all of the strategies speak to
instances in which guys let their worry guide their understanding of sex (as risky) and
inform their sexual decisions.

In many instances, articulations of the "others" who expose guys to the worries
associated with sex are limited to an indication that someone repeated some version of
the stock advice: "Don't do it. But if you do, make sure you use protection." However,
some of these "others," who are typically parents or friends (both male and female), are
described as doing or saying something that the guys find particularly relevant. For
instance, Morgan indicates that his mother not only told him to "use protection," but she
also bought him condoms. Likewise, L.J. appreciates the multitude of tips his mother
gave him for protecting himself. She had suggestions about how to evaluate the genetic
health of a girl, should L.J. consider having a child with her. Plus, she had a very specific
strategy for STD risk assessment:

She just be like, "Did you use a condom?" I'm like, "Yeah." "If it ain't smell
right don't go in." 'Cause like, you know, if it don't smell right, you don't want
to go in somethin' that don't smell good. If somethin' don't smell right, you're
not gonna eat it.
(L.J.: 17-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

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Regardless of the actual protective value of the advice or practical assistance offered by

these mothers, they represent instances in which others' articulations of worry had a

notable impact on guys' orientation to sexual decision making, at least in the short term.

It is worth noting that a few guys indicate that particular experiences also helped

raise the relevance of worry to their sexual decision making. For L.J., having to be

treated for gonorrhea awakened him to the risks implicit in sex:

So when that happened that opened my eyes up and realized that you don't realize
what you are getting into when you have sex and you taking a risk. Anything you
do is, you taking a risk. When you wake up and go outside, that's a risk.
(L.J.: 17-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

And Alvin reports that watching "The Miracle in Childbirth" in school caused him to

appreciate the seriousness of paternity:

R: "Miracle of Childbirth." That's the only thing that scared me.

I: What was that?

R: Ugh! Make me scared to be up in there. It was, Whoo. Ooh!

I: What is it? It's a film?

R: Uhm-hm.

I: About?

R: About a lady givin' birth.

I: Oh, actually shows — ?

R: Uhm-hm. I'm like, "Ugh!" So I decide I don't wannabe no dad just yet.

I can wait for another 5 years.
(Alvin: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Both guys present their experiences as unexpected, powerful happenings that transformed

how they understood sex. In other words, they construct them as epiphanies. The

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epiphany story is a well-established form of narrative (Denzin 1989; Woodward 2001),
and its use in these cases has a number of important implications. First, it represents one
form of story that guys do have in a meaning-making arsenal that is relatively bereft of
story forms. (The full compliment of stories that guys made use of in my interviews will
be described in the next chapter.) Second, it provides further evidence that guys tend to
experience and articulate their introduction to different discourses or horizons of meaning
in different ways. We have already seen, for instance, that different sorts of people tend
to be described as conveyers of the discourse of piety (e.g., parents; youth ministers) as
compared with the discourse of relationship (e.g., female friends; media sources).

This is not to say that the epiphany story could never be the vehicle through
which guys articulate their appreciation of other discourses. Matthew, a religious virgin,
articulates his decision to commit to virginity as one consequence of his being saved, and
he conveys the experience of being saved and accepting Christ into his life through an
epiphany story. The point is simply that the nature of the "others" that propagate ways of
interpreting the sexual realm does generally vary across discourses because different
meaning systems link most effectively to different cultural concerns.

Given that worry, as an horizon of meaning for sexual decision making, is
organized around risk and fear, it should not be surprising when guys present their
awareness of it through epiphany stories. Certainly fearful experiences, as much as any
others, have the potential for transformative impacts on our lives. Also, the epiphany
stories remind us that the outside influences or "others" we speak of should be considered
most broadly to include influential experiences as well as people.

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Conclusion

The three discourses and fourth horizon of meaning I have described represent, in
broad strokes, an array of ways that adolescent males narrate sexual decision making.
Sometimes religious ideals come to the fore, and sometimes primary importance is placed
on relationships. In still other instances, the desire to acquire sexual experience or
concern about causing pregnancy or catching an STD provide the organizing principle for
sexual decisions. By virtue of offering systematic ways of approaching sexual decisions,
these discourses encourage those who use them to orient to an array of distinct but related
concerns — such as sex, girls, virginity, and self— in particular ways. In other words,
committing to the articulation of one aspect of the sexual realm in terms of one discourse
brings with it strong incentives to accept that discourse's "take" on other aspects as well.
This quality of discourses can be comforting, for it provides a sense that we have answers
to questions we have not yet confronted. Yet it also makes them somewhat inflexible,
creating the sense that we "should" be or think in ways we have not anticipated or cannot
abide. This is the "catch-22" of discourses: The world seems too disorderly without
them, but their adoption always creates narrative challenges. Narrative challenges are
situations in which one feels compelled to use talk to try to reconcile the "expectations"
of a discourse or competing discourses with one's particular sense of self or reality. The
specific narrative challenges that adolescent males face vis-a-vis discourses of sexual
decision making and how they wrestle with them is the topic of the next two chapters of
Part II.

As we move to those chapters, it should be noted that in this chapter I presented
the discourses largely in isolation from one another for the sake of clarity. In practice, in

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the guys' talk, discourses exist and are articulated very much in relation to one another.
We have already seen, for instance, that guys who articulate the discourse of relationship
and are committed to virginity can define the importance of relationships in terms of its
opposition to the discourse of conquest.

Finally, the fact that I have outlined the discourses with the help of the
articulations of adolescent males does not mean that these orientations to sexual decision
making are exclusive to them. Although specific issues may be different, it is certainly
reasonable to imagine men, and in some cases women, of varying ages drawing on these
same discourses to make meaning out of their own dilemmas in the sexual realm. For
instance, does a 3 5 -year-old man experiencing impotence orient to the problem in terms
of his relationship with his partner, his concerns about not being able to father children,
or difficulties satisfying sexual partners? I have described the discourses in broad terms,
but I still need to demonstrate how the dilemmas and possibilities they raise are unique to
young men. I explore these challenges and how the guys endeavor to meet them in
Chapters 6 and 7, but I preface this with an examination, in Chapter 5, of the narrative
strategies the guys have at their disposal for meeting narrative challenges.

CHAPTER 5
NARRATIVE STRATEGIES

In earlier chapters, I described how narrative practice — the analytical mode that
guides this study — brings together interest in discourses-in-practice and discursive
practice. The examination of the three discourses in Chapter 4 addressed the former. By
drawing on one or another of the discourses or meaning systems I described, the guys
bring various cultural understandings into the practice of providing relevant responses in
an interview. Turning to the latter, discursive practice, means shifting focus from the
cultural resources available for meaning-making to the role of the language user in
assembling meanings. Some of this meaning-making derives from rhetorical moves that
are idiosyncratic; a particular guy's perspective on sexuality hinges on his interpretation
of a particular word, for instance. But much of the meaning-making process involves
context-specific use of general narrative strategies that all or many of the guys use and
that are, ostensibly, available to any competent speaker in virtually any instance of
narrative production. In Chapters 6 and 7, 1 want to be able to examine the confluence
of discourses and idiosyncratic and general narrative strategies as the guys confront
specific narrative challenges. So in this chapter, I provide the last building block for that
analysis by examining general narrative strategies that the guys commonly used in the
interviews.

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Identifying Narrative Strategies

Before I introduce the five narrative strategies that I will examine in this chapter, I
should provide the caveat that identifying narrative strategies is, like identifying and
describing discourses, an act of interpretation. There are no hard and fast rules that guide
an analyst in deciding that a speaker is doing something significant with language at one
point and not another, nor are there directives for how he or she should define and label
what that significant "something" is. Likewise, once a narrative strategy is identified,
even one as ubiquitous as "story," interpretation is still required to determine whether
particular sequences of talk should be included in the category. All of these
qualifications are not to say that narrative analysts are chasing ghosts or that anything
goes. The fact that stories do get identified and do get analyzed is proof against that
suggestion. Nevertheless it is worth noting that this can be slippery business. Focusing
on what the guys' accomplished with language in any given sequence and how they did
so, I have identified five general categories that I believe represent distinct strategies of
meaning-making that pervade the interviews. My decisions were guided by my interest
in the guys' presentation of sexual selves, a desire to examine any "formal" narratives
that were presented, and the need to characterize how guys asserted meanings in the
absence of formal narratives. Other analysts, guided by other imperatives, would likely
identify some other strategies or categorize particular sequences of talk differently. I am
confident, however, that their interpretations would share much with mine and they
would recognize the reasoning and interpretive value behind my decisions.

By my reckoning, five narrative strategies were essential to the self-construction
that took place in the interviews. I call those strategies telling, presenting selves,

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contrasting, categorizing, and parroting. Two of these — telling and presenting
selves — are umbrella categories for a family of related strategies. Each of the five
general strategy groups is named in the form of a gerund to emphasize the ongoing,
active nature of what it represents; each is a way of doing things with words that guys
"activate" by structuring their narrative in specific ways. For instance, by presenting a
specific topic in terms of oppositions, a guy can use contrasting to articulate a variety of
positions, including his own, with regard to it. These ways of arranging talk are, at least
theoretically, always available. Speakers determine the level of impact each has on their
narrative, however, by how they strategically apply them.

Telling encompasses rhetorical maneuvers ranging from the production of stories,
narrowly defined, to the assembly of story-like narratives that lack some elements
associated with stories but nonetheless can be seen as a kind of "telling." Speakers are
"presenting selves" when they use any of three strategies, each of which primarily
functions as a vehicle for the construction and management of self in relation to the
exigencies of the interview. The next two strategies, contrasting and categorizing, are
fairly self-explanatory. In one case, a speaker makes meaning by directing how things
are named, in the other, by determining how those names are related. The final narrative
strategy, parroting, refers to instances in which guys shift subject positions during the
interview and actually speak as some other person, thing, or self.

Although the group of narrative strategies I call "presenting selves" specifically
identifies narrative work that relates to the articulation of identities, all of these narrative
strategies can be and are used to facilitate identity work. With these other strategies,
however, the designation of particular selves or management of identities is indirect or

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results while other narrative goals are also being pursued. The "presenting selves"
strategies are unique only in that articulating the self of the speaker is their only effect
and it occurs in a context in which identity is the "going concern."

Another important note is that all of these narrative strategies are collaborative, to
some degree or another. It is appropriate, I think, to place most of the emphasis on what
the guys are doing with language since, for the most part, they are the ones being incited
to produce meanings. We should not lose cite of the fact that the interview is active,
however. I, as the interviewer, shape narratives by the topics I rise, the way I phrase
questions, and the manner in which I respond to the guys' comments. In some cases this
influence is obvious, as with the form of storytelling I call collaborative narratives. In
other instances, it is less visible but no less consequential, as when guys appear to relate
to me as an authority figure, calling me "sir" and asking if their answer gave me "what I
wanted." For convenience sake, I will most often refer in this section to what the guys
did with language, but it should be understood that their narrative strategies always
operate in the context of parameters set, heavily influenced by, or negotiated with me.

Just as the guys' narrative strategizing is not done independent of my influence,
the strategies themselves are not independent of one another. Although it is convenient
for me to separate the strategies for examination, as I did with the three discourses, in
practice the guys may use multiple strategies simultaneously to construct an intricate web
of meanings. Even in this discussion, in which I endeavor to keep each strategy separate,
some meshing of them will be evident. But the complex interplay that guys create
between the narrative strategies will be fully evident when I examine narrative challenges
in Chapters 6 and 7.

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Telling

In Chapter 4, 1 indicated that the guys do not rely heavily on stories to convey
meaning. That statement is certainly accurate, particularly if we define stories narrowly
as sequences of talk that present an ordering and evaluation of past events. Such
constructions are not so central to each of the guys' narratives as to warrant making them
the basis for an entire narrative analysis. Far too much narrative work would be left out.
The limited importance of stories should not, however, be taken to mean that the guys do
not tell stories. A small number of guys tell a lot of full-blown stories. Others tell fewer,
less involved stories. These guys seem to make up for this, however, by producing what
we might call pseudo-stories, narrative constructions that satisfy some but not all of the
criteria by which stories are typically identified. In short, many of the guys do not
produce an appreciable amount of what analysts would hear as complete stories, but they
all rely to some degree on an activity I would call telling, which results in stories or
pseudo-stories.

Telling, as it appears in these interviews, comes in four forms. In addition to full-
blown stories, guys tell hypothetical narratives and habitual narratives, and with my
involvement they produce collaborative narratives. The three pseudo-narratives deviate
from the strict definition of story in patterned ways. Hypothetical narratives dispense
with the expectation, essential to stories, that the events described are real and happened
in the past. Habitual narratives breach the expectation that the past referred to in the
narrative is a single moment or time frame, and collaborative narratives violate the rather
traditional assumption that stories are individual productions.

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In the discussion that follows, my goal is twofold. I want to provide examples of
the different forms of telling, but I also want to demonstrate the strategic use of each
form of telling. These examples should not be seen as an exhaustive delineation of
strategic usage, but merely suggestive of how particular guys made them relevant to
specific narrative needs raised in the interview.
Stories

What the narratives collected under the rubric of stories have in common is that
they relate actual past events or states of being, sequence these in some way, and offer
some explicit or implicit evaluation of these happenings. By this definition, stories can
be as simple and brief as the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme (Berger 1997) or as lengthy
and complex as a woman's in-depth description of her recognition that she has an
inherited disease (Bell 1988).

The stories the guys in this study tell certainly reflect this diversity. Some stories
are quite involved and contain nested narratives— that is, related stories or pseudo stories
told within the boundaries of the over-arching story. These highly developed stories
sometimes run for three or four pages when transcribed. In other instances, stories last
for just two or three sentences and include the story elements described above in their
barest forms.

Not surprisingly, there is also great diversity in the rhetorical uses to which the
stories are put. The guys tell stories about everything from their most influential mentors
to their experiences of virginity loss in the interest of goals as diverse as presenting
particular selves, explaining sexual decisions, and typifying groups of people. At the
same time, the fact that I elicit the stories in interviews that share common themes means

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that the guys face similar rhetorical demands and sometimes enlist stories to address

similar concerns. This sense of guys telling very different stories to accomplish similar

ends is evident in three types of stories that are told by several of the guys. I call these

transformation, demonstration, and history-making stories.

Transformation stories make the statement "I changed." Some times the change

described is a gradual one, like an evolution or a progression, and sometimes it is sudden,

as in the epiphany stories mentioned in Chapter 4. Matthew's story of religious

conversion— what he describes as "being saved"— is an excellent example because it

includes both types of transformation. As this abridged reproduction of the story

demonstrates, there is Matthew's slow acceptance of the idea of giving church a try and

then the epiphany of religious awareness that occurs when he is saved:

I always wondered, where am I goin'? I was just sittin' in class one day: "Why
am I here? Am I going to heaven or hell? What makes it? If I kill somebody,
does that mean I'm goin' to hell? Or if I do drugs, does that mean I'm goin' to
hell?" Uhm, and then — let's see. Gosh. It was whenever my mother got saved,
[describes process of mother getting saved] And then she kept tellin' me, you
know, "You should come with me. You should come with me." And I was like,
"I don't wanna come. What's the point of it? You always said there was no point

of it. Why should I?" And finally, I don't know I was bored that Sunday

morning, you know, something. I just got up, and I went. And, you know, I went
to church, and still didn't know what, you know, I was like, "That was nice. He
gives a nice sermon," or whatever, [describes process of stepfather and sister
getting saved] And I was still, you know, "Why are you guys doin'— What's the
point?" And then I talked to my mother after I got off the bus, and she talked to

me And she told me all about Jesus and stuff. And I just started crying, and

then I got saved. I mean and then I felt, you know, "Wow, there's"— I know that,
you know, there's a purpose and, you know, why I'm here. And there's actually a
difference. And then, you know, that's when I started doin' better in school and
not partying. I stopped goin' to parties, and I stopped, you know, doin' all that
stuff. And I just quit everything, and then.
(Matthew: 15-year-old, White, virgin)

Notice that the story begins and ends with Matthew's assessment of himself, first

before and then after he is saved. Coupled with the descriptions of the transformative

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events, these "before and after" self-assessments give force to Matthew's assertion that

he has changed. They provide evidence that the long, deliberative process and the

epiphany experience have had an impact. Once lost in existential quandaries, he is now

aware of God's plan for him and has changed his lifestyle accordingly.

Not all transformation stories are as involved as Matthew's is. In fact, while

transformations often involve changes in both thought and behavior, sometimes the

stories only focus on how a guy's awareness has been raised. Consider, for instance, this

excerpt from the story L.J. told about his bout with gonorrhea:

When I was pissing again and it was hurting, I told my mama what happened and
she was like, "We'll just take you to the clinic." They gave me some, a hundred,
a thousand milligram antibiotics and some penicillin to get the virus, the disease
out of my system, the bacteria. And that worked. That right there opened my
eyes up, that experience. Like I was talking about earlier with my brother that
experience open your eyes up. So, I opened my eyes and realized that you need to
use a condom when you're having sex, because you don't know what is out there.
(L . J. : 1 7-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

L.J. does not assert that after this experience he used a condom every time he had
sex. In fact, later in the interview he mentions having unprotected sex and calls himself a
hypocrite for not protecting himself. But the story makes the statement "I changed"
because L.J. credits the gonorrhea scare with raising his awareness about the risks of sex.

Another statement that some of the guys make with stories is, "That's my point."
They use stories to demonstrate the importance or validity of an assertion they have
made. In essence, they offer their personal experience as support for their contentions.
For instance, during our interview, Grady makes the point that some guys, like him, keep
their sexual exploits private, while others are "nasty" and tell everything. When I ask
him to elaborate on the difference between the two types of guys, he eventually tells a

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brief story (beginning in the third line) about one of his male friends — his

homeboy — getting vulgar with some girls:

They just don't care. They probably like the nasty ones, that tell everything they
did. Or they'll just like mention it like in third person, like, "My Homeboy did
this the other day." And, "I wonder if it was good." They'll ask one of the girls.
Like, my Homeboy, W., he did somethin' with a girl and he asked our dawg. M,
she a girl, and K, was that a good or not, the what he did to her the other night?
He talk about he did somethin' until she went to sleep. She talked about, if she
went to sleep, you must ain't feel nothin'. [both laugh] He just sat there. He got
kinda mad and stuff. He just start laughin'
(Grady: 18-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

Grady's story provides an example of how some guys, including his friends,
engage in explicit talk about real or imagined sexual exploits, not just with other guys but
with female friends as well.

Evan drew on his personal experience to tell a more sobering demonstration story

at the beginning of our interview. He mentioned that the men his mother date tend to

have an influence on him, and then provided this story:

Like, one instance, my mom was going out with this one guy, and he was really
cool and everything. I really looked up to him. He was like my role model. And
then, like, he beat her one night, and that was kinda traumatizing. But, uhm, he's
had like a mixed effect on me.
(Evan: 15-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Evan's tale is actually both a demonstration and a transformation story. It

demonstrates his point that his mother's boyfriends can have an impact on him using a

particular instance in which a man's violent behavior transformed what was initially an

entirely positive relationship for Evan. While at the outset Evan indicates that he "really

looked up to" the man, after relating the violent incident he concludes that the man's

effect on him was "mixed."

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One last example of story types is what I call the history-making story, which

makes the statement, "This is why I am who I am." This strategic use of story amounts to

a particular sort of identity work. The story delineates particular events from the past and

asserts that these help explain some aspect of the teller's current self. For instance,

Andrew engages in "history making" when he tells stories about his family life in an

effort to explain why he has developed such a strong commitment to the mental but not

the physical aspects of intimacy:

I was raised by a single mother, and she, you know — My father left her. and I've
never met him. And, uh, she's always had like, a, I, I was the product of an
unhappy coupling, you know. I was always a fault. And, you know, I was always
spoken down to and, uh, never anything physical. And, uh. I remember, when I
left for college, my mom told me she loved me, and it sounded really weird,
'cause she had never said it before. I had never heard the words come out of her
mouth, and I was like, "Oh my God!" It just sounded really weird. It sounded
really awkward. And I've — You know, when I was 14, er, 13 or whatever and
wanting to explore my sexuality, I never did because by then, I had read, like, just
so much stuff that I wasn't willing just to go out and have sex, just to go out and
just do it for whatever. You know? Since then I've been looking for that mental
connection and, uhm, I think it was just never, never really having that sort of
connection, ever, to this point, with another human female.
(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

The main events of Andrew's story are the recognition that he is unwanted, his

being the target of verbal abuse, and a more recent incident in which his mother

awkwardly professed her love for him. In the evaluation portion of the story, Andrew

posits these occurrences as causal factors that help explain his reticence to explore the

physical side of sexuality and his yearning to bond intellectually with a female, to

experience a "mental connection." He states explicitly, "I think it was just never, never

really having that sort of connection, ever, to this point, with another human female."

With this last sentence, Andrew completes the history-making process, drawing an

emphatic link between what he has experienced and the person he has become.

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Another example of a history-making story is provided by L.J. when we discuss

committed virgins. I ask L.J. if he thinks he would have been able to remain virgin if he

had been taught he ought to "save himself for marriage. In response, he tells a story

about his younger years that ostensibly explains why he is not someone who can wait:

I: Do you think that when you were younger, if you had been taught that you

shouldn't have sex, until you are married, do you think you could have
waited?

R: I don't think so. Because when I was younger, I can remember sneaking
in the living room like around 12 o'clock, watchin' a little Cinemax, had a
little Red Shoe Diaries and stuff like that. And when I went to my uncle's
house one day, I had saw a flick. It was a hard-core flick. And I saw it
and it just caught my eye. In my head, the wheels started turning. I'm
like, "Man, I could be doin' that." So it is just like that influenced me. I
got caught up in society that influenced me. I would have waited — I
probably still would have did it cause I seen what was going on.
Everybody around was talking about it at my age. Like. I was ten years
old, little boys talking about her boobies and stuff and like right there,
[unintelligible — 3 words] It just hypnotize me so. That's me.

(L.J.: 17-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

At one level, L.J. is making the argument that his experiences with soft- and hard-
core pornography helped make him who he is today — someone who lost his virginity at
age 13. In this sense, the story is a simple example of history making. But on another
level, it is an especially remarkable instance. Because my question asked him to
speculate about alternative paths he might have taken in terms of his sexual decision
making, L.J. also manages this story in a way that rejects these alternatives and confirms
the inevitability of the life he has led. When L.J. says, "I probably still would have did it
cause I seen what was going on," he suggests that even if his past had not included the
specific incidents he described, other similar experiences would have awakened his
fascination with sex. With this rhetorical maneuver, L.J. binds even the alternative paths
I have suggested to the end result that he has lived. Regardless of what he might have

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been taught, some incident would still have led him to be curious about sex and to lose
his virginity at a young age. The introduction of the notion of alternative lives, then,
creates a narrative challenge for L.J., which he meets with creative use of the history-
making story.
Hypothetical Narratives

When the guys are not being creative with stories, they are often telling about
their lives in other ways. The most common alternative or "pseudo" story form is the
hypothetical narrative. In this form of telling, speculation is essentially given a narrative
form. The speaker indicates that the events described are fictional, then "sets them in
motion" in a narrative sequence. In this way, guys demonstrate how their ideas might
take concrete form in actual situations.

The use of a hypothetic narrative to concretize speculations or ruminations is

aptly demonstrated by Jerry when he and I discuss how men deal with sexual urges. He

comments that he thinks most men can handle their urges and remain faithful to their

partners, and he supports his contention with a hypothetical narrative that demonstrates

how he thinks this fidelity is maintained in practice:

But it's like some guys know how to handle it. I say some of the married men,
most. Because if you're married, you're gonna get those kind of, like, "Man,
wooh! Only if I was 20 years younger. Oh, wooh! Only if I wasn't married/"
But then when you think about and you got beautiful kids, beautiful wife. You
got — what more? You got in-house vagina, that's yours for life. You know what
I'm saying? I mean, what's the use of going out hittin' this girl, hittin' that girl,
when you gonna get the same satisfaction.
(Jerry: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Jerry begins his hypothetical narrative in the second line, when he introduces an

imaginary, typical, married man. As the narrative unfolds, the man is tempted by

beautiful women who make him long for a bachelor's freedom, then he recognizes that

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his wife and family are more valuable than the sexual satisfaction he might get having

sex with ("hittin"') some random woman. While I certainly wonder about the

designation of a man's wife as "in-house vagina," I cannot deny that Jerry's hypothetical

effectively articulates his sense that married men ought to be able to weigh the "benefit"

of infidelity against the cost of risking one's family.

A more down-to-earth example of a hypothetical narrative appears in my

conversation with Sean. In the course of our discussing sex differences in young

people's interest in and reactions to virginity commitments, I ask Sean if he thinks guys

and girls respond differently to social pressures to be sexually active. His answer is

dominated by a hypothetical narrative that compares girls' and guys' reactions to

attractive people:

When you're with guys, for a guy, you're more pressured into doing it than if you
were a girl [Int: Uhm-hm.] because I think that guys are more open to talk about
than, than girls are. I mean, I mean, you sit with some guys and if a good-looking
girl walks by, they're gonna comment. You know, they're gonna be like, you
know, "I wouldn't mind getting' some play with that girl," something like that.
And girls'll just be like, "That guy, that guy, that guy there's hot," you know.
[Int: Right.] I mean, so it's kinda like, guys are more open than girls, I think, are.
Or from, from what I know, they are.
(Sean: 16-year-old, White, virgin)

After a sentence that suggests how we should hear what is to come, Sean launches

into a narrative (starting at the third line) in which fictional events happen (e.g., a girl

walks by; guys make sexually suggestive comments) to actors that are mere typifications

(a group of guys, a good-looking girl, and a group of girls). Like Jerry, Sean is thus able

to reveal something about how he understands a specific issue, even though his own life

experience may not include one distinct story that conveys that understanding.

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Habitual Narratives

Like some hypothetical narratives, habitual narratives amalgamate multiple events

and thus are presented in an indefinite time frame. They differ from hypothetical,

however, in that all of the events are purported to have actually happened. Indeed, much

of the force of the narrative results from the assertion that the events described do not

change from one instance to the next. For instance, when Drew and I are discussing sex

education, he volunteers this habitual narrative about the impact the possibility of STDs

has on his sexual activity:

Well, you're always worried about getting an STD. I don't usually think about
that till afterwards. And then I like, "Huh. Well, I used a condom, so I guess it's
alright. I'm not gonna worry about it." I don't really worry about much.
(Drew: 1 8-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Beginning by asserting that one is "always worried" about STDs. Drew presents a
series of events that typify his response to that ever-present concern: He keeps it out of
his mind until after he has had sex, then reassures himself that he is safe because he used
a condom.

Another example of a habitual narrative is provided by Dairy 1 when I ask him
where he got his information about sex:

Like, you know, like, school they always have presentation. They always used to
talk about it. So through that. And like sometimes, you know, through classes,
you know, talk about it or teachers'll bring up the topic and like they'll debate
about it, you know. It wasn't like — I never had sex education — but [I got
information] through middle school through high school. So I was aware of
certain things.
(Darryl: 18-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

Here, Darryl constructs a habitual narrative as a way of demonstrating the

pervasiveness of sexual information in school, rather than its concentration in a single

instance, like a sex-education class. Darryl produces an image of his middle and high

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schools as places where there were "always" presentations, talk, and debate about sex,
and can thus assert that he learned about sex almost incidentally by virtue of being
immersed in those mediums.
Collaborative Narratives

The final type of pseudo-story, the collaborative narrative, refers to instances in
which my ability as the interviewer to raise and pursue topics is instrumental to the
production of a story. Typically, in these cases, a guy's initial response to a question
references a specific past event, but it does not seem to complete the sequencing of this
event with other, related ones. Also, in some cases, the speaker does not provide a sense
of how the events are meaningful to him. In essence, the speaker produces the
beginnings of a story but leaves it incomplete. By indicating my interest in the matter
and sometimes asking additional questions, I help the speaker continue the sequencing,
develop the story, and reflect on the meaning it has for him. A case in point is an
exchange I had with Matthew when we are discussing the advice he gets from others
about how to stay "pure," even when he is attracted to a girl. When Matthew begins to
talk about a specific instance involving a particular girl, I try to help him advance the
story:

I: Well, how did you know that this was a situation that you needed to get,

that it was potentially more than friendship, that you needed to get some
advice on it?

R: Well 'cause , you know, me and the person were both, we were both

asking each other, you know, "Should we do this?" or whatever. And we
were still having doubts and whatever. So I — That's probably how, you
know — I would talk to my parents, and then I'd talk to my friends and

I: And you talked to her, as well?

R: Yeah and then I talked to her.

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I: What was her, uhm, part in the situation? What was her approach?

R: It was the same. She talked to her parents. She talked to some of her
friends. And we both decided, you know — She came back and. it was
weird because she was like the same thing, you know, both at the same
time, we were like, you know, "I don't think that's right" or whatever. So
we — She was basically the same way as I was.

I: Well, that's good.

R: Yeah. That's was pretty cool.
(Matthew: 15-year-old, White, virgin)

At Matthew's first turn in this exchange, he simply answers my question: He
knew he needed advice because he was having doubts. However, he also suggests that
his prospective girlfriend was having similar doubts and that he was going to talk to his
parents and friends. In essence, he insinuates that there was a series of events that
unfolded, but only clearly describes the first one (i.e., the doubts). As to the rest, he
leaves us wondering, "What happened next?" With some additional prompting, Matthew
provides an answer to that question and evaluates the whole experience as "pretty cool."
The end result is that Matthew and I collaboratively produce a story that begins with
Matthew's doubts about dating and ends with a "meeting of the minds" between two
youth who are concerned with staying pure.

In my interview with Morgan, there is an instance in which narrative
collaboration proceeds in a rather unique way. We are discussing the ways that virgins
are treated in his high school, and Morgan indicates that a group of kids he calls "preps"
are the ones most likely to ridicule virgins. I intend to ask Morgan if he has ever
witnessed one of the preps hassling a virgin, but he takes the conversation in a different
direction:

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I: Have you ever had a situation where one of the preps — or somebody

else — was — ?

R: Was incriminating me?

I: I don't know.

R: They were talking about me?

I: Yeah.

R: I grabbed 'em by their neck and told 'em listen here, "What you don't

know, what you don't need to know, are two different things. Keep your
mouth shut, especially about me."

I: What kinda stuff were they saying?

R: You know, "Look at him! He's unpopular." And now I get to walk

around with a [high school football team] jersey, and they changed their
heart real quick.

(Morgan: 1 7-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Morgan's interruption of my question with his own suggests to me that he has a
story to tell, one that is perhaps substantially different than the one that my question
might invite. By simply pleading ignorance, I encourage him to begin to articulate the
situation that he has in mind. The result is not a story about preps and virgins, but one
about a direct confrontation Morgan had with one of the preps. The story, in turn,
becomes a vehicle through which Morgan defines himself in relation to the social cliques
at his school.

These and many other examples indicate that collaborative narratives deserve
attention as a separate form of pseudo-story, particularly in relation to interview
participants, like many of these guys, who are sometimes reticent to dominate a
conversation that includes an adult. Still, I think this genre of story should be appreciated

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with two qualifications in mind, both of which remind us of the active aspects of the
interview context.

First, the narratives that result from my exchanges with a participant are
collaborative productions, not completions of preexisting stories. Although it may seem
that my role is to help a guy "finish" a story, in truth what my intervention does is direct
his meaning-making process. In some cases, this may remind him of aspects of a story he
has neglected, but it is just as likely to encourage him to produce meanings that would
not otherwise occur to him. For instance, had I not specifically asked what Matthew's
girlfriend's position on dating was, would the story have ended with the two of them
realizing they shared a common perspective? The point is simply that collaborative
narratives do not help to advance some innate script that guides the interview. They are
productions that take the interview into new territory, and they occur primarily because of
my assumption that stories are a powerful means of conveying meaning.

The second qualification is that calling these exchanges collaborative narratives
should not blind us to the fact that the entire interview process is fundamentally a
collaboration. In most cases, the collaboration operates with me, the interviewer,
orienting the other participant to particular issues and encouraging them to produce
accounts in relation to them. Such was the case, for instance, when I asked L.J. to
speculate about the effects of having a different sort of upbringing. But there are
instances in any interview— and particularly in deliberately active ones— in which the
subjective positions of interviewer and interviewee are contested, suppressed or modified.
For instance, Derrick comments during our interview that it is difficult to know how to
frame certain responses about his sexual decision making since he does not know "where

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I was coming from." Taking this as an implicit question, I essentially take his place as
"respondent" and tell him the story of the evolution of my sexual decision making and
my virginity loss. Situations like this that destabilize the presumed roles of the
participants occur to a greater or less extent in virtually every interview and should serve
as a constant reminder that interviewing is always and unalterably collaborative.

In sum, the guys in this study often produce meanings by sequencing and
interpreting events; however, this "telling," as I call it, does not always take story form.
Sometimes the scenarios described are hypothetical, sometimes they exemplify
circumstances that are experienced as habitual, and sometimes the production of the
telling is dependent on collaboration with me. The question of why many of the guys tell
few bona fide stories is an important one that I take up in Chapter 8. For our immediate
purposes, however, the important feature of the interviews is the proliferation of tellings,
not the shortage of stories, for the tellings demonstrate the guys' active use of the story
form as a narrative strategy, regardless of whether actual stories are produced.

Presenting Selves

When the guys narrate their experience using one of the forms of telling, one of
the results is almost always some sense of themselves. But they do not depend solely on
tellings to "narrate themselves." The guys also make use of three unique narrative
strategies to produce direct, deliberate depictions of themselves. The first two of
these — identity claims and distancing — are typically short declarative statements of who
the speaker is or is not. The third, biographical work (Holstein & Gubrium 2000a),
describes a more extensive passage in which an identity is not so much claimed or
disclaimed, but negotiated. Although each of these narrative strategies can be used in the

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context of a telling, they do not depend on such a context. They represent a separate
class of narrative strategies that facilitate identity work. As I did with the different types
of stories, I organize my discussion of the strategies for presenting selves in terms of
particular uses to which they are put. These are examples, not an exhaustive inventory.
Identity Claims

Identity claims are statements through which a guy asserts the type of person he
is. They typically take very simple forms. Theoretically, in fact, an identity claim could
be made with just two words, such as "I procrastinate." All that is required is for the
speaker to create a direct link between himself and some quality.

Despite their simple design, identity claims further illustrate the artfulness of

narrativity. They can operate in very sophisticated ways in practice because their use is

always bound to context. This complexity is evident, for instance, when guys make

claims to masculinity or manhood. In the following examples, each guy makes a claim to

a different sort of manhood, for different reasons and to different effect:

I don't think I'm a man yet. I think that I'm, like, a young man, I guess.
(Sean: 16-year-old, White, virgin)

And see, I consider myself to be average. I'm an average male.
(L.J.: 17-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

But if it do happens, if it happens, to me, to me, I'm a gentleman, so of course.
I'm going to take care of my responsibilities. I'm going to be there and I'm going
do what I have to do, you know what I'm saying?
(Jerry: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

In the context of a discussion about the meaning of manhood. Sean claims he is a

young man, implying that that designation makes him qualitatively different from a

"man." L.J. identifies himself as an "average male" as a way of emphasizing that he does

not have extraordinary looks or wealth that would draw girls to him. Consequently, he is

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a kind of "every man," and the way girls respond to him tells a lot about what they really

look for in a guy. Jerry claims the identity "gentleman" to indicate that he will take care

of his procreative responsibilities in the event that he is responsible for a pregnancy.

Taken together, these cases demonstrate the power and flexibility of identity claims. In

making them, guys do not simply associate themselves with established categories or

typifications, they mold and modify them to fit their own sense of themselves and the

rhetorical demands of the situation at hand. In the previous examples, each guy

constructs and claims a nuanced notion of manhood that produces a relevant, situated

identity.

Distancing

In some cases, the guys construct who they are through opposition, by articulating

who they are not. This is the narrative strategy of distancing, a sort of inverse of identity

claims, and it comes in two forms. In what I call the direct form, the guys make overt

statements that separate their own identities from undesirable characteristics or qualities,

often associated with some typified group. In this form, distancing amounts to the use of

what Dorothy Smith (1990) calls "contrast structures" in the specific interest of

constructing one's identity. For instance, in the course of our conversations, two of the

guys deliberately distance themselves from the identity of "player," which describes a

kind of playboy who is intent on showing off his ability to attract and seduce girls:

Some girls might say that and they be like, "L, he's a pimp player and all that
stuff." Man, that ain't me. I can be if I want to. If I choose to. But that ain't me.
(L.J.: 17-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

I'm not a player. I don't pretend. I'm not a player. That's not my thing. I don't
see women as a game in any way shape or form.
(Donnie: 18-year-old, Hispanic, virgin)

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Although L.J. mitigates the distancing somewhat by insisting that he can be a
player if he wants to, both he and Donnie are emphatic in defining themselves in
opposition to the "player." In these passages, neither guy provides affirmative statements
about the kind of person he is in relation to girls; all the identity work is done "in the
negative," as it were, through distancing.

Rhetorical distancing, the other form that this narrative strategy can take, is not so

overt as direct distancing. It does not involve the construction of explicit contrast

structures; rather, it is evident more in how meanings are phrased and structured than in

the actual words used. Frequently, this form of distancing is not so much a matter of

opposition as mollification. Where direct distancing seeks a deliberate, intentional break

from something, rhetorical distancing simply insinuates some degree of separation. With

rhetorical distancing a speaker does not say, "That's not me," the message is more akin

to, "I may associate myself with that, but I won't commit myself to it." A fascinating

example of rhetorical distancing is offered by Morgan, when he describes the situation in

which he lost his virginity:

I don't know how I went there. I was kinda stoned when that happened. It was
just on the bus. Wasn't feelin' too well. And the girl had like for a long time,
since kindergarten. And she called me at my dad's house, where she lived right
next door to me. So I just went over there. Started makin' out, got a little bit
further, little bit further, and finally, intercourse.
(Morgan: 17-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

In this excerpt, Morgan describes an event in which, it is safe to assume, he was

fully and actively involved, at least in a physical sense. Yet throughout the story he

introduces elements that militate against the notion that he actively pursued or desired the

sexual encounter that occurred. To begin with, he emphasizes the fact that he was stoned

and feeling sick— both states that might lessen the likelihood that he would be interested

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in sex. Next, he places virtually all of the responsibility for the liaison on the girl: She
had liked him for a long time; she called him. The only initiative he took was going to
her house, which was in response to her call and was, after all, right next door. As a final
act of distancing, when Morgan describes his actual physical encounter with the girl, both
he and the girl are absent; the sentence has no subjects: "Started makin' out, got a little
bit further, little bit further, and finally, intercourse." The cumulative effect of all of
these rhetorical maneuvers is that Morgan lost his virginity, but, as he tells it, he was not
there at the time. In essence, Morgan's telling of the event, with all its distancing, allows
that the sexual encounter occurred, but simultaneously keeps Morgan's identity out of it.

Strange as it seems, this sort of severe distancing from involvement in one's "first
time" is relatively common among the nonvirgin guys. Few tell artfully crafted stories
like Morgan, perhaps because the mere act of storying the event would give it more
substance than they wish to attribute to it. But many describe the entire virginity loss
event with some variation of the three words "it just happened." The distancing in this
phrasing, while not as evident as it is in Morgan's story, is severe. There are no actors,
and therefore no one to whom initiative can be attributed, and the sexual encounter itself
is hidden in the word "it."

Rhetorical distancing need not involve such a severe degree of self-effacement,

however. Guys can also create distance by strategically positioning their identities in

relation to some event or idea. Derrick engages in this sort of rhetorical distancing when

I ask him about the sex talk that occurs among his friends:

I mean, I try and not get involved in that kinda thing, but I mean I'll laugh and I'll
encourage it. You know what I mean? It's not, like, "A ww! Phew! That's
wrong!" I'm like, "Are you kidding me?" You know, stuff like that.
(Derrick: 1 8-year-old, White, virgin)

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In this passage, Derrick does not omit references to self from his talk, as Morgan
does in his story of virginity loss. Instead, he distances himself from the crude comments
of his friends by distinguishing his level of involvement. He says that he laughs at and
even encourages the talk, but he does not take an active part in it. In fact, he "tries not to
get involved" in it. With this rhetorical maneuver, Derrick aligns himself with his
friends, but not so closely as to be branded a purveyor of vulgar sex talk. For himself, he
stakes out the less-damning territory of consumer.
Biographical Work

With the last narrative strategy for presenting selves, identity takes center stage.
Whereas identity claims and distancing occur in the context of the production of other
meanings, biographical work describes those instances in which who the speaker is
constitutes the "going concern" of the talk. As a result, these passages tend to be longer
than the simple statements that can convey most identity claims and distancing. Also,
among the guys in this sample, biographical work is relatively uncommon, perhaps
because many of the guys are only minimally self-reflective.

Those who dwell on who they are and how they present themselves, however,
often spend as much time articulating, questioning, and negotiating their identities as they
do discussing their sexual experiences and sexual decision making. For these guys,
biographical work is critical to their efforts to share their experiences because their sense
of self is an integral part of the context that makes those experiences meaningful.

One of the most striking examples of this dependence on biographical work is
offered by Donnie. In the early part of our interview, when we are discussing his time in
high school, he tells a lengthy story about an incident that occurred in his Junior year.

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Although I will certainly not do justice to the story by summarizing it, the key features
are important to the biographical work that Donnie produces in relation to it.

The story describes a vacation that Donnie took with two male friends to a resort
in Florida. On the first night of their stay, all of the guys had been drinking. When they
returned to their hotel room, one of the other guys made a pass at Donnie and was
persistent to the point that Donnie feared he would be molested. But immediately
following the incident, both other guys turned on Donnie and spread the news around
school that he had made the advances. Donnie was ostracized at his all-male Catholic
school and graduated with few lasting friendships.

This incident, its aftermath, and the fact that Donnie was disparaged throughout

his childhood for being overweight provide the central narrative resources for elaborate

identity work that Donnie does throughout the interview. Often, as in the following

(abridged) passage, this identity work takes the form of biographical work that is

dedicated to self-presentation:

I mean, I did very well in school. I don't know how, but I did very well. I mean,
you'd think with the shit that happened to me, you think it'd be a little more, a
little more phased, but. When you get picked on from first grade and on, you just
build a really hard outer shell, and you're just like, "Well, fuck you. You don't
know what you're missing." And that's how I am with people. I don't mean to
not trust them, but I'm just very protective of myself because you don't know
how people will react. And you don't know if you just do the wrong thing, that's

it. It's over But, uhm, that was high school. And I carry it with me every day.

There's not a day that doesn't go by that I don't remember it. And it's not easy to
live with. But it's incredible. I give a lot of credit to women who have been
raped because this almost turned into a rape and was just something that's marked
me. And luckily it didn't escalate to that situation. But then I wondered, you
know, what type of vibe was I giving off? Was I sending any signals to this guy
that I was interested in him or something [like] that? And, I wouldn't know what
to deal with, if this actually ever happened. Like if [it (?)] ever [progressed (?)]. I
wouldn't know what the hell, what I'd do with myself. So I give a lot of credit to
those survivors [and what they've gone through (?)]. Because I know it can't be

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easy. [Int: Uhm-hm.] I mean, this was just a freak, a fluke of nature, if anything.
(Donnie: 18-year-old, Hispanic, virgin)

Over the course of this extract, Donnie presents a number of different identities in
relation to the incident and other indignities he has suffered. Initially, he presents himself
as a victor, one who has overcome innumerable hardships to succeed. Quickly, however,
that depiction gives way to one of a person who has had to become self-protective and
untrusting to survive. The "survivor" becomes part of Donnie' s presentation of self as
well: Like a rape victim, Donnie has been "marked" by his experience, which he cannot
forget and from which he still feels lingering effects. One of these effects bears directly
on his identity: He occasionally doubts himself and wonders if he bears some
responsibility for his own victimization.

The passage is a paradigmatic and powerful example of biographical work
because the talk of which it is composed is devoted to figuring out, demonstrating, or
convincing me who Donnie is in relation to his past experiences, particularly the near-
molestation incident. As he tells it, he is both a victim and a survivor, one who has both
succeeded and paid a price. The diversity of answers Donnie provides highlights the
dynamism of biographical work. The strategy does not provide a forum for the
delineation of static states of being, it is a narrative space in which guys wrestle with who
they are and how they account for who they are.

Another example of biographical work that demonstrates this "wrestling" aspect
even more clearly is offered by Derrick, who is a committed virgin. When I ask him
what limits he would ideally like to put on his physical encounters with girls, he resorts to
biographical work to manage the disconnect he perceived between his ideal and his actual
behavior:

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I would love to be able to not do anything, but that is impossible to me at this
point right now, it seems. There is no way that I'm gonna be out and this great-
lookin' girl and, you know, we're ooking' or whatever and then it's like, "Oh,
well, I'm not gonna kiss you." I mean, that is — I mean, I feel bad about it the
next day. And like, regardless of how far I go past the point of kissing, it's
like — I mean, this is making-out full-on kinda thing. I don't know. I'd like to
curb it at just that, if at all. But, I mean, especially now, especially at this age. It
was a lot easier in high school. But now, I mean, these girls are just ready to go.
They're like more aggressive than I am. It's like, "Oh my, God. Gimmie a
break." So that's where I'd like to. And I feel — Anything past that I feel bad, and
it's like, "I can't believe I did that. I don't even like this chick." I mean, it's
more of a sense that I'm cheating myself.
(Derrick: 1 8-year-old, White, virgin)

The passage begins with an odd sort of identity claim: Derrick wants to be a

certain kind of person (i.e., one who avoids all physical intimacies with girls until he is

married), but he asserts that "that is impossible to me at this point." In the biographical

work that follows, he articulates why this is so in terms of his age, the aggressiveness of

girls who are past high school age, and his notion of masculinity. The role of age is not

clearly delineated, but it appears to relate to Derrick feeling strong physiological urges,

having graduated from high school, and being free from parental constraints. The

aggressiveness of girls contributes to Derrick's conflicted identity because they place the

burden of avoiding encounters on his shoulders. And masculinity appears to be a third

factor when Derrick says, "There is no way that I'm gonna be out and this great-lookin*

girl and, you know, we're ooking' or whatever and then it's like, 'Oh, well, I'm not

gonna kiss you.'" In a sentiment that clearly associates him with discourse of conquest,

Derrick insists that he is not the kind of guy who will turn down a girl when kissing is the

"logical" progression of their involvement. Finally, at the same time that he works to

manage his identity in relation to the "inevitability" of his involvement with girls, he

articulates a guilty self who knows that he is only hurting himself by succumbing to girls

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he does not even like. This latter identity provides a kind of damage control in relation to
the other identity struggle: Although it may be impossible for him to be the type of
virgin he wants to be, he recognizes his shortcomings and regrets their effects.

Biographical work, distancing, and identity claims thus comprise an arsenal of
narrative strategies by which the guys present selves. Sometimes they do this with
simple statements, sometimes by artful modes of self-reference, and sometimes through
lengthy deliberations about who they are in relation to past events or the exigencies of the
interview itself. Each strategy brings identity to the fore and makes visible the
interpretive work the guys do to construct who they are as they simultaneously strive to
meet the rhetorical demands of the interview.

Contrasting

Whether his interview is long or short and his use of narrative strategies simple or

sophisticated, each of the guys makes frequent use of contrasting. Very simply,

contrasting refers to the production of contrast structures, placing two or more narrative

constructs (e.g., ideas, people, groups, events) in relation to one another and interpreting

the significance of the differences that are identified. In my interviews, I sometimes

solicit contrast structures deliberately. For instance, James and I are discussing what it

takes for a person to be comfortable with and agreeable to the idea of having sex, and I

ask specifically about sex differences in what constitutes this "readiness":

I: Do you think it's different for guys and girls in terms of how they get

ready for sex, when they're ready for sex?

R: Naw. Well, actually, yeah. 'Cause a girl, a nice ooking' girl can get it

anytime she wants it. But dudes have to like work for it. They got to like,
know what I'm say in', go out with the girl, take her out to eat, be nice to '
her and stuff like that. But a girl, she's got what you want. So if she's just
givin' it out, then she's gonna have what she wants and then. You, you

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gotta work for it. Dudes gotta work for it. But if a girl wants it, she can
have it just about any time.
(James: 16-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

In his response, James equates "readiness" with "availability." The essential
difference that he articulates is that sex is always available to girls, particularly attractive
ones, while guys always have to pursue it and persuade girls to give it to them. The
contrast structure introduces this difference in the first two sentences ("'Cause a girl, a
nice ooking' girl can get it anytime she wants it. But dudes have to like work for it."),
then emphasizes it by shifting back and forth between depictions of guys and girls. The
striking thing about this passage, as with all contrast structures, is that it polarizes topics
and places differences in sharp relief. In this case, for instance, the implication is that
there is little if any common ground between how guys and girls experience their
readiness for or the availability of sex. And while it may be argued that my question
asked for such a stark contrast, such entreaties also leave open the possibility for the
person responding to contradict or seek to amend the terms of the question.

At any rate, guys often produce contrast structures without any prompting from
me. For instance, when I ask Del what he thinks it will be like to loss his virginity, he
uses a contrast structure to convey his sense that the quality of the experience will depend
on the context:

Well, depends on who it is with. I mean, if it's someone I don't really know, like
a hooker or something like that, not be too great. But if it's someone I really love
and care about and they care about me, it's probably gonna be one of the best
things in the world.
(Del: 14-year-old, White, virgin)

Del's choice of sex with a hooker and sex in a loving relationship as the targets of
his contrast makes the relationship between the partners the defining feature of the

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experience. It is in this regard that the two scenarios differ, and it is on the basis of this
difference that Del asserts that losing his virginity to a hooker would "not be too great,"
while losing it to someone he loves and cares about would be "one of the best things in
the world."

Categorizing

As ubiquitous as contrasting, perhaps more so, categorizing represents the most
fundamental act of meaning-making, naming. In our everyday lives, we often treat
names as though they were inherent properties of the things we attach them to, and in so
doing we render the naming process invisible. Identifying categorizing as a narrative
strategy is simply a recognition that naming is not an automatic or impartial act, but a
deliberate one that produces meaning.

When the topics at hand are sex and sexual decision making, the role categorizing
plays in the production of particular realities can be especially powerful. Simply
recalling the many ways that the language common to the discourse of conquest
sexualizes, objectifies, and dehumanizes girls makes the point. However, another aspect
of the interviews that is worth examining in this regard is the relative importance of
sexual status (i.e., virgin versus nonvirgin) to guys' sense of self and others. Looking at
categorizations will not provide a definitive answer to this question of personal and social
identity. It will, however, suggest some of the ways that guys construct the relevance of
sexual status, while simultaneously demonstrating how categorization functions as a
narrative strategy.

When the question of sexual status comes up in the context of actual social
relationships, both virgins and nonvirgins categorize their friendships in ways that

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minimized its importance. Consider, first, how Sean, a virgin, describes the people in his

church who are sexually active :

I: Well, how do you, how do you view the other people in your church, in

your youth group that you know, uhm, have had sex.

R: Well, I mean. I view 'em just as my friends, you know. I mean, most of
my, most of my friends have had sex before, I mean. And, most of 'em. I
mean, some of 'em haven't, uhm. But I really don't think less of 'em or
think any more of them, I just think of them as [my?] friends.

(Sean: 16-year-old, White, virgin) (emphasis added)

Twice in this passage Sean describes the nonvirgins in his church as his friends,
and each time he does so he adds the qualifier "just" to emphasize the irrelevance of
sexual status. By categorizing them "just as my friends," Sean asserts that their status as
nonvirgins does not qualify how he sees them. These nonvirgin friends are on equal
footing with Sean's virgin ones.

When James, a nonvirgin, talks about virgins who might be in his friendship
group, sexual status is not irrelevant, but, again, specific categories help minimize its
importance:

I: Do you and the guys that you hang out with, does it make a difference

whether somebody you're with is a virgin or not?

R: No. We might mess with him every now and then, just playin' with him.
But we won't like blow it outta proportion like not chill with him
anymore. They're gonna be our boy regardless, but. They're virgins,
that's just fine.

(James: 1 6-year-old, White, nonvirgin) (emphasis added)

In this instance, James admits that the virgin is likely to be teased occasionally.
But when all is said and done, he is still one of the boys. By describing the virgin as "our
boy," James invokes a vocabulary of adolescent male friendships, often associated with
African- American youth, in which one's closest allies are his "homeboys." Categorizing

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the virgin in these terms denotes that he will be embraced by the group with the same

loyalty and intensity of any other member, virgin or otherwise.

While sexual status thus appears to be largely irrelevant when specific social

relationships are considered, some guys still find it relevant in terms of the general social

environment. In various ways, several virgins (and many nonvirgins) indicate that the

message they receive from society at large (the generalized other) is that virginity is not

normal for guys. Matthew and Sean enlist powerful categories to make the point:

I think they just think, you know, goody-two-shoes or whatever.
(Matthew: 15-year-old, White, virgin) (emphasis added)

I: When you feel that pressure, is the feeling similar or different or. you

know, and how is it —

R: It kinda builds up like, like anxiety kinda, you know, or it builds up — not
uncool, just, like, different, you know. I'm just, Vmjust different. I'm
not, I'm not savin' myself at that point, I'm just bein' different than
everybody else.

(Sean: 16-year-old, White, virgin) (emphasis added)

Matthew's use of the term "goody-two-shoes" suggests that the "problem" with
virgins, as others see it, is that they are overly proper, unwilling or afraid to do something
that others might consider wrong. Sean makes a similar observation, but he does so by
focusing on how he feels, not what "society" implies. Most of the time, Sean says he
does not feel the social pressure to have sex. However, when he does, he is transformed
from someone who is saving himself into someone who is just different. This shift in
how Sean categorizes himself reflects the weight of social expectations. But even more
importantly, the description of his altered sense of self as "different" conveys the
detrimental nature of the transformation. In the discourse of adolescents, few categories
are as powerful and pejorative.

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Parroting

In our interviews, it is common for the guys to occasionally take on different
voices — figuratively and sometimes literally — and to signal in other ways that their
words should be bracketed, via quotation marks, from other speech. This narrative
strategy, which I call parroting, can be put to a number of strategic effects. By way of
introduction to the strategy, I describe three of these uses: quotations as adjectives,
speaking for collectives, and quotations as "straw men."
Quotations as Adjectives

On the face of things, it seems reasonable to assume that a primary reason why a

speaker would assume a different narrative voice would be to attribute some idea or

attitude to the person or group spoken for. Yet in some instances this function, while

present, appears to be superceded by a different purpose. The guy speaks for others

primarily to dramatize a point that he is trying to make or to articulate an idea for which

he cannot find his own words. In this unique scenario, the words that the speaker

attributes to some other subjective position become, in essence, an adjectival or adverbial

phrase in a sentence that the speaker begins from his position as narrator. Matthew

demonstrates this strategic use of quoting others when he explains what he believes

would constitute having sex in opposition to ("out of) God's will:

Out of God's will I think they're just doin' it for pleasure, the spur of the
moment, you know, "Let's get high or off of this for the moment, and we'll
do it." Do it with anybody you want just for the thrill of it, just to get, you
know, pleasure for that one moment.
(Matthew: 1 5-year-old, White, virgin)

While Matthew's quote certainly reflects an attitude that he attributes to this generalized

other— this "they" that has sex for fun— the phrase he speaks for them is not a separate

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thought that can stand separately from the sentence he has already begun in his voice as
narrator. The entire quotation represents another way of saying "doing it for pleasure" or
"spur of the moment," and, semantically, it could be replaced with a single word like
"hedonistically." Rather than searching for his own adjectives or adverbs, however, the
context of the interview gives him the freedom to shift narrative positions in mid-
sentence and put words in the mouths of those whose ideas he seeks to describe. Doing
so not only preserves the flow of his speech, but it also allows him to give the others a
presence in the interview that is tailor-made to his perception of them. And while this
particular strategic use of narrative shifts, more than others, seems concentrated among
the speech of my younger participants, I find it occasionally in the talk of several older,
more eloquent guys as well.
Speaking for Collectives

As often as the guys assume the subjective position of a single person or some
projected sense of themselves, they give a voice to some group in order to articulate how
they believe the group's members think or act. Jerry uses this strategy, for example,
when he explains to me what some of his male peers, who he described as "sex fiends,"
say when they talk about girls and sex. After suggesting that they should masturbate if
their urges are so strong, he speaks for them to demonstrate their vulgarity:

If you so much a fiend for sex then why don't you do that [masturbate]?
You know, everybody, "Oh, I want to hit this girl. She's fine. She got a
fat bootie. Oh, she look good! Man, I want to get up in that!" You know,
it's just crazy man.
(Jerry: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Although he is not relating the specific words of a specific person, Jerry rhetorically

constructs a class of people (male sex fiends) and portrays them through what are.

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ostensibly, their own words. Notice that the strategy allows Jerry to present these people

in all their coarseness and slang, without himself being "defiled" by association with their

words or thoughts. (In fact, the sentence that follows their quote is an evaluative

statement that intentionally creates distance.) In this way, speaking for collectives

"immunizes" speakers in a manner similar to disclaimers (Hewitt and Stokes 1975).

Another element of the rhetorical power of this strategy lies in its malleability:

Any collection of persons that a speaker can assemble can be given its own narrative

voice. Male respondents can speak for "all women," as many of the guys do at some

point in their interview. As the interviewer, I can use the technique to query respondents

about the attitudes presumed to be held by particular groups. For instance, I might speak

for young Christian males who are committed virgins in an effort to elicit a response

from a nonvirgin respondent. The power to speak for collectives even extends beyond

the realm of sentient beings to include inanimate objects, as Andrew demonstrates when

he contrasts the "voices" of television and books:

And the TV says, "This is right and this wrong. This is right and this is
wrong." And books say, you know, "This is this guy's perspective, and
this is this guy's perspective. And this is how this is right in this guy's
eyes and this is how this is wrong in this guy's eyes." And you see ideas
and, you know, and books aren't telling you, "This is how you should live
your life."
(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

Encapsulating his notion of the difference between the mediums in short, stark statements

and speaking for them is an extremely effective way for Andrew to dramatize his disgust

with television. Not only does it carry the novelty of making inanimate entities speak, it

limits their voice to exactly what he "hears" — namely, unequivocal pronouncements from

television, and nuance and ambiguity from books.

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Quotations as "Straw Men"

Speaking for someone, some collective, or some thing also appears to be an

effective and popular way to tell others that they are wrong. It is extremely common in

the interviews for the guys to take on another subjective position for the express purpose

of then returning to their voice as narrator and contradicting, disagreeing with, or

distancing themselves from what has been said. Andrew provides an example of this use

of quotations in talk when he makes it clear that he does not agree with males or females

who believe they can control members of the opposite sex with sex:

You know, you see a girl, and she'll be like, "Ha," you know, "I got him
wrapped around my finger because I'm having sex with him." And the
guy's like, "Ah, she's gone in a week, once I get my kicks off." And
[pause] both those ideals are pretty friggin' wrong.
(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

In this and other cases of quotations as "straw men," the evaluative statement that

concludes the quotation is as important as the quotation, if not more so. The words that

are spoken in the narrative voice or voices of others are set ups that allow the Respondent

as Narrator to clarify his or her position, often in an evaluative statement, by means of

stark contrast to that attributed to others. With complete rhetorical control over not only

what they say, but what others are alleged to say, the interview is an ideal context for

respondents to raise and raze straw men in the interest of constructing meanings that

serve the demands of both persuasion and self-presentation.

As the example of these three particular uses demonstrate, parroting is a powerful

and flexible narrative strategy. With it, speakers add multivocality to interviews in ways

that serve a variety of rhetorical ends. To be sure, researcher interpretation is involved in

deciding exactly when speakers make shifts in narrative position, but this ambiguity

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should not diminish our appreciation and recognition of this narrative strategy. The need
for interpretation is no greater with regard to parroting than it is with telling, and
parroting may be a more important strategy than telling for these guys. A cursory
examination suggests that use of the former is at least as prevalent as the latter. Indeed,
the strategy may be attractive to guys precisely because it does not require the production
of sophisticated narrative structures associated with stories and, to a lesser extent, pseudo
stories.

Conclusion
Some of the narrative strategies I have reviewed in this chapter are quite
sophisticated; stories can be intricate, lengthy tales and parroting involves purposeful
manipulation of other narrative voices, for example. But if we consider categorizing,
identity claims, distancing, contrasting, and the pseudo stories, many of the strategies are
remarkably simple; they are just statements, particular words, or the loose ordering of
less-than-real events. The fact that they are simple does not mean that they are trivial,
however. In fact, just the opposite is the case. As I noted at the beginning of the chapter,
the relative lack of dependence on stories in the interviews with these guys prompted me
to ask the following question: "How do they convey their ideas, some of which are quite
sophisticated, without making liberal use of stories?" I, like many narrative analysts,
assumed that complicated ideas needed sophisticated narrative vehicles to carry them. I
was wrong. The strategies described in this chapter represent the primary means by
which the guys achieved their rhetorical goals in our interviews, and, by and large, they
are deceptively simple. In retrospect, it makes sense: If your experience does not include
a large storehouse of stories or you do not have the narrative sophistication to construct

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complex narrative structures (two possibilities that will be explored further in Chapter 8),
your best course of action may be to do more with less.

I believe the notion of doing more with less aptly characterizes what the guys do
with narrative in our interviews. Few of them tell intricate stories, but virtually all of
them make use of every tool in the vast array that I have described here. What's more,
they take full advantage of the fact that the different strategies are largely complimentary.
Speaking as a collective can provide the basis for contrasting, distancing can be achieved
in the context of a habitual narrative, and so on. In the end, the interplay of these
relatively simple strategies results in complex meaning-making arrangements that rival
many highly developed stories.

In the next section, I examine some of these instances of narrative work in
relation to their result. Recall that at the conclusion of the last chapter, I noted that the
three discourses of sexual decision making, while not available exclusively to young men
like the guys I interviewed, raise unique narrative challenges for them by virtue of their
sex and position in the life course. In the next two chapters, I describe those age- and
sex-specific mediators, and I examine how the guys use the narrative strategies to
navigate the narrative challenges the mediators raise. In Chapter 7, 1 focus on the
mediation of the discourses of relationship and piety by the three
mediators — independence, belonging, and masculinity. However, I first devote an entire
chapter to the mediation of the most influential discourse, the discourse of conquest.

CHAPTER 6
MEDIATING THE DISCOURSE OF CONQUEST

The groundwork I laid in previous chapters, which focused on discourses-in-
practice (the three discourses) and discursive practice (narrative strategies), now allows
me to examine how the boys navigate various narrative challenges that arise during the
interviews. Doing so can be an extremely powerful means of examining how boys use
language to account for their sexual decisions and present their sexual selves. The key to
this approach is carefully identifying the narrative challenges that will be investigated.

Narrative Challenges

At base, virtually every moment in an interview presents a narrative challenge
since meanings must always be made and identities constructed. But not all moments tax
a guy's narrative practices such that the effects of his selection of narrative resources and
use of strategies are highly visible and consequential. Nor are the most powerful
narrative challenges purely idiosyncratic. In a previous chapter, I mentioned that
discourses constantly raise narrative challenges for those who draw on them because
individuals rarely, if ever, wish to commit to every single idea, perspective, or mode of
action promulgated by a particular discourse. These challenges can be important
instigators of identity work for individual guys, but even larger challenges — ones that
virtually all the guys must confront in some fashion — may arise by virtue of the way that
discourses interact with social factors.

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In the case of the guys in this study, gender and age appear to effect the identities
the guys seek to convey. This fact should not be surprising since it is a fundamental
sociological principle that those factors that people have in common will often cause
them to confront similar issues. Also, academic and popular writing suggests that
adolescence is a time when males confront a number of pressing, on-going identity
concerns. Although we could surely compile a lengthy list of identity issues that
adolescent males face, three in particular seem to have the greatest urgency for these
guys. These concerns are (1) demonstrating some form of masculinity; (2) asserting
independence from others; and, paradoxically, (3) confirming that one "belongs,"
particularly among peer groups. During our interviews, talk rarely proceeds for long
without one or more of these elements being somehow insinuated into a guy's self-
presentation. It is as if the guys approach the interview with "identity agendas"
associated with their gender and position in the life course. Each of the three items on
that agenda then mediate guys' articulations of the three discourses of sexual decision
making. Narrative challenges arise as the resources offered by particular discourses
complicate, challenge, or otherwise frustrate guys' efforts to satisfy their identity agendas
in the course of participating in the interviews.

It is these narrative challenges that I will target in the ensuing chapters because, to
paraphrase Susan Chase (1995a), it is these that represent the embodiment of cultural
relationships in actual practice. In Chapter 7, 1 will focus on how the discourses of
relationship and piety are mediated by the three items on the guys' identity agendas.
However, the current chapter is devoted exclusively to the mediation of the discourse of
conquest. This discourse is singled out because, as will become evident in both chapters,

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the resources of the discourse of conquest, by virtue of their relative concurrence with
ideals of hegemonic masculinity, function as a kind of benchmark, against which guys
define their sexual decisions and sexual selves. This benchmark relates primarily to
expressions of masculinity, but it also includes implicit indications of how concerns
regarding independence and belonging should be addressed. In the following discussion,
I remain cognizant of the theoretical propositions about masculinities that I outlined in
Chapter 1, including the fact that there are multiple masculinities. For the sake of clarity,
however, I use the singular "masculinity" when referring in general to the gender-based
identity concerns of males.

The Three Mediators

I mentioned earlier that academic and popular literatures support my contention
that adolescent males typically struggle with a myriad of identity concerns. This point
fosters little debate. Indeed, if we assume that identity development is required to reach
adulthood, then such struggles are implicit in the very definition of adolescence
(Webster 's New Ninth Collegiate Dictionary 1990). What may require a greater degree
of justification is my assertion that these concerns in particular — masculinity,
independence, and belonging — mediate adolescent males' encounters with the discourses
of sexual decision making. On what basis do I stake my claim that these factors are
likely to be part of guys' identity agendas? Let me address this question briefly.

The importance of belonging to guys' sense of self is not hard to document. The
very notion of peer pressure, the social compulsion to do as your friends are doing, is
synonymous with adolescence. Recent novels (Plum-Ucci 2001) and self-help titles
(McCoy & Wibbelsman 1996) aimed at teens reflect the importance belonging has for

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that audience, and some researchers have linked the difficulties of not belonging to
adolescent violence (Lefkowitz 1997; Page 2001). Research also continues to suggest
that displays of heterosexuality provide a critical means by which guys establish their
"insider" status to other guys (Connell 1998; Hollingshead 1949), and for support of
these assertions one need look no further than popular cinema. The link between
belonging and public affirmations of heterosexuality among guys has often been
portrayed in film, most recently in the blockbuster comedy, American Pie (Herz 1999).
Aimed at young males, the movie tells the story of a group of guys who make a pact
designed to ensure that each of them loses his virginity before graduating high school.
The incredible popularity of this movie provides evidence not only that belonging is a
prime concern for adolescent males, but also that the demonstration of heterosexuality as
a sign of belonging among guys continues to resonate with contemporary audiences.

The status of independence as a pressing identity concern is also fairly simple to
establish. In academic circles, psychologists especially (McElhaney & Allen 2001 ;
Noom, Dekovic, & Meeus (1999), but sociologists, too (Thome 1993), have noted that
adolescence is a period in which both boys and girls struggle with the transition from
dependence to autonomy. The concern for establishing independence has also received
attention from self-help authors (Palmer & Froehner 2000), although not as much as has
been paid to belonging and peer pressure. In the final analysis, however, the urgency of
the quest for independence among adolescent males may be most aptly demonstrated
where it has been vented for the last 50 years, in music. Factions of hip-hop, rap, heavy
metal, speed metal, and punk rock take the rejection of authority and the assertion of
independence as their raison d'etre.

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My confidence that masculinity is a part of the identity agenda of virtually any

adolescent guy comes from both direct and indirect sources. One indirect source of

support is the fact that the popular conception of male development remains that

manhood is not a given, a boy must become a man (Clatterbaugh 1997). Direct support

comes from men who have written first person accounts of how they worried about

becoming men when they were adolescents. For instance, Julius Lester describes how

the focus of his clumsy efforts to demonstrate his masculinity shifted from sports to girls

when he entered adolescence:

Through no fault of my own I reached adolescence. While the pressure to prove
myself on the athletic field lessened, the overall situation got worse — because
now I had to prove myself with girls. Just how I was supposed to go about doing
this was beyond me, especially because, at the age of fourteen, I was four feet
nine and weighed seventy-eight pounds. (I think there may have been one ten-
year-old girl in the neighborhood smaller than I.) Nonetheless, duty called, and
with my ninth-grade-gym-class jockstrap flapping between my legs, off I went,
(quoted in: Franklin 1988, p. 158)

In what he calls a "critical autobiography," David Jackson (1990) recalls being

similarly self-conscious about failing to measure up to benchmarks of traditional

masculinity, a situation that he now interprets through the lens of his academic

understanding of gender:

From early adolescence onwards I've been ashamed of my "unmanliness." I
think I know how that sense of inadequacy was produced in me. I certainly know
that my culturally learned view of my own body as "unmanly" mainly comes
from the socially constructed contrasts between ideal, heterosexual norms, and a
withering sense of my own puniness. But that recently acquired awareness didn't
prevent me from feeling inadequate, especially between the ages of 10 and 16:
ashamed of not having to shave until well after most boys had started; ashamed of
my breaking voice, seesawing from husky gruffness to a thin, squeaky piping;
ashamed of my ridiculous, unboylike hands — smooth, delicate and "never seen a
hard day's work in their lives." (pp. 168-169)

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These and other poignant depictions of boys' struggles to claim masculinities during
adolescence date from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, loosely mirroring the period
during which some men were spurred to a personal, self-conscious examination of their
manhood by their encounters with feminism.

Although the promulgation of such stories appears to have abated in the past ten
years in favor of theoretical and sociopolitical critiques of masculinities, many of the
cultural features that provide a context for such stories remain, including age-segregated
school environments that invite boys to compare themselves with their peers and a
relative lack of bona fide sexual education in a culture that is saturated with sexual
messages. In light of this context and the persistence of the "coming of age" narrative as
an expression of adolescent male experience, I feel confident in asserting that coming to
terms with the masculine (however defined) is an on-going, pressing identity concern for
contemporary young men. As such, it is bound to mediate how the guys I interviewed
use available discourses to account for their decisions about sexual behavior and how
they present themselves in relation to those decisions.
Masculinity, Mediation, and Hegemony

Managing this on-going identity concern compels these boys to relate themselves
in some way to the hegemonic mode of masculinity. As the commonly accepted ideal of
manhood, the mode that tops the hierarchy of masculinities, the hegemonic form
ostensibly represents how every guy should strive to be a man. In the mid-1970s,
psychologist Robert Brannon summarized this standard of manhood in four "catch"
phrases:

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1. "No Sissy Stuff!": Masculinity is the relentless repudiation of the feminine.

2. "Be a Big Wheel.": Masculinity is measured by power, success, wealth, and

status.

3. "Be a Sturdy Oak.": Real men never show their emotions, particularly

emotions that might be associated with weakness, such as fear or crying.

4. "Give 'em Hell.": Real men are daring, aggressive, and eager to take risks,
(adapted from Kimmel 1994, pp. 125-126)

Despite the passage of a quarter century, Brannon's description needs little revision to be

current. If we add a phrase like, "Be a Player," that points to the importance of active

and routine demonstrations of heterosexuality to the contemporary model of masculinity,

I think this characterization provides a useful touchstone for our subsequent discussions

of masculinity as a mediator.

In practice, few men, if any, can live up to this ideal (Kimmel 1994) and some

have intentionally stopped trying to (National Organization of Men Against Sexism 1998;

Stoltenberg 1993). Nevertheless, it exists as the standard, and most guys feel compelled

to account for even minor deviations from it. Groups who experience significant social

or practical barriers to meeting the standard often construct and seek to validate

alternative masculinities. Franklin (1984) and, more recently, Majors and Billson (1992)

have documented this trend among African-American adult males, for instance, and Brod

(1994) has examined the construction of Jewish masculinities. Adolescent males, too,

may seek to develop different masculinities that de-emphasize the emblems of hegemonic

masculinity that are less accessible to them, such as financial success or certain

indications of independence (e.g., housing of their own). Still, these alternative

masculinities reflect back on hegemonic masculinity in as much as they are adaptations

of or reactions to it. Thus, hegemonic masculinity creates narrative challenges for guys

whether they seek to embrace or resist it.

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The Relationship of the Discourse of Conquest to Hegemonic Masculinity

These challenges are likely to involve the discourse of conquest as well, since this
discourse provides the narrative resources for the hegemonic project. As I have noted in
previous chapters, discourses are repositories of narrative resources for constructing,
among other things, masculinities. In and of themselves, however, they do not produce
masculinities. That said, it should be clear from my description of the three discourses in
Chapter 4 that each discourse includes resources that facilitate the construction of certain
masculinities over others. For instance, with its emphasis on relating to girls, basing
sexual decisions on one's degree of "connection" with partners, and striving for
commitment, the discourse of relationship provides resources more amenable to a
sensitive, nurturing masculinity than the dominance-oriented hegemonic masculinity.

By the same token, I think it is appropriate to say that the discourse of conquest
provides the resources for the construction of hegemonic masculinity. This is not to say,
however, that articulating the discourse of conquest invariably produces hegemonic
masculinity. As with all instances of narrative practice, the meanings that result depend
on how resources are assembled and managed. One guy may draw heavily on the
conquest discourse and construct an identity consistent with the hegemonic model of
manhood. However, another may use similar resources in ways that exaggerate
hegemonic characteristics to that point that the identity he produces is hypermasculine.
Still a third guy may manage the resources of the discourse such that his masculinity does
not exhibit the focus on dominance associated with hegemonic masculinity, but
nonetheless privileges the pursuit of sex over the pursuit of relationships. In sum, while
it is fair to say that hegemonic masculinity represents a convenient code for the axis

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along with the resources of the conquest discourse coalesce, we should never lose sight of
the fact that masculinity, like other aspects of identity, is produced through narrative
practice, never given a priori.

In the remainder of the chapter, I examine the narrative challenges raised by
masculinity as well as the other two discourse mediators — independence and
belonging — as they emerge in relation to guys' articulations of the discourse of conquest.
I begin by demonstrating how the guys' manage resources from the discourse to construct
the terms of belonging for themselves and others. Next, I explore how the guys navigate
three different challenges to their masculinity that arise from their articulation of the
discourse of conquest. Finally, I examine how guys seek to navigate identity challenges
that emerge when they try to construct identities with a mix of resources from the
discourse of conquest and one of the other discourses.

In the interest of space and providing the fullest possible reckoning of the
contours of these challenges, I will in some cases present the navigation of the challenge
through a single case study. The majority of the time, this single case is axiomatic of
other cases that are not presented. In a few other instances, the case presented is unique
among those I interviewed, but I present it because I believe it represents either a
narrative challenge that other guys may face or a response to a challenge that others
might employ.

Constructing the Importance of Belonging Within the Discourse of Conquest

So long as adolescence is identified as a distinct portion of the life course and
constructed as a transitional phase between childhood and adulthood, belonging will
likely be a central concern to those who are in it. Evaluating to what degree self and

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others "fit in" becomes a way of learning, sharing, molding and testing the norms of new
social situations, like dating, assuming leadership roles, and separating from parents and
other authority figures.

While belonging may always be important, how it is defined is always subject to
change. Different groups use different criteria, and that which earns one acceptance
within a particular group can vary radically over even short periods of time. The fact that
the meaning of "belonging" is not given means those who articulate the discourse of
conquest must work to construct belonging in a particular way. The guys I interviewed
manage the resources of the discourse so that belonging is tied to two basic criteria, being
sexual and being loyal to a male peer group. The importance of being sexual necessitates
the use of rhetorical strategies— what I call "virginity status tests" — by which guys seek
to determine who is and who is not appropriately sexual. The male peer group, or "male
fraternity," insulates guys in a homosocial environment into which girls are allowed only
intermittently and only as sexual partners or potential sexual partners. Thus, by its very
nature, the male fraternity provides a check on guys' adherence to the sexual component
of belonging at the same time that it demands loyalty from its members. In the
discussion that follows, I examine how the guys routinely assert and affirm these criteria
of belonging as they articulate the discourse of conquest.
Male Fraternity

Passages that construct belonging in terms of a male fraternity abound in the
interviews. They appear even in the talk of guys who are especially reticent or who tell
few stories. For instance, Jamal and Alvin, who are among the quieter guys, articulate
the relevance of a male fraternity to their sense of belonging and, by extension, their

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sexual decision making during a volley of questions and answers with me. Their
comments highlight how displaying heterosexuality and fitting in with other guys are
inextricably linked in the context of the fraternity, but they also demonstrate subtle
variations that can occur within that context:

R: With me, I just hang out with about 4 or 5 people.

I: And among those 4 or 5, are you the top guy?

R: Not really, I'm [probably (?)] about second or third.

I: Tell me about the guys that are like second with you and first.

R: They probably the one that everybody like and stuff. The one that can

fight and all that. Get any girl they want. The rich ones.
(Jamal: 16-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

I: And in some ways, it was also that you knew that this would change how

your uncle and his friends thought of you?

R: Mmm-hm. I probably thought it probably would, which it did, anyway.

I: How did their attitude toward you change after that?

R: How'd my attitude change?

I: No, their attitude toward you.

R: Well, they just took me around more often with them. I went about

everywhere wit 'em. I was always wit 'em. I was just like the little, little
man with them.

(Alvin: 19-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

Both Alvin and Jamal suggest that the fraternities they belong to are to some degree
hierarchical and that one's position in the hierarchy is related to one's prowess (or
presumed prowess?) with girls. Indeed, Alvin points to the loss of his virginity as the
critical rite of passage through which he gained membership to his fraternity. Alvin's
experience is perhaps unusual, however, because it appears that he is a sort of junior

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member of a fraternity that consists of older males, including his uncle. Most of the guys
indicate that their male fraternities consist of guys who are their age. The age difference
between Alvin and the rest of the members of his male fraternity likely accentuates the
sense of hierarchy in this case. At the same time, it aptly reflects the kind of striving for
emblems of adult masculinity, like sexual experience, that characterize male fraternities.

Jamal's description of the terms of belonging he associates with his fraternity
underscores this point. Among his peers, acceptance and standing are garnered not just
by demonstrating success with girls, but by displaying other hallmarks of hegemonic
masculinity as well, such as fighting and being wealthy. The inclusion of these latter
criteria in the "status accounting" of the male fraternity is not common among the guys I
interviewed, but it is consistent with the notion of male fraternities as domains within
which the terms of belonging are linked to the "practice" — in all senses of the word — of
hegemonic masculinity.

An interest in sex and the display of heterosexuality are not the only ties that bind

a male fraternity together, however. Male fraternities are also constructed as groups that

extol the bonds of brotherhood. As such, they emphasize and encourage guys' social

distance from girls, and they foster the notion that guys owe loyalty to other members of

the fraternity precisely because they are males. L.J. articulates the centrality of maleness

and loyalty to the fraternity in a story he tells about a friend who is— in L.J.'s

words— "pussy-whipped." The evaluation portion of that story sums up his points:

Man, it's like this cat he don't wanna keep with the boys no more, Man. He be
like at the girl's house all day, all night. [Us two (?)] he ain't wanna spend time
with. But, Man, your boys were here before your girl. Know what I'm sayin'?
Keep it real. Hang with your boys. He was just getting' pussy-whipped and
wanna go walk to the girl's.
(L.J.: 17-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

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The candor and passion of L.J. 's speech are rather unique, but his suggestion that guys

betray their brethren when they choose relationships with girls over the camaraderie of

the male friendship group is not. Indeed, the notion of pussy-whipping, which is hardly

L.J.'s creation, functions as a check on guys' commitments to their fraternities. Much

like "cooties" to elementary school boys, the term "pussy-whipped" carries the

implication that a guy has strayed too far into the "girls' camp" and risks contamination.

As such, it encourages and reinforces the repudiation of the feminine that is a hallmark of

hegemonic masculinity.

Virginity Status Tests

While baiting guys with the epithet "pussy-whipped" primarily functions to

establish the rules of belonging within male fraternities, the strategies guys have

developed from the resources of the discourse of conquest for establishing who belongs

are not limited to this insulated environment. Those who articulate this discourse assert

the importance of interest in sex and the display of heterosexuality in larger social circles

by making an effort to separate the virgins from the nonvirgins. To that end. several

guys, even some who tend to articulate the discourse of relationship, report that they have

tactics for ferreting out virgins based on how they talk about sex. Donnie, for instance,

does not so much describe his strategy as display it in a passage that combines parroting

and contrasting. He speaks in the voices of two guys claiming to have had sex; one

displays excessive bravado while the other is more pensive and reticent, almost contrite:

You know, when you hear a guy, "Oh, she was GREAT!" I'm like, "You know,
you're so insecure of yourself you have to just fuckin' go head and say it to the
whole world. I don't believe you." Your eyes do not lie. That's one thing. Your
eye won't lie. And when a person can tell, look you in the eye and say, "Yeah,
look it happened. I wasn't expecting it. And I regret it." Or, most times their

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like, "Well it was great, but I kind wish I waited off." I tend to believe it more
than just, "Oh, she was GREAT! Three or four times! Oh my God!"
(Donnie: 18-year-old, Hispanic, virgin)

As Donnie sees it, excessive boasting about sexual exploits is the mark of the liar; it is the

way a guy talks when he is putting on a show of being experienced. In contrast, guys

who have actually lost their virginity speak in less vulgar, hyperbolic terms, and will

likely express some regret about having had sex. For Donnie, who is a committed virgin,

the poles of belonging are reversed in favor of virgins. But his description of a strategy

for identifying those who lie about their status belies his recognition that virginity status

is an important aspect of belonging among adolescent guys.

Other guys take a more interactive approach. When a guy makes a claim about
his sexual status, they challenge it, believing they can establish the guy's "true" status
through his response. In essence, they force the guy to endure a rhetorical gauntlet, the
experience of which they believe will expose those who are lying about their status.
Morgan describes a particularly viscous version of this gauntlet that he uses with guys
who claim to be committed virgins. In this case, the challenges to the guy's claim
degenerate into a kind of shaming ritual:

I: So a guy who says he doesn't wanna have sex till he's married is lying?

R: Oh, most definitely. You know for a fact they're a liar. We both know
they'll lie. Let's put it that way. I mean, come on, you know he's gonna
lie.

I: So what do you think of a guy that does that?

R: I call him a liar, until he'll admit it. And if he don't admit it, and you keep
sayin' it. Alright. And then he finally cries and breaks down and says,
"Yeah, Man, I'm still a virgin." Then I'll believe him. Till he cries and
proves to me he's not, you're a liar.

(Morgan: 1 7-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

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Morgan's strategy is undoubtedly cruel, but it is this cruelty that so clearly aligns
this test of belonging with the discourse of conquest: Guys who want their claims to
virginity to be believed must abdicate their claims to a privileged masculinity by crying.

Not all efforts to separate the virgins from the nonvirgins are as direct and

aggressive as Morgan's, but they share the basic philosophy that the more guys talk, the

more the truth will come out. Jerry makes this point in an hypothetical narrative he tells

about how guys scrutinize other guys' sex talk:

Yeah, it's like this male thing like man. Yeah. Coming like a bunch of males,
"Yeah. All right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Had sex with this girl last
night. Man, whoa! She was the bomb! Whoa! Man, she had some good pussy,"
like that. You know, and then he could say the same thing but different to the
next guy. Like say for instance, like this guy come over, he talkin* bout, "'Yeah I
just had sex with this girl." There's like four guys there. And then, the guy that
was there that he was talking to and telling about it and the other two guys that
was there, then the next guy might be there with a new crowd and he telling the
story, but differently. And the guy's witnessing that. "Wait a minute. Hold up.
But he said he just had sex with — What? He's lying!" You know what I'm
saying? And that's bad! It's bad to lie on your penis like that. It's bad. It's very
bad.
(Jerry: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

In this instance, the guy purporting to have had sex is not challenged by a single
person, but his lie is exposed as he is caught telling the story differently to different
audiences.

The narrative production of male fraternities and the rhetorical strategies by
which guys determine others' virginity status are important for a number of reasons. At
base, they are relevant because they vividly demonstrate how important sex is to these
guys and how the guys who articulate the discourse of conquest routinely and
purposefully group themselves together as males. However, these narrative maneuvers
are even more important in that they demonstrate how concern for belonging mediates

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the guys' management of the discourse of conquest. We can imagine other groups, such
as twenty-something professionals, for whom bonds between males — or belonging, for
that matter — are of little importance to their articulation of the discourse of conquest.
But for these guys, belonging is important, and the male fraternity provides a context in
which they can articulate a discourse of conquest, including the rejection of all things
feminine, and simultaneously assert that they belong. Not only do they belong, the group
to which they belong supports and advances the hegemonic agenda that is at the heart of
the discourse of sexual decision making they are articulating. Additionally, virginity
status tests provide a means by which guys can at least presume to be maintaining the
boundaries between those who belong and those who do not in terms of the all-important
category "sexual experience."

I should point out that virtually all of the guys who use some sort of virginity
status test or align themselves with a male fraternity take pains to assert that they do not
denigrate virgins or give one's virginity status any credence. The fact remains, however,
that guys take note of one another's status, and "nonvirgin" is the preferred category
within the dominant discourse. Hence, those whose claims to that status are secure are in
the privileged position of determining to what extent they will use their status as a
criterion for belonging. Virgins may reject guys who would exclude them because of
their status, but the social circles within which they might turn the tables and use virginity
as a criterion for belonging are extremely small by comparison to those in which being
"experienced" reigns.

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Navigating Narrative Challenges Related to Masculinity

As the preceding discussion makes clear, when the guiding discourse is conquest,
adolescent guys' efforts to belong hinge on their aligning themselves with aspects of
hegemonic masculinity. In particular, assuring acceptance requires the repudiation of the
feminine and the assumption of a sex-savvy "player" identity. In this sense, the
mediating effects of belonging and masculinity on the guys' articulation of the discourse
blend together. Since, in the context of this discourse, belonging means assuming certain
emblems of a particular type of masculinity, I could not discuss the mediating effects of
belonging without revealing some of the influence of masculinity.

There are, however, many ways in which masculinity mediates guys' use of this
discourse that are distinct from their efforts to belong. This mediation gives rise to three
broad narrative challenges: (1) avoiding a spoiled identity; (2) managing partial
commitments to the discourse; and (3) navigating threats implicit in the discourse. The
first of these challenges arises for guys who adopt the discourse wholesale. The second
confronts others who make claims to a masculinity consistent with the discourse but who
also reject key features of the discourse. The third category refers to three specific
challenges that confront all whose sexual decision making is guided by the conquest
discourse, regardless of whether their commitment to it is partial or complete. I call these
challenges the dilemma of advertising sexual conquests; the challenge of declining sex;
and the challenge of negotiating to secure sex. Examples of discourse mediation par
excellence, these challenges are simply by-products of the intersection of the discourse of
conquest and adolescent concerns about masculine self-presentation. In the next three

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subsections, I examine the contours of the three broad narrative challenges and detail how
the guys use narrative strategies to confront, if not always overcome, these challenges.
Avoiding a Spoiled Identity

In some respects, guys who articulate the discourse of conquest in all of the many
ways that it can inform sexual decision making (e.g., the social place of girls; the
meaning of sex; the importance of the male fraternity; one's own self-presentation) are
lucky. By adhering to the discourse they have ready-made justifications for their
decisions, the choices they make will be internally consistent, and their alignment with
the dominant discourse is likely to carry benefits in the form of social acceptance.

But blind allegiance to the discourse also carries a danger. As we saw in Chapter
4, articulations of girls, sex, virgins, and others from a conquest perspective can be quite
pejorative: Girls are sexualized, dehumanized, or rendered invisible, as the situation
dictates; sex has little meaning beyond its accomplishment and the accolades that it will
bring among one's male fraternity; and those who are or appear to be inexperienced are,
at best, seen as immature, and, at worst, derided as gay. In short, the discourse is a recipe
for dominance, and as such, its resources must be carefully managed. A guy can use
them to construct a masculinity consistent with hegemonic ideals, but articulating sexual
decision making primarily in terms of dominance can also produce the image of someone
who is dangerously hypermasculine (Adler 1927/1998; Klein 1993). In the latter case,
the guy appears so bent on accumulating sexual conquests, so dismissive of virgins, and
so intent on dehumanizing women that his masculinity looks to others like a massive
effort to compensate for traits that are antithetical to hegemonic masculinity — namely,
weakness, fear, and vulnerability. In other words, guys who articulate the discourse

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wholesale run the risk of presenting not as a "man's man," but as a hypermasculine

pretender. Given that both masculinities are predicated on the same notions of

dominance, it is worth considering just how many degrees of separation there are

between the guy who displays hegemonic masculinity and the guy who others would

deride as hypermasculine. For present purposes, however, the important fact is that the

guys I interviewed appear to recognize that presenting too strong a commitment to the

discourse of conquest might spoil their identities, so they take steps to forestall such

spoilage. The following briefcase studies of Jordan and Drew exemplify how guys who

are strongly committed to the discourse of conquest head off the possibility that the

masculinities they are presenting will be seen as hypermasculine.

Throughout our interview, Drew constructs a masculinity that features many

hegemonic elements drawn from the discourse of conquest. However, two articulations

in particular demonstrate his commitment to the discourse of conquest dramatically. The

first, in this excerpt that contains some material presented earlier, is his endorsement of

sex as an end in itself:

R: Well, like, sometimes I'll, like, I'll just be really fuckin' horny, and I'll

want to have sex. So I'll go out with that, like, that is my sole purpose for
tonight. My mission tonight is to find someone to have sex with. [Int:
Okay.] Like, sometimes, that'll happen. Usually it's just, like — Usually
I'm not too worried about it. I'm too worried about hitting on girls or
flirting with girls. It's just — I don't know.

I: But sometimes the urge hits.

R: Sometimes just like, gotta go do that this weekend.
(Drew: 18-year-old, White, non-virgin)

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The second is his acceptance of the male fraternity as a reference group for his sexual

decisions, indicated in this passage by his recognition that, within the male fraternity, a

girl's value is determined by her physical attractiveness:

I: Like among the group that you hang out with, does it mean something for

a guy to have sex with a particular girl or have sex more often than other
guys, or—?

R: Well, you can have sex a lot, but if you're havin' sex with a really, really
fine girl, it doesn't matter how many girls you've had sex with because
they girl you're having sex with now is just, she's a hotty.

I: Right. And does that mean something to the other guys?

R: Yeah. It's like, Man, I would — Like, I would trade every girl I've had sex
with to have sex with her 'cause she's just so hot. And like I can brag
about that. Like, "Yeah I had sex with her."

(Drew: 1 8-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

These passages clearly demonstrate Drew's commitment to his male fraternity, approval
of meaningless sex, and tendency to dehumanize of girls. With respect to sex in
particular, he presents himself as driven and goal-oriented. He fits the image of the
"sexual predator," a guy who pursues sex at all costs, with little regard for consequences
or for his partners.

Do these excerpts, coupled with all of the other ways in which Drew aligns
himself with the discourse of conquest, prove that Drew's self-presentation is bordering
on the hypermasculine? To some extent, this must remain an open question because the
notion of excessive masculinity that is delineated by the term "hypermasculine" is in the
eyes of the beholders. The more important and constructive question is whether or not
Drew himself fears that others will see him as overcompensating. Does he feel that he
faces a narrative challenge to in some way "soften" his articulation of the discourse of
conquest? The answer, I would argue, can be found in a number of rhetorical maneuvers

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Drew makes over the course of the interview that mitigate his relationship to the

discourse of conquest. Whatever other narrative purposes these maneuvers may serve, I

would argue they also stave off the implication that Drew is demonstrating

hypermasculinity.

The first such maneuver is distancing himself from some of the activities of his

male fraternity. At one point in our interview, Drew indicates that although he does not

see his own virginity loss as an act that conferred manhood upon him, he recognizes that

many guys do approach it as a rite of passage into manhood. When I ask how he knows

that other guys make this connection, he tells a story about a guy in his friendship group

who has not yet had sex. Notice how Drew does not include himself in the story, even

though the others involved are "his boys":

I: How do you know that the whole thing about being a man is something

that is part of it for your friends?

R: Well, a couple of them, they're like — after they had sex first time — they
were like, "Yes, I'm a man now." So they just flat out said it. [Int:
Right.] And a lot of, and like other ones — Like one of my boys was
having a hard time having sex, like, I don't think he's had sex yet, and he,
like, like with him, and basically with like everybody else, they're always,
like, they encourage him to do it. They like try to set him up. And like
one of 'em — we call him Mikey — they're like, "After you have sex, your
name's Mike." It's like before you have sex you're Mikey 'cause, just,
you haven't grown up yet. But afterwards you're Mike. [Int; Okay.] So,
that's part of it. [emphasis added]

(Drew: 1 8-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Drew's distancing efforts are almost absolute. If not for a few telling phrases, we would
have difficulty recognizing that he considers himself part of this group. The guys
involved in the story are described as others, separate from him: They encourage their
friends to have sex; they tell Mikey he will be called Mike once he has sex. Drew only
hints at his connection to the others when he refers to the first virgin as "one of my boys"

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and when he says of the second virgin, "We call him Mikey." These two instances

indicate that he does see himself as part of the group, but the distancing that characterizes

the rest of the passage suggests that he is taking pains to separate himself from this

particular fraternal activity. In doing so, Drew not only avoids linking his identity to the

notion — endemic to the discourse of conquest — that virginity loss is a prerequisite for

achieving manhood, but he also demonstrates a degree of independence from his male

fraternity. Both of these rhetorical accomplishments suggest that his adoption of the

discourse of conquest is less than total, and therefore they help insulate his identity from

the damaging implications of the hypermasculine label.

The second means by which Drew mitigates the intensity of his commitment to

the discourse of conquest is by making intermittent articulations of the discourse of

relationship. For instance, although he orients to sex in terms of the discourse of

conquest throughout his interview, he also asserts that his first sexual experience was

about love, not conquest:

R: I don't just go around havin' sex with anybody. I definitely — Like, I like
for there to be something there, but at the same time, I've also had like
one-night stands. [Int: Okay.] But I definitely, I like it better if there's
something deeper involved. It means a little bit more.

I: Okay. Uhm, so the ideal situation for you, to be with somebody and

sexually active would be what?

R: Like with my first girlfriend. I loved her a lot, and she loved me back.
(Drew: 1 8-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

I have presented parts of this passage before. It bares repeating, however, because even

in this passage Drew hints at the importance of the discourse of conquest to his sexual

decision making: He prefers that his sexual experiences occur in the context of

relationships, but he does not avoid or regret those that do not. Still, the indication that in

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some instances — including his first experience of intercourse — the discourse of

relationship guided his decision making strengthens the claim that he is not

hypermasculine, despite his prevailing commitment to the discourse of conquest.

Finally, Drew insulates himself from suggestions that he is hypermasculine by

minimizing the relevance of virginity status to guys' identities. We have, in fact, already

seen this tendency in the previous excerpts. Drew insists that he lost his virginity because

the situation was right, not because he felt he needed to shed the label "virgin." And in

another portion of the interview, he says that losing his virginity did not change how he

felt about himself. Neither does he treat the virginity status of others as particularly

consequential. He distances himself from his male friends who attribute great importance

to another's virginity loss, and he insists that he does not look down upon those who

commit to virginity:

I: Okay. Uhm. In general, what do you think being a virgin says about a

person?

R: Says they have self-control and a lot of restraint [Int: Okay.] to not do that.
I: Is that a good thing or ... ?

R: Well, I mean, I can respect somebody who wants to hold out. If they don't
want to have sex until they're married, I can respect that. [Int: Mm-hmm.]
I don't think any less of somebody who doesn't wanna have sex.

(Drew: 18-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Although it would be consistent with the discourse of conquest to question, criticize, or
dismiss guys who consider sex irrelevant to their masculinity, Drew indicates a level of
sympathy with them. In so doing, he advances the construction of a masculinity for
himself that— for all its commitments to the discourse of conquest — does not appear to be
of the hypermasculine variety.

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Unlike Drew, whose masculine presentation tends toward the excessive most

noticeably in terms of his approach to sex, Jordan's excess is most evident with respect to

his attitudes toward girls. In the earliest moments of our interview, he boldly claimed a

masculinity that embraced even the most misogynistic elements of the discourse of

conquest:

So I somewhat look at mostly women as not on the same level as myself, even

though that they may be more intellectual than myself, but I don't look at them on

the same level, physically, emotionally. And I don't think that we're equal

basically.

(Jordan: 1 8-year-old, African- American, born-again virgin)

This commitment to male superiority, in turn, provides the rationale for sexual behavior

that, like Drew's, is such an extreme expression of the goal-oriented approach to sex that

it could be described as predatory. In the following passage, for instance, Jordan

categorizes girls in different ways. These different categories confer varying degrees of

humanness on them and construct them as suitable for varying types of sexual acts:

I: It sounds like with previous girlfriends, you went to a certain point, maybe

as far as oral sex.

R: Yeah.

I: And then with your current girlfriend, you've sort oP'gone all the way,"

as they say.

R: Well, really they weren't girlfriends. They were just — whores. I guess
you could say.

I: Okay.

R: I don't wanna use the term so loosely, but they weren't really — They
didn't mean anything to me, really.

I: And how long were you with them, in general.

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R: Weeks. Months. Just receiving, like, favors and stuff, but not anything in

return.
(Jordan: 1 8-year-old, African- American, born-again virgin)

The only girl that Jordan describes as a "girlfriend" is his current partner, with whom he
had intercourse. The rest of his sexual partners are, by his reckoning, just whores.
Jordan uses this latter category to group together girls he deems unworthy of having a
relationship with him. These lesser girls are the ones he describes elsewhere as "just
flesh," and he treats them as such: Their sole relevance to him is that they can provide
sexual favors to him, which, we later learn, means they perform oral sex on him.

Through these and other passages, Jordan clearly articulates the discourse of
conquest and makes claims to a hegemonic masculinity. In as much as these claims are
made through unrepentant assertions of male dominance, dehumanizing language, and
the sexual use of girls, however, they represent extreme expressions of hegemonic ideals.
Perhaps Jordan differs from other guys who articulate a discourse of conquest only in that
he espouses a belief in hegemony at the same time that he draws upon the discourse.
Other guys whose sexual decision making is guided by the discourse of conquest may
share Jordan's misogynistic views but not express them openly. Certainly the discourse
provides the narrative resources for such constructions. But the primary issue here is the
type of masculinity guys construct from those resources, and passages like those I just
quoted attest to the fact that Jordan, more than other guys, constructs a masculinity that
borders on the hypermasculine. Self-reliance and indifference to what others think is also
part of his masculine self-presentation, yet he does make two complex rhetorical
maneuvers during the interview that appear designed to the fend off the identity spoilage
that hypermasculinity threatens.

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The first maneuver acts as a kind of convoluted defense against the suggestion

that he is a sexual predator. In the process of explaining how he approaches girls and

relationships, Jordan shows us the flip side of the male superiority he espouses elsewhere:

R: I approach relationships mostly not trusting the woman in the beginning,
and having her have to earn my respect, really.

I: Okay. And how does she do that?

R: The things she does. How she acts. For instance, my first girlfriend — My
girlfriend now — Well, actually, any girlfriend I went out — I didn't kiss my
girlfriend for the first three months that I went out with her. [Int: Wow.]
Because I believe in knowing, for her to earn my respect first, before I
even go into in an intimate relationship.

(Jordan: 18-year-old, African-American, born-again virgin)

Whereas in other instances what we see is the denigration of girls that is inherent in such
claims, in this passage Jordan directs our attention to the high esteem in which that
philosophy encourages him to hold himself. Concerned about the trustworthiness of the
girls he dates, he actually holds himself back, reserving his kiss as a symbolic act of trust.
The perspective inverts the traditional image of guys placing girls on proverbial pedestals
and having to win them over. By placing himself on the pedestal as a defense against
girls presumed failings (i.e., their lack of trustworthiness), Jordan effectively changes the
definition of sexual encounters from "male conquest" to "male capitulation." In that
context, he cannot be a predator, since being involved with girls who have not won his
trust becomes a matter of "giving in" that threatens his integrity, not a matter of
accomplishment that confirms his masculinity.

The other defense Jordan mounts against identity spoilage also relates to his
construction of sex and relationships and, paradoxically, it involves something of a

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rejection of hegemonic masculinity. When I ask Jordan about sexual urges and how he

copes with them, he says he only gets urges in the context of intimate situations:

Nawjust. When I'm with my girlfriend, uhm, sometimes I get urges. But I
never — outside of my girlfriend — I never get urges. So I never have the feeling to
cheat or anything like that. [Int: Right.] And I never needed it. I never needed
sex. After I've had sex, I never needed it, unless I — When I have sex, it's not
because I need it. It's because just that intimate thing. [Int: Okay. Okay.] It's
not something that — I'm not a [fiend (?)] for it or anything like that.
(Jordan: 18-year-old, African- American, born-again virgin)

Although squaring this passage with Jordan's history of meaningless sexual encounters

may be difficult, the excerpt counters the hypermasculine identity in several ways. First,

Jordan's assertion that he has never needed sex and that it has always been a by-product

of intimacy represents a turning away from hegemonic masculinity. Jordan is essentially

portraying himself as indifferent to sex as an act distinct from relationships. Whether this

portrayal is true or not, the rhetorical move amounts to a renunciation of the "masculinity

dividend" awarded within the hegemonic mode for always being ready and willing to

have sex. Second, by playing up the importance of intimacy, Jordan encourages us to see

his sexual behavior through the lens of the discourse of relationship, not conquest. And

finally, the most direct counter to the hypermasculine identity comes in the last line,

when Jordan says he is "not a fiend" for sex.

Each of these maneuvers manages the construction of Jordan's masculinity in

relation to the discourse of conquest in a different way: One relinquishes his claim to a

specific aspect of hegemonic masculinity, another draws on a different discourse to

reframe Jordan's masculinity, and a third explicitly distances his mode of masculinity

from the type that one might associate with hypermasculinity. Taken together, they help

mollify the strident claims to hegemonic masculinity Jordan makes and provides him

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some defense against the claim that his articulation of the discourse of conquest is an
anomalous exaggeration of its terms.

As the cases of Jordan and Drew demonstrate, commitment to the discourse of
conquest has its pitfalls for guys who are conscious of making claims to masculinity at
the same time they articulate their orientation to sexual decision making. Although
articulating the discourse of conquest carries the appeal of linking one's identity to the
emblems of hegemonic masculinity, it also brings the danger of over committing to the
discourse and seeming hypermasculine. Concerns about masculinity, therefore, mediate
how the guys articulate the discourse of conquest. Stories, distancing, and contrasting
appear to be especially useful narrative strategies as speakers try to distinguish their own
identities from those that might come across if their commitment to the discourse of
conquest appears too complete or too fervent.
Managing Partial Commitments to the Discourse

If articulating a commitment to the many facets of the conquest orientation to
sexual decision making has its hazards, so too does the opposite tact of making only a
limited commitment to the discourse. Guys like Jordan and Drew express their adherence
to the discourse of conquest so strongly that they have to employ narrative strategies to
ensure that others do not deride it as too strong. But other guys find their claims to
hegemonic masculinity stand on shaky ground because they do not commit to a central
aspect of the discourse. Consequently, they have to manage their articulation of the
discourse carefully in order to address this threat to the identity they wish to construct.

A case in point is L.J. In some ways, the identity he constructs over the course of
our interview is unfalteringly consistent with the discourse of conquest and supportive of

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claims to hegemonic masculinity. He highlights his curiosity about and readiness for sex

at an early age, identifies his experience of virginity loss with his emergence as a man,

and describes girls as threats to male social groups. At the same time, however, he

rejects the identity of the "player," which is at the heart of the conquest notion of

manhood:

Everybody, when they see me, they be thinking I got a lot of kids cause how old I
look. They be like, "You bout twenty-five. You got like four kids/* Some girls
might say that and they be like, "L, he's a pimp player and all that stuff." Man,
that ain't me. I caw be if I want to. If I choose to. But that ain't me. "Cause I'm
lookin' for something besides just having sex with women and just goin' on like
that. I want something that I know I can just come home to and know she gonna
be there and not with no bullshit. Even though bullshit is gonna be in a
relationship anyway because that's basically how life is.
(L.J.: 17-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

Considered in light of his unqualified acceptance and promotion of so any other aspects
of the discourse of conquest, L.J.'s insistence that he is not a player seems incongruous.
Suddenly, a guy who associates himself with so many of the characteristics of hegemonic
masculinity is drawing on the discourse of relationship to depict himself as someone who
wants more than just sex.

I do not want to dismiss L.J.'s assertion that he is interested in having meaningful
relationships. In several parts of the interview he describes relationships he has had that
have lasted more than 6 months, and more than once he expresses strong, caring feelings
for his partners. But considered in context, L.J.'s rejection of the "player" identity does
not translate into a repudiation of the conquest discourse in favor of the discourse of
relationship. Rather, it represents one element in the construction of a different
masculinity predicated on conquest resources, one that privileges action over self-
promotion. Rhetorically speaking, the primary reason that L.J. distances himself from

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players is not to endorse relationships but to align himself with a superior masculinity in

which manliness is secured by sexual experience, making talk irrelevant. This point is

evident in several passages, like this one, in which L.J. contrasts himself to players and

then quickly segues into descriptions that highlight his sexual prowess:

Cause, like, just about every day or every week it's a new girl out here, and all the

boys want to try to do their best to like talk they talk with the girl They throw

their new shoes on and their new outfit on to impress the girl and make it [sound
like?] they got cheese or they know how to dress good, whatever. But me, I sit in

the background. I watch And, like, I won't hop on every new girl that come

here to this school. I just — If they have something on that gets my attention, I
give them a compliment. I'm like, "You have something nice on." "You caught
my attention," that's all. I don't try to get nothing perverted or nothing like that.
'Cause that's not me. Me, I know I like sex. I talks about it. I know a deal about
it 'cause I['ve] experienced a lot. My brother done showed me what he done.
[Hooked me on (?)] to what he done did, like, with threesomes with girls and stuff
like that. I done experienced that, so I pretty much know what's going on. And
me — well, when I was having sex — I was havin' sex with grown women, like 23
years old.
(L.J.: 17-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

L.J. is not distancing himself from players because they orient to sex in terms of the
discourse of conquest. For the most part, he does this too. But L.J. is also not allowing
the fact that he is not a player threaten his masculinity. On the contrary, he is asserting
the hegemony of his version of manhood by articulating it in the context of a favorable
contrast structure. In that sense, L.J. offers us an example of managing a partial
commitment to the discourse of conquest, but also much more than that. First, this
passage provides a visible instance of the contentious struggle for dominance among
masculinities. And second, L.J.'s artful use of narrative strategies remind us of the
discursive possibilities that exist when factors like masculinity mediate guys' articulation
of discourses.

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Navigating Threats Implicit in the Discourse

The narrative challenges of avoiding a spoiled identity and managing partial
commitments to a discourse arise when a guy's commitment to the discourse of conquest
is unusual in some way. But there are other narrative challenges that have nothing to do
with one's level of commitment to the discourse. I call these challenges implicit threats
to masculinity because they are essentially traps that exist in how hegemonic masculinity
is defined and signified that can be sprung as guys articulate the discourse of conquest.
These three challenges attest to the fact that staking a claim to masculinity, particularly
its most valued form, is never easy because the simplest statements or the most mundane
admissions can threaten to invalidate one's identity claims. Like L.J.'s management of
the challenge involving partial commitment to the discourse, however, investigating the
guys' confrontations with these implicit challenges reveals complex and creative
narrative practice.

I call the first of these implicit narrative challenges the dilemma of advertising
sexual conquests. As I have amply demonstrated already, one way guys stake claims to
hegemonic masculinity is by broadcasting their sexual "conquests" to others, especially
other guys. Doing so often brings a challenge in the form of a virginity status test that
seeks to discredit their claim. But some guys face a different challenge, one that arises
because they downplay their sexual experience. While it may seem counterintuitive that
guys seeking to construct masculinities in terms of the discourse of conquest should
minimize that which will garner them "masculinity dividends," we saw in Chapter 4 that
a number of guys distance themselves from their virginity loss experiences or gloss over
their sexual exploits as incidents that "just happened." Perhaps this downplaying of

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sexual experience occurs because guys recognize many authority figures disapprove of
their being sexually active. Most likely they oriented to me as an authority figure
because I was twice their age. Whatever the reason, when guys articulating the discourse
of conquest minimize their sexual experience, they generate a narrative challenge for
themselves. They must bolster their claim to a mode of masculinity that exalts sexual
experience in spite of the fact that they have tried to abdicate responsibility or credit for
their own experience.

Many guys neutralize the threat to their identities at least in part by staking claims
to other emblems of masculinity offered by the discourse of conquest. For instance, in a
passage that I noted in an earlier chapter, Evan allies himself with the conquest
promotion of the importance of sex by disparaging virgins. His willingness to criticize
virgins — even though he does not know why they warrant scorn — is evident when I ask
him to imagine remaining virgin until his late teens:

I: How do you think your friends would treat you?

R: Totally differently, I bet.

I: Like what?

R: They'd probably think I was gay or somethin'.

I: Why?

R: I have no clue. That's just kinda how it is, you know. It's just one of
those secret things that nobody tells you about.

I: Have you seen that kinda thing happen to people here? [silent agreement]

Can you give me an example?

R: Uhm. Like, uhm, [one of(?)] my friends, D., he used to make fun of
people. It's just one of those things, you know. I mean, you don't
really — Not many people know, if you're a virgin, that you're a virgin,
unless you actually tell 'em. But, I mean, some people are that stupid

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where they go like promoting it. And then that's when they get hit, you
know. They get made fun of and everything.
(Evan: 15-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Evan's insistence that others would think he was "gay or somethin"" if he remained a

virgin indicates that he interprets his own sexual experience in terms consistent with the

discourse of conquest. In this way he affirms a masculinity consistent with hegemonic

ideals both by denigrating nonvirgins and subtly reaffirming the fact that he is not a

virgin. Within the accounting scheme of dominant masculinities, such claims may not be

a substitute for sexual experiences that are advertised and recognized by others, but they

help to bridge the gap.

In addition to the common strategy of laying claim to other signifiers of

hegemonic masculinity, Evan employs another, more idiosyncratic means of neutralizing

the threat to his conquest-inspired masculinity: He emphasizes how he plays the role of

tutor for a male friend of his, helping him gain experience with girls. While this tutelage

does not go as far as facilitating his friend's virginity loss, it aims to at least initiate him

into the ways of "players":

R: 'Cause, I mean, he feels that if he's that popular, he should at least get one
or two girls. I mean, he goes out on dates all the time, because I have lots
of friends and everything, and I like to set him up. My friends are all cool
with it. It's just like. It's like one of those rules, you know, if you screw

up on this date They like tell me, "If he screws up, I'm never gonna

go out with him again or anything," you know. So.

I: So is that, when he screws up, is that that he's not, just saying the wrong

things?

R: Yeah, stuff like that. Like, uhm, like he becomes clumsy or something
'cause he gets really nervous, you know, and like he stutters and says the
wrong things. And, like, it's kinda retarded. It's funny to watch. It's
extremely funny to watch.

(Evan: 15-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

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In describing what he tries to teach his friend and pointing out his friend's difficulties.
Evan creates an implicit contrast between his own and his friend's knowledge of and
"abilities" with girls. Through the contrast, Evan asserts a claim to the "player" identity
(and its link to hegemonic masculinity) that might otherwise elude him, given his self-
effacing depictions of his sexual encounters.

The difficulty raised by declining sex — the second implicit challenge to conquest
masculinities — is easy to imagine. The resources for constructing masculinities offered
by the discourse of conquest stress always being ready and eager for sex, being tough,
and showing no fear. On its face, choosing not to have sex when the opportunity presents
itself runs counter to these mandates and thus threatens a guy's claim to these types of
masculinities. For instance, when James tells me about instances in which he turned
down opportunities for sex, he clearly recognizes this admission might raise questions
about his readiness for sex and, by extension, his masculinity. In an effort to head off this
implicit threat, he accounts for his actions with an elaborate hypothetical narrative that
contrasts his true motivations with the ones he expects others will impute to him:

R: Oh, all the time. I want to. I don't always go through with it [sex], but, I
mean, I want to. But I don't go through with it all the time.

I: Are there — What are the — What distinguishes times when you go through

with it and times when you don't?

R: Feel better whenever you go through with it. You know what I'm sayin'?
You just, you just— Whenever you go through with it, you probably want
to. You're probably thinking in your mind, "I want to do this. I want to
do that." But whenever you don't want to, you're just thinking about it,
but you don't go through with it. It's just. I don't know why, but it's just
harder to go through with it when you don't want to. And if you don't
want to, don't go through with it.

I: I guess I don't understand 'cause it sounds like you feel better when you

do go through with it.

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R: Yeah, but see that's like sometimes you wanna go through with it, but not
with that person. So you just be like, "Naw." And then they think you're
scared. But then again, at the same time, you just don't wanna have sex
with them. So they're gonna think you're scared, even though you just
don't wanna have sex with 'em. That's what it is.

I: Okay. And you don't wanna have sex with them, why because . . . ?

R: Because you've heard stuff about 'em. They got STDs or they have sex
with a lot of people or they're just ugly. They just don't appeal to you.
(James: 16-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

James' strategy for responding to the emasculating assumptions of others is essentially to
offer a dose of realism. In the face of the presumption that he should have sex with every
girl who shows interest in him, he insists that the decision to have sex must be situational:
Sometimes sex should be avoided because a girl is believed to pose a high STD risk;
sometimes a guy is simply not attracted to a girl who wants him. Although this argument
is quite sensible, it amounts to an abdication of his claim to hegemonic masculinity on the
grounds of being ready for sex. For although he states at the outset that he wants to have
sex "all the time," the conditions he later applies belong to a more logical and cautious
masculinity than the dominant one associated with the discourse of conquest. Thus, for
James, the mediating effect of masculinity on his articulation of the discourse of conquest
creates a narrative challenge that he cannot answer with resources from that discourse.
His efforts to respond to the challenge ultimately compel him to appeal to an alternate
masculinity.

The third and final threat implicit to this discourse involves talking about sex. In
order to achieve a sexual liaison with a girl, a guy must somehow convey his interest in
sex. Yet young guys, like just about everyone, find it difficult to talk about sex. Thus,
the need to "get" a girl— and thereby confirm one's masculinity— places guys on a

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collision course with both their fear of talking about sex and the hegemonic mandate not

to show fear. Many guys navigate this problem by developing indirect strategies for

conveying their sexual intentions to girls. For instance, James describes a rhetorical

strategy, which was familiar to some of the other guys as well, that involves the repetition

of what is ostensibly an entirely innocent phrase:

R: Over at [a local high school] all you gotta do is, like, whenever you're
talkin' to a girl or whatever, just be like, "What's up? Man, what's up?"
After you say, 'What's up' enough times, they'll realize what you're
talkin' about. And that's exactly how it is right there. You just be with a
girl and be like, "What's up?" She be like, "What you mean?" "Was up?"
She'll be like, "What are you talkin' about?" And you can just be like,
"What's up?" And she'll be like, "Oh." And she'll just get it in her head.
She'll figure out what you're talkin' about.

I: Wow! How did you find out that that's how it worked?

R: I don't know. That's just how everybody does it over at [local high

school]. So that's just what I started doin'.
(Evan: 15-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Others, like Drew, avoid speaking about sex even in the most oblique ways and instead

depend on contextual clues to impose sexual meanings on the definition of the situation:

I: I mean, do you talk to her about the possibility of having sex?

R: Not usually. It's just like, over the course of the night, by the time, like, if
we make it to a room with a bed, it's cause we're gonna have sex. It isn't
something that like, like, "So you wanna have sex tonight?" It's just like,
I find a girl, I talk to her, I hit on her, and, like, if things go well with that,
then I'll have sex with her that night.

(Drew: 1 8-year-old, White, nonvirgin)

Whether they use rhetorical strategies or contextual elements, most guys whose
articulation of manhood relies on the discourse of conquest have to navigate between
their anxiety regarding talking about sex, which threatens to expose them as fearful, and

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not getting sex, which amounts to an even stronger threat to the type of masculinity they
are constructing.

My explication of these threats to masculinity surely bears out my description of
them at the outset as traps within the discourse. Whether the issue is advertising one's
sexual exploits, declining sex, or revealing one's sexual intentions to a prospective
partner, one false move can throw a guy's claim to hegemonic masculinity in doubt. The
absolutism inherent in hegemonic masculinity ensures that virtually all guys will fail to
live up to its mandates in some instances, and, as we have seen, the discourse of conquest
offers few resources that can facilitate effective rhetorical repairs. Despite guys'
inventive efforts to meet these challenges, often they must salvage their identities by
relying on their claims to other emblems of hegemonic masculinity or identifying with an
alternative masculinity.

The virtual impossibility of articulating an identity with conquest resources that
does not run afoul of some expectation of hegemonic masculinity does not mean that
none of the guys presented their manhood in hegemonic terms. It does mean, however,
that none could do so without confronting instances in which they did not "measure up,"
at least in a rhetorical sense. Furthermore, the ubiquity of the implicit threats, considered
in light of the other narrative challenges I have described, affirm the powerful mediating
effect masculinity has on guys' articulations of the discourse of conquest.

Reconciling the Discourse of Conquest with Other Discourses

Up to this point I have focused on discourse mediation in situations in which the
guys articulate the discourse of conquest in total or near-total isolation from the other
discourses. But some guys endeavor, throughout their narratives, to construct identities

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that draw heavily from another discourse as well as the discourse of conquest. Still
others attempt to reconcile the conquest discourse with others to address particular
narrative challenges. Constructing such "hybrid" identities is difficult and not always
successful because that which makes discourses distinct — their unique orientations to
sexual decision making — also ensures that they orient to the discourse mediators in
different ways. In this section, I chronicle several guys' efforts to manage these
differences and reconcile the conquest discourse with other ones as they relate to the
three mediators.
Reconciliation with the Discourses of Conquest and Piety

Before we look at cases in which guys try to reconcile these two discourses, it is
important to identify the specific incompatibilities that make such efforts problematic. In
terms of belonging, the essence of the incompatibility is that the discourses champion
belonging to different groups. The discourse of conquest asserts the importance of the
male fraternity, while the discourse of piety is often predicated on membership in a
religious community. Similarly, both discourses recognize threats to independence, but
from different sources. Within the conquest discourse, the threat is posed by girls, who
raise the specter of pussy-whipping. From the piety orientation, in contrast, blind faith to
religious doctrine threatens independence, so guys who articulate it often feel the need to
demonstrate that their commitment to a faith and its doctrines regarding sex are free
choices, not burdens imposed by parents or pastors.

The two guys that are the subject of my case studies for efforts to manage these
incompatibilities and reconcile these two discourses approach the task from different
directions. Derrick is a virgin who is trying to reconcile his religious beliefs and

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commitment to virginity with his recent, enthusiastic adoption of views (and behaviors)

consistent with the discourse of conquest. Jordan, on the other hand, has lost his

virginity, and his articulation of girls expresses such a concern with conquest and

dominance as to be hypermasculine. At the same time, he tries to mollify this identity

with appeals to the discourse of piety, including committing to abstinence and describing

himself as a born-again virgin. The two cases provide vivid examples of the mediating

effects of belonging and independence on the discourses of conquest and piety, the

difficulties inherent in trying to construct identities that bridge two discourses, and the

intricate narrative strategies that guys develop in an effort to build these bridges.

Jordan's efforts to produce an identity that combines the "man's man" qualities of

the discourse of conquest with the pious abstinence of the born-again virgin are rooted in

a particular way he responds to concerns about independence. Throughout his interview,

he constructs a masculinity consistent with hegemonic ideals that espouses the superiority

of men over women. This reliance on the discourse of conquest raises the expectation

that his efforts to assert his independence will focus on avoiding the "controlling'*

tendencies of girls. But Jordan articulates the discourse in a way that does not commit

him to a male fraternity. Instead, his identity is predicated on radical independence:

R: I'm really a seclusive (sic). I stay to myself. I don't really follow the
crowd.

I: So you don't — You're not one of— You don't think of yourself as one a

person who feels like there's this thing about having sex and being a man?

R: Well, really it's like, I don't care. I do what I wanna do. If I feel like I

think I should do it, than I'll do it. But some people, they don't think that
way. They figure, uh, "Well, everybody else is having sex, so I might as
well have sex." Which I don't really look at it like that.

(Jordan: 1 8-year-old, African-American, born-again virgin)

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Jordan is not a virgin. He has had sexual intercourse once and received oral sex

numerous times. In that regard he is no different from the people he criticizes. He sets

himself apart, however, by insisting that his sexual encounters are always acts of

individual choice made with only his interests in mind, not scenarios created and played

out for the benefit of a male fraternity.

Perhaps the last thing we would expect someone who presents himself as so

fiercely independent to do is interject elements of a discourse of piety into his narrative.

Given the large role that religious doctrines and faith-based communities typically play in

the discourse, appealing to it seems antithetical to the almost defiant self-reliance Jordan

espouses. Jordan does articulate the discourse, however, when he discusses his studies of

Catholicism and their role in his decision to be a born-again virgin. And with some artful

narrative practice, he manages to construct his religious commitments in a way that

compliments rather than contradicts his independence. His basic strategy is to focus less

on his commitment to religious principles and more on how his commitment provides a

forum for him to demonstrate his independence from temptation and peer pressure:

I: What do you think being a virgin says about a person?

R: I don't think it says very much. I know rotten people that are virgins [Int
laughs], so I really don't — Uh. One, it says self-control. And it always
says self-control if that's your key. If you wanna be a virgins, but you
can't be a virgin, then that means you have no self-control. But if you
don't care about bein' a virgin, then it really doesn't show self-control,
since you're not concentrating on not being a virgin. [Int: Right.] So to
each his own.

I: In your case, is it gonna be an issue of self-control or — ?

R: In my case, when I say I'm not gonna do somethin', I'm not gonna do it.

So it's self-control.
(Jordan: 1 8-year-old, African-American, born-again virgin)

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I: Like some guys, under that kind of pressure would just, would lie. They

would just say, "Yeah," you know, "I've done it."

R: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I never. No. I never had to feel to be under
pressure. I never been under pressure.

I: Okay.

R: I probably been under pressure, like pressure, like, to some people, but. It
really doesn't bother me none, 'cause I really don't care what people
think.

(Jordan: 18-year-old, African-American, born-again virgin)

In both these passages, the religious basis of Jordan's commitment to "virginity" remains
implicit, while the self-control and immunity to peer pressure that are expressed in that
commitment are emphasized.

The benefit of Jordan's approach is that it allows him to draw from both the piety
and conquest discourses when constructing his identity. By being selective about the
elements of the discourse of conquest with which he aligns himself, Jordan avoids the
threats to independence that can arise when the discourse is adopted more completely.
He can then defensibly add elements of the discourse of piety to his self-presentation by
articulating that discourse in a way that presents religious commitment as a showcase for
his independence. The drawback of this approach, however, is that it allows for only a
limited inclusion of piety elements. By not referring back to religious commitments as he
articulates his independence from temptation and peer pressure. Jordan appears to
minimize their importance. He seems to attribute his ability to remain abstinent as much
to personal fortitude, which we might associate with the discourse of conquest, as to his
understanding of and appreciation for Catholic doctrine.

The context in which Derrick seeks to reconcile the two discourses is quite
different from that which Jordan confronted. While Jordan sought to interject elements

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of the discourse of piety into a narrative that began with identity claims consistent with
the conquest discourse, the two discourses are intertwined in Derrick's narrative from the
outset. Throughout his narrative Derrick stakes claims to the identities of both the
"player" and the "pious virgin." As the following passage demonstrates, this rather
convoluted identity work is evident early on in the interview. After briefly describing his
religious upbringing, Derrick talks about his current "partying" lifestyle, and the clash of
identity claims is startling:

I: What happens at those parties? [laughs]

R: What do you mean?

I: Well, uhm, in terms of— I mean, are they tame? Are they wild? Is there a

lot of alcohol? Is there — ?

R: Depends on the night. There's always a lot of alcohol. They will get to
the point where they're wasted out of their mind and they don't even
comprehend what's going on, so there's no chance of them picking up.
And then there's points where it's a few beers and, you know, I'm in the
mood to, in the zone, kind of thing. Game "A." "A" game.

I: Right. Now that's for them. Or is that for you, too?

R: That's for me, too. I mean, I get wasted and stuff where I don't know
what's goin' on, but I do not — You know, I'm a virgin and I plan on
stayin' that way. But, you know, I've come close after nights like that,
goin' to parties or goin' out to clubs or whatever.

I: So you definitely hook up with women.

R: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, there hasn't been like 20, but more than one,

so.
(Derrick: 1 8-year-old, White, virgin)

By his own admission, Derrick is enjoying wild, alcohol-soaked nights with his

roommates and friends, and he clearly enjoys "hooking up" with girls in the course of

these festivities. In this regard, he is every bit the "player" that epitomizes hegemonic

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masculinity. In the same breadth, however, he lays claim to a masculinity that
emphasizes restraint and piety by insisting that he's a virgin and plans on staying that
way.

Derrick employs a two-pronged strategy for reconciling these two identities and
the discourses from which they emerge. On the one hand, he insists that he cannot be
expected to have the self-control necessary to avoid all the situations that threaten to end
in the loss of his virginity. On the other hand, each time he describes a provocative
encounter he had with a girl, he expresses guilt about it and reaffirms his religious
commitments by interpreting the situation in terms of the discourse of piety.

One instance in which Derrick draws upon the first strategy is when I ask him

what limits he would, ideally, like to put on his interactions with girls. Parts of his

response have been quoted earlier, but the full breadth of his response is important for the

purposes at hand. In it, Derrick points to several features of the social context in which

he finds himself, including his age, the fact that he is out of high school, and the sexual

aggressiveness of college-age girls, to insist that he can not be expected to live up to his

ideal:

R: [pause] I would love to be able to not do anything, but that is impossible
to me at this point right now, it seems. There is no way that I'm gonna be
out and this great-lookin' girl and, you know, we're dancin' or whatever
and then it's like, "Oh, well, I'm not gonna kiss you." I mean, that is — I
mean, I feel bad about it the next day. And like, regardless of how far I go
past the point of kissing, it's like — I mean, this is making-out full-on kinda
thing. I don't know. I'd like to curb it at just that, if at all. But, I mean,
especially now, especially at this age. It was a lot easier in high school.
But now, I mean, these girls are just ready to go. They're like more
aggressive than I am. It's like, "Oh my, God. Gimmie a break." So that's
where I'd like to. And I feel— Anything past that I feel bad, and it's like,
"I can't believe I did that. I don't even like this chick." I mean, it's more
of a sense that I'm cheating myself.

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I: How so?

R: By wasting time with people that I don't care about. But at the time it
seems right.

I: Why was it easier in high school? Partly because the girls are —

R: Because the girls are puttin' the brakes on. And you, as a male, hot-
blooded, are just, whatever they'll let you do, you'll do. And now, it's
like, "Oh my God, I've gotta like" — /have to put the brakes on 'cause
they're not gonna. And that, to me, makes me wanna avoid the situation
because I know that it's gonna be hard to put the brakes on, especially if
I'm the only one puttin' 'em on.

(Derrick: 1 8-year-old, White, virgin)

Rhetorically speaking, this passage is quite complex. In the first several lines, after
asserting that he "would love to be able to not do anything," Derrick constructs a
hypothetical narrative that dramatizes how the attractiveness, availability, and desire of a
girl with whom he is dancing virtually compels him to "make out" with her. Derrick's
participation in encounters like this one enhances his "player" identity, but the narrative
suggests that this is not a case of Derrick seducing someone. As the story would have it,
Derrick is almost a victim; he has no reasonable alternative but to make out with the girl.
Following this hypothetical narrative, Derrick reaffirms his desire to put limits on
his contact with girls, but then immediately employs another narrative strategy that
allows him to abdicate control over that contact. This time, the strategy is a contrast
structure between the girls he encountered in high school and the older girls he meets
now. High school girls, he says, are resistant to guys' advances, but older girls are
sexually aggressive and actually make advances themselves. This shift in girls' approach
to physical intimacy complicates Derrick's efforts to balance the conquest and piety
discourses enormously. With high school girls, he could be a "hot-blooded male" and
depend on them to ensure that the encounters did not infringe greatly on his commitment

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to purity and piety. In other words, he could behave in ways that would garner the

dividends of hegemonic masculinity, yet still also articulate a discourse of piety with

confidence. Now this delicate balance is threatened, and, by Derrick's reckoning, there is

little he can do about it. After all, he did not change, the girls did.

Since Derrick ostensibly has such little control over how his "player" identity is

expressed (i.e., how far his encounters with girls go), he must also have a strategy to

repair the damage his intimate encounters wreck on his pious identity. Expressing regret

is critical in this regard, but so too is reasserting the relevance of the discourse of piety by

interpreting encounters in its terms. Both of these techniques of identity repair are

evident when I ask Derrick to reflect on the implications of his having given and received

oral sex:

I regret it, that I did it. I feel really bad because of-I don't know-it's like [pause].
It was fun, but then it's like, after, it's like, "That was not worth feeling this bad
about. It's not worth, you know, me feelin' sorry for this girl. Me not wanting to
ever see her again. Never wanting to deal with her. I didn't even like her." You
know? And it's like, "Ugh." It would be one thing if I really liked the chick. You
know what I mean? And it was more of a passionate love moment than drunken
stupor kinda thing. So. I feel bad. I feel like I've lost some of my innocence, and
I've lost some of my purity.
(Derrick: 1 8-year-old, White, virgin)

Derrick's regret about the experience takes many forms: He feels bad because it makes

him feel bad about himself. He feels bad for the girl, who he now wants to avoid like the

plague. He feels bad that the incident was driven by alcohol, not feelings of intimacy.

But, most notably, he feels bad because the incident compromised his purity and, by

extension, his claims to the identity of "pious virgin."

Even the brief glimpse I have provided of Derrick's efforts to reconcile the

conquest and piety discourses reveal both the enormous creativity the guys exhibit in

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coping with narrative challenges and the immense difficulties inherent in trying to
reconcile competing discourses. Although Derrick is quite active and inventive in
repeatedly making claims to a pious masculinity, the success of his efforts seems limited
by the persistent appearance of dramatic counter claims to the "player" identity.
Virtually every instance in which Derrick expresses his commitment to purity follows a
description of an instance in which his purity was compromised. In this context,
Derrick's efforts at blending the identities may garner some legitimacy if we accept his
abdications of responsibility for his intimate encounters. But even so, his claim to purity,
which is at the heart of his construction of pious masculinity, holds only in the strictest
sense of abstaining from intercourse.
Reconciliation with the Discourses of Conquest and Relationship

As with any attempt to reconcile the conquest and piety discourses, the possibility
of bringing together the discourses of conquest and relationship is complicated by
fundamental incompatibilities. In terms of how they orient to girls, the context they treat
as "proper" for sex, and the degree of importance they attribute to the male fraternity, for
instance, the discourses are nearly polar opposites. While girls are seen largely as a
means to a sexual end from the perspective of the discourse of conquest, the relationship
discourse places them and guys' interactions with them at the center of sexual decision
making. By extension, the conquest discourse privileges the male fraternity as the site
where sexual accomplishments are celebrated, but the fraternity is irrelevant within the
discourse of relationship because couples have sex for themselves, not for the benefit of a
peer "audience." Granted, this opposition is mitigated somewhat in the case of guys who
articulate the discourse of relationship in terms of "weak" or short-term couplings. For

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instance, when the relationship discourse is articulated in this manner, the construction of
virgins is virtually the same as it is in the discourse of conquest. Yet even in these
instances, the discourses are difficult to reconcile because of the effects of the mediators,
particularly masculinity and belonging. In the subsequent discussion I explore these
difficulties through the case of Grady, whose narrative includes a tortured effort to
reconcile the discourse of conquest with the "weak" version of the discourse of
relationship.

In a whole host of ways, Grady satisfies the adolescent male "narrative agendas"
associated with belonging and masculinity with articulations of the discourse of conquest.
He describes having a grave distrust of women, expresses a fear of being "pussy-
whipped," and identifies his male fraternity as the place to which he retreats to escape
"girl trouble." All of these aspects of his efforts to construct his masculinity and assert
that he belongs are evident when he compares himself to other guys who are committed
virgins:

I gotta do somethin', Man. I couldn't do it. I gotta have some kinda experience
with a girl, 'cause. Girls, like, they'll make you happy one minute, but. like, if
you really get into 'em too much, they can really make you mad, like everyday,
all day. Because, just the stuff that they do. It just makes you mad. And you'll
just be upset all day or whatever. You go out there. You get off the phone with
'em or whatever, talkin' and stuff. You can't have sex with 'em so. You ask 'em
can you come over — they home by they self— you'll go back up to where you're
homeboys hang out at. You'll just got up there and just try to relieve all that
stress.
(Grady: 18-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Grady presents himself as someone who is trying to strike a delicate balance. On the one

hand, he cannot be like the committed virgins and forego sex. On the other hand, he

seems hyper-aware of the conquest assumption that too much involvement with girls

results in a guy becoming pussy- whipped and needing to retreat to his male fraternity.

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Given the apparent intensity of Grady's concern about being pussy-whipped and
his commitments to the discourse of conquest, one would expect that Grady would
manage this situation by articulating an intense resistance to meaningful relationships.
Remarkably, however, when I ask Grady to account for his continued pursuit of sex in
the face of the threat of pussy -whipping, his response comes from the discourse of
relationship. His rationale is a desire to surrender to the illusion of love, seemingly to
yield to dependency:

I: So there must be something that makes all that agony worth it.

R: Yeah. Yeah. It's just having somebody there that — know what I'm

sayin' — really cares about you all the time, you know what I'm sayin'.
And somebody that's always gonna be there for you. But they might be
there for you all the time, but you'd like to think that. That's why you tell
'em you love 'em or whatever. Because you may think you love them, but
they might be messin' wit your homeboy on the side or whatever. But it
still makes you feel good to hear them tell you that they love you all the
time. So you really just gonna go wit that feeling. And most guys fight
for what they want, so they just get mad or whatever. They just start
fightin' over girls all the time, so.

I: But it's rough.

R: Yup. I ain't never fought over no girl, though. 'Cause if he gets her,

that's him. There are a lot more girls out there. [Int: Uhm-hm] A lot of
'em.

(Grady: 18-year-old, African-American, nonvirgin)

Suddenly, Grady is not concerned with his male fraternity or with being perceived as
"pussy-whipped." He wants a relationship; he wants to feel loved. In fact, his
willingness to maintain a relationship even when he suspects the sentiments on which it is
founded are false reflects the kind of self-delusion that the term "pussy-whipping"
derides. It also introduces enormous contradictions into the identity he is constructing:
Does he want to present hegemonic masculinity, or a more relational, emotional

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masculinity? Does he somehow hope to belong both to a male fraternity and a
committed, love relationship?

In subsequent parts of his interview, Grady might have endeavored to resolve
these contradictions in favor of one discourse (and view of himself) or another. For
instance, he might have renounced the male fraternity or rejected the tendency, associated
with the conquest discourse, to generalize negative attributes of some girls to all girls.
Either of these rhetorical moves would have strengthened his claim to a relational
masculinity and located his sense of belonging more in relationships than in male peer
groups. Conversely, one option that might have allowed him to preserve love as
something more than an illusion while simultaneously demonstrating a masculinity
consistent with the discourse of conquest would be fighting for "exclusive rights" to a
girl. Grady employs none of these strategies, however, and as a result the identity he
presents is contradictory, plagued by the incompatibility of his desire for love and his
belief in the conquest depiction of girls as fickle and threatening.

The cases of Grady, Jordan, and Derrick demonstrate vividly the enormous
challenges inherent in attempting to construct identities by blending resources from
competing discourses. In some instances, exemplified by Derrick and Jordan, one
discourse appears to be dominant, and the articulation of aspects of another end up,
intentionally or unintentionally, fortifying that dominance. In others, like Grady's,
neither discourse assumes uncontested dominance, and the result is unresolved
contradictions. Regardless of the outcome, every effort at reconciliation brings the
mediating effect of social factors to the fore, for these mediators are the focal point of the
incompatibilities between the discourses. As we have seen, each discourse offers

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different ways for the guys to resolve their need to present some form of masculinity,
assert their independence, and establish that they belong.

What do these efforts at discourse reconciliation mean in terms of how guys talk
about and orient to sexual decision making? First and foremost, I think they remind us of
the limits of the interplay between narrative resources and narrative practice. In spite of
their creative use of narrative strategies, language users are hard pressed to construct
compatible meanings from discourses that are essentially in contradiction. Put more
concretely, when guys approach sex and relationships primarily from the viewpoint of
sexual conquest, it is difficult for them to simultaneously make the claim that other
considerations, such as religion or love, are important. This is not to say that narrative
practice is inconsequential. While the reconciliation efforts I explored were largely
unsuccessful at blending discourses, they certainly succeeded in creating tensions in
identities and exposing the multiple ways that a guy can cope with discourse mediators.
In that sense, the narrative work these guys did reaffirms that discourse is not destiny and
that language users' artful manipulation of discourse resources will always be a
destabilizing force on the boundaries between discourses.

Conclusion

Exploring the mediation of the discourse of conquest by the social factors of
masculinity, independence, and belonging is a tall order. Like all discourses, the
discourse of conquest is multifaceted, meaning each of the three mediators can influence
its articulation in multiple, complex ways. My investigation of these mediating effects
demonstrates that each of the mediators does have an effect on the guys' articulations, but
not to equal degrees.

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The need to belong affects how the discourse is articulated a moderate amount, as
guys actively construct the importance of male peer groups (male fraternities) and
routinely engage other guys in virginity status tests to determine whether or not they
belong with nonvirgins. Independence is not as powerful a mediator of this discourse,
but Jordan's narrative demonstrates that it can influence how guys articulated the
discourse of conquest if they reject the importance of the male fraternity.

Masculinity is by far the most influential mediator of how the discourse is
articulated. Articulating the discourse of conquest affords guys the opportunity to claim
hegemonic masculinity, but it also confronts them with a host of related narrative
challenges. Presenting themselves as too enamored with the trappings of hegemonic
masculinity raises the possibility that their identities will be discredited as
hypermasculine. Conversely, rejecting key elements of the discourse leaves one's claim
to hegemonic masculinity in doubt. In both instances, guys feel compelled to account for
their level of commitment to the discourse in an effort to achieve the masculine
presentation they desire.

Even if their degree of commitment to the discourse is not an issue, however,
guys' strategies for articulating it are effected by concerns about masculinity. In the
course of presenting themselves in terms consistent with the discourse of conquest, guys
face the imminent danger that some aspect of their experience will be inconsistent with
hegemonic masculinity. Out of concern for the opinions of authority figures, they may
minimize the role they play in achieving their sexual "accomplishments." For reasons
particular to a given situation, they may have declined a sexual opportunity they had. Or,
they may be uncomfortable about raising with their partners the possibility of having sex.

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In each of these instances, the reality of the situation runs counter to the template
provided by hegemonic masculinity, which emphasizes demonstrating masculinity
through sex, being fearless, always being ready for sex. Trying to square that reality with
the sense of manhood to which they aspire moves guys to all manner of strategic
meaning-making. Some guys seek to minimize the particular disconnect between their
experience and hegemonic masculinity by asserting their claim through other aspects of
the discourse. Some meet the narrative challenges by finding indirect or creative ways to
satisfy the expectations of hegemonic masculinity. Still others address the challenge by
asserting a claim to an alternate masculinity and insisting on the superiority of this
definition of manhood. Regardless of how they grappled with the challenge, however, all
of these guys are confronted with the mediating effects of masculinity on their
articulations of the conquest discourse.

As I reflect on guys' engagement with the narrative challenges they face as they
articulate the discourse of conquest, I am left with two strong impressions. The first has
to be the incredible flexibility, creative, and seeming intentional ity with which the guys
manipulate the resources of the discourse. Through categorizing, distancing, storytelling,
and contrasting, the guys construct meanings for notions like belonging, virginity, sex
talk, and independence that satisfy the demands of particular contexts. The same
resources that help one guy construct a "player" identity are used by another to produce a
masculinity that dismisses the player as a charlatan. This narrative elasticity in the
production of meaning provides dramatic evidence of the power of discursive practice.

At the same time, however, I cannot help but be struck by the futility of some of
the narrative work that guys engage in when trying to identify themselves with

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hegemonic masculinity. Time and again, they confront narrative challenges that require
them to engage in complex narrative work just to salvage a portion of their claims to the
hegemonic ideal of manhood. The difficulties they encounter seems to lend credence to
the claims of men's studies scholars who contend that the hegemonic ideal is unattainable
and guys' quest of it is self-destructive (Kaufman 1994; Pleck, Sonenstein, & Ku 1993;
Stoltenberg 1993). Some guys certainly manage to identify with hegemonic masculinity
in multiple ways. But for many guys, presenting an identity consistent with hegemonic
masculinity entails an enormous amount of narrative work, with little guarantee of
success. Whatever these difficulties may ultimately say about masculinities and their
production, in terms of meaning-making, they remind us of the limits of narrative
practice. However creative the guys may be in manipulating the resources of the
discourse of conquest, they cannot produce whatever meanings or identities they wish.

Indeed, that tension between guys' artful narrative practice and the somewhat
permeable boundaries imposed by discursive resources encapsulates the essence of the
narrative challenge. At the same time that guys express their views on sex and sexual
decision making, they are endeavoring to wrest from discourses the flexibility to produce
identities that, to their reckoning, favorably satisfy the "identity agendas" inspired by the
three mediators. In this chapter, I examined this tug-of-war in relation to the discourse of
conquest. In the next chapter, I conclude my substantive analysis by exploring the
narrative challenges guys face when they articulate the discourses of relationship or piety.
This examination will reveal that the three mediators raise different types of challenges
for those articulating discourses other than conquest. Still, many of the challenges

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require or motivate guys to engage the discourse of conquest since it represents the
repository of articulations they reject.

CHAPTER 7
MEDIATING THE DISCOURSES OF RELATIONSHIP AND PIETY

My examination of the mediation of the discourse of conquest in Chapter 6
revealed that the boys' articulations face an array of narrative challenges. In their efforts
to meet those challenges, they tell stories, establish novel categorization schemes, draw
telling contrasts, strain the boundaries of discourses, and otherwise stretch their powers of
narrative practice.

As my focus shifts in this chapter from the discourse of conquest to the discourses
of relationship and piety, many things stay the same. My concern is still how pressing
identity concerns — independence, belonging, and masculinity — mediate the guys'
articulation of discourses of sexual decision making. These mediating effects are still
manifest in narrative challenges, and I have every reason to believe that the boys'
responses to these challenges will be as active and inventive as the one's I have
documented already.

The challenges that arise are not the same, however. The discourses that now take
center stage present very different contexts for the emergence of narrative challenges than
that associated with the discourse of conquest. In a rather crude way, it may be
reasonable to characterize the difference as one of mainstream versus alternative
approaches to sexual decision making. Although it is cause for dismay for some (myself
included), the evidence is all around us that popular messages urge guys to construct their
masculinity in terms of sexual conquest and guys typically orient to concerns about

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belonging and independence according to peer standards. To the extent that the
discourses of piety and relationship offer different ways for guys to address these aspects
of their identity agendas, they constitute resources for dissidence from the dominant
approach. But this dissidence frequently comes with a price, as guys feel compelled to
account for the "subversive" identities they construct. Thus, the narrative challenges
faced by those who articulate the discourse of piety or the discourse of relationship are,
by and large, generated by and relate back to the mainstream orientation to adolescent
male sexual decision making that is consistent with the discourse of conquest.

My explication of the narrative challenges associated with these two "dissident"
discourses is organized in terms of the mediating factors that prompt them. I begin by
examining the narrative challenges associated with belonging and then shift attention to
those related to masculinity. In each case, the nature of the challenge dictates logical
divisions within the section, but these divisions are different for each mediator. With
belonging, it makes sense to tell a separate story for each discourse. With masculinity,
however, it is more constructive to group those who articulate the discourse of piety with
those who articulate a strong commitment to relationships, and then tell another, unique
story about guys who articulate a weak commitment to relationships. Finally, since
independence appears to create challenges primarily for guys committed to piety, this
mediator is discussed solely in relation to that discourse at the close of the chapter.

Navigating Challenges to Belonging

The tendency for the narrative challenges associated with these discourses to be
driven by their variation from the discourse of conquest is nowhere more evident than
with respect to belonging. Guys who articulate either the discourse of piety or

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relationship routinely presume that others perceive them as "not cool" or "misfits"
because of the choices they make regarding sexuality. And although the challenge is
similar for adherents to both discourses, the guys' responses differ. Guys whose
commitment to virginity stems from relationship concerns (hence forth referred to as
"relationship virgins") tend to address the challenge directly, seeking to undermine the
assumptions on which it is based. Pious virgins, in contrast, employ a variety of less
direct strategies, some of which seem acquiescent to the conquest discourse.
Discourse of Piety

One way in which pious virgins assert that they do, in fact, belong is by appealing
to a sense of belonging that transcends decisions about sexual behavior. Sean
exemplifies this approach when I ask him if he feels physical urges toward girls. In his
response, he not only affirms that he does, but he also seizes on that fact as an indication
of his commonality with other guys. Describing himself as "just a regular, regular
teenager," Sean constructs an inclusive category to which both he and nonvirgins belong.
In this way, he does not capitulate to the conquest orientation to virginity in order to
belong, but neither does he actively assert the piety orientation. He stakes out a middle
ground that de-emphasizes his commitment to virginity and establishes him as an insider
on the basis of his interest in— not experience with— heterosexual sex.

It is apparently not beyond the pale, however, for a pious virgin to capitulate
completely to the discourse of conquest and seek to establish that he belongs on its terms.
We have already seen that Derrick constructs his identity as much or more in terms of the
discourse of conquest as the discourse of piety, so it should not be surprising that he
stakes his sense of belonging on the conquest discourse as well.

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But how can he claim to belong in terms consistent with the discourse of conquest

when he is a virgin? Derrick's strategy is to elaborate the category of "virgin." Much

like Jordan did when he sought to affirm his independence, Derrick creates a contrast

between guys who choose virginity and those who have virginity thrust upon them. By

affirming that he is one of the former types of virgins, Derrick also allies himself with the

discourse of conquest and the peer acceptance associated with it:

'Cause people know, you know, I love women and can pick up a girl without
really any trouble, so they're not gonna be like, "Oh, well you're just a dork."
You know, they know that I can do it, so they don't hassle me about that. I mean
some people probably get hassled for it.
(Derrick: 1 8-year-old, White, virgin)

Some guys are virgins because they are "dorks" and cannot pick up a woman even if they

try, but Derrick is a virgin whose heterosexuality and prowess with girls are not in

question. In short, he is a player. Therefore, he fits in with the sexually active "cool

kids," even though he has not had sex. Fitting in on these terms, however, means that he

implicitly reaffirms the outsider status of many other pious virgins, who reject the

identity of the player and all sexual involvements, not just sexual intercourse.

Sean exemplifies this latter group of virgins, and his narrative demonstrates that

pious virgins need not orient to belonging in conquest terms. While he is not particularly

aggressive in asserting an alternative "pious" notion of belonging, he exhibits a keen

awareness that there are multiple reference groups for evaluating virginity:

R: I mean, I'll be talkin' to some of my old friends and they're sittin' there,
you know, "I did this with this girl last night." And I'll be like, "Oh,
really." And they're, "Have you done that yet?" And I'll be like, "No. I
don't wanna do that." And then, you know, they'll make comments like,
"Why not? It's cool. It's fun.," you know, "It's. You enjoy it," or
whatever. And I — You know, so they kind of look down on you, you
know, like, you know, "Are you gay?" You know, they'll say stuff like
that a lot, but. So, yeah, I mean, there's only— I mean, not a lot because I

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don't really hang out with 'em anymore. I'm always with, you know, my
group of friends, so. Not as much any more, but it has happened.

I: How does it make you feel when they do that?

R: Nah. I, I really don't care. I'm like, "Okay," you know, '"whatever. If

you say so." I mean, I think it's sad for them because, you know, they just
don't know any better. You know, they might, they're gonna regret it, I
would think, in the long run, but.

(Matthew: 1 5-year-old, White, virgin)

In this passage, Sean identifies two distinct groups that apply competing meanings to his
virginity. His "old friends" are those he hung around before he converted to Christianity
and was saved. Given a presence in the narrative by Sean's parroting, they articulate the
discourse of conquest and use homophobic taunts to paint Sean as an outcast for being a
virgin. The other group, composed of his current, Christian friends, provides a buffer
against the criticisms of the secular guys by supporting and sharing his religious
commitment to virginity. Sean aligns himself with them and thus establishes that he
belongs on their terms, which are sympathetic to virginity commitments and quests for
purity. In addition, his insistence that he no longer has much contact with his old friends
suggests that he recognizes isolation from his old friends as an important strategy for
maintaining what, in mainstream terms, is an "alternative" sense of belonging.

Having effectively established that he belongs while remaining true to the
discourse of piety, Sean makes a respectful, but nonetheless deliberate, effort to assert the
superiority of his constructions of virginity and belonging. He does not claim directly
that his pious approach is better or morally superior, but his categorization of the
conquest approach as pitiful ("I think it's sad for them") carries the implication that his
way is wiser because it accounts for the long term. While Sean's criticism is couched in

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nonjudgmental terms, its claim to what we might call the "intellectual high ground"
anticipates the strategies for negotiating belonging employed by relationship virgins.
Discourse of Relationship

In considering how belonging mediates guys' articulations of the discourse of
relationship, we first have to return to the distinction I have made between weak and
strong commitments to relationships. All of the guys whose commitments to
relationships are weak, in the sense that even couplings of limited intensity and duration
are considered appropriate contexts for intercourse, are also nonvirgins when I interview
them. As such, the narrative challenges they encounter with respect to belonging tend to
have much in common with those faced by guys who make partial commitments to the
discourse of conquest or who seek to reconcile the conquest discourse with the
relationship discourse. In essence, their story has already been told, and so I focus here
exclusively on "relationship virgins," guys whose commitment to relationships compels
them to delay virginity loss until they find "the one."

Relationship virgins, more so than pious virgins, confront the narrative challenge
associated with belonging head-on. Recognizing that their decision not to have sex for its
own sake casts them as outsiders, these guys respond by embracing their dissident status
and constructing it as an indication of superior insight. Donnie, for instance, has no
difficulty renouncing belonging because in its absence he has achieved greater self-
awareness. He, more than anyone, knows what is right for him, and he has learned to
adhere to that, even if the consequence is being outcast. He has been outcast throughout
his youth, in fact, and has cultivated the perspective that "they don't know what they're
missing."

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Similarly, the insight that supersedes an interest in belonging for Andrew is his

recognition that guys' sexual activity and the other behaviors that make them "cool" are

essentially acts of conformity. Andrew thus redefines coolness as conformity and rejects

conformity as ignorance:

And people shun the idea of being a virgin 'cause you're supposed to be sexually
active, you know. The real, the cool people, the mature people, the mainstream,
MTV people, they're the people that are out there runnin' around havin' sex. And
those are the people that are idiots, you know. [Int: Right.] Those are the people
that are, you know, that are being force-fed, uh, brand names and being force-fed,
you know, women have to make themselves puke and wear makeup so that men
can be happier with them. And men have to be big and buff and burly so that they
can, you know, punch each other in the shoulder all homoerotically to prove [Int
laughs] to prove how homosexual they're not, you know. [Int: Right.] And it's,
it's so idiotic that people won't just look at themselves and realize how wrong
they're being and doing. And, you know, they're gonna shun somebody because
of their sexual ethics and they're sexual morals and how they live their lives.
(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

To Andrew, the "necessity" of having sex is just one of a multitude of erroneous ideas
that young people have been "force-fed" by mainstream influences. It is ludicrous to him
that anyone would even want to achieve insider status among a group that accepts such
ridiculous, destructive ideas uncritically. Since his perspective equates conformity with
ignorance and a conquest orientation toward sex, being an outcast emerges as the only
reasonable option for him.

Andrew is, in fact, explicit about extolling the virtues of being an outsider. He
regards it as a sign of superior mental toughness:

You know, there's a lotta people out there that are just not mentally as, as strong
as others and can handle, you know, being outcast or thrust aside for a little
while, maybe, because they haven't found the right niche for their ideas. So
instead they'll change their ideas to fit everybody else's and run around and start,
you know, having sex and, you know, being all MASCULINE and "Oh
football!"

(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

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Andrew's strategy for meeting the narrative challenge of belonging within the discourse
of relationship thus amounts to an all-out assault on the discourse of conquest and
hegemonic masculinity. Reversing established interpretations, Andrew insists that guys
who follow the hegemonic script are not strong; they are weak because they adopt
traditional notions of masculinity out of fear of not belonging.

Although both Andrew and Donnie are not social pariahs in the sense of having
no friends and being isolated completely, they perceive that many others consider them
outsiders in terms of their orientation to sexual decision making. In contrast to the pious
virgins, who either capitulate to conquest notions of belonging or seek belonging in
religious enclaves, these relationship virgins reject the social pressure to belong.
Insisting that pursuing sex is an ignoble means of bonding with others, they seek to
justify and even celebrate their outsider status. In this way, they also simultaneously
manage to forcefully assert their independence.

Navigating Challenges to Masculinity
When guys articulate either the discourse of relationship or piety, concerns about
masculinity influence their narrative tremendously, just as they do for guys who articulate
the discourse of conquest. In fact, guys whose commitment to relationships is weak tend
to confront challenges and produce responses that are analogous to those I have discussed
with respect to conquest adherents. Committed virgins articulating either discourse,
however, face a different challenge, by virtue of their complete rejection of the
construction of sex associated with hegemonic masculinity. In some instances, they
respond to this challenge by constructing alternative masculinities, but they are as likely
to instead produce critiques of the notion of gender itself. I begin this section by

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exploring the masculinities constructed by guys with weak commitments to the discourse
of relationship. In the course of the discussion, I pay particular attention to how their
narrative work compares to that of guys who articulate the discourse of conquest. I then
turn to the more radical responses to the problem of masculinity produced by users of the
discourses of piety or relationship who are committed virgins.
Commitment to "Weak" Relationships

By insisting on the importance of relationships to their sexual decisions but not
committing to virginity, a number of guys place themselves in a unique position with
respect to constructing their masculinities. On the one hand they embrace a discourse
that is antithetical to fundamental aspects of hegemonic masculinity, such as treating sex
as an end in itself and orienting to girls and relationships through the notion of "pussy
whipping." On the other hand, the fact that they are sexually experienced aligns them
less with virgins articulating the same discourse and more with nonvirgins articulating the
discourse of conquest. Given this precariousness of their position within the discourse of
relationship, guys' efforts to construct masculinities typically involve some capitulation
to conquest definitions of manhood. Specifically, they construct their manhood in
relational terms, but they also stake claims to certain aspects of hegemonic masculinity
that are compatible with sexualized relationships. Jerry provides one example of how
these guys construct their hybrid masculinities.

From the outset, Jerry is explicit about the fact that he orients to sexual matters in
the terms of the discourse of relationship. He notes that he is not the type to have sex
unless he is ready for it, and, as the following passage indicates, he associates being ready
with being in a relationship that is about more than sex:

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I: What's the problem with being with — With finding yourself with a girl

who just wants to have sex?

R: The problem is that a girl that just wants to have sex is just, the

relationship is just based on sex. And if you want somethin' more out of
that relationship like love, commitment, trust, and understanding, you
gonna want those things and the relationship is not all about sex. It's not.
It's about love, trust, commitment you know, being there for your, uhm,
spouse and it's all about that. It's not just all about having sex. If you
want to have sex, it's plenty of girls just wanna have sex. You know what
I am saying? You go to a party. They get drunk. They do this and it's just
you know. Some. Men like me, I don't. Like me, personally, like me, I
don't look for that. That's not my concern.

(Jerry: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Jerry's declaration of the preeminence of love, trust, and commitment over sex indicates
clearly which discourse guides his sexual decision making, but it does not, in and of
itself, confirm that he is seeking to construct a relational masculinity. Only in the phrase
"men like me" is there an implication that he associates the choice he has made with a
particular way of demonstrating manhood, rather than, say, an isolated, idiosyncratic
preference.

Confirmation that Jerry links his commitment to the discourse with types of
masculinities comes later in the interview when the discussion turns to players. Jerry
rejects the player identity for himself, but his subsequent damning critique makes it clear
that the player represents a specific way of approaching girls, sex, and manhood:

I: What do guys get out of being players?

R: I mean, (laugh) I basically don't know. I think they assume that they

getting' power for theyself cause they got that pipe game. So the next girl
gonna come and be like, "Man, I want to do this and that with you."
Whoa, come on now. If you gonna have a lot of whores sweatin' you, and
that's what you gonna chased for, for the rest of your life. And you tiyin'
to find someone out there that's gonna benefit you, but she's turnin' out to
be a whore. And then you finally tryin' to settle down and you messing up
your life. So, I'm saying they really ain't getting nothin' out of it but just
the only thing they getting' out of it is a piece of pussy. To me. What?

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One-night stand. The next day they back at it again. So they with a
different girl. So I'm sayin' that's confused. A player is the most
confused person. They confused a lot, a whole lot.
(Jerry: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Whereas Jerry's earlier articulation of the discourse of relationship put little emphasis on

collective ways of being a man, this one is predicated on the rejection of the player as the

embodiment of what Jerry considers an untenable masculinity. Focusing solely on sex,

wanting for love and trust in relationships, and always ending up alone, the player

provides the straw man, the contrast against which Jerry stakes his claim to a masculinity

that privileges its opposite.

Jerry's relational masculinity is not the antithesis of hegemonic masculinity,
however. His dismissal of players represents a rejection of manhood based on the
relentless pursuit of sex, but it is silent on other dimensions of sexual decision making,
such as virginity and sex talk. Furthermore, Jerry is not a virgin. So while he may
distance himself from the discourse of conquest with respect to its fundamental
orientation to sexual decisions, he stands to gain "masculinity dividends" by linking his
identity with these other signifiers of hegemonic masculinity. The challenge within this
narrative challenge for Jerry is constructing these links in ways that are consistent with
his avowed commitment to relationships.

With respect to virginity, constructing a compatible link presents few difficulties

since a guy's constructions of virgins and virginity can remain largely independent of his

notion of relationships. Jerry associates himself with conquest interpretations of virginity

by placing virgins in an unfavorable contrast with nonvirgins:

I think they, virgins— men virgins— they crazy. They can flip it this way and
sayin' they not a virgin and be all macho about it and all this about it. But a
man's that not a virgin, he's like laid back. Like, "Okay, I'll let this out. This

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feels good." A virgin is uptight all the time. They, like, pushy-pushy. They got
like a little attitude, just like girls. They always got a little attitude. To me, they
just need, you know, a little piece.
(Jerry: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Depicting virgins as "pushy-pushy" and "just like girls" and insisting that they can

resolve these conditions by getting "a little piece" (i.e., losing their virginity), Jerry

constructs a connection between virginity loss and manhood that reflects hegemonic

ideals to a tee. This denigration of virgins, furthermore, carries with it an implicit

affirmation of Jerry's own status as a nonvirgin, which bolsters his claim to this marker

of hegemonic masculinity. Thus, Jerry's belief that relationships are a necessary

prerequisite for sexual intercourse does not prevent him from constructing his manhood

in terms that privilege being "experienced."

He faces greater rhetorical challenges, however, when he tries to link his

masculinity to another hallmark of hegemonic masculinity— sex talk that objectifies

girls — while simultaneously maintaining the importance of relationships. The

obj edification of girls is part and parcel of the conquest reduction of females to their

sexual potential, and it underlies the restriction of girls to the borders of guy's lives that is

policed by notions like pussy-whipping. Therefore, if Jerry wants to identify with this

treatment of girls, he must somehow finesse the contradiction that it appears to create in

his masculine self-presentation. His strategy is to align himself with the objectification of

girls, but in a modified way. He qualifies his acceptance of this behavior by

distinguishing between inappropriate talk with acceptable talk, the latter of which he

associates with the identity of the "gentleman":

I: Like around school and stuff, the guys that you hang out with, how much

talk about sex is there?

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R: Man, every time man. With guys it's natural. I could be a gentleman and

just be like, "Man, damn, man."
[end side 1]

R: I could just be like, "Man that girl looks good over there, Man. Oh, man,

she look good." And, "I'll beat " It's all natural. You could still be a

gentleman and talk. I mean, it's nothing wrong with, it's amongst us guys.
But — you know what I'm saying? — You don't have to blow it out of
proportion like some men do. You know what I'm saying? Some men,
they're [in a lusty voice] "Oh man, I want to hit that. Oh yeah, there's no
telling what I'll do. Ooh!" You know what I'm saying? You don't even
have to be all like that. If you want to compliment a woman, be a man
about it and go up and say, "Hey, you look nice," Or, "Can I get your
phone number? Maybe we could talk or go out some time." Stuff like
that. Or you could just be, like, "Man, she look good," if you don't want
to talk to her. Okay, it's amongst y'all guys. If she looks good, she looks
good. If you feel like — If you wanna beat, you just tell in your mind, like.
"Man, she look good enough to have sex with."

(Jerry: 19-year-old, African- American, nonvirgin)

Jerry's perspective is that it is natural for guys to talk about sex. But whether that talk
occurs between guys or in the presence of girls, there are right and wrong forms that it
can take. Using the narrative strategy of contrasting, Jerry constructs two different types
of sex talkers— gentlemen and others— that embody the two ways of talking about sex.
The others, who represent the wrong way, are guys who "blow it out of proportion" and
talk about girls in vulgar, ultra-sexual, dehumanizing ways. Jerry, by contrast, is a
gentleman. Gentlemen talk about sex when they are with their guy friends, but their
language remains respectful. They use phrases like, "Man, she look good." rather than
the more crude, "Oh man, I want to hit that." And when it comes to approaching girls,
they are— in Jerry's estimation— more manly than the others. While other guys use crude
talk to cover their fear of talking to girls, gentlemen display their superior masculinity by
appealing to girls in a way that shows class. The category of gentleman thus designates a

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masculinity characterized by a kinder, gentler form of sex talk that is not inherently
inconsistent with a relational masculinity because it does not dehumanize girls.

In sum, the masculinity that Jerry constructs strikes an uneasy balance between
his weak commitment to relationships and certain aspects of the discourse of conquest.
On the one hand, Jerry is the kind of man who values relationships; on the other hand, he
presents his status as a nonvirgin and his participation in sex talk as emblematic of his
manhood. He suggests that in his case these two notions of manhood are not mutually
exclusive, however, because his code of gentlemanly masculinity tempers his expression
of the conquest orientation to girls.

In terms of rhetorical strategies, Jerry's case thus has similarities to that of L.J.,
who espouses only a partial commitment to the discourse of conquest. Both draw
selectively from the discourse to satisfy narrative challenges. But while L.J. manages his
articulations in the interest of a securing a stronger claim to hegemonic masculinity, Jerry
produces an alternative masculinity that purported to be more refined than the hegemonic
masculinity with which it shares some roots.
Commitment to Virginity

With respect to masculinity, the narrative challenge for guys whose articulations
of the discourses of piety or relationship include a commitment to virginity differ
substantially from that of guys like Jerry. Those who articulate a weak commitment to
relationships have grounds from which they can make claims to hegemonic masculinity if
they choose, such as through the denigration of virgins or the objectification of girls. For
committed virgins, however, the incompatibility between their orientation to sexual
decision making and the conquest discourse that supports hegemonic masculinity is

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virtually absolute. Consequently, hegemonic masculinity and its variants derived from

the discourse of conquest are denied them.

In general, the strategy guys implement for asserting masculinity in this context is

to actively redefine it so that the basis for the evaluation of one's manhood is something

other than the hegemonic standard. However, their strategies for redefinition diverge

significantly. Consider these statements, cited earlier, from Sean and Donnie:

I don't think I'm a man yet. I think that I'm, like, a young man, I guess. [Int:
Okay.] But, but I think that, uh, I think that to be a man, I mean, it 'd be a lot
harder of a challenge to not have sex, until, until you get married than it would be
to have sex. [Int: Uhm-hm] So I think that doing that to prove that you're a guy
is kinda like the easy way out, I guess. I mean, not — I mean, it depends on who
you are, what you believe, but, I mean, I think that that's probably a pretty easy
way to prove that you're a guy, you know. Just go out and have sex.
(Sean: 1 6-year-old, White, virgin)

I don't think having to have a serious relationship or getting laid requires you
becoming a man, personally, because I feel that I'm a man, and I haven't had
either of the two. I mean, I've had one relationship, but it was short lived, just
because I had to break it off 'cause I was coming over here. I was like, I'm not
gonna cheat the person either. But, uhm. I don't think being a man — Or, I think
you're more of a man if you can hold it and wait long, and wait for the long run
and wait till you find that right person to give it to. I think you're more of a man
if you can hold it, and then tell yourself, "You know, that isn't you." And
constantly remind yourself who you are. That's being more of a man than
anything else.
(Donnie: 18-year-old, Hispanic, virgin)

Both guys contest the equation of sexual experience with manhood as it is typically
articulated within the discourse of conquest. Sean calls being sexual "the easy way out"
of the dilemma of proving masculinity, and Donnie insists that having sex does not make
a male into a man. This basic sentiment is echoed elsewhere by Andrew, another
committed virgin.

However, the three virgins respond differently to the breach created by their
rejection of conquest definitions of manhood. In the passage presented above. Donnie

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goes on to assert his own masculinity on the grounds that self-awareness and self-
control — demonstrated in his case by his not having sex until he can lose his virginity on
his own terms — are the stuff of which true masculinity are made. Sean, on the other
hand, does not claim an alternate masculinity. In fact, he actually rejects the relevance of
gender categories altogether:

I mean, if I'm not a man, than I'm not a man, just as long as I feel that I'm who I
wanna be and who I think is the best person for me to be, then it's the best thing
for me, 'cause bein' happy's the most important thing in life.
(Sean: 1 6-year-old, White, virgin)

Taking a radically individualized view of the significance of gender, Sean insists that
masculinity is irrelevant to his self-image. What is important, he says, is his state of
being, not how he is categorized. In this way, Sean "solves" the identity issue of
masculinity by negating it. From a sociological standpoint, Sean's denial will not stop
gender categories from influencing his life. In terms of the presentation of identity in the
context of our interview, however, it provides an answer for Sean's deviation from
mainstream standards of masculinity. If the "gender game" is stacked against him, he
chooses to quit playing.

Andrew, a relationship virgin, takes a dizzyingly paradoxical approach to the
mediating influence of masculinity. He rejects the quest for dominance exemplified by
hegemonic masculinity adamantly, but he does so in a way that implicates him in his own
quest for dominance. After indicating that he considers himself a fairly masculine person
and that he likes to fight, Andrew admits that he has occasionally fought with guys who
were trying to assert masculine dominance over him:

I just get into a lot of little small quarrels over guys that are trying to prove their
masculinity to you, you know. "Oh, I'm, I'm more bad ass than you, so if you
wanna come up to me and ask me about," you know, "my actions, I don't have to

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explain myself to you. I'm going to pummel you until I'm right." [Int: Right.]
You know, "I'm gonna beat you up until you agree that I am," you know, "more
masculine than you," and, uhm. I won't — I won't stand for it! [Int laughs] I'll,
I'll, I'll lay myself down on the line physically for that sorta thing.
(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

Andrew's parroting of other guys in this passage confirms that he believes the guys'

defensive, combative attitudes emerge because they feel their masculinity is being

threatened. But by opposing their demonstrations of hegemonic masculinity through

physical violence, Andrew jumps headlong into the battle for supremacy that defines the

hierarchy of masculinities.

Andrew's tactic raises an obvious question: Given that he thinks of himself as
"fairly masculine," what sort of masculinity is he fighting for? Throughout our
interview, Andrew presents himself as extremely thoughtful, particularly when it comes
to relationships and sex. He believes that people should be introspective and think about
sexuality before they involve others in their exploration of it. His own ruminations have
convinced him that the physical act of sex pales in importance to the intimacy and sense
of connection that characterize meaningful relationships. That said, one might expect
that the masculinity Andrew espouses would be far more cerebral and relationship-based
than hegemonic masculinity.

Here again, however, Andrew constructs a paradox: Although he has previously

aligned himself with some notion of masculinity, however ill-defined, when I ask him to

describe his vision of masculinity, he stakes out a position outside of the gender order on

the grounds that it is an ill-conceived social construction:

I don't think there's a right way to be a man. I think there's a right way to be a
human being. [Int: Okay.] And I don't think there should be, uh, the sort of, the
wall between the sexes that: He is a man. He is a woman. He is a man, and he is
a woman 'Cause I think we all have the same brains. We are just brought up

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differently, and we have different ideals. And girls are told, "You're a girl. And
you're supposed to be passive and you're supposed to be quiet, and you're
supposed to have sex with guys. And guys, you're a guy. And you're supposed
to be loud and you're supposed to be obnoxious and you're supposed to play
football and go and, you know, do what you want with women because, you
know, they're there for you."
(Andrew: 1 7-year-old, White, virgin)

When addressing the issue of gender directly, Andrew orients to it in the most

stereotypical terms: Girls are passive and derive their relevance from their sexuality;

guys are loud, active, and entitled to exploit girls sexually. He does not conceive of the

possibility of alternative masculinities that might be more consistent with his ideals.

Instead, he throws the proverbial baby out with the bath water and insists that the relevant

category of concern is not "man," but "human being."

The contradiction between Andrew's claim that he is masculine and his

subsequent resistance to presenting himself in gendered terms has no simple resolution.

Perhaps it is explained by the fact that the "masculine" he sees in himself does not fit

within the stereotypical notion he has of masculinity. In any case, it raises a final, thorny

question: How does this contradictory, fluid position facilitate his resolution of the

narrative challenge posed by masculinity? Frankly, it is hard to say. On the one hand.

one could argue that by resorting to violence, Andrew stakes a claim of his own to

hegemonic masculinity, thereby undermining whatever alternative masculinity or

alternative to masculinity (i.e., nongendered humanness) he might also construct. From

this perspective, Andrew's answer to the masculinity question is no answer at all, since

the alternatives he offers are grounded in a concern for hegemony. Another possible

interpretation is that Andrew's fights with these guys epitomize the dynamic through

which the masculinities hierarchy is transformed. By challenging "manly men" on their

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own terms, Andrew seeks to topple the hierarchy and earn a privileged spot for
nongendered humanness. Finally, it may simply be that Andrew's identity is
contradictory with respect to masculinity: He believes that gender should be
unimportant. He certainly believes that sex should not be associated with manhood. At
the same time, however, he prefers to think of himself as masculine, and in the absence of
other "mainstream" avenues for demonstrating that masculinity, he turns to fighting.

Andrew's response to the narrative challenge to masculinity faced by committed
virgins is unique in being so convoluted and seemingly contradictory. But the basic
problem he wrestles with confronts all these guys: How should a guy respond to the
expectation that he display masculinity when his choices with regard to sex alienate him
from the discourse associated with "ideal" manhood? The virgin guys are united in
challenging the established ideal of masculinity, but they have different ideas about what
sort of identity to claim in its place. Some, like Donnie, construct an alternative
masculinity on terms consistent with their chosen discourse of sexual decision making.
Others, like Sean and Andrew, flirt with rejecting the need to be masculine in the same
way that Andrew abandons the need to belong. Whatever resolution they seek, the
intense rhetorical work these guys do in relation to masculinity is testament to its
presence as a pressing identity concern, even among guys who wish to reject it.

Independence and the Discourse of Piety
In the same way that guys recognize that committing to virginity place them outside
of mainstream articulations of adolescent male masculinity, pious virgins seem keenly
aware that their adherence to religious interpretations of sexual issues raise questions
about their independence. Considered alongside many guys who spend their adolescent

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years rebelling against authority figures — sometimes by having sex — the pious virgins

risk seeming like "do-gooders," who are fettered to the wishes of church and family.

Each of these guys, therefore, uses narrative strategies to depict his commitment to

virginity as one of free choice, not simply blind conformity to religious dictates or the

wishes of parents.

One strategy pious virgins use to assert their independence is to play up the fact

that they had had opportunities to be sexual. Sean makes a point to do this when he

asserts his independence from the people who taught him his religious values:

Being a virgin is something that I wanna do, I mean, like, like, I know that, that
like, all the teachings I've had from my youth pastor, my mom, and my church, I
mean, they've probably influenced me to do that, but I'm only a virgin because I
wanna be a virgin. 'Cause, I mean, you know, I mean, I've had opportunities, too.
I mean, I mean, I'm not like the best-looking guy at school or whatever, but, I
mean, I mean, I mean, I, I could have sex if I wanted to. [Int: Right] But I choose
not to because I don't want to.
(Sean: 1 6-year-old, White, virgin)

Indicating that he could be having sex if he chose to bolsters Sean's claim to
independence in two ways. First, it demonstrates that he is not simply repeating an
abstract ideology he has learned; his personal commitment to the choice of abstinence has
been tested in a context where religious and parental influences have difficulty
reaching — namely, his intimate interactions with girls. Second, it suggests that his
decision to remain abstinent is not ultimately a cover for an inability to relate to girls. In
this way, his claim that he has had opportunities to be sexual also shrinks the gap
between the discourse of conquest and piety. Although he does not go through with
having sex, he makes a limited claim to being a "player" by indicating that he can pique a
girl's interest.

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A different strategy that other pious virgins use is to acknowledge that their ideas

about virginity came from authority figures, but emphasize the process by which they

adopted these teaching as their own. For instance, when I ask Matthew how he learned

about the importance of virginity and staying pure, he couches his explanation in a

transformation story. The story details a progression that begins with Matthew

committing to purity out of obedience to his religious mentors, primarily his mother and

stepfather, but culminates in his deciding that purity and virginity are things he wants for

himself:

kinda did it over, like, you know, a process of time. You know, when I was saved,
you know, I still didn't know exactly — I just got saved, so I didn't really know what
was up. [Int: Right] Uhm, but, yeah, over a length of time, you know I was, you
know, I guess, you know, they were saying, you know, "You shouldn't have sex
before marriage." And I was, like, "You know, okay," you know, "I won't do that"
just because that was more of like a rule to me. [Int: Right] You know, "You
don't do that." And I was, like, "You know, that's fine, whatever." And then, but
then over a length of time a started thinking, you know, I don't want a kid, so I
don't want to do that just because I don't want to. It's not that it's a rule, it's that I
don't want to. I believe that's what God, you know, wants for me. So that, you
know, is over a length of time.
(Matthew: 15-year-old, White, virgin)

Matthew admits that his commitment to virginity was not, initially, an independent

choice; he accepted it because it was "more of like a rule to [him]." This dependent state

represents only the starting point of his story, however. As the story progresses "over a

length of time," Matthew reflects on his attitudes toward paternity and his sense of God's

plan for him. He determines that he does not want to have sex or compromise his purity,

regardless of whether others set these commitments up as rules or not. Constructing this

story, therefore, allows Matthew to do more than assert that his choice of virginity is an

independent one. It provides a dramatic and undeniable contrast between his present

state of independence with his former one of dependence. The story asserts that Matthew

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is not the dependent person he once was, and he can never go back to that state because
of the personal, intentional growth that he made happen. In this way, Matthew's claim to
independence may be as strong or stronger than that of guys who do not identify with an
initial state of dependence because his transformation story creates an insurmountable
distance from that dependence.

The cases of Sean and Matthew demonstrate two very different strategies for
asserting independence. Whereas Sean describes actual opportunities he had had to be
sexual and emphasizes his ability to resist temptation, Matthew focuses on the
philosophical process through which he internalized his commitment to virginity. These
two diverse examples thus demonstrate the variety of strategies pious virgins can bring to
bear on this narrative challenge, at the same time that it confirms the relevance of
independence to these guys' identity agendas. Expecting that they may be seen as
followers at a point in the life course that practically demands rebellion, they expend
considerable energy to construct independence in their narratives.

Conclusion

The preceding discussion demonstrates clearly that guys who articulate the
discourses of relationship and piety face narrative challenges that are qualitatively
different, but no less pressing, than those who adopt the discourse of conquest. Indeed,
the challenges that confront the former group are largely a product of the ways in which
their orientations to sexual decision making differ from the conquest discourse.
Particularly among committed virgins, guys' efforts to construct themselves as ones who
belong, as masculine, and as independent are complicated by their awareness that the
discourse of conquest provides the mainstream responses to these identity agendas.

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Consequently, the narrative challenges of adherents to the discourses of piety and
relationship are largely struggles for legitimacy, battles to stake out underappreciated
ground. In the process, guys often have to choose between completely rejecting
privileged avenues for meeting identity agendas, or trying to construct interpretations of
their identities that draw on the resources of the dominant discourse. Pious virgins, for
instance, must adopt one of two mutually exclusive strategies. They can assert that they
belong in terms that minimize the difference between being sexually active and having
opportunities for sex, thereby associating themselves with dominant modes of belonging.
Alternatively, they can reject the relationship between the display of heterosexual ity and
belonging altogether, and affirm that they belong on other terms, such as their association
with a religious community.

Similar choices face committed virgins as they seek to construct masculine
identities: By virtue of their decision to remain abstinent, they place themselves in
opposition to hegemonic masculinity, which privileges sexual conquest over relationships
or religious principles. But how do they position themselves with respect to gender after
rejecting privileged definitions of manhood? Do they construct alternative masculinities
founded on the sense of responsibility, interconnection, and caring that underlie their
commitments to virginity, or do they renounce the relevance of masculinities altogether
and stake out a precarious position outside of the gender order? My analysis does not
suggest any ready guidelines for choosing between strategies, as each approach brings
with it its own pitfalls and rhetorical struggles. It does, however, make those pitfalls and
struggles visible. As a result, it brings depth and specificity to our understanding of the
difficulties of articulating a subordinate discourse.

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My examination of the struggles faced by guys who articulate the discourses of
piety and relationship as they seek to manage the mediating effects of belong,
masculinity, and independence brings my substantive analysis to a close. It is, literally,
the final chapter in the story of how these guys construct their identities in the process of
explaining their sexual decisions to me. It is not, however, the final chapter of my study
of that story. What remains is for me to review the analytical tale that I have told and
explore what can be learned from it, what it lacks, and, most importantly, what I and
others can do with that information. The next and last chapter is devoted to these tasks.

CHAPTER 8
REFLECTIONS ON NARRATIVE AND IDENTITY

At the start, I pointed out that much of our understanding of life comes to us
through stories, and I noted that a research report like this one is, itself, another story,
albeit one that aspires to convey systematic, empirical knowledge, perhaps even a form of
truth. In keeping with this openness about the constructed nature of research knowledge,
I think it is appropriate at this juncture to reflect critically on the story I have told and
explore how it has been constructed.

Reorientation

The first point that becomes evident upon reflection is that this story is not the one
I initially planned to tell. When I envisioned this study and began conducting interviews
for it, I expected that it would focus on the stories young men told that exemplified their
sexual decision making. It soon became clear, however, that stories carried a relatively
small portion of the burden of meaning-making in the guys' narratives. I took a step
back, then, and began to think about the narrative resources guys had at their disposal.
These resources could be used to construct stories, but they could also be arranged
meaningfully in other ways that typically slipped through the net cast by narrative
researchers who fixate on stories. Discourses, as repositories of narrative resources,
came to the fore, and the focus of the analysis shifted from the story ing of sexual decision
making to the production of approaches to sexual decision making through the
articulation and management of discourse.

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This analytical reorientation facilitated a particularly deliberate examination of
the constituent elements of the guys' narrative practice. On the side of narrative
resources, I traced the contours of three discourses of sexual decision making (plus a
horizon of meaning) suggested by the guys' ways of talking about sex, virgins, virginity,
girls, manhood, and other aspects relevant to sexuality. Then I attended to the guys'
active use of these resources by identifying five primary narrative strategies they
employed in constructing their sexual identities. Isolating discourses and discursive
strategies from their context in the guys' talk was an artifice, but it provided the
necessary background for an analysis of the guys' narrative practices — that is, how they
drew on both discourses-in-practice (narrative resources) and discursive practices
(narrative strategies) to make meaning.

When I turned my attention to narrative practice, it was evident that the guys I
interviewed confronted issues that were unique to them as young males. In particular,
three pressing identity concerns — masculinity, belonging, and independence — mediated
how they articulated the discourses of sexual decision making. That is to say, in the
process of accounting for their decisions regarding sexual behavior, the guys were also
inclined to manage discursive resources so that the identity they ascribed to themselves
projected a form of masculinity, a sense of belonging, and a degree of independence. The
challenges the guys faced in this effort differed depending on the discourse and the
discourse mediator (i.e., masculinity, belonging, or independence) in question.
Examining how guys' sought to resolve these challenges in their narratives thus provided
a natural organizing principle for my study of their narrative practices.

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So, starting from the simple ideas that it makes sense to explore young men's
sexual decisions on their own terms and that doing so would shed light on their strategies
for self-presentation, I developed a rather complex analytical framework. The products
of the consequent analysis can, however, be presented in relatively simple terms.

First, it is clear that the discourse of conquest holds a preeminent position among
the three discourses for these guys because the orientation to girls, sex, virginity, and
manhood it offers is consistent with popular, well-publicized images of adolescent life
and how boys should live it. When guys construct their sexual identities, they necessarily
account for the position they stake out vis-a-vis the discourse of conquest.

Similarly, masculinity appears to be the most pressing of the three identity
concerns that mediate the guys' articulations of the discourses. It raises the greatest
number of narrative challenges and is the target of some of the most complex narrative
practice. In confronting the narrative challenges associated with masculinity, guys also
variously construct, reinforce, and challenge a hierarchy of masculinities. The
hegemonic form at the top of this hierarchy is predicated on sex as an indication of
manhood, the importance of homosocial bonds between males, the denigration of
virginity, and the marginalization of girls. Guys who commit to virginity face the
greatest difficulty constructing a sense of masculinity against this ideal, but even guys
who aspire to identify with the hegemonic standard often find it riddled with
contradictions and hazards. Concern with masculinity also contributes to the importance
of the discourse of conquest, as that discourse provides the narrative resources for the
construction of hegemonic masculinity.

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Finally, although there is enormous creativity in the ways in which the guys draw
upon the five narrative strategies as they confront narrative challenges, there are some
commonalities, if not in their narrative practices, certainly in the strategies that support
those practices. In other words, we can speak in general terms of the guys' meta-
strategies for addressing narrative challenges. Regardless of the discourse mediator in
question or the discourse being articulated, guys appear to confront narrative challenges
by manipulating definitions and being selective about where they place emphasis.
Committed virgins redefine manhood, for instance. Guys who fear that their identity will
be seen as hypermasculine are selective about the aspects of the discourse of conquest
they articulate, and they distance themselves from certain features of hegemonic
masculinity in order to preserve a favorable identity. Whatever the narrative challenge,
the powers of language that these guys harness to their advantage are its abilities to make
distinctions, introduce shades of gray, and control which elements take the foreground
and which recede into the background.

This basic summary of the development and results of this study does not tell the
whole story, however. The project is multidimensional, and as such it is the product of
several interrelated stories, stories of discourse and narrative, masculinities, and
adolescent sexual decision making, and interviewing. In the remainder of this chapter. I
take a closer look at each of these stories more or less individually, with an eye toward
what can be learned from them, what they lacked, and how they might be improved in
future efforts to examine the sexual identities of adolescent, heterosexual males.

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Discourse and Narrative

In order to facilitate my examination of narrative practice, I took the bold step in
this study of trying to define discourses of sexual decision making. I called this effort an
attempt to "give form to the formless" because discourses are typically treated as
invisible repositories of meaning that exist only in the traces — instances of language
use — that simultaneously construct, activate, and refer to them. Success in this sort of
endeavor is not easy to document. I would argue, though, that the consistency in
perspective across elements of the same discourse and the conflicts among discourses I
demonstrated are a good indication that I have identified relatively distinct "systems of
meaning." Furthermore, I think my strategy of giving shape to each discourse by
identifying representative articulations of constituent elements (e.g., sex, virginity, girls,
others) could serve as a model for defining discourses of all kinds.

In addition to the possibility of defining discourses, I think this study also firmly
establishes the importance of the relational nature of discourses. The notion that
discourses can clash is not new. Foucault has shown the importance of conflicts between
discourses to social transformations in the prison system (1979), the treatment of mental
illness (1965/1988), and sexuality (1978/1990). But these clashes are on a broad socio-
historical scale. My analysis shows that on a micro-sociological level different
discourses do not clash recklessly, they are managed by individuals who recognize and
actively engage the different systems that exist for making meaning of the same
phenomena. Sometimes clashes are irreconcilable, but guys do sometimes succeed in
managing their articulations of different discourses in ways that stave off conflict,

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insulate their identities from the paradox of their multiple commitments, or otherwise use
the existence of multiple discourses to their advantage.

By illustrating this dynamic, my study brings new perspectives to both discourse
and narrative practice. Discourses, which Foucault tends to depict as detached from
everyday life, are shown here to be fundamental contributors to the construction of
meaning at the level of narrative. And while they represent competing orientations in
their "ideal" abstractions, their inherent differences and even their conflicts are open to
interpretation and revision through strategic narrative work. Thus, at the same time,
narrative practice is revealed to involve the management of competing discourses, not
just the production of stories. These new perspectives thus pave the way for more studies
of narrative that attend as much to speakers' selective articulation of various discourses
as to their storytelling.

The intense, creative narrative work done by the guys in this study also sheds new
light on established understandings of what is involved in moving through the life course.
The notion of "life transition" is common currency in most discussions of adolescence. It
suggests that the challenge of adolescence is essentially one of moving through time from
point A to point B and enduring or achieving a number of developmental milestones.
This study suggests that it is much more than this. Adolescence requires a great deal of
narrative work in the interest of navigating a veritable "sea" of discursive and semantic
possibilities, and each of these possibilities implicates the youths' identities in the courses
of action to which it relates. In other words, youth do not simply pass through the time
between childhood and adulthood the way a kitten grows into a cat. As human beings
who are self-reflective— albeit to varying degrees— they are at virtually every moment

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narrating their identities into being in ways designed to present a consistent identity
(Gergen & Gergen 1997), navigate the immediate narrative challenges posed by the
interview context, and meet the broader challenges raised by the identity agenda that
characterizes male adolescence. Orienting to adolescence solely in terms of recognizing,
achieving, and coping with various developmental milestones thus glosses over the
critical interpretive work youth do as they determine how to address these challenges of
adolescence. Just as this study shows the important interpretive work young men do with
respect to virginity loss, one could imagine other studies that would explore the
interpretive work involved in a whole host of other "milestones" of adolescence, such as
the experience of the bodily changes of puberty or the changes in social life that
accompany the deliberate "pairing off into heterosexual couples.

Masculinities

Because of the prominent role masculinity plays in guys' articulations of their
sexual selves, my examination of narrative practice in this context offers much to the
academic study of masculinities. Specifically, the current study contributes to our
understanding of the interplay of multiple masculinities, the construction of adolescent
masculinities, and methodological issues related to studying masculinities in interviews
with young guys.
The Interplay of Multiple Masculinities

The well-established notion that masculinities exist in a state of competitive
hierarchy has been demonstrated empirically in a number of ethnographic and historical
studies (Connell 1995; Espiritu 1998; Hayward & Mac an Ghaill 1997). These studies
examine how conflict between groups of men or boys grows out of and is fought in terms

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of their differing ways of being masculine. The analytical focus on group behavior in
these examinations can create the impression that each individual involved is committed
fully to his group's masculinity. My research cautions us to be wary of such
assumptions, for it shows that individual guys typically negotiate and construct their
masculinities with full knowledge of the variety of discourses — and associated competing
notions of manhood — they can draw from. Believing that a combination of elements
from multiple discourses best reflects who they are as young men, some guys try to
construct "hybrid" masculinities on the basis of partial commitments to two seemingly
contradictory masculinities. Guys who present their sense of manhood in this way should
hardly be treated as members of some recognizable group masculinity. Instead, their
cases should be taken as evidence that, at the level of narrative practice, masculinities are
constructed as much through negotiation and integration as through competition.
Moreover, even when guys seek to articulate a single, consistent mode of
masculinity, such as the hegemonic standard, they rarely if ever achieve the kind of clean,
simple, and complete identification that is assumed in the ethnographic studies. Claiming
the qualities associated with hegemonic masculinity too stridently raises the specter of
being deemed hypermasculine, and all claims to it involve pressures to demonstrate that
one "measures up" in seemingly endless, sometimes contradictory ways. So although
there is value in studies that document the competition between masculinities that occurs
at the level of social groups, my research reminds us that these portrayals are narrative
productions. They gloss over any inconsistencies or complications in individuals'
commitments to particular masculinities to bring the story of group contentions into
sharper focus. My research suggests that groups of men who identify or are identified

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with a specific mode of masculinity should, at best, be thought of as representing clusters
of masculinities that coalesce around the target masculinity. In other words, each is not a
paragon of that masculinity, and, indeed, no one man is likely to be. Rather, the qualities
that describe that masculinity emerge when the men's individual enactments of manhood
are considered collectively. Being aware of the disconnect between collective
representations and individual enactments of masculinities is important because it points
to narrative practice as a site where established masculinities can be resisted or
destabilized, even in the absence of the kind of collective challenge highlighted by other
researchers.
The Construction of Adolescent Masculinities

In addressing the interplay of multiple masculinities, I have already touched upon
two important features of adolescent males' active construction of masculinities that
emerged from this research. First, guys typically construct their masculinities with an
awareness of the multiple discourses from which they can draw meaning-making
resources. In other words, they understand both the terms upon which their own
masculinity is based and several other ways of constructing manhood that they have
eschewed. This point anticipates the second, which is that guys sometimes construct
their masculinities from multiple discourses through a delicate process of selective
articulation and narrative management. These two aspects of the construction process
remind us that young men are not cultural dopes. They do not simply align themselves
with a particular discourse and articulate the notion of manhood that follows logically
from it. They select narrative resources from the available discourses, modify them as
needed, and assemble them with an eye toward producing the most effective, positive

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picture of themselves that responds to the conversation's going concerns. In this context,
ambiguity and contradiction in self-presentations are as much responses to limitations in
the resources for meaning-making as evidence of "failure" to construct a "consistent"
masculine identity.

With respect to the construction of masculinities, this study also provides a new
understanding of how inequities between masculinities are managed. As I mentioned
previously, the discourse of conquest and the hegemonic mode of masculinity it supports
represent the standard against which other approaches to sexual decision making and
manhood are judged. Consequently, those who construct masculinities from the
resources offered by the discourses of piety and relationship find that they must account
for the masculinity they did not construct (one consistent with the discourse of conquest)
in the process of articulating the one they claim. The narrative work they do in this
regard not only provides concrete evidence of the hierarchy of masculinities, it also offers
a glimpse into the strategies of narrative resistance devised by foes of hegemonic
masculinity.

In many cases, resistance involves an assertion of a different definition of
manhood, the construction of an alternative masculinity. What it really means to be a
man, these guys say, is to be more prescient of the long-term consequences of present
actions, deliberate about one's choices, self-aware, resistant to peer pressure, or cognizant
of the social or religious implications of intercourse. By and large these redefinitions are
predicated on knowledge and self-control. From this perspective, pious and relationship
virgins are better men than those who aspire to hegemonic standards because their
behavior is guided by their intellectual or spiritual interests, rather than libidinal ones

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thrust upon them by peers or the media. Recognizing these terms as the foundation of
these alternative masculinities should allow researchers conducting future studies on
adolescent males to rapidly identify them through their points of conflict with other
constructions of manhood, particularly hegemonic masculinity.

Other guys resist hegemonic masculinity by claiming a position outside the
gender order, an approach that is similar to the move toward "color blindness" that some
people, most often Whites, espouse as the answer to racial tensions. In both cases, people
who generally advocate equality and reject any intention to oppress others argue that the
best way to end the inequality in question is to deny the relevance of the category on
which it is based. The philosophy purports to be profoundly humanistic: We need to
stop treating each other as White people, Black people, men, or women, and relate to one
another just as people.

In race and ethnic studies, color blindness has been criticized as a naive— if often
well-intentioned— maneuver of the dominant group (Whites) that allows them to
maintain their power and privilege without engaging the institutional racism on which it
is based. In a very basic sense, this criticism can be leveled at gender blindness as well.
A male who repudiates the importance of gender as a social category obscures his male
privilege and the subjugation of women on which it is founded. The similarity ends
there, however, because appeals to gender and color blindness resonate differently within
their respective dominant groups. Within the dominant White racial group, renouncing
the importance of color is typically met with benign acceptance, except in communities
that espouse White supremacy. Within the gender order, however, a guy rejecting
masculinity is explicitly or implicitly attacking the masculinities hierarchy and directing

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the strongest assault against hegemonic masculinity. We can thus expect that the attack
will be repulsed in the same way that the dominant masculinity subjugates subordinate
masculinities. On a personal level this occurs through belittling (particularly
feminization and homophobic taunts), intimidation, and physical violence.

In terms of racial politics, the nearest equivalent to this scenario might be light-
skinned Blacks — often disparaged by dark-skinned Blacks for being "too
White" — arguing that color is irrelevant. Unless the more dominant group (i.e., dark-
skinned Blacks; guys who claim hegemonic masculinity) join the subordinates in their
renunciation, all the subordinates have succeeded in doing is relinquishing their position
(i.e., their Blackness, their masculinity). But here, again, the analogy breaks down.
While a light-skinned Black might then develop alliances within the White community
and thus have his or her color blindness "rewarded" with some of the privileges of the
dominant group, a guy who renounces his masculinity has nowhere to go, except perhaps
to a group even more subordinated by gender categories, women. I am not suggesting
that men should be hesitant in any way to align with women. I am only pointing out that
a man's appeal to gender blindness does not benefit him in terms of power or status
within the gender order. Already marginalized by other men, if he denies the relevance
of masculinity, he seems to risk even greater isolation and powerlessness.

The one exception I can foresee to this downward spiral for gender-blind men is if
their closer affiliation with women prompts them to appreciate gender oppression and
join women in the fight against sexism. In this case, their individualized attacks against
hegemonic masculinity become part of a broader, sustained social effort to undermine the
institutional sexism that sustains that hegemony. At least one of the guys I talked to

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showed signs of making this shift. Of course, to achieve this, the same men can no
longer remain gender blind, they have begin to look at gender in a new way. If such
transformations are possible, then gender blindness might not be the subtle support of the
status quo that color blindness appears to be. Instead, it may be the indication of an
opportunity to help a man develop a positive, constructive relationship with feminism.
Masculinities and Method

Given that gender is best understood as situationally activated (Holstein 1987), I
could not be sure when I began this project that it would allow me to explore the
construction of masculinities as I hoped. I believed that topics like virginity and sexual
decisions were so saturated with gender connotations that they could not help but serve
my purpose, but I had to wait and see. For the most part, I would say my approach was
successful. Over the course of the study, however, difficulties associated with addressing
masculinities in interviews were exposed, and these deserve closer inspection.

First, guys have difficulty articulating what masculinity means to them. My
examination of masculinities did not depend on self-reports, of course, but I often asked
guys what being a man meant to them as a way of bringing masculinity to the fore of the
discussion. Some of the trouble they had may be a matter of their being young, new to
their own masculinities, and inexperienced at reflecting upon them. Some of the
difficulty may result from a lack of narrative sophistication, an issue I explore in the
section on interviewing. By and large, however, I think the trouble they had simply
shows that they are just like everyone else— scholars and laypersons alike— who finds it
challenging to relate this elusive, abstract concept to his or her everyday experience.
Asking guys to talk about their own masculinity puts them on the proverbial spot, and I

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think it would behoove me to prepare better strategies to help guys if I attempt to brook
the topic in the future. At this point, I can only speculate as to what those strategies
might be. One option might be asking about male role models. Given that masculinities
are largely produced and enacted for male audiences, another helpful strategy might be
encouraging guys to talk about situations that affected their standing among their male
peers. The key, I think, is to make the issue more relevant and less daunting to the guys
who face it. My experience with this study has demonstrated to me that that is not easy.
Getting at guys' sense of their own masculinity is important, however, so developing
these strategies is a high priority for me and should be for anyone who wants to explore
masculinities in an interview context.

Another limitation I see in this project with respect to the study of masculinities
has to do with the identification of types of masculinities from guys' articulations of the
three discourses. With my focus on the production of meaning at the level of narrative, I
think I have done a good job of demonstrating how guys "personalize" resources for
constructing masculinities through narrative practice. Such personalization can be
overemphasized, however, leading to the impression that all masculine identities are
distinct, individualized. One starts to imagine that there is little that is social about
masculinities at all, since each guy simply creates his own from available resources.

I have tried to prevent this misinterpretation by relating the narrative work of
individual guys to more or less cohesive modes of masculinity, such as hegemonic
masculinity and others I have called gentlemanly masculinity and relational masculinity.
But in retrospect, it seems to me that these notions of collective masculinity are
oversimplifications, and I believe I know why. I think my efforts were frustrated by the

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downside of what makes this study different from the ethnographic ones I mentioned
earlier. In discussing the interplay between masculinities, I argued that my focus on
narrative practice allowed me to see nuances in individual guys' production of
masculinities that were lost to researchers who remained fixed on the competition
between masculinities represented by different groups. By the same token, however, it
appears that my attention to narrative practice makes it difficult for me to see the
collective masculinities to which the guys I interviewed belong. Some of this limitation
might be circumvented by increasing the sample size. As I interviewed more guys,
distinct masculinities defined by race, class, religion, or attitudes toward girls might
emerge. Kathleen Gerson (1993) demonstrated that large sample sizes can accomplish
exactly this elaboration of masculinities in her narrative study of men, family, and work.
The fact that she had to interview 138 men to do it, however, may be an indication that a
interview-based, narrative approach simply is not as conducive to identifying collective
masculinities as other qualitative methods, such as ethnography.

Adolescent Males' Sexual Decision Making
Although I designed this study such that the investigation of guys' sexual decision
making was largely indivisible from issues of masculinities and narrative, the lessons we
can learn from these guys about their sexual decisions deserve their own spotlight. I
believe there are three fundamental things we hear when we listen to these guys'
narratives. First, they confirm that it is important to explore guys' strategies for making
sexual decisions. Second, some guys need strategies for coping with pressures to be
sexually active, and the kernels of these strategies can be found in the words of the guys
themselves. And lastly, guys' efforts to resist the undue influence of the discourse of

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conquest will continue to be an uphill battle unless they are supported by broader cultural
change. In the remainder of this section, I explore each of these lessons in turn, and,
where appropriate, I discuss changes they seem to warrant in adults' perspectives on
adolescent males and in public policy.

The current study demonstrates the value of eliciting narratives of sexual decision
making from adolescent males, although one might argue it does so in a negative way.
The narratives provide a glimpse of the social world within sexual decisions are made,
and this glimpse should give us pause. To be sure, there are enclaves in this world in
which girls are respected; love, connection, and even spirituality are central to bonds that
become sexual; and virginity is treated as a virtue at best and a nonissue at worst. But
these are only enclaves. Regardless of their own orientation to sexual decision making,
all of the guys I interviewed indicate that the heart of this male adolescent world is far
different. By their own accounts, this is a world saturated with sexism and homophobia
that not only goes unchallenged but is a social lubricant in male-to-male interactions. It
is a world suffused in myths and half-truths about girls, sex, and STDs, and it is
populated by other males — usually friends, but sometimes older brothers, fathers, and
uncles — who seem to feel a duty to ensure that their charges adopt the conquest discourse
and lose their virginity. Much of this boy culture is hazardous to girls, who become
pawns in guys' efforts to help other guys lose their virginity, are victimized by the sexual
double standard, or are derided as harpies that threaten the independence and brotherhood
of guys. Perhaps anyone, male or female, who has survived adolescence in an American
school has an inkling that this is how it is. However, narratives like the ones I have
collected give us the opportunity to look at it with new eyes and get beyond vapid cliches

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like "boys will be boys." They provide a starting point for a sincere, informed
examination of the ways in which the prominence of conquest-based interpretations of
girls, sex, and virginity impacts the everyday lives of young men and women. As such
they offer a vital contribution to existing efforts to develop programs and policy
interventions that promote greater sexual responsibility and appreciation of the
importance of paternity and fatherhood among young males (Sonenstein, Stewart.
Lindberg, Pernas, & Williams 1997).

These narratives also shed light on the oft-discussed issue of the pressure to be
sexually active among adolescent males. The conventional wisdom is that, regardless of
whether they are virgins, in a relationship, or known to have had intercourse with many
girls, guys continually receive the message from other guys that they should want sex and
be pursuing it and having it. There is certainly truth to this conventional wisdom. Guys
who articulate the discourse of conquest, in particular, report that they have contests to
see who can be more "successful" with girls, and peers can influence who guys have sex
with and how much value they place on relationships.

However, the conventional wisdom also includes the belief that virgins are
ostracized and derided as homosexuals because they are not having sex, and my
interviews suggest that this is not entirely true. While there are no doubt guys who have
been taunted for not having had sex and others who have perpetrated taunting for exactly
that reason, the narratives I studied suggest that one's sexual image, not actions, are what
counts in the social accounting scheme. In other words, since much of the behavior that
is presumed to carry so much importance is unverifiable, coping with the expectations of
the discourse of conquest is largely a dramaturgical and rhetorical accomplishment. It is

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not whether you are a virgin, but whether you act or talk like a virgin. Virgins and
nonvirgin alike need to present themselves as capable of "getting" a girl in order to avoid
criticism. In the final analysis, this distinction between actions and social act means that
what drives sex-related peer pressure among young men is not concern about virginity
status, but concern about heterosexuality. Within the realm dominated by the discourse
of conquest, there is room for guys who can attract girls but choose to avoid intercourse.
Derrick is a perfect example. There is no room, however, for guys who appear
disinterested by or inept at the pursuit of heterosexual "accomplishments."

In their everyday interactions, guys can and do insulate themselves from the
pressure by putting on a show of interest in and competence with heterosexual
pursuits — hence, the elaborate virginity status tests that purport to ferret out "fakers."
Talking to guys about how they identify virgins provides an indication of what
distinguishes a good act from a bad one. In general, the guys I interviewed suggest that
presenting a "successful" heterosexual identity involves appearing confident but not
boastful, keeping the language used in sex talk with other guys respectful, not letting sex
talk dominate one's conversation, and avoiding bravado when mentioning actual sexual
experiences. Being aware of these social performance elements could prove useful to
guys who feel powerless to confront sex-related peer pressures. Like light-skinned
Blacks who hide their heritage to gain acceptance in the White world, these affectations
may allow them to "pass" (Sanchez & Schlossberg 2001).

Unfortunately, "passing," whether it is done with respect to race or sexual
identity, is a very limited response to a problem. It can be an adequate coping
mechanism at the level of the individual, but it does nothing to combat the root social

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problem. In the case of the sex-related peer pressure faced by adolescent males, that
problem is homophobia. Consequently, if we want to help guys resist the discourse of
conquest and the pressure to be hetero sexual that it fosters, our focus needs to be squarely
on combating homophobia. While it is unrealistic to expect that public policy or
education will eradicate the human tendency to form in-groups and out-groups, we can
teach young people that it is unacceptable to form such groups on the basis of
presumptions about and prejudices toward another's sexual orientation. It is critical,
furthermore, that these efforts involve all youth — boys and girls, virgins and nonvirgins,
heterosexuals and nonheterosexuals — because the message will be ineffective if it
reaches just the victims and not the perpetrators of homophobia.

Giving youth the tools, knowledge, and social support to understand and combat
homophobia should help reduce the indignities guys visit on other guys, but by itself such
action is not enough to challenge the dominance of the discourse of conquest. Yet doing
so is critical, I think, for those who want to entice young men away from the discourse of
conquest toward other discourses, such as relationship or piety, or address the
dehumanizing effects the discourse can have on young women. Given the degree to
which the power of the conquest discourse is predicated on dehumanizing depictions of
girls and the feminization of other guys, any serious challenge to it needs to confront
sexism as well as homophobia.

Based on what the guys in this study have said, I think that two central elements
of any such challenge should be (1) working to counter the isolation from females that
guys tend to develop, as epitomized by male fraternities; and (2) advancing gender
awareness in much the same way that racial diversity is promoted. It seems to me that

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the tendency toward gender-based isolation needs to be disrupted consistently throughout
childhood. Coed sports and other games, curriculum that encourages cross-gender
interaction, and coed social events increase the chances that by the time boys reach
sexual maturity, they will have one or more Platonic, cross-gender friendships or at least
they will have had some memorable, positive experiences with girls that are not cast in a
sexual light. The goal is not to keep boys from forming homosocial groups, it is to
ensure that these interactions are balanced by others that include girls as equal
participants. To that end, coed programs should include safeguards to ensure that boys
do not dominate activities and marginalize the girls.

As important as these opportunities for cross-gender interaction are, encouraging
youth to reflect upon them and learn from them is even more so. Gender awareness
programs would foster these activities, with the fundamental goal of helping boys and
girls recognize their similarities and appreciate and respect their differences. I anticipate
that such programs would explore the sexual double standard that girls face, foster critical
discussion of the different ways that boys and girls tend to garner social status, and
examine the nature and consequences of stereotyping and dehumanization. Coupled with
a greater emphasis on having boys and girls, young men and women, work and play
together, these programs could go a long way toward mitigating the sexism that, along
with homophobia, is the crux of the social power of the discourse of conquest.

Interviewing

It is a fundamental assumption of proponents of active interviewing that
interviewer and participant construct narratives collaboratively. The power of this
assumption is that it shifts the interviewer's focus away from concern with

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"contaminating" the information he or she wishes to "extract" from the participant and
toward facilitating the production of stories grounded in the participant's experiences and
relevant to the topic. This shift does not mean, however, that the interviewer can be lax
about his or her role. Indeed, facilitating stories can be as difficult as satisfying the
traditional interviewing mandate to not interfere, and it requires a more deliberate
engagement in the interview process. In hindsight, two pressing methodological issues
emerge from this project and both implicate the role of the active interviewer.
Limits to Storytelling

Given that I had originally planned this project as a study of stories, a
methodological question that begs for attention is why the stories these guys told were,
by and large, quite limited in length, depth, and importance to the meaning-making that
occurred during the interviews. By raising this question, I do not mean to suggest that the
limitations of the stories represent a failure. On the contrary, I think it forced me to look
closer at other ways that individuals construct meaning in narrative and as a result
develop a new appreciation of the nonstoried aspects of discursive practice. Still,
narrative analysts frequently note the centrality of stories to people's appreciation and
sharing of experience, so the fact that stories did not assume a prominent role in most of
my interviews warrants consideration.

It seems to me that there are two fundamental factors that could have contributed
to this seemingly aberrant result. One deals with me, the interviewer; the other shifts the
focus to the guys I interviewed. For my part, it is possible that aspects of my
interviewing technique, demeanor, and efforts to establish rapport with the guys inhibited
them from telling more elaborate, specific, and meaningful stories. With respect to

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technique, experts in qualitative research interviewing stress the importance of being
prepared, asking open-ended questions, and being willing to relinquish the role of the
interviewer so as to empower the participant (Eder & Fingerson 2002). Indeed, this last
imperative is at the heart of the conception of the interview as active (Holstein &
Gubrium 1995). As I reflect on the interviews I conducted, I am confident that I was
responsive to each of these basic elements.

At a more esoteric level, however, there may have been shortcomings in my
technique that could have inhibited guys' storytelling. First, in their examination of
methodological concerns particular to interviewing men, Schwalbe and Wolkomoir
(2002) indicate that some men assert control of potentially threatening interview
situations by becoming "minimizers." That is, they provide terse, uninformative answers
to questions and resist requests for elaboration. Schwalbe and Wolkomir suggest that this
behavior can be common among male interview participants because men may seek to
"protect a masculine self by maintaining control or revealing no vulnerabilities or
uncertainties" (p. 209).

It is difficult to say whether (or which of) the reticent boys I encountered should
be categorized as minimizers, since the term references motivations that are ultimately
unknowable. Still, many of my questions were directed specifically at the boys'
masculinity, at a time in the boys' lives when they themselves were likely to be unsure of
the "quality" of their presentation of that aspect of self. These conditions suggest that
gender may well have been at the heart of some boys' reticence. To the extent that this is
true, it represents a failure on my part on two fronts. First, I should have recognized that
the boys' hesitancy might be part of their masculine self-presentation, and, therefore, was

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important as data. Second, during the interview I should have implemented some of the
strategies for reducing the masculinity-related anxiety of minimizers identified by
Schwalbe and Wolkomir. By circling back through earlier parts of the interview,
drawing on what other boys had said, and relinguishing signs of my status as interviewers
(e.g., tape recorder, notepad), I might have made some of the minimizers feel more
comfortable, more in control, and more like they were in a position to teach me. In this
way, their need to assert their masculinity would become an asset to the interview. The
result might have been fuller answers and, perhaps, more stories.

An essay by Susan Chase (1995b) about interviewing for narrative analyses
reveals another possible limitation in my interview technique. Chase distinguishes
between stories and reports. Stories are what interviewers are after, and she says they
happen when narrators take responsibility for making the relevance of life events clear to
the interviewer. When this occurs, the result is detailed, often impassioned, stories of
actual past events. By contrast, if interviewers fail to get participants to "take
responsibility for the meaning of their talk" (p. 3), the result is often an impersonal
chronicle of events that can degenerate into generalities. Chase argues that well-meaning
interviewers elicit reports instead of stories when they ask questions that orient more
toward their scholarly, sociological interests than toward the experiences of the
participant. In my interviews for this study, I was careful to word my questions in
everyday speech, urge guys to tell stories, and encourage them to ask questions or request
clarification during the interview. In some cases, however, I think my pursuit of a
preestablished notion of what sexual decisions entail (e.g., dating experiences, a
perception of girls, a degree of concern about virginity status) intimated to the guys that

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my interest in their stories was secondary to my desire to get this information, and they
jettisoned storytelling and lapsed dutifully into reporting mode.

When it is phrased in terms of deficiencies in my interviewing technique, the
limits of the stories the guys told do seem like a product of failure, even if I ultimately
transformed it into an asset for the project. It is possible, however, that some or all of this
situation was due not to a problem on my part, but to limitations in these young men's
competencies with language. As I raise this issue, I want to be clear that I am not
suggesting that these guys were somehow cognitively impaired. I did not screen
participants for cognitive deficits or test for intelligence quotient, so I can only give my
impressions. But based on my own casual observations, I would say that the guys I
interviewed displayed a range of intelligence that is likely consistent with the variation
among normal adolescents. The issue is not mental capacity or intelligence, but what I
would call narrative sophistication. Some people are simply more articulate than others.
Their superior abilities with language translate into narratives that are more coherent,
involve more adept use of narrative strategies, and perhaps include more elaborate
meaning-making through stories. There were certainly varying degrees of narrative
sophistication exhibited in the narratives I collected for this study, and this variation is to
be expected. What makes the issue more than a question of individual competencies,
however, is that the narratives of a majority of the guys were relatively unsophisticated,
with a limited use of stories. Given this fact, it makes sense to at least raise the
possibility that for whatever reason— be it development or social— most adolescent males
are not sufficiently adept at using the most complex narrative strategies, such as
storytelling, to articulate their sexual decision making and their sexual selves.

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The notion of narrative sophistication opens up all sorts of questions about child
development, language learning, the acquisition of rhetorical skill, and how that skill may
vary by subject and the context of narrative production. I do not pretend to have the
answers to these questions, but they are certainly ones that should interest narrative
researchers. At the same time that we celebrate and base research agendas on people's
seemingly inherent status as narrators (Plummer 1995), we should recognize that not all
narrators are created equal, and the capacity to narrate may be subject to social
stratification. In the case of this study, that recognition means that the limited nature of
these guys use of stories is attributable as much to the lack of narrative sophistication
adolescent males bring to this topic as to any deficiencies in my interviewing technique.

All that being said, I think it behooves interviewers to assume that the people they
interview have the highest levels of linguistic competency and to focus on developing
their abilities at eliciting stories, rather than blaming participants for narratives that lack
sophistication. Taking this tact strikes me as the best way to ensure that participants
reach their potential in terms of narrative sophistication and the only way that systematic
differences in sophistication, if they exist, will come to light.
Power Dynamics

Another methodological issue that deserves comment is the impact of my
presence as the interviewer, particularly in terms of the power dynamic that is involved
when an adult interviews youths. Much of my interaction with each guy before the
interview began "officially" was designed to equalize that dynamic. I tried to talk
informally with each guy about what was going on with them and find out about their
interests. When I prepared them for the interview, I told them what types of questions to

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expect, emphasized the informal nature of our discussion, told them there were no right
or wrong answers, and even gave them an opportunity to look over my interview outline.
Donna Eder and Laura Fingerson (2002), who write specifically about interviewing
children and adolescents, point to these sorts of efforts as ways of encouraging what they
call "reciprocity," which helps to minimize the power differential between adult
interviewers and young participants.

They suggest that there is more that I could have done, however. Other strategies
that they recommend for building reciprocity are conducting action-oriented research that
includes youth in improving their own lives, using multiple methods, and interviewing in
groups. Reformulating this project as action-oriented research would be a particularly
challenging endeavor that I suspect would encounter huge obstacles. First, I wonder how
young guys could be convinced that talking frankly about their strategies of sexual
decision making would improve their everyday lives. Second, including some sort of
real-life "intervention" into a project that focuses on adolescent male sexuality would
likely make the already difficult task of recruiting participants more so. Still, the notion
that guys might be involved in thinking reflectively about their own sense of manhood
and how it relates to their sexuality is intriguing. Marsiglio (1998) has suggested using a
phenomenological approach to encourage men to develop their procreative
consciousness, which includes an awareness of the links between sex, birth control, and
paternity. I used a similar strategy in these interviews when I asked guys to imagine
remaining virgin past their adolescence, but linking that kind of active interviewing to
guys' real life situations— of taunting those perceived as gay, for example— might be a
step toward the promise of greater reciprocity offered by action-oriented research.

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Conducting group interviews and using multiple methods — the other reciprocity-
building strategies suggested by Eder and Fingerson — are excellent ideas that I could
implement in future projects easily. Although interviewing in groups would likely inhibit
guys from telling more personal, potentially embarrassing stories, that loss might well be
offset by potential increases in participants' level of comfort and candor on less personal
topics, like girls, sex talk, and masculinity. Plus, if participants were recruited from
guys' preexisting friendship groups, the group interview might provide visible,
analyzable examples of guys' interactions within male fraternities.

Whether the interviews are in groups or one-on-one, complementing them with
other methods has enormous potential, I think, and it is something that I would pursue in
any subsequent work on this topic. In particular, I am eager to find a way to combine
interviews with participant observation, so that I can examine narrative practice in guys'
everyday interactions, not just their conversations with me. The enormous importance
accorded the male fraternity by many of the guys in this study suggests that these all-
male social groups are fertile grounds for field work. A study of an all-male club or
sports team, for example, could focus on "locker room talk," which might involve
informal discussions of sexual decision making.

There is, however, one aspect of group interviews or participant observation that
gives me pause. Several times in the previous chapters I have noted research that
suggests that guys construct and display masculinities primarily for the benefit of other
guys. That proposition has been substantiated in this study, I think, by the ways some
guys reported altering their sexual or social behavior to satisfy the expectations of their
male fraternity. This dynamic means that when we conduct group interviews or observe

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male social groups, we only have access to the masculine display, never to an
individual's sense of self in the absence of pressures to "perform" masculinity. The
narratives that we collect in this context are no less valid than ones generated in one-on-
one interviews, but we must be aware that they are qualitatively different. For this
reason, a method that combines group interviews or observation with individual
interviews might be the most fruitful avenue for expansions of this project.

Final Thoughts

The multiple, interrelated stories that comprise this study can each teach us
something. The story of discourse and narrative demonstrates the interplay between
discourses that are seemingly in competition, and it forces us to rethink our understanding
of how life course transitions transpire. The story of men and masculinities offers an
appreciation of how the hierarchy of masculinities plays out at the level of narrative and a
glimpse at the struggles of those who align with subjugated masculinities. The story of
adolescent males' sexual decision making demonstrates the value of analyzing narratives
on the topic. It also provides us knowledge we can use to try to foster more inclusive,
humane approaches to sexuality among future generations of young men. Finally, the
story of interviewing encourages us to reflect on the limitations of what I have
accomplished here and offers some ideas on how future studies can be more successful at
developing rapport with guys and soliciting stories from them.

I anticipate that all of these lessons will be helpful to me as I continue to pursue a
research agenda that emphasizes masculinities, sexualities, and qualitative methods. In
particular, this study suggests that in future projects I might (1) explore the questions of
narrative sophistication and recollections of virginity loss experiences by examining the

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sexual decision-making narratives of men in their early twenties; (2) study the link
between homophobia and developing masculinities by analyzing the narratives of high
school life told by gay men; or (3) conduct a comparative, ethnographic study of the
leisure activities of several groups of young, single adult men to examine the enactment
of masculinities in a "natural" setting and see what part sex talk plays in it. Whatever
direction I choose, I hope that other researchers will find the lessons I have learned here
relevant and bring them to bear on their research as well.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Mark David Cohan was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and raised in Ormond
Beach, Florida. In 1989 he graduated with high honors from the University of Florida
with a degree in English. For the next several years, he worked as a medical editor at the
Anesthesiology Department of the Health Science Center at the University of Florida
before beginning graduate work in the University of Florida Department of Sociology in
1993. He received his master's degree in 1995, and his master's thesis was subsequently
published in The Sociological Quarterly under the title, "Political Identities and Political
Landscapes: Men's Narrative Work in Relation to Women's Issues." Since the
publication of his thesis, he has co-authored numerous articles on fatherhood and
qualitative methods with William Marsiglio and presented on various aspects of active
interviewing and interpretive sociology at regional sociological meetings. He currently
lives in Seattle, Washington, with his fiancee, Dr. Randi Lincoln, where he is a part-time
instructor for Western Washington University.

296

I certify that I have read this study and that in my opinion it conforms to
acceptable standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Gubrium, Chairperson
Professor of Sociology

William Marsigli
Professor of Sociology

UZL-

^&44>^f4t*sZ

;rnan Vera
Professor of Sociology

a*s

Berardo
ssor of Sociology

iUeu.

Rodman B. Webb

Professor of Educational Psychology

This dissertation was submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Department of
Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and to the Graduate School and
was accepted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy.

August 2002

Dean, Graduate School

LD
1780
20 M

Q.b1S

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

3 1262 08555 0332

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