Attn. Misia

[redbird]

Here's an interesting definition implied by a CNN story on pledging virginity:

"Among virgins, boys who have pledged abstinence were four times more likely to have had anal sex than teens who have remained abstinent but not as part of a pledge, according to the study. Overall, pledgers were six times more likely to have oral sex."

Comments

[misia.livejournal.com]

Bruckner & Bearman are studying abstinence pledges, which are specifically heterocentric and focus on PiV intercourse (through language about "Biblical marriage relationships and the like) as the crux of their definition of "abstinence," so, yeah.

It is however quite true that one of the problems that continually plagues the whole "abstinence" movement is that they never -- apparently for fear of saying too much by doing so -- articulate precisely what the dimensions of "abstinence" are supposed to be and the entirety of what it is supposed to entail... leads to all sorts of interesting casuistry & weirdness, as you point out.