ABSTRACT
In the context of sex education literature, however, virginity, and particularly the abstinence from sexual activity it entails, can have connotations of religion or conservatism. This chapter begins with seventeen-year-old Catholic Australian Italian student Josie refuses the sexual advances of her 'Anglo' boyfriend Jacob, whose anger demonstrates a failure to recognise her choice to have sex on her own terms, where and when it is right for her. It compares Josie and Gemma's positioning as 'religious' and 'secular', terms which inform understandings of virginity and the closely associated term abstinence. The chapter suggests that when Josie herself experiences a more embodied sexuality the rational arguments she advocates become more difficult to sustain, revealing some of the complex and potentially irrational dimensions of sexuality. It identifies the multiple intimacies that exist side-by-side in these representations, which may be missed in a sex education which prioritises reason, rationality, or pleasure.
