How to Lose Your Virginity

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How to Lose Your Virginity

A film by Therese Shechter

US | 2013 | 66 minutes | Color | DVD | Order No. 131114

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SYNOPSIS

Female virginity. The US government has spent 1.5 billion dollars promoting it. It has fetched $750,000 at auction. There is no official medical definition for it. And 50 years after the sexual revolution, it continues to define young women’s morality and self-worth.

This hilarious, eye-opening, occasionally alarming documentary uses the filmmaker’s own path out of virginity to explore its continuing value in our otherwise hypersexualized society. Layering vérité interviews and vintage sex-ed films with candid self-reflection and wry narration, Shechter reveals myths, dogmas and misconceptions behind this "precious gift." Sex educators, porn producers, abstinence advocates, and outspoken teens share their own stories of having - or not having - sex.

In a culture where "Be sexy, but don’t have sex" is the overwhelming message to young women, the film goes through the looking glass to understand a milestone almost everyone thinks about but no one actually understands.

PRESS

"In spite of the fascinating and telling historical context, the true triumph of HOW TO LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY is in how relatable it is."

Feministing

"...ambitious but successful film...HOW TO LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY is very well done…approaches the difficult subject with warmth and humor. I recommend it for anyone who desires a serious, grown-up, critical overview of the issue of sex and virginity in contemporary America."

Jack David Eller Anthropology Review

"Entertaining and thought-provoking, this is recommended."

Video Librarian

“Having demonstrated the ability to craft an engaging and entertaining film [I Was A Teenage Feminist] and to effectively incorporate her own story without losing sight of the broader issues, Shechter seems like the perfect filmmaker to tackle the complexities around virginity. It’s a topic that far too many people are obsessed about – probably for all the wrong reasons – so the film is sure to stimulate interest and provoke heated debate."

Basil Tsoikos All Things Documentary

"If you, like me, are an avid fan of Shechter’s 2005 film I Was a Teenage Feminist - a spirited exploration of the trials and tribulations of contemporary feminism - then you too may enjoy her personal and thoughtful approach to her current documentary-in-progress."

Ms. Magazine

"Shechter covers all of her bases, and leaves no sexual stone unturned...Her ability to teach, dismantle, expose and explore is remarkable."

Leigh Kolb Bitch Flicks

"Virginity is a powerful and malleable concept, as evidenced by the teenagers in Therese Shechter’s smart, funny and provoking documentary."

The Huffington Post

"Shechter gets us talking about our V-cards (whether we’ve cashed them in or whether we’re holding on tight) and creates an important documentary in the process."

Bust Magazine

“Therese Shechter thinks about sex a lot. A lot…her work actually tackles one of the last taboos in our culture’s discussion of sex – the deliberate decision not to participate in it."

Forbes

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Therese Shechter

Therese Shechter is an award-winning filmmaker and the founder of the production company Trixie Films. Over the past 20 years, she's created a body of work that fuses humor, activism, and personal storytelling to explore the expectations around women’s roles and identities.

Therese’s most recent film MY SO-CALLED SELFISH LIFE, is a revolutionary documentary about one of our greatest social taboos: choosing not to become a mother. The film is the third in her series of documentaries investigating all that is sacred about womanhood, including I WAS A TEENAGE FEMINIST and HOW TO LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY.
Her documentaries have screened on television, streamed online, and appeared in film festivals from Rio de Janeiro to Istanbul to Seoul. Her work is in the collections of hundreds of universities, non-profits, and libraries, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, Elle, and Ms. Magazine, among others. (08/07)

Subject Areas

I Was a Teenage Feminist

Why is it that some young, independent, progressive women in today's society feel uncomfortable identifying with the F-word? Join filmmaker Therese Shechter as she takes a funny, moving and very personal journey into the heart of feminism. Armed with a video camera and an irreverent sense of humor, Shechter talks with feminist superstars, rowdy frat boys, liberated Cosmo girls and Radical Cheerleaders, all in her quest to find out whether feminism can still be a source of personal and political power. In this enlightening documentary, screened worldwide, Shechter hunts down the answers to questions many women are grappling with about their roles and identities in today’s society: Is feminism dead, hibernating, or trapped below the radar? Have the goals of the ‘70s been accomplished or have feminism’s opponents appropriated and denigrated the movement beyond all recognition? If so, how did this happen? Do you have to be political to be a feminist? And do you even have to be female? With home movies clips of Shechter as a budding feminist, archival materials from old health classes, and music by Ani DiFranco, Lavababy, Gina Young, Moxie Starpark and the legendary Helen Reddy, I WAS A TEENAGE FEMINIST redefines the F-Word for a new generation.

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The Education of Shelby Knox

Winner of the Sundance Best Cinematography Award and the SXSW Audience Award, WMM is pleased to be finally releasing this fascinating and powerful documentary. Lubbock, Texas has an abstinence-only sex education policy in its schools and some of the highest teen pregnancy and STD infection rates in the nation. Shelby Knox is a devout Baptist teenager who has pledged abstinence until marriage. When her interest in politics leads her to get involved in a campaign for comprehensive sex education in her town's public schools, and then to a fight for a gay-straight alliance, she must make a choice: Stand by and let others be hurt, or go against her parents, her pastor, and her peers to do what she knows is right. THE EDUCATION OF SHELBY KNOX is an exceptionally timely and intimate look at the cultural wars from the perspective of a young woman’s life. The support her conservative family provides is an example of how a healthy democracy could look given the time and will to listen.

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Wired for Sex, Lies and Power Trips

An inside look at the culture of sexual harassment and bullying widespread among many teens today, this unique and compelling program examines the price that adolescents, especially girls, pay to be cool, hip and popular in our brave new wired world. Questioning and confronting their own and each other’s stereotypes and assumptions, three different groups of culturally diverse teenagers share personal stories of navigating their hyper-sexualized, high-tech environment, where the online posting of racy photos, raunchy videos, and explicit gossip and lies, is as commonplace as bombardment by provocative media messages that degrade and objectify women. In its unflinching exposé, the film takes us on a journey that includes candid personal interviews and diary excerpts, images from computer screens and youth nightclubs, and clips from short fictional films that the three group’s members have made about sexual and social pressures on their lives. Told through the authentic voices of teens, this essential tool for promoting awareness and change is must-see viewing for school and youth groups, media studies and women’s studies educators, educators, counselors, parents, and health care professionals.

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Scarlet Road

Impassioned about freedom of sexual expression, Australian sex worker Rachel Wotton specializes in a long overlooked clientele— people with disabilities. Working in New South Wales—where prostitution is legal— Rachel’s philosophy is that human touch and sexual intimacy can be the most therapeutic aspects to our existence. Indeed, she is making a dramatic impact on the lives of her customers, many of whom are confined to wheelchairs or cannot speak or move unaided. Through her graduate studies and her nonprofit group Touching Base, Rachel both fights for the rights of sex workers and promotes awareness and access to sexual expression for the disabled through sex work—and brings together these two often marginalized groups. We follow her from conducting sex and disability workshops to speaking to the World Congress on Sexual Health about her mission to observing her overnight stays with severely disabled clients who blossom under her attention—with one man even gaining back lost movement and sensation thanks to his time spent with her. Rachel has made it her life’s work to end the stigma surrounding these populations; the depth, humor and passion in this positive and pro-active documentary will transform the way we see sex workers and people with disabilities forever.

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Virgin Tales

Evangelical Christians are calling out for a second sexual revolution: chastity! As a counter-movement to the attitudes and practices of contemporary culture, one in eight girls in the U.S. today has vowed to remain "unsoiled" until marriage. But the seven children of Randy and Lisa Wilson, the Colorado Springs founders of the Purity Ball, take the concept one step further. They save even the first kiss for the altar. Following the Wilsons for two years, this impressive documentary observes the family’s life up close as some of their children prepare for their fairytale vision of romance and marriage, and seek out their own prince and princess spouses. As VIRGIN TALES takes in home routines, church services, social gatherings, conventions and purity balls, a broader theme emerges: how the religious right is grooming a young generation of virgins to embody an Evangelically-grounded Utopia in America.

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Inside Her Sex

While we live in a highly sexualized society, the messaging around female sexuality is distorted and rife with shame. What women should look like, who women should want, what women should desire...in fact, who women should be, is dictated to us from screens and pages and people. INSIDE HER SEX is a thought-provoking, feature-length documentary that explores female sexuality and shame through the eyes and experiences of three women from different walks of life, each brave enough to chart her own course of sexual discovery: Elle Chase, a popular sex blogger, Candida Royalle, the creator of Femme Productions Inc., a feminist, adult film company designed to speak with a woman’s voice and Samantha Allen, the ex-devout Mormon and current gender, sex, and tech writer for The Daily Beast. Through varied, candid and intensely personal interviews, INSIDE HER SEX will delve to the core of these three women and their sexuality, beginning a much needed conversation around female sexuality and shame. Essential viewing for Gender and Sexuality Studies.

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