Male first-intercourse dread frames woman as terrifying, not just unclean.

Evidence

In all literature, a young man’s first sexual intercourse is often upsetting to the point of inducing vomiting; and if, in truth, such a reaction is very rare, it is not by chance that it is so often described. In puritan Anglo-Saxon countries in particular, woman stirs up more or less avowed terror in most adolescents and many men. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 365

Categorization

• CANDY: The observation that literature keeps describing a rare vomiting reaction because it registers a real cultural terror is a compact, quotable point about how narrative frequency indexes anxiety.