I suppose that makes a twisted kind of sense. I'd been exposed to the idea before (though I wouldn't have called it pervasive in the cultural milieu I grew up in), but didn't make the connection -- possibly because Card's setup doesn't seem to work if sex/loss of virginity is ordinarily painful or unpleasant.

It's odd to write an allegory which implicitly rejects the real-life idea it's supposed to point to (ETA: as opposed to tactfully ignoring it). I suppose Card might be trying to write for an audience that he assumes to have already rejected it, but now I feel like I'm making too many speculative leaps to be confident of my predictions.