Just this week, Dan Savage forwarded the following question to his readers:
Abstinence education, purity balls, and the failure of males to evolve hymens has made virginity harder to define. Do we lose our virginities all at once? In dribs and drabs? How can some girls be old pros at oral and anal and still consider themselves virgins on their wedding nights?
Savage Love readers? I'm punting this one to you: What constitutes virginity? When do we lose it? Do we have more than one to lose?
I sent him a message with my opinion...
The "am I/am I not" routine around virginity is just about one of the most pointless things that our culture obsesses over.
I'd first like to address grammar: nothing is really "lost" in sex. For women, a small flap of skin is broken. For men, we dump a couple of ounces of cum. All in all, talking about virginity as a noun, a possession that can be lost, is just a way of embedding the idea that it, a thing that doesn't exist, is something precious, delicate, and in need of protection. The reality is that sex is something you do and experience. It is something you gain. So let's all just stop talking about "losing" our virginity, okay?
Second, though, in our early sex lives, it's just the Bob's honest truth that we all immediately run to our friends to see if we've screwed, licked, or sucked our way into that wonderful club, "People Who Have Done It." We're just a little foggy on what "it" might be. I don't think it's universally any one thing. There's no objective way to say "only after having done this have you had sex." As any discussion involving men and women, queers and straights, kinksters and vanillas will tell you, objective standards just don't apply. If you really feel the need, you can come up with a personal standard. Maybe fucking really was the Big Moment for you. Alternatively, maybe it was the first time you had your mouth on someone's genitals that you thought to yourself, "Now I've really had sex!"
But if you can't make up your mind about what single act you feel was the tipping point, then maybe you're like me and you find it all to be incremental. Not a switch that flips from from "virgin" to "sexpert" but simply a gaining of various experiences. The great thing about this philosophy is that every time, even if it's with the same person for years, is kind of like the first time because you haven't had sex as the person you are today with the person he/she is today. It's all a learning experience. It's fresh every time. Therefore, it's fun every time.
Long story short, let's all stop obsessing about virginity and get on with learning about ourselves as actively sexual people. Don't ask "have I done it yet?" but instead "what do I like and how do I pursue it in a healthy way?"