Virginity
From Encyclopedia of Sex and Sexuality
The term “virgin” is commonly used to refer to someone who has never had sexual intercourse. For women, according to popular belief, is has also been commonly understood that a virgin is a female who has never had her hymen broken by the insertion of a male’s penis. The hymen is a membrane that partially closes off the entrance to a woman’s vagina, and may act as a barrier to insertion until broken by pressure. While an intact hymen has historically been used to verify a woman’s virginity, most especially on a “virgin-bride’s” wedding night, this is a totally false notion. A woman’s hymen, for no known reason, may naturally open, offering no resistance to a first sexual partner’s penis. Or it may have been torn for other reasons in the past and may have virtually disappeared.
While the experience of actual sexual intercourse is the usual way to define the “loss” of one’s virginity, there is, in reality, a big gray area in which people may be sexually experienced and yet still “technical virgins.” If you have engaged in oral sex or have been brought to orgasm by a partner’s hands stimulating your genitals, you are technically considered a virgin. Yet you may, in fact, have had much more sex than someone whose only experience is a single act of sexual intercourse.
Both sexes can, of course, be virgins, but most cultures view virginity differently for males and females. Traditionally there has been a double standard. Women have been expected to be virgins before marriage, while men have been allowed, sometimes even encouraged, to have many sexual experiences.
While in America today that attitude is changing, the double standard still persists. Girls are still often labelled “easy” if they too readily say yes to boys. And boys are still often encouraged by society to “score” with girls. Teenage boys who are still virgins may actually worry that they will be labelled “losers” by their peers.
Actually, today, in seeming contradiction to the double standard, the pressure to lose one’s virginity is now being felt by girls as well as boys as societal attitudes towards teenagers and sex have loosened. Many teenagers of both sexes now feel tremendous pressure from peers to become sexually active. Sex seems to be everywhere one turns—on TV, in the movies, in music videos, in magazines. So it is not surprising that many young people feel an increasing sense of urgency about having their first experience of sexual intercourse, and some of them even feel embarrassment about being a virgin.
It is important to say that no one should ever make the decision to lose one’s virginity on the basis of peer pressure, shame, embarrassment, or anyone else’s values. A person’s first sexual intercourse is something one never forgets. To have that experience at the wrong time, or with the wrong person, or according to anyone else’s rulebook, is certainly a big mistake.
