Sexual Relationships
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What does it mean to be a "virgin?"

Brazilian girl who auctioned and sold her virginity for $1.5M. Wonder how she defined virginity?
Brazilian girl who auctioned and sold her virginity for $1.5M. Wonder how she defined virginity?

The word "virgin" always stirs discussion on this site. There are those who want to retain a claim to virgin status despite some sexual experiences, and there are those who are very eager to tell those people that they are no longer virgins. And there are usually disagreements. I suppose the reason this question is important is that many (certainly not all) people - at least in my culture - as children are taught that retaining your virginity until marriage is important. By contrast, non-virgins are less worthy, less deserving of attention and respect, and have generally brought some shame upon themselves. However, most of us lose our virginity long before we get married, so there is much hypocrisy in this issue!

This question is usually asked without the asker defining "virgin," presumably because we all KNOW what "virgin" means . . . right? I know what a virgin is, and so do you, and so does the next guy . . . but we don't all mean the same thing. So let's consider some of the possible definitions.

What does it mean to be a virgin?

1. "A virgin is a girl who has an intact hymen." There are several problems with this definition.

a. It totally omits the possibility of a boy being a virgin.

b. It stigmatizes those girls who are born without a hymen, or with a partially perforated hymen, or who had their hymen torn in an accident, or who were sexually assaulted.

c. It rewards girls who are sexually active and who later have hymenorrhaphy to "restore" them to virgin status.

d. A girl could be the blow job queen of the village, well known by every man and boy for miles in every direction but, if she had not yet had PIV sex, she would be classified as a virgin.

At least she has a crown!
At least she has a crown!

2. "A virgin is someone, male or female, who has not yet had PIV sex."

a. Again, a girl could be the blow job queen of the village but, if she had not yet had PIV sex, she would be classified as a virgin.

b. Lesbians who never had sex with a male would be virgins their entire lives.

c. Homosexuals who never had sex with a female would be virgins their entire lives.

d. The rape victim is not a virgin.

3. "A virgin is someone who has not had an orgasm as a result of sexual interaction with another person."

a. Under this definition, if the village blow job queen always gives oral sex but never receives any sexual stimulation in return, then she is still a virgin.

b. Anyone who tried but failed to reach orgasm with a partner would still be a virgin. There are people who go their entire lives without an orgasm although they routinely engage in sexual activity with partners. Would you call that person a virgin?

c. What about if your girlfriend gives you oral sex but doesn't finish you because . . . because she doesn't, like maybe she is scared or insecure? Are you still a virgin?

You want me to do WHAT?
You want me to do WHAT?

d. What about the rape victim? She (or he) is not a virgin under this definition.

4. "A virgin is someone who is innocent and naive about sexual matters." This definition isn't exactly the same as "child-like" but it's close.

The white dress doesnt mean anything. In the western world, most people were not virgins when they get married.
The white dress doesn't mean anything. In the western world, most people were not virgins when they get married.

a. This definition can apply to both boys and girls.

b. It does not stigmatize those girls who are born without a hymen, or with a partially perforated hymen, or who had their hymen torn in an accident. Whether you would call a rape victim a "virgin" under this definition is debatable (and I am NOT trying to be unkind to rape victims! However, under this definition, a rape victim would have some knowledge of sexual matters.)

c. The blow job queen is not considered a virgin under this definition.

d. Homosexuals and lesbians with sexual experience would not be considered virgins under this definition.

e. The problem with this definition is that sexual innocence is very difficult to define.

So, which definition should you use? Well, what is the reason why this issue is relevant? "Only virgins are worthy of marriage." (No, I don't believe that statement, but it is one of the justifications for making virgin status important.) The presence of a hymen does not insure that a girl has been chaste, and the absence of a hymen does not always mean that she has been sexually active.

If the importance of virginity is related to religious beliefs, that is not a very suitable occasion to be playing word games and hiding the truth. Would you really tell your religious leader, "Of course I'm a virgin, because anal sex doesn't count!?"

What is it about being a virgin that is so damned important that other people want to know whether you are a virgin? Is that a more important question?

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Most Helpful Girls

  • I think what all this boils down to is the concept and idealism of purity and innocence. Specifically, purity and innocence of the mind.
    For example, a man who wants a virgin wife would still be put off if he knew she was the blowjob queen of the village, though technically a virgin because she’s never had her vagina penetrated. But when a girl claims virginity, it’s implied that she’s innocent and all his for the taking, and that’s what the man really wants: ownership of a brand new, innocent and “unused” female. That is what I believe the virginity issue really about.

    • But I'm unused, too. So why should I not also have someone who is unused? It's only fair. (But it's not about innocence of the mind. It's about innocence of the body. You can think all the dirty thoughts you want, but doing something dirty is completely different.)

    • By that logic then those who are raped are “used” as well.

    • @MzAsh Well, that's the terrible thing about rape, isn't it? Besides all of the other numerous reasons why rape is bad. Which is why I think it should be punishable by death.

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  • I think virginity is what girls want to throw away and adults want

    • Women in the western world give it away to the Hobo off the street if it meant they could brag to their high school friends that she popper her cherry and keep it a secret that it was a hobo off the street.

    • I'm sorry. It's a little difficult for me to understand.

    • @ManHater That's just false. Western women do enjoy more sexual equality than in other parts of the world - that is a positive thing not a negative thing.. They are certainly not all desperate to have sex and brag about it.

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What Girls & Guys Said

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  • We do not value virginity here in Japan, regardless of how it is defined, unlike cultures influenced more strongly by a religious background that prizes virginity. Marriage is prized here but I think it's inconsequential to the vast majority of Japanese whether their husbands/wives were virgins before marriage, and whether or not they had other sexual partners before them.

    And I am far from an expert on religious scripture, but I don't think what was meant by passages that prize "virginity" or speak of things like adultery as a sin intended to have loopholes for acts like oral sex, anal sex, or sexual activities involving the hand.

    • I don't want to impede on the definitions used by people who focus heavily on virginity, and I think the concept can get quite ambiguous as you pointed out. Yet I just go by the notion that any sort of act involving two or more people which is designed to sexually stimulate each other is sufficient to result in a loss of virginity as I see it.

    • ... this is still somewhat ambiguous. Well, I think we have it easy in Japan because we just don't care! :-D

    • There is a funny thing though here in Japan. During Allied occupation after WW2, the Allied forces made prostitution illegal. Yet they defined it in terms of vaginal intercourse. So Japanese got around it easily by just making brothels that offer blowjobs, handjobs, anal, and mammary intercourse. It reminds me of some of the loopholes that religious conservatives seek out to preserve what they consider their virginity until marriage.

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  • Virginity is not something that there is a right or wrong opinion on. while the physical view of sex is right (i. e a girl is a virgin until her hyman is broken the long held view women should stay virgins until marriage is massively outdated. Virginity for men and women is something they can and should chose to give up when they what to the notion of you should stay a virgin till marriage is one that needs to go. stay a virgin as long as you like and surrender it when you like if your partner being a virgin or not bothers you then you don't deserve them

    • The question is about hw you define virginity.

  • If you’ve had sexual relations with the opposite sex then you’re no longer a virgin. You also never will be again. I think people try justifying their actions by making up lies and adding context; like it’ll give you super powers or something. I don’t know…. it doesn’t make since. I had premarital sex, and I accept in my personal belief that action was wrong, I also accept that what I am doing now is also wrong…. not gonna try to justify it because I like women now. No, that would be illogical. I am no longer a virgin.

  • Wow! $1.5 million? No girl's losing their virginity for money is worth that. Besides, how do they know she is really a virgin? I can see everyone in here trying to sell their virginity on eBay, I mean is that even legal? Sounds more like prostitution - selling sex for money.

    • Yes, I have some concerns about that prostitution issue, also.

  • This is a really great question and I know it’s debated as some people engage in anal intercourse before vaginal to retain “virginity.”
    .
    For me, I always considered heterosexual virginity lost with penis in vagina sex. Simply because I would never start with anal and I always considered oral sex foreplay.
    .
    I fully understand that LGBTQ+ people would have a different definition of lost virginity.
    .
    It’s a complicated question for sure.

  • I'll get this out of the way and say that I never placed any value on virginity. It's based on an antiquated notion used to stigmatize women. I think women have every right to enjoy sex as do men. Célébrez l'amour et le sexe! Célébrer la vie!

    My own definition of virginity applies only to females. I think that was traditionally the case. Men wanted to marry virgins to insure that it was their seed that produced offspring. It was a time when women were second class citizens in the eyes of the law and totally dependent on men for survival.

    You mentioned perforated hymens but there are also elastic hymens that stretch and don't "break". So just because a women doesn't bleed doesn't mean that she's not a virgin.

    Anyway, I'm going to say that, in my own personal opinion, virginity only applies to women's vaginas. If they have been fucked in the pussy (with a penis), they are no longer a virgin. But who cares? I'm actually disdainful of guys who will only marry a virgin, or of guys from certain cultures who have a fetish for virgins.

    I heard from a guy once who said that women who have had sex are tainted; unclean; impure. Can you believe that? That judgmental, misogynistic bullshit makes me sick.

    I celebrate the advent of birth control methods that liberated women to satisfy their libidos without fear of pregnancy.

    I think the term is irrelevant and rather silly, especially when applied to inexperienced guys, gays or lesbians.

    Based on my definition, a blowjob queen or a woman who has been butt fucked can still be a virgin.

    That's just my opinion. I'm not here to impose it on others.

    • Beautiful opinion. Loved your answer, Lliam.

    • @anon1903. Why thank you, ma'am. :-)

  • I believe any shared sexual experience that involves the privates so sex, anal, oral would mean your not a virgin. As for hypmen I don't believe that as not everyone is born with them plus they can get stretched during various sporting activities, so girls as young as 8 if not younger could not have one and in other words would make them not virgins.

    Kissing on the other hand is not what I consider a deflowering activity.

    • Extremely consistent with my beliefs about virginity.

    • This

  • no sexual contact of any kind with male or female

  • For me (echoing someone else) it’s simply a social construct.

    A guy would not know if a girl said she was still a virgin, she could in theory say this to every one night stand in a month. It is far to of a male controlling shame thing, ‘you can’t marry Dawn she’s not a virgin, marry Bethany, she’s never had a boyfriend’.

    The fact Dawn had sex once and that’s all but Bethany was in a relationship with another girl and taking 10” dildos every night never factors in to it.

    it’s just too fucked up on attitudes towards virginity

    Then you have those American Virginity ring things, for us when we went to the States on deployment, those rings basically said I do anal sex, as nearly every time ‘I’m saving myself for my husband, but you can use the other entrance’ that’s just beyond fucked up.

    To Hank out near Miami, you did marry a virgin but 20 engineers from 617 Sqn enjoyed her arse.

    It does need to be rethought as to what it is, the current set up is shit, it’s no longer simply a penis entering a vagina.

    Women should be allowed to decide what it means… also the same for guys….

    https://www.letsemjoy.com/blog/virginity-is-a-social-construct

    https://medium.com/@lbetros1101/5-reasons-why-virginity-is-a-social-construct-f8cc36333127

    https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a28368604/miley-cyrus-virginity-social-construct/

    https://schoolofsexed.org/blog-articles/2020/04/2/virginity

    Life is for living not being held back by stuff written eons ago.

    Really Good My Take.

  • My observations:
    1. In the traditional system it was highly desirable for a man to know whether he was paying to raise another man's offspring or not. Without blood/DNA tests it was very easy for women to fool a guy. Virginity was a way to get around the problem. If she was truly a virgin then the odds of her having another man's baby soon after marriage was low. So the concept of male virginity was meaningless.
    2. Traditionally men were trying to get laid. Women were trying to not get laid by the wrong guy (or at least not to be publicly known as the woman who beds every man). The genders had totally different goals. A man didn't want to be known as the guy who had zero partners. A woman did, unless she found a high value partner. And even today, women generally would rather have a guy who can get other woman than the guy who needs to beg her for attention so male virginity never had any value in the 'marketplace'. Although, sure, it might be to a guy's benefit to avoid having sex with the wrong females!
    3. There's zero way for a male to prove he's a virgin. There's some slight possibility of a woman doing that even if there's also going to be virgin women who can't prove it.

    Going back to point #1, I think traditionally virginity ONLY had to do with vaginal intercourse because again, it was related to offspring/inheritance/raising kids stuff. It didn't matter if 500 dudes did something to her body as long as it wasn't vaginal.

    Women & men think differently... I never heard a woman say, "I need to marry a virgin". But some guys say it.

  • "d. The rape victim is not a virgin."

    The sad truth is that she *isn't* anymore. Nowhere is it defined that she loses her virginity in a nice and consensual way. (Of course the circumstances are terrible, but she effectively is no longer a virgin nonetheless).

  • I'm sorry but I thought I'd take the easy way out this time
    And to be honest this is like 360 Degrees from what I really think

    https://youtu. be/gkSxhG4cbPo

  • Google says "a person who has never had sexual intercourse" so that would refer to someone who has never had vaginal or anal sex.

    You make a good point about lesbians though. I saw a lesbian say that you lose your virginity if you engage in a sexual activity aimed at inducing orgasm.

    • "if you engage in a sexual activity aimed at inducing orgasm" - with a partner, of course. (Masturbation doesn't lead to virginity loss)

    • Sexual intercourse includes oral sex. Just look at the definition of the word "intercourse" itself: "Communication or dealings between individuals or groups" (from Oxford) So just put "sexual" in front of that and extrapolate logically. Also, Sexual Intercourse definition 1 from Merriam-Webster: "physical sexual contact between individuals that involves the genitalia of at least one person"

    • And yes, the point about lesbians -- or bi people engaging in lesbian sex -- is absolutely valid.

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  • a penis has gone into your pussy. if the tip goes in and even if he cums you're still a virgin. if he goes all the way in, you're not (to me)

    • So if a guy cums inside you but he was never fully inserted, you are still a virgin?

  • If you have sexual experience you're no longer a virgin.

    • Most people would agree with that statement but then disagree about the definition of "sexual experience." Remember that there are people who say that "oral sex" is not really "sex."

    • I know plenty of "good christians" who preach that bullshit. If you're stimulating genitalia of another person, it's still sex. You've had sex. You're no longer a "virgin".

    • @Dazed0N0Confused EXACTLY! IKR? Those people are so FAKE!

  • I’m sex positive, but I also understand the limitations God put. It’s what’s best for us. A virgin is someone who waits until marriage to be intimate. In the Christian point of view, sexual love is more than skin on skin. God only intended for us to be spiritually and intimately involved with one person. Sex is a gift, I’m not being a prude. But it’s been misused frequently. Song of Solomon 8:4 days not to awaken love until it pleases. To the flesh this sounds like an outdated, social construct. But God’s ways are higher than our own. I like to think of it in the opposite way, there are many people who regret losing their virginity too soon.

  • Rape victims are not a virgins, forced sex is still sex. As for slutty non-virgins, it's called technical virgins, true virgins are innocent, while technical virgins can be slutty.

  • Pretty straight forward means you've not a had a man's p in your v or you've not had your p in a girls v nothing more nothing less. It's really NOT as big as a deal as people make it out to be. Of course only have sex with someone who truly love you and you love them back but do not think it holds any value on you as a woman or a man whether you lose it or not and when you decide to lose it. I'm so fed up of people virgin and slut shaming just let people do what they want in there privacy of the bedroom as long as it's not hurting anyone.

    • If people don't talk about their bedroom exploits outside of the bedroom, no one else will ever know.

    • I agree with you on that. I think it's personal and why would anyone else want to know about there bedroom activities. I actually hate it when all people wanna do is talk about sex. Like it's okay if your talking about sex with your partner or maybe sharing a funny story that involves sex taking place but people who are just simply doing it to brag or to seem edgy get on my nerves

    • Sometimes, someone's exploits are well known because they are shagging a different partner every week and those people tell their friends and. . . there you go, a slut reputation is born.

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  • I’m a Virgin because I’m shy and not confident with myself and I have never met a person I fully trust.

    I’ve never been kissed and never had any intercourse with anyone.

    But I do get embarrassed and uncomfortable when people tell me “how are you still a Virgin? Don’t you think about sex? Do you ever get horny? Do you masturbate?” 🙄

    • same here

  • Virgin. No physical sexual acts. That’s me. I’m a virgin and as you’re probably sick of me complaining about here on GAG, I’m a virgin. Thanks lol.

    • Is that you in your profile picture?

    • That is Monica Bellucci

    • Okay!

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