I’m still trying to wrap my brain around all the thoughts that this article from MSNBC shook loose regarding women who undergo surgery to reattach their hymens so that they can be virgins again. Jane sent me the link and her reaction mirrored mine: EAAAAAUUUGH!
Since then my brain has been gnawing on the issue, and forcing me to examine my own horror. Why am I so squicked? And under what circumstances would someone want to surgically reattach their hymen? I can understand wanting to reclaim one’s own virginity if it was forcibly taken away by rape or assault, and I see the necessity when women are subject to honor killings should they dare have sex outside of sanctioned wedlock. But investing external value into the presence of a hymen such that one might pay a surgeon a good amount of money to reattach it for the pleasure of someone else… I don’t get it.
I also thought about and went back to re-read Candy’s and my discussion about virginity in the romance novel and how it’s a powerful and sacred construct affecting both heroes and heroines. But would a romance heroine be believable if she had her hymen reattached?
The surgery itself raises a lot of questions that I’m still puzzling over, not the least of which is how important virginity is in and outside of our culture. Outside of RomanceLandia, is losing your virginity important, and would you want it back? Me? No, thanks.
The balm to my what-the-fuck so far has been this interview series with the creator of The Virgin Project, a comic book that details individual’s experiences losing their virginity. Pages from The Virgin Project are making their public debut at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival Gala. Man, do I ever want to go to Seattle. If any of you ladies see the exhibit, please do let me know what you think!
Count me among the head-scratching men as well. 😉
I recently had a heated discussion about this topic at a dinner party with American friends (living in the UK). Another friend and I, both European, considered virginity something, like kirsten said, which we had to get rid of, having been thoroughly forewarned that it probably wasn’t going to be very good the first time. One of our American friends got thoroughly upset by our statements, and it took us a while to figure out that she’d been brought up to equate sex with love, while we were raised in an environment that told us that love wasn’t a necessary requirement, but being safe is. The European side of the table didn’t think virginity was a big deal, because we didn’t make the equation of sex with love, whereas the American side of the table did and was appalled. We only figured all of this out after one of the American guests asked whether the present Europeans had done it to be loved.
Anyway, point of this rant being that it seemed very interesting how in present days the differences amongst Western cultures played out in our conversation, and the different connections we made, particularly how across the pond for the dinner guests the subject was one constructed around emotions, hence special, whereas on the other side of the pond we considered it a burden. Since that evening only women were present, I did ask a few male friends about female virginity (sorry, there were no Americans at hand, so my findings are restricted to Europeans). Interestingly enough only one had been ‘the first’ with anyone and most of them said that they preferred someone who knew what she was doing. Maybe it’s a European thing…
…okay, I admit it, the guys all come from the Netherlands and Germany, both of which are known for liberal sexual attitudes. Maybe not a European thing…;)
23 and 17 are “Freakishly Late” for losing one’s virginity? Ladies, I am almost 29. (In May.) TWENTY-NINE. And I am a virgin. THAT is freakishly late.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with waiting for love, if that’s what you’re into. Maybe it’s b/c I speak from the “have not had” side of the divide, but sex is such a personal choice that choosing NOT to have it needs to be as valued as choosing to have it. Virginity should not be valued as an entity unto itself, or valued b/c it’s a special gift to give to someone (ugh), but it can be valued as a state you (if you’re lucky and were not abused as a child) choose to be in until you’re ready. And readiness varies. Some people may be ready at 14, others not until 25. (Or older!!)
We’ve all acknowledged the double standard wherein men can have sex and be lauded for it, while women must remain “pure,” but there is another double standard that I’m interested in, and it’s lurking in this thread, too. And that is that there is a point at which being a virgin is actually something to be ashamed of. On the one hand, you’re told to value your virginity, and not “give it away” lightly (blahblahblah) or too young, and on the other, there’s this whole “I don’t want to sleep with a virgin; she doesn’t know what she’s doing” or “If you’re a virgin past age [X], you’re a prude or there’s something wrong with you.” It’s less commonly talked about, but the double standard is there.
//Heh, I got to point as a young woman where the whole idea of virginity was a huge bother, and I was ready to recruit the nearest slack-jawed goon to rid me of the dreaded affliction. I knew it was going to be a disappointment. Why forever associate that disappointment with someone I cared deeply about?//
This friend speaks to my condition! That’s what I did. The first time was lame (though “slack-jawed goon” is a trifle harsh) but the next time was better, etc.
I don’t actually remember the assault that was my first sexual experience at 16, but I do remember the woman who examined me in the emergency room saying “well, there’s no hymen; you’re not a virgin”, in this disapproving voice that somehow implied that the absence of a hymen meant that I was not a virgin, and that not being a virgin made it not such a bad thing to be assaulted.
Because only virgins are special and pure enough to be hurt by rape? I am disgusted by any thinking that assumes a woman is a man’s for the taking, and that a man wouldn’t want a “pure” woman, so hymen reattachment is neccessary.
rest41 – I have no idea how to make that into a witty comment!
I was in late high school and college in the “Reclaiming Our Body” era of the early 70’s— books about how to masturbate and all that— so this seems like a giant step backwards.
And frankly, I would not have any elective surgery right now due to the current increase in multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria.
spam blocker word: wife33 (no, not even wife 1)
Oh, and did I mention I adore this blog? Because I do. So very much.
always69 – hah. Not always, but considering the theme…
I remarked over at Jane’s site that this is the sentence that leaped out at me from the article:
“Do you ever wish you could re-wrap it and give it only to your future husband or wife?” (italics mine)
I’m still dying to know exactly what the guys are doing to re-wrap their non-virgin willies as a gift for their future wives.
The person who pointed out that surgical intervention to alter or ‘improve’ the genitals has a long history is absolutely right. There was even a standard surgical procedure in the Roman period for ‘reversing’ male circumcision and reconstructing the foreskin. This was because circumcision was regarded as an aesthetically and socially objectionable mutilation in the Graeco-Roman world.
However, the fact that some custom has ancient roots is not a good reason for continuing to do it, let alone reviving it, today.
I think there are quite deep-seated American/European cultural divisions on issues such as this, and some of them may impinge on areas where, again, I must tread carefully. Americans tend to place a markedly higher value on youth than Europeans do (hence, perhaps, all those chick-lit heroines that are supposed to be in their twenties, but behave like half-witted 12-year-olds). Depilation and the ‘prettification’ of the genitalia, and the reconstruction of a hymen, can all be seen, from one angle, as a celebration of the immature female, the perky girl-woman, as opposed to the hairy, droopy and generally well-used adult version. Shades of Ruskin, perhaps.
I think that as a European woman of a certain age, who lived through the socio-sexual transformation that took place in the 1960s, I may be able to see the dangers of all this more clearly than some younger / US females. You wouldn’t want to go back to the 1950s, believe me – not even here, and I suspect it was worse in the USA.
On a lighter note, who has read Jayne Ann Krentz’s Desire, a medieval romance written under her Amanda Quick persona? Remember the running joke about the vials of chicken-blood?
Let me just join the chorus of those who are deeply disturbed by this procedure and all of its implications.
(Among other things) I do wonder how beneficial this might really be for women who live in countries/cultures where sex outside of marriage is punishable by death. I would assume that many of the women who fear for their lives and might want to take advantage of the service might not have the money or access to a surgeon on their own, so that they would need to confide in a parent or other authority figure—thus having to confess to not being a virgin and exposing herself to the very potential harm she’s tring to avoid. Additionally, the article focuses on clients who come from these cultures but live in the U.S. and have access to these surgeons. For most of the women actually in the foreign countries, I would imagine surgeons who could/would do this would be incredibly few and far between—and none of the examples in the article seemed to actually deal with such a case. All this to say that I think this particular argument “in favor” of this surgery is problematic, to say the least. It seems to me that it’s a way to justify the surgery as a public good, when what it’s really about is another way to control and subjugate women to male expectations about sex and sexuality.
I expect most of you are aware of this kind of thing:
http://www.aussiemakeover.com/lrejuvenation.htm
As a moneymaking scam, clever stuff, no doubt, but I think there is a pretty disagreeable sub-text, namely that the normal appearance of the adult vulva is somehow not good enough. I think that is a fundamentally misogynistic point of view.
Erin’s point about the unavailability of the reconstructive surgery where it might be needed for the patient’s safety is spot-on.
Totally squicked. I think the “honor killings” type of patient is probably in the minority of women who are having this done. The woman who said she was doing it as a gift for her husband—EW! Get him a cordless drill, woman! Jesus, any gift that requires that much pain on your part… well, damn, I can’t imagine wanting to give anyone who’d want me to hurt and bleed anything but a black eye. But maybe that’s just me.
And since we’re all sharing, my first time was at 19, to the man who would later become my ex-husband. He wasn’t a virgin, but wasn’t far from it either, and the pressure of “The Moment of My Deflowering” was too much for Mr. Happy, who wilted from the strain. After many attempts to revive him, I gave up and went to sleep. Later I woke up rather suddenly—apparently Mr. Happy didn’t feel the stage-fright while I was asleep and managed to get happy, and the future ex didn’t see any reason to wake me up before starting the main event…
So, someone, anyone—tell me again why I’d want to repeat that?
Mondays,…argh.
I fucking HATE double standards.
Why would any woman actually want to have her hymen broken twice? God knows I don’t. (I was 32—do I win the Freakishly Late crown?)
And I’m sorry, but reattaching your hymen won’t make you a virgin any more than turning your car’s odemeter back to zero will make it new. That’s called defrauding the buyer.
Every day the society depicted in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ (movie) seems to become more of a reality and less of a fiction here in the good ol’ USA.
road61: well, if Huckabee or one of his ilk becomes president, I’ll indeed hit the road to somewhere else!
Wow. Number one – an anniversary present? For reals? You know what my husband would love for our anniversary? If I went out and mutilated my genitals. That would be great. He’s always wanted me to enjoy sex less!
And number two – these women who are supposedly coming to these doctors because they are afraid of honor killings? (Such a great name. Because there is so much honor in murdering a defenseless member of your own family.) These women who live in and are citizens of the United States? Who have five grand to be secretly spending on this, and are liberal and unsheltered enough to have had sex despite their culture’s viewpoint on it? What in holy hell are they doing jetting off to be potentially murdered by their nephew for not keeping their legs together? I sometimes get the feeling that no one is keeping us down anymore. Like maybe some men got the ball rolling way back when, and since then we’ve been doing a fine job of it ourselves.
And one more thing, while I’m ranting. If someone came into my office right now and tearfully told me that she was going to be murdered, I like to think I would try to help her avoid said murder. I would try to find her a place to go to where she would be safe. I would talk to her about how no one has the right to hurt her, and help her figure out a way to stay alive and whole. You know what I would not do? Collect my five thousand dollars and grab my scalpel. These so-called doctors are no better than the barbers who perform female circumcisions with rusty razor blades, and they should be ashamed.
Nip/Tuck did an episode where the surgeons reattached the hymen of an oversexed, manipulative high school student who claimed to have torn it riding. The patient was under age, but the mother gave her consent with no problem. The show is set in LA, so I wasn’t surprised by the request or the consent.
I’d be interested to see some real stats on those who’ve had the procedure. The doctors in the MSNBC article made it seem as if the procedure was being requested by 1st generationers going back to the mother land to marry only. However, as someone mentioned above, the desire to surgically spruce up one’s vagina already exists. It’s not a major leap from a sprucing to making it like new again.
AgTigress, I should clarify that I wasn’t stating that a longstanding history makes this the way it SHOULD be, especially not for all women, but I was only pointing it out because of how shocked everyone was at the the concept.
The fact that it isn’t new is an indicator that there have always been people who’ve wanted to do it. I, personally, never would. I do think that if someone wants to do it, it’s their business and it’s not necessarily going to bury feminism in a tidal wave of OMG MALE OPPRESSION. No one is being required by law to have these surgeries, so it’s kind of mystifying to me that the concept, which has existed since ancient times, of wanting to “be new again” down there is so controversial.
My word? Open69. I could definitely make a pun, but it stands on it’s own just fine.
Follow the money. Let’s ignore those who have this procedure done because of a supposed cultural imperative (that didn’t keep them from having sex in the first place). Making women dissatisfied with ourselves is big business in America. The unhappier women are, the more likely we are to spend money for a fix or cure.
It makes me crazy every time I hear a woman who’s had plastic surgery drone that she did it as an “empowering” act and now her “self-esteem” has improved. Seems to me these phrases are handed out to clients along with their surgeons’ bills.
Jennifer – yes, sorry. I did realise that you were merely reporting a fact, rather than making a recommendation!
Physical mutilation generally, including deliberate scarification, piercing and tattooing, has a very, very long history, almost certainly back into prehistory, earlier than we can follow because there are no representations, or at least, none that is unequivocal. Much of it was concerned with the whole process of identification within a community, and hence the separation from other communities – in a word, tribalism. It is primitive (and please note that ‘primitive’ is in itself, a neutral designation, neither good nor bad).
I am well aware of the arguments that, if a woman wants to have size 44 DD breasts, or a reconstituted hymen, or a tongue-stud, or a picture of a barbed-wire bracelet around her biceps, no-one else has any right to challenge this boost to her self-esteem.
What I am questioning, profoundly, is why, in this generation, such things are being so commonly regarded as capable of carrying the burden of the improvement of personal self-esteem.
I am not innocent: I had my ears pierced in 1964. But this was not because I thought I would be higher status or more beautiful or more adult with pierced earlobes (I was already adult anyway); it was simply because of a liking for jewellery and a dislike of pain, but of course, the taste for personal ornament is very primitive in itself.
The huge rise in the popularity of tattooing and piercing in our societies (Europe as well as the USA) over the last quarter-century seems to me to be part and parcel of an altered perception of what best represents personhood, and it is a terribly superficial perception of identity and self-esteem.
There are really difficult issues here. Free personal choice is a crucial part of independence, and yet if the choice is a profoundly unwise one, as when a woman has her breasts augmented to grotesque proportions, or her vulva and vagina ‘contoured’ to a more ‘aesthetically pleasing’ appearance, what has been achieved? Short-term satisfaction for the woman concerned, along with a deep undermining of self-esteem and confidence for many other impressionable females, and a general cheapening of the image of human personhood.
I have long believed that cosmetic surgery should be permitted only for the repair and correction of serious congenital or acquired abnormalities. I would be the last person to tell someone with a hare lip or disfiguring accident scars that they should put up with it. But monkeying about with perfectly normal and healthy tissues seems to me to be sheer madness, and a sign of worrying societal breakdown.
Oh, boy, a whole new can of worms—
I have long believed that cosmetic surgery should be permitted only for the repair and correction of serious congenital or acquired abnormalities.
First, my body is my business. I decide what is done or is not done.
Second, who gets to decide and enforce what is an ‘abnormality’? Who gets to be the final arbiter on that subject?
First, my body is my business. I decide what is done or is not done.
Indeed. But to what extent? That is precisely the problem that I indicated.
I think you will find that most people do draw some lines. For example, wouldn’t most of us try to dissuade an unhappy friend or family member from committing suicide? Yet it is his/her body, life etc. Should we then not interfere?
What if a person wanted to have a limb surgically removed (yes, it has been known)? Is that okay, if the person really wants it? Even if he/she wants it when in a state of severe mental turmoil? No? But it is his or her body, so a personal decision, right?
What about sexual practices? Entirely our affair, what we like to do between consenting adults. Right. What if what we like to do, with consent, is kill the sexual partner? Is there not a line drawn there beyond which most of us would say that personal preference may not operate?
There are societal norms that most of us accept as just and reasonable, and these change over time and in different cultures. We have considerable rights over our own persons, but we also have responsibilities to the society of which we form part. The crucial issue of where the lines are drawn.
I’ve heard of this before and don’t “get” the desire for it. It seems like the physical “proof” of chastity is being used as a copout to represent the actual state of being chaste, because it’s much easier to determine (and make money from) even though the correlation isn’t that strong in reality.
My first reaction when I heard of this procedure was to wonder if they would do it the other way – wouldn’t it be simple to surgically, with minimal pain, remove the hymen? That’s what I wished for throughout my teenage years, when I WAS chaste, but was deathly afraid of the pain of having first-time sex (and that fear would also make sex more painful). After all, a scalpel seems like it would get the job done in a much cleaner and (more importantly) painless way, but I’ve never heard anyone even mention the idea.
Whoa! Where’d my personal sovereignty go? And why is that toilet running?
Ick.
Oh, and SB Sarah – no wifi, but Bluetooth…
Electronic tattoo
Lijakaca—they do do that. You may have to ask, but a gynecologist can do it for you. I’ve known people who had it done right before they knew they were going to have sex (mostly wait-till-marriage types), and one friend who seriously considered it, but decided just to have an “old-fashioned” wedding night.
AgTigress, some of the examples you’re citing directly affect other people. Personal sovereignity ends at the limits of your body.
And, yes, while we might try to talk people out of suicide or limb amputation, in the end, we cannot force them not to do it. We can try, but they will figure it out if they want it badly enough. (And there are some people with a severe form of body dysmorphia whose lives are actually improved through limb removal.)
Cosmetic surgery can do a lot of good for people if they go into it with the right mindset. If I had been born with a disfiguring birthmark, I’d probably find some way to get it removed, even if it wasn’t life threatening. I’ve known women who got breast reductions and felt not only physically better, but much, much more psychologically stable. And what about sex reassignment surgery? Some of that is cosmetic. Do we condemn people to living in the wrong bodies for the rest of their lives, when there exist procedures to ease their struggles?
While cosmetic surgery (and tattooing, and piercing, etc.) can become an addiction, it’s really unfair to judge the whole concept based on those who abuse the process or those who treat it as a necessary part of everyone’s life.
AgTigress—
The thing I take issue with about your viewpoint is the implication that limiting the choice of what people are allowed to change about their bodies is going to somehow fix the problem of low self-esteem in our culture. If women can’t get boob jobs, then they’ll stop feeling bad about their boobs on a global level? It doesn’t make any sense.
Our culture is not to blame for our issues, our issues are to blame for our culture. We have imperfect bodies, so we begin to admire those who have them. We then envy them, then decide to try and get those bodies ourselves. What nature won’t provide, we turn to medicine for. We outlaw plastic surgery and then what? We still envy those perfect bodies, but now we have a crop of people who are deeply dissatisfied with their bodies and have no choice to fix it. How it is that going to make them feel better?
I thought I did express the caveat that some cosmetic surgery is done for perfectly good reasons. Breast reduction is very often such a case; breast augmentation very rarely is, in my view, but I am willing to believe that there might be exceptions. I am not, therefore, judging all cosmetic procedures by the same standard.
What we are arguing about here is where the lines should be drawn. This is both a personal matter AND one that affects society, and the line is necessarily blurred and changeable.
I can understand very clearly indeed why it would help a person’s self-esteem to have something that is widely perceived as a disfigurement or abnormality removed, or to have their body changed to match their gender identity, but I remain concerned by the thought that there are evidently a great many people who are of average, normal and healthy appearance, who are not disdvantaged in any way by their physical characteristics, yet who cannot rest until they have ‘corrected’ and ‘improved’ perfectly normal noses, breasts or whatever. This kind of consideration should not, surely, constitute such a major plank of a person’s identity and self-esteem.
What we are arguing about here is where the lines should be drawn.
Again, WHO draws those lines? That question remains unanswered.
This is both a personal matter AND one that affects society,
I’m—stunned. Almost speechless, but not quite. I’d no idea my girlish body parts had such amazing potential. I must make certain to use my powers for niceness instead of evil.
and the line is necessarily blurred and changeable.
It’s blurred, all right. Frankly, I prefer clarity.
AgTigress, I think you’re mistaking a symptom for a cause. Plastic surgery is a symptom of a wider problem, but getting rid of elective plastic surgery won’t make the low self-esteem issue go away. To put it another way, if you have pneumonia, you can take a pill to make the fever vanish, but you still have pneumonia.
I can see where you’re coming from, but I think arguing against the symptom won’t solve the illness. We need to address the things in our society that make women (and men) want to surgically sculpt themselves into a form that is more in-line with whatever the latest fad of “aesthetically pleasing” happens to be. To me, that means doing things like using real-woman sized models in ads, television, and movies. These bombard us all with messages of unattainable body perfection day in and day out, and here is where the change should happen, IMO.
(And yes, it is unattainable, even for those actresses and models. Ever hear of airbrushing?)
Snarkhunter wrote:
>And that is that there is a point at which being a virgin is actually something to be ashamed of. On the one hand, you’re told to value your virginity, and not “give it away†lightly (blahblahblah) or too young, and on the other, there’s this whole “I don’t want to sleep with a virgin; she doesn’t know what she’s doing†or “If you’re a virgin past age [X], you’re a prude or there’s something wrong with you.†It’s less commonly talked about, but the double standard is there.<
Robin, you and I are going to have to share the “freakishly late” crown. I was 32 as well. I’d like to thank you and Snarkhunter for putting something into words I have lived with for awhile now.
I grew up in a fundamentalist church that preached anyone who indulged before marriage was going straight to hell, and the only proper way of conducting oneself as a female was presenting the most “precious gift” on one’s wedding night. To say that I regret this decision is an understatement. I also spent years dealing with the people around me who thought there was something wrong with anyone who wasn’t sexually active.
I can’t even imagine what the “revirginizing” crowd is getting out of this. I’ve seen the other side, and it’s not all that and a bag of chips.
Julie and Robin, you give hope to me (and probably to all the other Improbable Virgins out there) that I will not, in fact, die a virgin. (I might still die a crazy old cat lady, but that remains to be seen.)
And Julie, your story is, I think, what most people expect of adult virgins. There’s the idea that we, if we’re not actually prudes, then we were all brought up in fundamentalist churches or religions, and thus have monstrously warped ideas of sexuality. ::sigh:: I swear to God I’m going to write a book about ideas of virginity in the US, b/c my faith has no direct impact on my sexuality. (Though I admit that my conservative non-denom church, which I attended of my own free will as a teen, did some damage to my ideas of God that I’m still correcting, I don’t think they affected my ideas of sex. That’s a whole other bucket o’issues.)
Which is not to discount your experience, either. I’m just trying to stave off any, “See, all older virgins are warped by religion!” nonsense. 🙂
Snarkhunter, et al: I feel like my frivolous use of ‘freakishly late’ has taken on a monstrous life of its own. It wasn’t meant as anything other than a descriptor of myself and my environment when I hit puberty.
Given that I went, in the late 80s, to a sex-positive, gay-friendly, “alternative” high-school which was ALSO where all the drop-outs from the other high-schools ended up + the gang-kids? Yeah almost 17 was really really *late* for that particular setting.
Maybe it’s just that in NZ, there really isn’t much of a concept of “saving yourself”- there might be for certain sectors of society but it’s Just Not part of our common narrative. I get the sense that we are much more like the UK in that regard- get your first time over and done with and then you can just move on to enjoying yourself without having to worry about it again.
[I really hope I haven’t said something inadvertently insulting again. It really is just offering my context which is a completely different setting than most of the commenters here.]
Oh, no, it’s fine. I actually enjoyed the phrase—if you can’t tell, this is something I find immensely amusing. I only tend to bridle when people bust out the “you’ve got issues/you’re a prude” bullshit.
Though I’m glad you qualified your circumstances—I was having a hard time imagining 17 as late in any context!!
Sweet. In that case all we need is to make a suitable TIARA with which to crown people….
AgTigress: I don’t think there ought to be a line drawn as to what procedures we should and shouldn’t be allowed to have done to our bodies, as long as it’s our own choice. What I have a problem with is the marketing campaign, and that’s where I think the line ought to be drawn.
Put it this way: How many kids do you know have had braces? Orthodontic correction is almost always cosmetic, at least in America. Aside from “Your child probably needs braces or he/she’ll end up with crooked teeth.” there’s almost no marketing. No “Do you feel like your teeth make you look like an ogre? Does your husband not want to kiss you because you’ve got fangs? Fix it now!” mentality. (At least that I’ve seen, someone may prove me wrong.)
Frankly, I’m more concerned about the whole “damaged goods” angle that keeps cropping up. Squicky.
(Wassa codeword? I don’t have one. Should I be envious?)
Me! Me! I wanna share too!!!
I thought I was “freakishly late” at 24! Why 24? Well, I just never met anybody I really wanted to do it with. Anybody who was single and available, that is. It wasn’t religious or anything. I’ve been a staunch secular humanist since junior high. Just lack of a suitable partner, I guess. Same problem I have now…
No way would I want to go back. Virginity sucked (and I didn’t – ha, ha.)
snarkhunter, Robin, and everyone, I don’t think that Sarah and Candy set out to start their own support group, but it has been good for me to read the responses to this thread.
snarkhunter, I wish I had some words of wisdom. Mostly, though, I wish you the best experience you can have, on your timetable and nobody else’s, with a person you care for and cares for you in return.
@ snarkhunter (3/3 5:50 AM), re: the double standard: I’m 23, and I definitely get the “If you’re still a virgin you’re pathetic” vibe, even from my friends. Even though they deny it if I ask them outright, how they act at other times convinces me that they do think it’s lame, or pointless. Usually I just brush it off, but occasionally it gets under my skin, and I DO feel ashamed at still being a virgin. And I hate that.
I’m not religious, and I’m not a prude. It’s a combination of not being particularly social (translation: complete and utter geek, high school – present), and wanting it to be a good experience, with the right person, when the time is right.
Half the time, I’m proud of the fact that I’ve stuck to my decision to wait until the right time. The other half… I think (or even hear) that no one will ever want to have sex with me if they know I’m a virgin at this point. And I want to cry, because that can’t be how it is.
Well, I guess part of the time I’m just indignant. (“So what is this magic number that I apparently missed? And who the hell has the right to tell me I’m supposed to live up to some chronological standard rather than what feels right to me?”)
And I’d written this before I saw Julie’s comment: We should have a support group for “Oh My God I Can’t Believe You’re Still A” virgins.
Which I guess is what this thread has become. It’s made me feel better, at least.
I’m 22 (23 in June) and a virgin. It’s just kind of never happened, probably because I’m shy (better now, but I had crippling social anxiety disorder up until relatively recently. I can talk to people, but coming onto that cute guy in my biology lab is still not going to happen. Sad.), but I’m definitely not a prude/religious/ugly/whatever the reasons people come up with.
The other half… I think (or even hear) that no one will ever want to have sex with me if they know I’m a virgin at this point
This is something I also worry about. 😀
(Verification: single19. Yes. I was.)