I want your opinion!

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-13-2006
I want your opinion!
2
Fri, 09-07-2007 - 8:24am
So I think this is the perfect board for this. It will make you think. So my girlfriends and one guy friend were talking last night about virgins and the definition(s) of one. Now I understand that there are religions and beleifs out there about staying a virgin before marriage so I dont want to upset or confuse anyone. My main question is what exactly defins a virgin. Everyone explores there body when they are young and realize that there is pleasure that comes along with touching yourself and others. So take a male for instance. Males can expereince the joys of cumming at an early age by pleasuring them selves. So when a guy pleasures himself does that mean he is still a virgin since he has already had the experience of cumming? Females on the other hand have it harder in my opinion on being defined as a virgin. We have the hyman and once that is broken we are no longer virgins right? So does that mean if you have never had sex but have used toys, play with your self. ext does that mean you are still a virgin? Also we dont experience the joy of cumming until we actually have something/someone inside of us, right? In my opinion beign a virgin is NOT having something inside of you to experience that pleasure. But with males it just seems so much easier and females have it harder...so unfair. I just want to know what you guys think of the definition of a virgin WITHOUT the fact of religious beliefs.
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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2007
Fri, 09-07-2007 - 9:01am

Welcome to the board oceangirl622. Interesting question.

My personal opinion is that once you have engaged in sexual activity with another person with the intent of reaching climax, you're not a virgin. I know technically, each person is a virgin with the absence of actual penis-to-vagina penetration. I don't count masturbation as a form of loosing virginity, and since a hymen can be broken in many ways, I don't consider that to be a determining factor for virginity.

I remember when my BF asked me if I was a virgin and I replied "kind of". He was confused and didn't understand what that could mean. While I hadn't had actual intercourse, I had been sexually active through manual stimulation, oral sex and dry humping. I guess that those are preludes to loosing your virginity for many. I know that some people want to remain a virgin until they get married, yet they practice these different sex acts regularly with their SOs. They share a bed and do everything except have intercourse in the name of preserving their virginity.

Most women don't have orgasms during intercourse, so I know that's not what the pleasure is all about for them. I don't think the religious notion of remaining a virgin until marriage was created to allow for all other sexual activity except for intercourse. I think those that avoid intercourse only, just to claim they are still a virgin, are using a technicality and sort of fooling themselves and others. Like you, I don't want to offend anyone else, but that's just my opinion. Personally I think being physically intimate with someone, putting yourself in a position to share sexual bodily fluids and placing yourself at risk to get STDs is all part of sexual activity. Once you are sexually active, you are no longer a virgin in the broadest sense of the term.

The only exception I make to that thinking is when dealing with teens. They are waking up sexually, and starting to experiment. It's not likely that their first sexual encounter will take their virginity. Yet if a teen is having oral sex on a regular basis, or with multiple partners, I don't really look at him/her as a virgin. It is a confusing line in some instances, but for an adult to be "playing sex" doesn't cut it in my book. And as I pointed out before, I claimed to be "sort of a virgin" at the age of 17 because I had gone past the point of curiosity, and had definitely moved on to the concept of sexual satisfaction.



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iVillage Member
Registered: 12-12-2006
Fri, 09-07-2007 - 9:30am

The "technical" definition of a virgin is a woman who has never had intercourse, i.e.: a penis in her vagina. In the "olden days" it also meant a "chaste" woman, or an "untouched" woman. The hymen has nothing to do with virginity. Due to evolution, the hymen is non-existent in some women, and others lose it in very innocent NON sexual ways, such as riding a horse or bicycle.

Many people confuse virginity with "sexual experience"....and think that a virgin has never had ANY sexual experience. In this day and age, virginity has nothing to do with experience. I remember a post a few years ago...from a woman who lived with a guy, and they indulged in oral sex and anal sex......and she was saving her "virginity" for marriage! That's laughable as far as I'm concerned. The woman is "fooling" herself.

Also, if you get into the physiology of the matter....for males, "intercourse" is the goal.....it might be for a woman, too......and she'll save it for marriage. What a shock she'll have when she finds out that all the other sexual activities that she might or might not have been involved in before intercourse......for a woman are much MORE pleasurable and/or satisfying than actual intercourse. Possibly the reason it's so "treasured" is because it's thought of as a "gift" for a man.....and no biggie for a woman.

Times change. 50-60 years ago, females were divided into two categories....the "good girls" and the "tramps". Guys loved the tramps, but wouldn't marry a girl unless she was a virgin, and a "good girl". They didn't want "used merchandise". Thankfully that's gone by the wayside.

There are some religions that put so much emphasis on a bride being a "virgin" that the only proof would be blood on the marriage bed. Again, not all women who ARE virgins will bleed the first time they have intercourse......and I've read that the women will take some animal blood to bed with them....so that the sheets will be stained, and everyone will be happy.

Virginity is whatever you want it to be, but it definitely doesn't mean "innocence" in this day and age.