ViRginity and Virginity loss

In William Faulkner's 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury, Quentin Compson is shocked to hear his father declare that men “invented” virginity and that it matters more to men than women. In fact, scholarly research in the Western context indicates that virginity is socially created and deeply gendered. This entry defines virginity and virginity [Page 1673]loss, provides a historical perspective to this topic, and presents data on average age at virginity loss in different groups.

Broadly speaking, virginity refers to the state of having never had sex and virginity loss refers to a person's first sexual encounter. (Some object to the term loss as pejorative.) Distinguishing between virgins and nonvirgins is an ancient practice. Early Greeks, Romans, and Jews valued virginity in unmarried women and believed virgins of both genders to possess special powers. Early Christians were urged to reject sin by embracing virginity, preferably as a permanent state, but minimally until marriage. Although lifelong virginity lost prestige after the Protestant Reformation, premarital virginity remained the widespread ideal, especially for women. Alternate perspectives also existed, however, coming to the fore in the United States during the sexual “revolution” of the late 1960s. Competing understandings of premarital virginity as desirable and undesirable have subsequently coexisted, often uncomfortably.

What sorts of sexual encounters, between what sorts of people, result in virginity loss is disputed. Before the Enlightenment and during the Victorian era, virginity was defined primarily in terms of spiritual or moral purity. Since about 1900, virginity has been defined primarily in terms of specific physical acts. The traditional—and most common—definition posits that virginity is lost the first time a person engages in vaginal sex. Some people believe, however, that engaging in anal or oral sex can also result in virginity loss. Others see these practices as foreplay and thus consistent with maintaining “technical” virginity—whereby an individual engages in “everything but” the activities thought to result in virginity loss (common since the 1920s at least).

Historically understood as exclusively heterosexual, virginity loss between same-sex partners is increasingly deemed possible, largely because of the growing visibility and acceptability of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer (GLBQ) people from the late 20th century on. According to one common formulation (favored especially by heterosexuals), GLBQ individuals can lose their virginity via oral or anal sex, whereas heterosexual virginity loss requires vaginal sex.

Tensions between moral/emotional and physiological definitions of virginity persist. Historically,

coerced sex was thought to compromise virginity. Yet, feminist analyses framing rape as violence, not sex, have led to new claims, common especially among women, that forced sex cannot result in virginity loss. Whether a sexually experienced person can resume her or his virginity is also debated. Most contend that virginity can only be lost once (a source of its significance). Others propose that, by being deliberately abstinent for a designated period of time (often until marriage), a sexually experienced person can become a secondary (or born-again) virgin. This view was popularized in the United States in the late 1980s by an increasingly influential conservative Christian movement.

In the United States, average ages at virginity loss (defined as “first vaginal sex”) declined steadily from about 18 for men and 19 for women in the early 1970s to between 16 and 17 for both genders in 1995, then rose slightly in the early 2000s, especially among men. Historic differences in virginity-related beliefs and behaviors by race/ethnicity, social class, religion, and region diminished considerably during the late 20th century. However, virginity loss occurs on average earliest for African Americans, followed by Whites, then Latinos and Asian Americans; later for conservative Protestants than for other religious groups; later for well-off than poor youth; and later in Southern, Midwestern, and Mountain states than in other regions. Most youth who pledge to remain virgins until marriage engage in sex while single, practicing safer sex at significantly lower rates than do nonpledgers.

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