Virginity is a fluid term. A dictionary definition would tell you that virginity denotes the state of one who has never experienced sexual intercourse – but the intercourse is not identical, for example, for a cisgender male homosexual and a trans female pansexual.
As expressions of intercourse differ within our community, we drift further away from an all-encompassing understanding of the term. From the mother of Jesus to the astrological symbol of Virgo or a cocktail without the good bits – concepts of virginity range from the most sacred of images to the most rudimentary activities.
So what does it mean to us? Within our diverse and heterogeneous LGBTQIA+ community, we embrace a variety of expressions of gender and sexuality. I spoke with four people under the rainbow umbrella to try and understand how their unique experiences have shaped their notions of virginity.
Teen student Rose V is a cisgender female who identifies as lesbian. Miss Rose once considered herself to be bisexual and has come to learn that she feels most attracted to women. She would still describe herself as a virgin.
Rose believes that as a lesbian, losing her virginity would include any intercourse with another woman – sexuality and men do not even connect for young Rose.
“At some times I’ve felt that due to society you feel pressure to lose your virginity, as if you haven’t by a certain age you are ‘prudish’ or ‘stuck up’,” Rose says, “However, for keeping my virginity I haven’t been pressured. I do get reminded by others that to keep your virginity is apparently a good thing. I personally believe that you can choose either way as long as you’re comfortable with your decision.”
Rose has always been honest about her virgin status, saying she feels it would be wrong to lie.
“There are always jokes about being a virgin, however I do not understand that when you do lose your virginity you seem to instantly obtain the label ‘slut’ or ‘whore’ if you are female, whereas if you are a male you get congratulated on sleeping around. I think that it is stupid that there is a double standard. I think that should change.”
Kelsie, another female student, considers herself to be pansexual. Unlike Rose, Kelsie believes that virginity is your first sexual experience – regardless of your partner’s gender.
Kelsie too felt some pressure to “keep up” with her peers when it came to having her first sexual experience but in the end she knew it had to be her decision to make.
“I actually wanted to lose my virginity for myself, because I really wanted to know how it would feel. The pressure was all from myself.”
Kelsie did however feel pressure to lie about her age, having lost her virginity at 15, she says many condemned her for being “too young”.
“A lot of my friends of all genders know I’m not a virgin, and it doesn’t matter to them because my sex life is nobody’s business.”
For 18-year-old pansexual Nick, virginity is about purity. “Pure,” he said when asked to define the term, “You haven’t been tainted with anyone else.”
Nick’s understand was not restricted to one particular kind of intercourse – so long as it involved “connecting one’s privates”.
Homosexual male Brenton has a more nuanced understanding of virginity, breaking his definition into 3 categories.
“For me it was split between virginity and anal virginity. Defined as the first time I penetrated someone and the first time I was penetrated,” he says, “I lost my virginity to a female before I lost it to a male, so it could technically be split into three.”
As a gay man, Brenton felt he could not be open and honest like Rose – feeling pressure from friends to have his first sexual experience, but being told by heterosexual friends to supress discussing it openly.
“I copped a lot of crap for that when I told some hetero friends, they didn’t understand being so open about it. [They thought] I couldn’t be considered gay until I’d ‘taken it’.”
Rose, Kelsie, Nick and Brenton’s experiences and personal conceptualizations of virginity are as varied and diverse as our community and as individuals represent but 4 pieces of a far greater puzzle. Does the concept virginity, as a multifarious community, serve us at all?
Leigh Hill
Names of interviewees have been changed.
