Yeah, I’m definitely speaking from personal experience, but of course so are you. Either way, if ‘penetration’ were used as the defining term for losing your virginity then, for a lot of lesbians, oral sex wouldn’t count.
Unluckily, no, I guess.
N/A works just fine.
I don’t think it’s ‘unluckily.’ It’s personal preference (and in my experience it’s a pretty common one).
I think the reason straight guys are so hung up on the question is two-fold. First, it’s inculcated in us on the playground (“going all the way”) that “sex” and what we would now call “sexual activity” aren’t the same thing, but because we do fit the (privileged) default paradigm, there’s no need for us to recalibrate the scale in the way that queers were forced to do. Second, we, to a man, have the experience of “no, we haven’t done it, but we do stuff.” If now the stuff means you’ve had sex, mightn’t there be a lot of 16 year old girls who are no longer willing to do it? (On their peers! Not on us!)
One hesitates to kiss and tell, but I had quite pleasant experiences with tons of girls (hah, not really – like, three or four) that fell in various places on the spectrum between making out and doin’ it. In one case, for instance, it was because my partner (a rape victim) was very protective of what’s been termed her “emotional” virginity. In another, it was because I didn’t want my first time to be with this particular person, etc. But if oral and “third base” are now considered equivalent to sex, then the emotional connections (bugaboos, even) that prevented us, on those occasions, from engaging in penile-vaginal penetration might have also cost me all number of blow jobs. And that’s no good at all.
–Cliffy
Okay… If a 20 year old person did _____ to a 15 year old girl, and would be convicted of statutory rape, that sexual act is considered SEX. Is performing fellatio or cunnilingus on a minor considered sex and therefore punishable by law?
Oral Sex is SEX. It’s not Oral flibidy-floo, it’s oral SEX. Once you’ve engaged in sex, you’re no longer a virgin. Stop looking for loopholes. You can no more be “technically” a virgin than you can be “technically” pregnant. Once you have become sexually active, you’re not a virgin.
The problem with using PiV as the criterion is that it marginalizes us and makes us invisible. It’s saying that we don’t have “real” sex, so our relationships don’t really count the same way that hetero relationships do. And of course that attitude contributes to opposition to same-sex marriage.
Thing is, I was having a chat with a childhood friend today, and she confirmed something weird: we never called it “oral sex” when we were in high school. We called it “blowjobs” or “eating out”, or “fellatio” or “cunnilingus”. The first either of us remember “oral sex” becoming a term to use was with the whole Clinton thing…and even there, I distinctly remember early on in that debacle having to explain to my son what a “blowjob” was, because a news anchor used the term on air.
Was it just us? Or did “oral sex” as a term become widely used only when they started having to talk about it on the nightly news? etymology online says, “The sexual sense [of the word “oral”] is first recorded 1948, in Kinsey,” but how widespread was the term compared to other terms for the activity?
I remember as well being a bit taken aback when there was the whole “is oral sex sex”? debate, also during the Clinton scandal. I was surprised it was even a discussion, because it just so obviously wasn’t. It was sleazy and something a married man shouldn’t be doing with a woman not his wife (without his wife’s permission) but it wasn’t “as bad” as “real sex”. I no longer believe that, for the marginalization reasons **panache45 **mentions, but I sure did grow up believing that.
“And after the spanking, the oral sex.” -Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974). That’s the first thing that comes to my mind when you talk about someone actually saying the words “oral sex.”
Well, “hands” – that’s the problem! You need the right tool for the right job. And sometimes a power tool can be very useful too.
It was just an attempt to lighten a serious question. To imply that I knew opinions would vary wildly & passionately, so I wanted to broach the subject with a touch of decorum, tact, and humor. 
I went to high school in the late 70s/early 80s and by then premarital sex was more or less accepted and desired amongst us teenagers. Or at least it wasn’t totally taboo and didn’t automatically make you a slut (or, ah, I don’t know what the male equivalent was, a rake?) like in the 50s. But being openly gay in high school was still absolutely not accepted. In fact, high school being what it was, even a slightly effeminate guy or butch girl would be ridiculed mercilessly.
Although I’m sure this still happens, it seems apparent to me that because authority figures now have to be accepting of it, teenagers have followed suit and can sometimes be more open about it in social circles. So the main reason I asked the question is because I also assume that, just as when I went to school, virginity is ***still ***the single most important aspect of one’s life from adolescence to adulthood (regardless of whether you talk about it to anyone or not). So I wondered how the two fit together amongst teenagers today.
I would gather that the term ‘virgin’ just isn’t used by teens much anymore. Hell, it wasn’t really even being used by teenagers when I was one. You just called it ‘having sex’ or sometimes still quaintly ‘going all the way’ though that phrase was fading out. So I guess that hasn’t really changed. Unless pressed for details teens today just tell their friends if they’ve ‘had sex’ or not. Though I can’t help but feel that, because it’s more complicated now, they’d insist on clarifying details & rules as to what constitutes what…