When a penis goes into any of the Big Three orifices and stays there long enough to make both partners very, very happy, you’re not a virgin any more. That said, you can be virgin for other particular sex acts. I’m not sure what would work for lesbians, and I’m dumb enough to come up with a hypothetical … wait a minute, dammit … I AM dumb enough to do that! When a vagina has a close encounter with a mouth or other vagina, you’re not a lesbian virgin any more. Close encounters might include strap-ons and double dildos. God, this is getting complicated. Is there a lexicographer in the house? Preferably a lesbian lexicographer?
It may be interesting to know that not all lesbians are into strap-ons.
Some find anything resembling a penis to be a big turn-off.
I have a lesbian friend, okay? 
You do realize that only 30% of women can orgasm from vaginal intercourse? (Check out the Hite Report for some more ignorance-fighting re:female sexuality.) Presumably the number of women who have orgasns from receiving anal sex or giving a blow job are much lower than 30%. Which means your definition of sex, even though it contains the phrase “both partners,” is very much defined by what brings men to orgasm, but not women. I’m not even talking about your guesses as to what constitutes lesbian sex. Your definition doesn’t take into account the Ultimate Pleasure of 70% of hetero women. Something to think about.
I don’t think “virginity” is a useful concept in the modern world, not least of all because it’s so difficult to get people to agree on what it means. The term also has so much baggage associated with it that it’s not even very helpful when talking about past sexual experience, potential exposure to STDs, or potential pregnancy. If virginity=purity, there’s bound to be plenty of people who simply lie about being virgins (or not being virgins), or who twist the definition as much as they can. If virginity is something that a woman can only “lose” with penetration by a penis or by achieving orgasm then there are a plenty of sexually active women who are still virgins.
In the modern world there are much better ways to determine whether someone has an STD or if a woman is pregnant than by just asking whether they’re a virgin. We also have good (although not perfect) ways of reducing the risk of STDs and pregnancy for people who are sexually active.
The thing is, this is only a problem if you put tremendous weight on the word. If you look at it clinically in the traditional penis/vagina sense then, no, a lesbian or gay male could very well be a clinical virgin. But the very idea of this gets a lot of people upset and so they try to distort the word to include whatever they need so they’re not “virgins” any longer. For a word supposedly without much modern value, it’s still ridiculously important to a whole lot of people. In theory, they should be saying “I’m still a virgin but who cares?”
I don’t know if this is still a thing or not, but I can remember hearing about Christian girls thinking that oral sex and anal sex did not violate chastity, and that they were still considered virgins; just goes to show how much it matters if a guy is a virgin.
I don’t see any reason to use the word at all unless you’re giving it some special weight relating to sexual purity/experience. Otherwise it’s an imprecise term with a lot of cultural baggage.
It’s interesting that you use the word “clinical”, because I don’t think I’ve ever encountered the word virgin in a clinical setting. I’m having a hard time thinking of reasons why a doctor would need a special word that meant “person who has never had penis-in-vagina intercourse, but may or may not have engaged in other sexual acts with any number of partners”. If a doctor did need such a word then I don’t think “virgin” would be the best one to use, as it’s likely to be confusing to the patient. I would assume that a doctor asking about my sexual history was concerned about the possibility of STDs as well as pregnancy and did not mean to focus exclusively on vaginal intercourse.
I’m also skeptical as to whether it’s truly “traditional” to consider someone who’s had oral or anal sex to be a virgin. I suspect the traditional emphasis on vaginal intercourse was largely because that was the only sex act most people ever experienced, and often the only sex act that was even legal.
I suspect that the “traditional emphasis on vaginal intercourse” was largely because that’s the kind that causes pregnancy. I think that we, living in an age of readily available and reasonably effective birth control, underestimate the extent to which sexual mores and morals derive from the reproductive function of sex.
My guess is that the oldest or most “traditional” significance of virginity comes from men who wanted to marry a virgin to be sure she wasn’t already pregnant with some other man’s child. And that the concept of “virginity” wouldn’t have been anywhere near as prominent if it weren’t for the fact that there’s a physical (albeit not infallible) manifestation of it (i.e. the hymen).
While I’m sure concerns about paternity were a major part of it, I have doubts as to whether such a man would consider a woman who’d never had vaginal intercourse but was known to have engaged in oral and anal sex with other men to be a virgin. And as far as pregnancy goes, a woman who hasn’t had vaginal intercourse in the past nine months isn’t any more likely to be pregnant than a woman who’s never had vaginal intercourse.
It’s only “imprecise” because people want to change the definition so they’ll fit into it. Originally the word had a very precise meaning.
Def. #2: efficient and unemotional; coldly detached.
I never meant “clinical” as a synonym for medical. As a “coldly detached” term, it has a simple meaning. People push their emotional responses onto the meaning and then demand that the definition be changed because “That means a lesbian is a virgin and I refuse to accept that” on emotional grounds. To be clear, I don’t personally care if a lesbian (or gay male or whatever) wants to say that they’re not a virgin. It’s not as though I’m in the unicorn ranching business and need to pick employees. I’m just pointing out how double-sided people are about the term, claiming in one breathe that it’s meaningless and in another that Groups B, C, D & E can’t be excluded from it.
I SAID we needed a lexicographer. Perhaps we should adopt hyphenated names for various kinds of virginity and just let it go from there. Strap-on virgin, scissors-virgin, oral-virgin, hand-virgin. Hmmmmm.
Or we could just dump the entire notion of virginity as outmoded.
Then I have some unfortunate news for you…
Losing your (hetero) virginity means performing a sexual act where, had no birth control been used and assuming fully functional sexual organs with both parties, there would be a non-zero chance of the woman getting pregnant.
So sorry. Blowjobs, hand jobs, sticking your finger up her ass or anything else does not count as “losing your virginity”.
I have my doubts about that, but even if it did then so what? If people have changed the definition of “virginity” then if you want to communicate effectively you can’t assume that the older, more precise meaning is intended or will be understood by others.
Who are these “people”? You’ve been responding to me, but that’s not what I said. I said that I didn’t think the term was useful because people can’t agree on exactly what it means and because it has a lot of cultural baggage that makes some people want to identify as either virgins or not virgins regardless of their actual sexual histories. I also pointed out that some of the proposed definitions in this thread include – not exclude – as virgins people who are sexually active, which seems strange given the word’s strong connotations of sexual innocence/inexperience.
Well, how else are you going to know who to sacrifice?
That’s more-or-less how it’s been defined among my peers. I’m 38, if that matters.
Given that no “new” definition is understood, I fail to see the issue with using the more precise definition.
Read the thread. See people talking about how such and such group needs to have an included definition. I’m not terribly worried about your personal feelings on it (no offense) but rather used your comments as a springboard for my own thoughts.
Well, if you don’t care what other people actually mean or whether they understand what you’re saying then you can use whatever definition you like. I was talking about effective communication, though.
If you are responding to things other people have said in this thread then I would prefer it if you would quote their posts and address your remarks to them and leave me out of it.
Right, like the traditional narrow definition that’s been used for hundreds of years as opposed to the recent “We need to include hand jobs and oral sex and being within 50’ of someone having an orgasm” definitions. It’s those people who are muddying the waters and making the communication less effective with whimsical definitions based on emotion.
This is a message board where people respond both broadly and narrow. Your remarks gave me an opening for something I thought contributed and thus I quoted you when responding. You’re welcome to stop responding to me and thus reduce the risk of me using your remarks however.
You are the only person I’ve ever seen claim that penis in vagina sex between a man and women while wearing a condom would leave both parties with their virginity intact.
I think you should reexamine your outdated definition to catch up with society.
What, didn’t see the “had no birth control been used” modifier?