"It Just Hasn’t Happened": The Twenty-Something Accidental Virgin

By Taylor Dashiell on April 23, 2016

Courtesy: 2brwngrls.tumblr.com

Are you over eighteen years old and have never had sex? Relax, there is nothing wrong with you. In fact you are part of an ever growing percentage of both young women and men who enter and even leave college with their virginity intact, myself included. Many are just unassuming, sociable, pleasant people who for whatever reason haven’t found someone who wants to have sex with them. Or hasn’t expressed any desire to toward them directly. This includes twenty three year old Howard University graduate and columnist Ashley Reese who up until earlier this year had never been on a date, much less been kissed or had sex. But she says she has lived a very fulfilling life so far including writing her own column, Accidental Virgin on TheGloss.com where she has found that she’s not as alone as she had originally thought. “I’m a little less embarrassed since starting my column but even before that I wasn’t really embarrassed,” Reese shares, “I was never really in a rush to be sexually active.” And just as the title of her blog suggests, she also did not set out to be a twenty something year old virgin. Her column is about her life experiences as a sexually naïve Millennial in a time where it seems extremely rare, and even weird, for people in their early twenties to still be virgins, but at the same time are by no means prudish, socially awkward nerds. Another young woman, MaryAnn, also has no problem saying she’s a virgin at the age of twenty-two, and is thankful most days that she still has it, “however some of the pressure [to lose it] comes from looking around and seeing that all my friends have lost theirs by now…I’ve only had one friend who told me she regretted her first time. Most of my other friends lost their virginity a little later in life (20+) so fortunately for them it was a good experience.”

In recent decades, loss of virginity has become known as an important milestone in human development, signifying a transition toward adulthood (Smith and Schaffer 96). But with the ever expanding, all age’s playground that is the internet and a hyper sexualized mass media outlet to reinforce it, attention has been drawn to the effects of young children’s exposure to sex and sexuality. But young children would obviously not be the only ones effected by a merging of reality and sexual fantasy. But what is considered sex? Does it just involve penile-vaginal intercourse or can someone still be a virgin if they participate in genital touching? Young adults who have never experienced sexual penetration are also consuming these images and asking these questions. If they aren’t being pressured from outside influences, there still is the tiniest bit of self-assessment and comparison that comes into play. More questions arise, most commonly “Is there something wrong with me?”

And the answer, Reese agrees, is no, “I don’t give off vibes of social ineptitude” and the good news is you probably don’t either. Sure, sex is a milestone in the transition into adulthood, but it has become more than just that. Human sex, at least, is now “a multipurpose activity” according to Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor in their co-authored book The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, “It can happen for emotional bonding, for social bonding, for pleasure, for communication, for shelter and comfort, for personal release, for escape – as well as for reproduction of the species” (11). And though their research stems from ancient female-male relations they have come across something. According to them, it’s understandable that many different sub cultures have risen around sex, including the hook up culture that has been attributed to Millennials almost exclusively by older generations. But what do the members of this generation think about sex outside of religious moralisms? Why do they have sex? What do they consider sex or more importantly, what do they consider abstaining from sex? Do girls worry about the well documented and anticipated discomfort? Do guys worry about being the source of that discomfort? Once sex and its mysteries are defined and solved in terms they understand, virgin and virginity’s definition can also be recalibrated for everyone, hopefully creating a middle ground between the current ‘good girl’ archetype and mythical unicorn status.

Teens and young adults have a different outlook on sex than people in their thirties and beyond. So naturally the words ‘virginity’ and ‘sex’ mean something completely different to them. Students first encounter sex in a formal setting in high school sexual education classes which are taught with a fairly adult mindset. The programs usually find their footing in scare tactics, going into graphic detail about STD’s and other health risks related sexual intercourse. And while these are valid points to be making with their futures in mind, the ultimate goal is to scare the students away from sex for as long as possible. Sometimes it works, most times it doesn’t.

To an extent it is understandable; gym teachers do not get paid enough to discuss all of the facets of heterosexual sex and sexuality, much less all of the other emerging classifications (Humphreys 664). It could even be said that none of them have completely figured it out themselves. So they water down the established adult version in hopes the students can grasp at least half of the information. This is very rarely the case however. As pointed out in Defining Virginity and Abstinence: Adolescents’ Interpretations of Sexual Behaviors, “understanding adolescents’ conceptualizations of sexual behavior has become increasingly important” especially when high school age kids are having sex. (Bersamin, Fisher, Walker, Hill and Grube 182). It’s incredibly hard to teach someone if you have no concept of how they both perceive and learn information.

In the article, a group of college students were asked out of eleven different sexual acts, which ones were considered “having sex”. The results showed that very few believed deep kissing was sex (2%), whereas almost all considered penile-vaginal intercourse as having sex (99.5%). In addition, 60% did not think oral-genital contact constituted having sex. When similar questions were asked of a twelve to sixteen year old age group, 83.5% agreed an adolescent was still a virgin if the participated in genital touching and 70.6% believed both girls and boys retained their virginity if they participated in oral sex (Bersamin, Fisher, Walker, Hill and Grube 182-184). Ms. Reese would agree with both brackets that believed oral sex does not affect your virginity status, “we’ve done everything BUT intercourse,” she says of her and her current male partner.

Curiously, it is noted that there is a significant discrepancy among the adolescents polled on whether or not genital touching or other sexual behaviors impact their virginity or abstinence status, going on to say it “may reflect the lack of consensus in our own society about what constitutes [as] “sex””, specifically pointing out former President Clinton’s infamous line “I did not have sex” in reference to oral sex (Bersamin, Fisher, Walker, Hill and Grube 186-187).

There is also a gender divide, where 10% of males, versus 2% of females, believed that a male or female was a virgin after engaging in vaginal intercourse, (Bersamin, Fisher, Walker, Hill and Grube 187). Though they are very much outliers in their opinion, it also attests to the discrepancies in the male and female teaching and conceptualization of virginity and sex.

In a review of thirty-five longitudinal studies compiled in 2013, it was found that a majority of people have sex for the first time between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, with 70-90%  of the participants engaging in sexual behavior by the age of eighteen (Smith and Schaffer 97). The findings are not that surprising since it has become more sociably acceptable to engage in sexual activities before marriage. Ms. Reese however is not waiting for anything in particular either. “I’m not religious. I am not saving myself for marriage. I do not judge my peers for getting nekkid and knocking boots with members of the opposite (or same) sex. I just missed the proverbial boat when it became time to start doing things in your formative years.” (How I Became an Accidental Virgin, TheGloss.com). MaryAnn however does believe she is waiting for someone special, just not on a white horse, “hopefully a guy with more sexual experience than me and that will mean it [the sex] will be better than it would have been in high school.”

Neither ideal is uncommon, despite the statistics on virginity loss. In a time before institutional religion became the norm, female sexual dexterity and substantial periods of abstinence were nothing out of the ordinary. But, this was also a time when both sex and abstinence were less about a connection with a god and purity and more about a connection with one’s self. These purifications “were a way of encountering a major life change or soul transformation” (Sjöö and Mor 272), and though there are no guarantees that these rituals were only linked to sexual activity, today’s youth do similar things, opting out of sexual activities for a much needed soul cleansing or self-reflection in an effort to get back in touch with who they are without sex.

This however calls into question the aspect of sexual moralism and its role in defining virginity. For lack of a better word, something called “God” has been used as a tool to suppress female sexuality (Sjöö and Mor 5), but also human sexuality as a whole. With the current stigma in place, sex has become a paradox and particularly women are ridiculed for participating and enjoying this natural part of life.  The social bonding, the pleasure, and all the other functions of sex under these morals are not allowed to happen outside of marriage. To date back to early Judo-Christianity, the practices are only a little over two thousand years old, where the exchange of sexual intercourse has been around much longer. Something new, relatively speaking, has been allowed to surpress a very natural and spiritual side to humanity, which in the long run has led to “the denial, the condemnation, and the mutilation” of sexuality (Sjöö and Mor 5). As Reese stated she is not religious and her views on her virginity do not stem from such a place. MaryAnn conversely grew up in a moderately religious household and believes herself to be religious, but does not link her faith to her religion in such a literal way, “I’m just looking for someone special” when that happens and under what circumstances has not been a hang up for her.

So, after years of subliminal messaging by society, and the raised eyebrows of close friends, twenty year old virgins have had it pretty rough for the last decade or so. Being led to believe something might be wrong with you because no one has approached you sexually is at its worst unbearably demeaning, and at its best dangerously self-deprecating. But research is being done, in an effort to understand this specific situation, as well as figuring out sex and sexuality as two, intertwined entities. Therefore here it is again, there is nothing wrong with you. Whoever you are: you are remarkable and strong and patient. Good on you.

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