Virginity in College

Trying to communicate your wants and needs with a short-term partner in college is awkward to say the least. Trying to communicate your virginity to a short-term partner in college – ten times more awkward.

I used the word “we” to describe virgins in solidarity, but I cannot group us all in one clump. For some, virginity means not making out with anyone at school, or waiting until they have found their life partner to make serious moves in the bedroom. For others, virginity is a technical and increasingly arbitrary term to describe what is essentially their sex life. Of course, there is also everyone in between.

A lot of people don’t feel comfortable disclosing their V-card status. I basically scream it out from the rooftop. I have no moral interest in being a virgin and I don’t have any plans to enroll in the Jewish version of a nunnery. A virgin is something that I am, and I am trying not to be pressured out of it by society before I’m ready.

Being so vocal about my virginity doesn’t necessarily translate to being confident about it. For me, telling a guy I’m a virgin usually sparks an intense fear of commitment that then leaves me off the hook for sex. It’s an easy out. Once, someone asked me why I don’t just keep it to myself and say, “I don’t want to have sex tonight.” Honestly, I’m not cool enough for that.

Sometimes, my virginity invokes curiosity instead of fear and speculation. I’m not surprised as to why someone would inquire about this life choice. After all, I don’t have the most innocent exterior. However, these questions put me in an uncomfortable place, where I actually have to articulate why I choose to opt out of vaginal penetration. The answer is complicated:

1)   I think it would hurt my body.

2)   There is a lot of pressure to be unaffected by sex acts in college after they are performed. Because I have never had intercourse before, I would never be able to assure someone that I would not cry or need to be taken care of.

3)   I do not trust any potential suitors enough at the moment with whom to share that new, uncharted experience.

4)   Most importantly, what I do now makes me feel empowered. It may not be the “sex” I see on HBO shows, but I enjoy it. Right now, I am not ready to venture into territory where I couldn’t go to sleep at night humming Chaka Kahn’s “I’m Every Woman.”

Virginity is actually a stupid term. It is heteronormative, because plenty of humans don’t end up using the route of vaginally penetrative sex. The word virgin is confining, because it implies some sort of checklist to qualify your existence, instead of doing what you want to, when you want. The loss of virginity also has an implication in American culture that you are ready to have uncommitted with sex with everyone you meet, which is not the case for most people.

I think that a person’s relationship with sex is fluid, and capable of redefining itself at any moment. No one embodies this better than Cate Blanchett in her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I. She has some explicit sex scenes with a very handsome Sir Robert Dudley, but at the end of the film when she assumes her full royal duties (and finds out that he is married), she cuts all of her hair off and proclaims that she is the Virgin Queen. As I once said when I was drunk: “If she can do that, I guess we’re all virgin queens now.”

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