The Virginity Project

On the face of things...

2009-11-07T03:20:53-08:00

You can go whole weeks here at the virginity project and nothing really happens. No one loses their virginity and if they do, they don’t feel inclined to talk about it and generally speaking, everyone appears to be at one with the world. And then all hell breaks loose. Which is an exaggeration but really, its not often that I get emailed a question that I’ve never been asked before:

‘Ms. Monro

Does a persons face change when they lose their virginity?

Thanks

Karl’

Now, I don’t know if I have some weird kind of dyslexia but I completely misread this question the first time I looked at it. I thought that it had been written by a person with a looser grasp of English than myself who was asking if people, generally speaking, face change when they lose virginity…as in stare it in the face….

Duh. I am clearly a person who likes to make things more complicated than they are when actually this person was asking me a very simple question. Do people’s faces change when they lose virginity? i.e. do they look different?

What a ridiculous thing to ask, I thought. Of course they don’t. And then I began to cast my mind back to a more inchoate time in my life and it dawned on me that maybe it wasn’t such a crazy question after all.

‘Can anyone tell that I have lost my virginity?’, I remember thinking that to myself as I sat on a Spanish beach aged 15. ‘Surely I must look different in some way?’

For reasons best known to myself at the time, I hadn’t told either of my best friends that I had ‘done the do’ the night before but I was utterly convinced that there was no need to because as far as I was concerned, it might just as well have been written all over my face in indelible ink.

Clearly it wasn’t because a couple of days later, they almost died of shock when Danielle the Slapper, a slightly older and more ‘experienced’ girl who spent her afternoons on the beach regaling us young’uns with explicit details of her nightly sexploits, popped this rather upfront question:

‘So which one out of you three is a virgin then?’ she asked as we were walking home one afternoon. ‘Not me’ chimed Claire and Tabitha. They both turned to me with expectant looks on their faces. Expectant as to how I was going to answer a question that we all knew the answer to. Or at least we thought we did. ‘No, I’m not either’, I answered as my two best friends did their best not to choke to death on their ice creams.

They had no idea. So clearly in my case, my face could be relied upon not to give the game away. But it did get me thinking about couple of incidences where people’s faces most definitely did give the game away.

A few years later, I went to college and completely wasted my time and everyone else’s doing an Art Foundation course. It wasn’t that it was a crap course; it was just that I was so obviously not cut out for the educational life. Anyway, there was a very nice and extremely spotty boy on my course called Ben. When I say that he was spotty, it wasn’t just the odd pimple, it was full on crater shaped, quite hard to look at without actually feeling a bit ill style acne. But he was a lovely man and he made some interesting ‘installations’ with chairs and string on the front lawn of our college campus.

But what was really amazing was this. A couple of months later, we went on a college ‘trip’ to Amsterdam and Ben, unbeknownst to us, got it on with Jane, another (female) person on our course. I have no idea whether Ben was a virgin before he met Jane but I suspect probably yes. What I do know for sure is this. When we returned from our trip and went straight into the Christmas holidays, by the time we all got back from the break, Ben’s face had completely changed.

His spots had gone.

Was it the marathon sex sessions? I don’t know but I would like to think that losing his virginity had caused such a major hormonal shake up in Ben’s body that his acne had beat the hastiest retreat known to man. Either that or it was a Christmas miracle.

Fast-forward another decade and I was working in a restaurant with the two fabulous Baker sisters. Never let it be said that the Baker family were backward at coming forward. Pretty much everyone - from the postman to the restaurant regulars and most of the staff, knew that Danni and Gaby’s younger sister was still a virgin. Don’t ask me why, they were just one of those families for whom pretty much no subject at all was off limits. Mother and two daughters (who all worked together) discussed the status of their younger sister’s virginity on a regular basis.

Eventually we all moved on and got other jobs so when I next saw the mother and asked the inevitable question, has Jennifer lost her virginity yet, I was amazed when her mother said yes, she has. But not only that, but that she had known with 110% certainty exactly when it had happened.

Despite the fact that Jennifer had a boyfriend whom she stayed with regularly and parents who were clearly itching for their daughter to lose her virginity, Jennifer had hung onto it. Until one morning when she walked into her house and her mother took one look at her and said ‘you’ve lost your virginity haven’t you’. It wasn’t a question.

‘Yes, I have’, answered Jennifer.

How on earth did you know this? I asked. How could you tell?

‘She’s my baby’, she said. ‘She’s my youngest daughter and I knew that my baby was not my baby anymore. She looked different, she smelt different and I knew that something had changed.’

So there you go Karl. Apparently people’s faces can change when they lose virginity. There might be a physical reaction, as there was for Ben and Karl, the person who asked this question in the first place. He broke out into hives when he lost his virginity because he is a born again Christian so losing virginity was hardly on the top of his list of things to do before he got married. Stress can make your body do some funny stuff.

Or it may just be an almost imperceptible change. Its not a physical change, its not even an emotional change, its more to do with the umbilical chord like relationship that exists between a mother and her smallest baby, the one that deep down, we don’t really want to grow up…but invariably does.

But it probably wouldn’t happen in the way that I imagined it which was something akin to having a large neon sign attached to my head announcing to the world that I was now ‘A WOMAN’ – which, by the way, was far more exciting a concept to me than the fumbling excuse for sex that had accompanied this important change in my life.

And when did you last see your virginity....

2009-10-30T12:49:47-07:00

Kind of dumb….but he does have a point.

Ride 'em Cowboy...

2009-10-20T12:51:43-07:00

As ever, losing virginity can mean many different things to many different people. Never was this more true than in the case of Brad, the owner of a story that caused consternation amongst my friends, family, various random passers by in the street and selected members of the local clergy.

Brad is a long standing correspondent of mine and when he dropped the following bombshell one day, I was only too happy to listen. Brad wanted to tell me about the time that he lost his anal virginity. Yes readers, his anal virginity - to his wife. Now whether this is in fact a legitimate loss of virginity is a matter that we could debate all day. But in the end, tying down virginity loss to one universal, agreeable definition is nigh on impossible and the point is that this was a significant moment of ‘loss’ for Brad so who can argue with that?

Let me give you some background detail. You can read the story here but in short, Brad is a househusband. He has raised three small children at home whilst his highflying executive wife has gone out and pursued a career. Brad plays the dutiful husband at all his wife’s work ‘do’s’ whilst his other half discusses business with the other highflying partners in the company, many of whom are also women. Brad is not the only househusband within his wife’s law firm either. In fact, Brad is currently mentoring a new member of the house husband community, Frank, who’s wife is junior to Brad’s and who is flying up the corporate ladder whilst Frank raises their small child at home.

None of which is the point I want to make because what got me right from the start of this whole episode was the realization that here is a man……who knows a lot about what it feels to be a woman. Not that I would quite put Brad into the bracket of Mel Gibson in ‘What Women Want’ i.e. being able to read our minds but its not that far off because when Brad talks about the experience of being penetrated, the words could just as easily have come out of the mouth of a woman.

Brad originally wrote to me following a gender related article that I had posted on this blog. We mailed back and forth for a while and eventually one day, he decided to tell me about the time that his wife had first made love to his bottom with a dildo. Well now, as you can guess, I was all ears. This is not a story you get to hear every day.

The Internet is littered with dull, predictable images of men penetrating women’s behinds with their penises. So much so that in a piece of research that the Guardian commissioned several years ago, a twelve year old boy admitted that having watched a substantial amount of pornography since the age of eight years old (supplied to him by his father), he had his first experience of anal sex at the age of twelve. Yes readers, twelve years old. This is what young people are learning about sex these days. That it is all about blonde women, forming large 0 shapes with their mouths whilst being penetrated by very oily looking men who are not usually that taken with the concept of foreplay.

But where on the Internet are men talking about having anal sex with their womenfolk…with themselves on the receiving end? Because my guess is that if it’s happening in small town Texas where Brad lives, then its probably happening in a whole bunch of places. Not that I care one way or the other because once again, the point of interest in this story, at least for me, lies much less in the nuts and bolts, or even the in’s and out’s, which, don’t get me wrong, are fascinating – but I am much more taken with the idea that here is a man who knows what its like to ‘give it up’, to receive instead of to give, to lie back and think of England or whatever other sex related metaphor you prefer to pick. Here are Brad’s latest thoughts on his wife’s sexual proclivities:

‘My guess is that it's not nearly as far a step for a woman to be done anally because it's probably not her first experience being penetrated. Does that make sense? Anyway, I think I understand better now why girls sometimes are not enthused about sex and why men are usually the aggressors. I have never initiated a pegging, because we do enough of it as it is, thank you very much. So Lynette initiates and frankly I'm sometimes not interested. Just not very horny at all. But I never deny her. LOL. One thing that occurs to me as I write this is how BORING the whole thing can be. It's like the same thing every time, or at best a variation that is similar to all the other times. And even when the foreplay is different, the screwing part doesn't vary a whole lot. Right, girlfriend? You're probably nodding in agreement.’

This had me in stitches. Having penetrative sex can be one of the most intensely erotic and intimate experiences that two people can share together. Conversely, it can also be dull in the extreme and rather pedestrian at times. Partly because that’s life and that’s sex. Sometimes it’s exciting and sometimes it is not and that’s just the way it is. But also because the penetrative part of sex, at least for a woman, can often be the least interesting part of the evening’s activities. You have to relinquish control, not just of your pleasure but also of yourself and in the end, perhaps that’s what this story is all about.

Brad feels this loss of control all the more keenly because as a man, he has relinquished all the ground that the male of the species would traditionally occupy. His wife is the initiator, or the ‘aggressor’ as he terms her. She earns the money. Invariably she also decides how they spend it. When she wants to have anal sex with him, she’ll pat his behind in the morning before she leaves for work and give him a wink. Brad knows exactly what this means.

So it is a story about gender role play and the positions, literally and figuratively that we feel we should – or should not - be playing in today’s society but it is also a story, bizarrely, about just how unimaginative we can be as sexual people.

Of course, sex should consist of whatever two consenting adults want it to consist of but I am constantly drawn back to the story of Hannah, a woman I interviewed for my book. Hannah lost her ‘technical’ virginity at the age of eighteen. But by this time she had already been in a relationship with her boyfriend for over two years and in her own words, had been having so many orgasms with him that going ‘all the way’ always seemed a bit pointless.

Jumping to the penetrative part of the sexual experience can cut out a lot of pleasure because it can limit our imagination. There are so many different ways to pleasure each other that don’t actually involve penetrative sex. I often think that young people, well, all people really, would do well to get to know their partners bodies really well – and all the amazing things that they are capable of doing – before jumping ahead to the penetrative part of sexual intercourse. We shouldn’t have such a prescriptive idea of what ‘sex’ should involve. Sex should be about pleasure and how you go about finding that can be a very interesting exploration, one that does not necessarily have to involve the placing of one thing inside another.

I digress. Perhaps I am also attracted to this story because over time, and during the course of many emails with Brad, I see how very much he loves his wife. Perhaps his willingness to ‘give it up’, to lie back and think of England on the occasions when he really doesn’t feel like having a dildo up his bottom are a testament of how much he wants his wife to be happy. If he were a woman, the feminists among us would be up in arms at such a concept. Why must a woman, or anyone for that matter, sublimate themselves for anybody else? But perhaps that is love. The willingness to let go of what we want from time to time and to give someone else what they want. I don’t know, I’m no expert.

FYI, Brad signed off his latest email to me, ‘Bow-legged of Texas'

To be or not to be.....

2009-09-26T04:20:52-07:00

Whoops! The Virginity Project took an accidental sabbatical. Once again, the day job took over the show but it’s all over now and I am on the hunt again for my next freelance contract. Meanwhile, I had this interesting exchange with a young American woman….

This week’s storyteller makes so many interesting points about sex and virginity that it’s hard to know where to begin. The point that stands out a mile for me is when she tells us how shocked she was to discover that there was a word to describe the state of never having had sex – or the ‘default’ state as she calls it.

This must be an odd thing to discover at the age of eight. That one is not just an eight-year-old child but that one also a virgin. One has been tagged, labeled and defined. You have barely taken your first breathe in the general context of your life, and yet, you are already a ‘virgin’. Perhaps this is where the anxiety kicks in, the anxiety of being apart, of being separate, of entertaining the very real possibility that you might be different to your fellow human beings. The horror! And as she points out, its not like you gain another label when you finally do the deed. You just cease to be a ‘virgin’.

Our storyteller really nails this concept when she says that later on, she begins to feel ashamed about her lack of sexual activity, about her perceived inability to move beyond her virgin status. This is where The Virginity Project really gained some traction because there could not be a richer – or more uncomfortable - seam to mine. Not that I planned it that way, it’s just that I have always received a lot of mail from people who have not lost their virginity – and feel awful about it.

Because make no mistake, the pressure is on, even if you are not aware of it. So much of what surrounds us is transmitting the non-verbal message that to be sexual is to be cool, that by jumping into the fray and taking part that you are also a fully functioning sexual member of society.

Of course, time and many interviews have proved to me that being sexual and losing virginity are not mutually exclusive but try telling that to someone who does feel different, who does feel excluded because they have not ‘joined the club’ so to speak.

Asides from pressure, there is also good old fashioned desire to contend with, and not just in terms of general ‘relief,’ for as our story teller herself says, having orgasms is not an issue, but sharing them with someone else is. For most of us, the sheer mental nourishment that we gain from being in close physical proximity to another human being and from exchanging, not just our bodies but also our minds, is something that we desire and require on a very fundamental level. It is life affirming, it is vital and if you are doing it with the right person, it’s the best feeling in the world.

Our story teller finishes up by being one of those young people that impresses the pants off me. Just because she’s has sex once (or perhaps even quite a few times), that doesn’t mean that she’s going to compromise herself. As she herself, says, we place far too much importance on ‘the first time’. What about the 999 times after that? Do they not matter as much?

Despite the ubiquitous pressure on young people to perform or to play the game, she refuses to give in. She knows what she wants and she is prepared to wait for it. That’s not an easy thing to do but I can’t help feeling that she’ll find it.

Rose. Born 1985. Lost virginity aged 23.

‘Definition of Virginity/About me:

I am Rose, a law student from the USA and a 23 year old heterosexual female, but I consider oral sex to be ‘sex’ and a loss of virginity. I have honestly never understood women (or men) who would perform oral sex on but not have vaginal intercourse. That is my MOUTH. Much more intimate than a body part that I can't even see without a hand mirror. (Laughing to myself). When I was 8 years old I learned what the word ‘virgin’ meant and was shocked there was a word for ‘the default’ state. I figured there would be a word for the ALTERED state. (Yes, yes I was a brain even then).

I grew up in a liberal household. My Mom is an Ob/Gyn so sexuality was never a taboo subject and I had no desire to remain ‘pure’ and no strong desire to wed (so waiting till marriage wouldn’t work) but given the STD’s in existence - my Mom has made me paranoid - I knew I would never be promiscuous. I wanted to have sexual activity within the contexts of a relationship.

I dated casually in high school, and my rule was no clothing removed if I wasn’t ready to have sex - my way to set boundaries. I went to a small private school where there wasn’t much opportunity to meet new guys but I was in no rush to have sex. But I definitely FELT sexual and thought that if sex was half as fun as my masturbation sessions, it was going to be wonderful. However, I never worried about WHEN I would ‘lose it’, I figured it would happen in due time.

I went on oral contraceptives at 17 in preparation for college and got sent away with a huge supply of condoms by my STD phobic OB/Gyn mother just in case I met someone. Well, I don’t drink - a huge activity in college - and I spent most of my time hanging out in the theatre department. Needless to say, meeting men I was interested in didn’t really happen. I went on a few dates, kissed some guys, made great friends but nobody I wanted to be in a relationship with appeared.

Actually I was starting to get nervous about my lack of sexual activity. Around my 20th birthday I began to feel ashamed about my lack of sexual experience. I began to doubt myself, my attractiveness, my NORMALCY. Was there something WRONG with me? Could everyone see it but me? I started to question if was heterosexual (I definitely was). It seemed as if the thing that came so easily to EVERYONE else, was so difficult for me. The only individuals I knew who had never engaged in any type of sexual activity (beyond kissing) at my age were religiously motivated (which is a fine choice).........but I ended up going 3 years without so much as kissing someone.

I must say that did make me very depressed at points. There were nights I would cry myself to sleep, just because I longed to be touched, to feel that connection to another human being. The worse thing was feeling as if it would NEVER change, and I would NEVER have the experiences I so longed for. I no longer felt my lack of sexual experience was a CHOICE - it felt like a punishment. I wanted to feel ‘normal’ and to have this ache inside of myself gone. However I was determined not to have a roll in the hay with the first guy who looked my way. I felt that being in a relationship was important and I was rightly weary of diseases and too weary to sleep with a stranger. I still went to school, hung out with friends but I felt there was something missing. To make matters worse most of my friends were in serious relationships and whilst I was happy for them, I longed to have that as well.

How I lost my virginity:

Well, I had sex (vaginal and oral), touched a penis and laid in bed with a naked man for the first time on my 23rd birthday. It was the happiest day of my life. All of the things I thought I would be - scared, nervous, ashamed - I wasn't any of those things. I was just HAPPY.

It so happened that I moved back to my home city the year before to go to law school and 7 months before my birthday, I met a guy who lived in my building. He was slightly older than myself (28 to my 22) but he was sweet, attractive (muscles galore) and a perfect gentleman. When he smiled at me I gushed. I felt 16 again remembering my first date and kiss (corny I know). I was actually flattered that he noticed me of all people, when, in my mind, it had been years since a man had looked at me. We dated seriously for two months before becoming intimate. The first time I had sex was everything I ever wanted it to be. It was sweet and pleasurable and intimate and completely worth staying up till 6am for! However, we broke up a few months later due to things entirely not related to sex. I don't regret our experience together for one second.

I never told him I had never had sex. You may wonder why, well, two reasons.

1. Having listened to my friend R over the years, who believed oral sex wasn’t sex, and when she finally decided she DID want to have vaginal intercourse, she was rejected repeatedly. I was afraid that the same thing that happened to her - guys would learn she had never had vaginal intercourse and back out during the heat of foreplay - would happen to me. After years of wanting this, I didn’t want to risk the same. OR that he would find it attractive that I was ‘untouched’ (I have heard that some people get off on that), I did not want to risk that......

2. And I didn’t think it was any of his business! My sexual life before him was private, and once we both got tested (before we had sex), I had no desire to learn about his previous sexual experiences. Having penetrated myself with sex toys for the last few years I knew there was no need to worry about pain/discomfort.

My thoughts on virginity:

The emotional baggage that went along with feeling unwanted and undesirable and ‘different/defective’ was much more damaging than the physical act of never having had sex. If I desire to have an orgasm, I can guarantee that through masturbation. But do I long to have sex again? YES, but I still want to be in a relationship because I need to feel mentally comfortable in order to be open sexually. That is how it works for ME.

I know I am not going to be LESS picky about who I choose to be with because I am no longer a virgin. I believe our culture places too much emphasis on the first time one has sex, especially for women, as if the first time is the ONLY time that is special, the ONLY time one should consider if sex is the right choice for you. Once one has had sex does not mean that they are no longer in control of their sexual destiny. If everyone was as particular about the 50x they had sex as they were about the 1st I think many of the negative consequences of sex (emotional and physical) would be minimized.’

The very best of British...

2009-09-06T05:54:17-07:00

The Virginity Project

Je t'adore...

2009-08-29T08:48:19-07:00

I have a little tale about virginity…..and love this week. Assuming that we are all talking about the same thing that is. Because it’s not like there is an international yard stick for love that we can all hold and know that we are talking about exactly the same thought, feeling, emotion, or whatever it is that we are talking about when we talk about love. Is there?

Not as far as I know there isn’t. Love is a highly subjective concept. How do we know that the love – or the so-called lack of - that our story teller speaks of today isn’t the exact same feeling that got our parents and our grand parents through 35 odd years of marriage, war, food shortages and god knows what else together?

Today’s storyteller says that she isn’t in love but that she adores the man that she loses her virginity to. Crikey, I’d take ‘adore’ over some of the stories that I have heard about virginity loss. Adore is a definite step in the right direction.

The point is that one doesn’t have to get it exactly right for that first time. Unless you are planning to get married to your first love, why aim for perfection? Which is another highly subjective concept when I think about it and perhaps one of the reasons why so many marriages fail these days.

Our parents probably did have a slightly more realistic view of what ‘real love’ and marriage actually involves on a day to day basis (a heady mix of patience, boredom, security and passion perhaps?) but either way, I think Carly makes a sensible choice about the man that she chooses to lose her virginity to.

Losing it to someone that you are insanely head over heels about is not always the best idea. In fact, when it all goes tits up, which invariably it does when you are dealing with emotions of that intensity, the fall out can take years to deal with. As this rather alarming article from the Observer confirms.

Why not make it a happy, healthy experience with someone whom you respect, fancy and/or adore? If someone has the decency to treat you well, you’re onto a winner already.

Carly. Born 1991. Lost virginity aged 18

‘I met my boyfriend through a friend I go to school with. He was dating her when we met so I never really thought we would get to date. About a year and a few months later they broke up and, in a way, I kind of swooped in and snagged him for myself. I find him to be the most handsome of guys and also the most put together, as in he was well dressed, cleaned up nice, and his intellect met up with mine. First we started off with me asking him to prom, and then confessing that I really adored him. He proclaimed the same and we started dating on April 17, 2009. I am 18 and so is he.

My mom is somewhat religious on the Christian stand point, and my dad wasn't so much religious as just more into morals. He believed, because I am the youngest that I should never have sex ever and that I should never even think about it. I was always told to 'lose it when you're in love'. Quite honestly, I don't even know what love is. Also, I'm not really worried about 'love' at this point in my life. Sure if I stumble upon it that would be nice but I'm not going to go around trying to find 'the one', if I did I would just probably end up 'settling'.

I am young and so is he, but we felt like we couldn't say no anymore. The attraction was too much for us and we really felt we were old enough and ready. It was June 18, 2009. The day after our 3 month anniversary, which is my longest relationship to date. I knew I didn't love him and I still don't but we are still happily together. We started discussing sex about the second week we were going out. Him and I have a ridiculous amount of sexual attraction so we really didn't think about it much; sex just seemed to fit well between us and in this relationship.

Well it was night time, about a week after we had bought condoms and we kept them hidden in a box in my closet. Everyone was asleep. We were on the couch just messing around, you know foreplay stuff. We took one look at one another and decided it was 'time'. He went to my closet and picked up 2 condoms, 1 extra just in case the other wasn't going to go on correctly because you never know what might happen, and then we met up in the guest bedroom.

He pulled down his pants and I took mine off. Now when people say the first time hurts severely, they weren't lying. I didn't last more then a few minutes. The pain was so severe. Also it was somewhat awkward because it hurt and also I felt like it really sucked for him. He kept reassuring me that it was fine and he would only go as far as I wanted and that he would respect me in any which way.

Afterward, I ended up walking a little different and sitting weird for a day or so. Now it took about 3 times before we realized I hurt so bad because of the angle we were at. Once he shifted and I moved a bit it was very pleasurable and quite nice. Some people say you will regret your first time if you're not in love. But I don't.

My mother and sister keep telling me that it’s a mistake because I don't love him. Well I do love him but in a different way. Like I love him for who he is but not the love that makes me want to stay with him the rest of my life. To me love is something that grows as you do. It’s not something to be rushed into and not thought about. The way I see it is...that this was a learning experience. I see that all relationships should be a learning experience. My dad asked why I was with Diego even though I don't want to marry him. I said to him that I'm too young to be in love and that I'm with Diego because I am meant to be right now in this part of my life.’

Those summer nights...

2009-08-14T02:36:30-07:00

I cannot think of a better way to spend ten minutes than to read these four fabulous stories, all inspired by the theme of ‘summer encounters’. Funny, touching, perfect. Enjoy...

2009-08-10T12:43:56-07:00

Ok, so travels to foreign climes might be over but that doesn’t mean its all doom and gloom. August is a lovely month to be in London. Nearly everyone goes away and those that are left are free to enjoy a city that on any average day of the week is busting a blood vessel to get every thing done on time. Traffic, deadlines, workflow, it all normally happens at breakneck speed - usually so that we can get to the weekend and ‘enjoy’ ourselves with an equal amount of fervour. Not so in August.

A languid air settles over the city. People walk slower, the roads are emptier. A journey by car that usually takes me an hour takes me twenty minutes. On a Saturday. This is unheard of. Queues are shorter; people are nicer to each other. And all of a sudden, all of the things that seem so important…..just don’t. I don’t mean that I stop paying attention to my personal hygiene or anything as drastic as that. Just that one realise’s that there is time to stop and smell the roses and that pleasure can be found in small things. Relaxing at the pool with the locals, sitting in the garden on a warm evening…..perhaps this is what people have been banging on about when they talk about ‘stay-cations’. That’s certainly what I tell myself as I realise that I have enough commitments to tie me to this city for another good while yet.

But I do have a response to my Muslim plea that I posted the other day. It’s not quite the story I was after but it’s a good start. I talked about my long and fruitless quest for the Muslim virginity loss story on this blog the other day. I have searched high and low for this story, considered asking complete strangers in the street, attended conferences and generally followed up every lead that I have ever been given with the enthusiasm of Sherlock Holmes, the Pink Panther and Magnum P.I combined. (although not wearing a monocle, a raincoat and tight shorts). But to no avail. It’s a tough call. These are not conversations that Muslims deem appropriate for public consumption.

Our story teller today, from Syria, makes some interesting points. I concur with these types of stories far more than people think. I do think that people don’t value their virginity half as much as they could. For most people that I know, it would never have occurred to them to wait longer than ten minutes to lose their virginity. Wait for someone who might have actually taken the time to make it a pleasant experience for them? Forget it. Our urge to ‘belong’ far outweighs our desire to wait for a potentially worthy experience. No one wants to be the odd one out so we doggedly follow the pack and avail ourselves of virginity at the earliest opportunity. But the alternative, as suggested below, also seems a bit drastic to me.

Waiting for marriage is a risky strategy. Sex and intimacy are too much of an integral part of any relationship to take a chance on. This is the glue that could hold you together through the rocky moments. One needs to know that it ‘works’ so to speak. And in the end, this story isn’t really about that anyway, it’s about the second-class citizen role that women continue to play in society. Our author tries to make sense of this: ‘By the way, im just mentioning girls but its not allowed to have sex in our religion for both sexes. But society pays more attention to what a girl should not do….’ Yes it does, and it has terrible consequences for some people.

Believe it or not, I genuinely did not mean to stray into this territory today. What I really want to know is this: why does society place more value on a woman’s virginity than a man’s? Our author puts the dilemma beautifully when she says this: ‘if they see a girl that is not a virgin then she’s not worthy enough for a guy to marry her.’

Why do you think it is that a woman’s virginity has always been regarded as something more precious, more sought after and therefore, more important than a man’s?

Gut reaction. Be as blatant and as honest as you like. I know what I think but I want to know what you think. I won't be publishing these, they are purely for my own use. Its part of the research for my book!

Please send your point of view/rant/ten cents worth to me here:

katemonroe@yahoo.com

In advance of any replies, thank you, it is a HUGE help. And in the meanwhile, here is nineteen year old Zaima from Syria with her very interesting ten cents worth…

‘HELLO kate I just read ur article about the VIRGINITY PROJECT, i was reading random stuff on the net and i came across ur article so as a muslim girl i wanted you to hear my opinion and my side of the story.

Im not strict about religious issues but i believe in certain issues God has asked us to do and i know that there’s a genuine reason behind every one of those issues. One of them is staying a virgin, clean, pure, and untouched. Here in the Syrian society there is a very large amount of people who are very strict concerning religious issues and if they see a girl that is not a virgin then she’s not worthy enough for a guy to marry her.

It’s like a gift a girl has to keep till her wedding day. By the way, im just mentioning girls but its not allowed to have sex in our religion for both sexes. But society pays more attention to what a girl should not do and if she is following what religion and society accepts. As for me, i have been around the world and i know that it’s very normal for a girl to loose her virginity at a very early age.

Im gonna express the way i really feel about this issue. i think bonding with the person who you have feelings for is really important – kissing, hugging and all these physical things, u cant really be close to some one without them. But sex is something forbidden for us. Some muslims may have had sex but not as u said at the beginning of ur article. Its not true that they all do but the only difference is that they don’t talk about it ....(the author mistook my meaning at this point. I was referencing the point that Muslims have sex lives, but that they don’t discuss them openly in the way that we do) because if a guy marries a young lady and on their wedding night he finds out that she is not a virgin then many actions will be taken if he is able to forgive her then that’s fine but if his parents or family hear about that then her picture and reputation will be long damaged and destroyed.

I know u may think that this is unfair and that she should decide her own destiny and what she wants to do with her body….if this is what ur thinking then i agree with u cuz i think every human being has the right to decide what to do with their own body but i wanna tell u something - don’t u think that there’s a reason in some religions they don’t allow people to have sex before marriage because it keeps u both excited about exploring each others bodies, it keeps a certain passion for each other like really strong passion u just wana be close to this person in a physical way but after u are sure that he is emotionally right for you.

i think having sex in an early age is really wrong not only for these religious reasons because everyone has their own beliefs but also for the risk of these diseases that we keep hearing about that are caused due to sexual intercourse. Another reason is that if a girl is immature and doesn’t have protected sex it may lead her to be pregnant, maybe dropping out of school that is really bad in my opinion and in the US its all u hear.... shes missing school because she’s sick or pregnant... by the way im 19 years old and i have had relationships but i am a virgin and i plan on keeping it this way... i was just trying to show u another side of the story here’.

*All names are changed. (even if I don’t always say so!).

2009-08-01T06:51:32-07:00

The Virginity Project has been larging it on a beach in Greece for the last few weeks and it’s been brilliant. I spent much of my teenage years visiting a Greek island called Anti-Paros when unbeknownst to me, paradise was right next door!

Sifnos - yes, it does sound like a sexually transmitted disease but I can assure you that its not - is a sensational island. Of course I would have been bored out of my mind if I’d come here in my twenties, ‘paradise’ being such a subjective concept. But right now, at this stage of the game, it’s pretty much like crash landing in heaven.

I’ve finally got what Otis Reading was talking about when he wrote ‘Sitting in the dock of the bay’. Is there anything more pleasant to do than watch large ships pull into a tiny harbour, unload some people, cars and chaos as an overexcited port policeman motors around trying to direct them all into their correct position and then collapse back into the sand once its all over, grateful that all I have to do is watch and eat an ice cream? I don’t think so.

Actually I did do some sensible reading whilst I was away. I’ve read it before but every morning before it got too hot, I went and re-read a chapter of Anka Bernau’s brilliant ‘Virgins – A Cultural History’ on the steps of the Greek orthodox church. There was no particular point to the location, just that it was shady with a nice view. Some mornings there were ladies in the church jabbering away in a language that I obviously don’t understand and I had the vaguest sense that they might be talking about me. Like why does that woman come and read a book about virginity loss on the steps of this church every morning?

On the days when I didn’t get up early enough and the sun had already moved around past the church, because let me tell you, on some mornings it was 32 degrees by 9.30am. Yes, 32 degrees…I moved up to the Old Captain’s Bar, a shady spot on the beach run by a charismatic man called Theo. Here I sat and read my book with a cup of tea and some assistance from Theo’s rather camp cat, Zaza...

Other highlights of the trip included eating cream pie and this is not a euphemism for anything except eating cake. Cream pie, or Bougatza as it is known, asides from civilization, is clearly one of the best Greek inventions ever. I have no idea what they put in it but it smells like sugar and cinnamon and vanilla and when you sink your teeth into the crispy layers of filo pastry and reach the smooth custardy but not too sweet centre and finally round yourself off with the white dusty icing sugar on the outside….you may just as well utter a round of cliché ridden expletives about dying and going to heaven, discovering things that are better than sex etc etc etc blah blah blah….funnily enough, the only vaguely attractive man in the entire town also worked behind the counter of the pie shop.

On the days when we weren’t reading, eating sweets or watching boats, we amused ourselves with the following conversation. Bear in mind that it was usually 38 degrees by this point.

Stacey: ‘I’m feeling a bit nippy, how about you?

Me: Absolutely freezing. Do you want to borrow one of my jumpers?

S: Could I? And can I take some of those woolly socks and scarves as well?

Me: No problem. How about we light up a bonfire, pop on some extra layers and I’ll send Celia down to the taverna for some hot soup?

S: Capital idea. Then once we’ve layered ourselves up with scarves, gloves and extra thermal gear, how about we climb the 330 steps up that dry, arid slope to the church over there, say, at around 1pm?’

Oh how we laughed. You had to be there. It was very hot.

When nighttime came, some of this was involved too:

But nothing like the old days. Partly because Europe is so expensive right now and paying 10 euro's for cocktail doesn’t feel like a paticularly healthy pastime but mainly because early morning in Greece is so beautiful that I didn’t want to miss a single moment of it...

Sunshine on a rainy day...

2009-07-18T01:24:17-07:00

If you’re sitting at work staring into space and thinking to yourself that sun really should be enjoyed whilst actually sitting in it…as opposed to observing it through a pane of glass, here is a Grade A, top quality virginity related distraction. This will keep you quiet for a good ten minutes. It has all the charm, pathos and shock value of the mighty Post Secret but without the visuals.

And you can probably tell that I wrote that a couple of days ago when I was a. at work and b. The sun was actually shining. As opposed to today when I am contemplating a trip to a field in Somerset and the celebration of a friends birthday in a large tent alongside the promise of rain. What it is to be British. Virtually a moment goes by when we feel we can’t possibly continue unless we mention the weather.

No matter. I am off to Greece on Monday for my holidays but before I go, here is an interesting little story that I found when I was searching on ‘gay virginity loss’. I was actually looking for a rock solid definition of virginity loss and whilst this story doesn’t supply that, it is still a beautifully crafted little tale with some vivid imagery.

Definitions have been on my mind lately as I work on the chapter of my book that seeks to define virginity loss. If anyone has anything to say on the matter, email me, I would love to hear what you think.

Is virginity loss a physical process? Or is it more of a spiritual or emotional matter? And how much does our definition of it change over the years? i.e. would you say the same now about virginity loss that you might have said twenty years ago….or do we refine our definition of that ‘loss’ as we grow and change and become more reflective about the past?

Your contribution could be vital – please email me on katemonroe@yahoo.com

Happy Holidays!