Like a Virgin
By Amy Lane
Okay—I admit it. I write a lot of virgins. I do—the first time is memorable, and it’s fun to write about, and I tend to like my characters young. So, well, virgins it is. But I have to admit, since I’ve started writing m/m, I’ve had to think long and hard about virginity, experience, and fidelity—and I’ve discovered that there are certain sore spots that purely piss me off.
For example, what’s virginity? In a girl, it’s sort of (repeat, sort of) easy to
define, because she’s got that whole little ring of flesh thing, and once that’s broken, well, yanno, virginity gone. Except, what if she breaks that little ring of flesh while riding a horse or doing a handspring or using a tampon (fucking OUCH but it’s been known to happen) or any of the other things that active girls do, well, then, maybe we need a different standard, right? So then it’s the sex—penetrative sex, right? That defines virginity, right? Except that’s not right either—because I’m telling you, if her hymen remains unmolested but she’s got syphilis in the back of her throat from pulling blow-job trains in the bathroom during lunch, then the term ‘virgin’ has GOT to be a misnomer. So, how do we define her virginity then? Is virginity only forfeited because she has extensive experience with the penis? Really? Because I’m sure there are a lot of lesbians who would beat the hell out of me for saying that—and they should! So does someone besides the girl herself have to see and experience the pudendum for a girl to lose her virginity? Do we finally have a winner for a definition?
Before you answer, hang onto something—I may blow your mind. You see, for me, I don’t think the definition is the important part. I think the important part is why does it matter?
Now, a few thousand years ago (okay, well, sixty years ago and I shouldn’t forget that even in jest) virginity was important because if his wife was a virgin, a man would know that his oldest child, at least, would be his. But with female birth control comes female empowerment, and men have to do what women have been doing for centuries—take her frickin’ word for it. So what does virginity mean now?
Well, it means, mostly, that the first sexual experience should be special, and if it’s not, well then shame on the person she’s having it with. It’s fun to write about because there is fumbling, there is embarrassment, and then, hopefully, there is wonder. It makes the idea—so prevalent in women’s escapism these days—of marking a woman as “mine” so much easier if she’s never been anyone else’s,
and so, in a literary sense, it really does have some impact. In a social sense, it could mean that she gave enough of a shit about emotional commitment and respecting her own body not to just chuck her hymen and/or self-respect at the first bozo who smiled pretty and talked nice. If she’s one of those naturally earthy, unembarrassed and sensual people who is simply physical as an extension of her own spiritual beauty, well then that last hypothesis gets thrown right out the window—and that brings us to boys.
Boys are different. Boys don’t even have the physical marker to announce their virginity to the world. Boys just have the knowledge that they have been consensually naked with someone or haven’t been consensually naked with someone—and even that gets blurry around the edges.
As a female writer of m/m romance, I think one of the first—and most important—things I discovered was that for gay men, the big A.S. is NOT as big a deal in real life as it is in the romance books. Now, I don’t know why that came as a surprise to me—I read het romance all the time, and I’ve got to tell you that, in spite of what the literature says, the penis is not analogous to a leaping tiger, my labia does not pulse in time to his throbbing member, and men do not want to go down on a woman after she’s been on a horse for three days with no access to water or a bath anywhere. Why should it surprise me that gay men do not just go 
buttsexing and salad tossing at the drop of a bar of soap?
Nevertheless, surprise me it did.
And it made me start thinking about why that all-important scene of penetrative sex was almost a requirement in the genre.
How exactly does asshole dilation (either giving or receiving) maketh a man? (And if it does, what does that say about my seven-year-old son, who has been routinely clogging the fricking toilet since he was four?) Especially since many gay men who have had long and satisfying sexual relationships will tell you emphatically that they rarely, if ever, go there?
‘kay. Tricksy questions, and, like the female virginity question, trying to answer them in terms of definition will end up in enough hair splitting to send Bugs Bunny running for some double-reinforced cast-iron armor, with the special titanium plating around his poor bunny balls. And like a lot of tricksy questions, I think that the answer is a lot simpler than we really want to see.
In my Green’s Hill universe, where the elves are pansexual and (in the words of one character) “they practically hump trees and call it experimenting!” there is one sexual rule at the hill.
Sensual and consensual. No one ever violates it.
I think that one of the problems that come with quantifying virginity into penetrative and/or non-penetrative standards is that people forget those two words. Physically, sex is easy—hell, you read the right kind of literature, and male or female, a good big O is as easy as going to the bathroom and wiping in the right direction. With two people, it’s naked and naked—and if there is no self-consciousness about the body, well, then, in, out, repeat if necessary, orgasm, GO!
The concept of not being a virgin shouldn’t rely on breakable rings of flesh or
dilated body parts or which tab fits in which slot to emit which substance or even if condoms are involved. The concept of not being a virgin should rely on intimacy, sensuality, and joy. One of the things that I think m/m writers have done just right is focused on the man who’s gotten off a thousand times—but never been in love. That experience is special, that experience is the one we want to capture. That is the character we’re rooting for, not the prickteasing prom queen with her knees crossed, squealing, “Not until we’re married!”
Sensual and consensual should be the gold standard for virginity. A physical experience that makes the characters feel as though they have shared something besides flesh and orgasm—maybe even friendship and kindness. If they’re lucky, even desire. If they’re really lucky, love.
Or at least, that’s the way I’m thinking about it. I wouldn’t mind if the idea spread, though—if nothing else, it means I’d never have to read the phrase “anal cherry” ever, ever, ever, ever fucking again.
Heidi Cullinan
Marie Sexton
Evaine
shawnyjeann
Yeah, that’s a wild line and when do you cross it? I suppose in it’s extreme it would be never having any kind of sexual contact with another person, never kissed, touched, or been touched. But usually if you count that most people lose it at least on the kissing front at some point in their early teens. I like your idea of the first time with someone special as being the most important. Shouldn’t matter how many times you’ve gotten off and how, the first time it means something more is something to celebrate (preferably not by your mother presenting you with a cake, ack!).
Humans tend to mark milestones as first. Baby’s first steps, baby’s first words, their first pair of shoes are bronzed, first day of school in pictures, their first report card lovingly saved, their first sports trophy kept forever on the shelf, your first house celebrated, your first car lovingly remembered, (your first marriage LOL) so I suppose it’s a natural extension to need to denote other firsts. Your first kiss (doesn’t everyone ask and remember?), your first blow job, first time someone touched you “down there”, first penetrative sex experience (regardless of hole). It just seems to be something we feel compelled to mark. Kind of weird I suppose.
Not weird, Tam– you’re right. Human. I just think if we’re going to mark it, there should be some significance to it!
Amy, I loved this. Great article. Sensual and Consensual, here here!
thank you! That line has stuck through four books and nine novellas!
You do like asking the tough questions, don’t you?
I was actually toying with this idea for a story. About a guy who’s gotten off a 1000 times, by someone else’s hand, mouth, ass even, but who’s never been treated right by a guy and when this finally happens, he’s finally losing his virginity (of sorts). I wonder if my readers will understand the significance?
I think so– like I said, m/m DOES seem to get that!
Great article, I really enjoyed it.
Thank you, sweetheart! Nice of you to comment!
Interestingly enough, I dealt with this very issue in Valley of Shadows. The ‘V’ word is invoked after their first intimate encounter (which does not involve anything even remotely penetrative) strictly in an experiential context. Upon learning Ellery had never been with anyone, male or female previous to him, Boone’s concern is strictly about the quality of Ellery’s first experience, because of how quickly it happened. He tells Ellery had he known he would have made it more ‘special’. As far as applying it across the board, that’s how I think of virginity in general. There are degrees of sexual acts, but innocence can only be lost once.
What was embarrassing for me was pulling the quotes in the quote boxes–I realized exactly how many virgins I’d really written! Oi!
As far as innocence being lost only once, I very clearly remember the first time I felt a guy’s erection pressing into me, and wow, that was sexy. I actually wrote a brief excerpt about that not long after it happened because it marked me so much as an experience worth remembering. (And I did not have sex with him. He knew I was a virgin (in anything but the kissing sense) and he respected that.)
I also remember that as the point that I stopped keeping a diary. I had been keeping them for a while just as a way to pass on to any possible eventual daughters that Mom went through those same things too. That night was when I realized that some things just have to be lived. =)
Lovely! Insightful! Inspiring! True.
And I’d like us band together and declare a moratorium on anal cherries. Oy.
IKR? SUCH an ugly image–and SO not sensual!
Great article Amy! I loved that Talker scene when I originally read the book. Cracked me up!
Aww… I liked that moment too. It was REALLY important that it was tender–the rest of that story was so intense!
I think you’ve made a good point about the loss of virginity being about the emotional investment in it. I tend to *not* write virgins, or at least I think I don’t, but in regards to people having a “real first time” with someone they love and who loves them back then yes, that is one of my favorite scenarios to write.
I like your definition of virginity a lot, in that light. Thoughtful post!
It’s funny– I think music caught onto this idea before books– Feels Like the First Time, Like a Virgin– there are lots of songs that have picked up on the idea that being in love is the BEST first.
Oh so much THIS. There are teenagers going around having oral and anal sex to “preserve virginity” and it’s so freaking ridiculous. Virginity is held up as some lofty goal, but the definition behind it is so narrow as to be completely meaningless. There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin by whatever standards, but there’s not wrong with not, either.
I love reading (and writing!) first-time sex scenes, but what constitutes a first time is as varied as the characters involved. Yeah, maybe someone is completely untouched, but that doesn’t make sex more “special” by definition. It’s the emotion surrounding it that makes it matter, not the act itself or what has or hasn’t been done before.
I know what you’re talking about with the teenagers–I mean, I got that example from real life, right? Making the definition so narrow means that people growing into their sexuality never look at the larger words–they look at ‘virginity’ and not ‘respect’, ‘sensuality’, and ‘kindness’–and those are much more important words!
It’s a long, long time since I saw The Color Purple in the cinema, so this quote won’t be word perfect, but doesn’t the mistress say something to the abused “wife” along the lines of “Well, I guess you’re still a virgin, because you ain’t never been loved?”
I seem to remember something like that in the book, as well!
Thought-provoking post, and I agree with you. Wish I’d read this before I had the big talk with the daughters — almost twenty years ago!
Regarding the m/m genre, I vastly prefer to write men experienced in some sort of sex and then, once they are together, sex between them as they enrich their lives in other ways. So virginity as typically defined hasn’t really been a big thing in my writing. Emotional virginity, psychological virginity, though…. Oh, now that’s interesting!
Jenna, your post ended up in our spam-filter for some unknown reason. Just wanted to let you know why nobody responded earlier! Sorry about that!
Awesome post!
Really interesting post Amy. Thx!
(Sadly I can only visit when my 8yo is not around so I was a bit late to the party.)