Word: virginal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...experience was not unique. Many guys in my high school, indeed in high schools all across the nation, have found themselves in situations like the locker room scene where they have lied about their sexual status and have kept their virginity in a closet. When I got into Harvard I told myself I wouldn't have to worry about any pressure to have sex. I saw Harvard as an opportunity to live as a male virgin without worrying about the sexual peer pressure that would occur at other, less enlightened campuses. I was wrong: the overbearing machismo is very much...
...gaining maturity and self-confidence, I learned to stop lying about my virginity, yet I saw many of my classmates continue the self-deception. I asked male friends, who were virgins, why they lied about their sexual experience. They gave me the obvious range of answers: "if everyone knew I was a virgin they will think I'm a loser"; "I won't get into that finals club"; "everyone else is doing it, I don't want to be the only male virgin on campus"; or "girls are not attracted to virgin guys, they would rather be with...
Female perspectives about virginity couldn't be any more different than the male perspective. Women who speak about their virginity do so in very confident, positive terms: "Yeah, I am a virgin"; "it's the right thing to do"; "I'm waiting 'till I'm ready"; "I want to make love instead of having sex"; "I don't want to be with someone I have no feelings with"; "so far I haven't found that person." Most females see their virginity as good, while most males view it as an embarrassment and concoct elaborate tales to hide it. We have...
...Romans were known for their Vestal Virgins, six female virgins who represented the royal house and tended the state cult of Vesta, the goddess of hearth. Violation of their virginity meant being buried alive. With the advent of Christianity, the Virgin Mary became one of the central characters of the religion. Then in the Middle Ages, medieval gynecologists were interested in determining female virginity, while male virginity was consistently overlooked. Even in the colonial period, Queen Elizabeth was heralded as the virtuous and Virgin Queen and the state of Virginia was named in celebration of this fact. Thus, our view...
...want to disseminate the idea that male virginity is acceptable, we have to move away from our historical obsession that defines virginity as a strictly feminine phenomenon. We must start defining virginity in a gender neutral sense. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the foremost authority on the English language, demonstrates the entrenchment of our association of virginity with females. According to the OED, a virgin is "an unmarried or chaste maiden, distinguished for piety or steadfastness in religion." The OED's second definition of virgin as "a woman (esp. a young woman) who is, or remains, in a state...