Technical Virginity: Doing Everything Except Sex

Looks like kids are still being weird about sex.

Researchers in Berkeley, California recently surveyed more than 900 middle school and high school students for a study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

When presumably asked what constitutes keeping one’s virginity, “70 percent of kids 12 to 16 believe they’re virgins even if they’ve had oral sex – and 16 percent believe anal sex doesn’t count either.”

Look, once you start engaging in sexual activity, your virgin status goes hazy. Sure, you might not have done it, but if you’ve done everything under the sun except it, your technical virginity basically becomes a moot point. If you’re sexually experienced, you’re sexually experienced.

The “I’m still a virgin!” declaration after engaging in other sexual activities seems to be rooted in our society’s desperate fear of being labeled. Teenagers (especially girls) ultimately want to be “good”, but their hormones are pulling them in a completely different direction.

Doing everything except the big “penis into the vagina” thing allows someone to explore their sexuality while still remaining pure in the eyes of society.

Sex is a big thing. I don’t want to deny that. But the more pressure we put on teenagers about it, the more they’re going to do anything to make up excuses.

First it was oral sex—which can still give you diseases and in my opinion is more intimate than intercourse. Now it’s anal sex, which defies logic, since there’s still penetration involved (and seems a whole lot more “difficult” than traditional sex).

I’m no Sex Ed teacher (although it doesn’t seem so hard to be one these days, considering my junior high Sex Ed instructor was our chorus teacher, who looked like she hadn’t had any for at least half a century), but it seems calming down our whole “losing your virginity is HUGE” speech is the best way to help teenagers understand the sexual experience as a whole.

There’s a lot more to being sexually active than traditional copulation, and letting someone in your backdoor because you’re afraid to open the front one is no way begin a healthy, confident sex life.