Philosophical Investigations of Sex: STUDY 1 (Gardner): Are You Still a Virgin?

Virginity— a concept society has that classifies the time before a person has sex for the very first time. Everyone has a different experience when they lose their virginity. On television, a person losing their virginity is romanticized and exaggerated, portraying to viewers that their first time promises and delivers so much. This study examined what “losing virginity” is really defined as. I make the claim that the concept of virginity is vague insofar as it fails to define a particular moment where it is lost and that it varies upon personal experience. People tend to either praise or persecute those who are virgins in this society so it is crucial to understand the ambiguity of virginity loss. This is true in a man’s world especially, where women are often sexualized. It is a common mindset that it is praiseworthy for an eighteen year old to be a virgin, but a thirty year old virgin ought to be shamed. My intention is for the readers to understand that society does this [judge one another] based on one sexual, biological moment in life. If it was believed that virginity was a vague term, these situations would not occur