THE DICTIONARY defines a virgin as one who has never engaged in penile-vaginal intercourse. Yet, there are many variations of sex. Many unmarried women, and doubtless a few of their partners, choose to engage in these while preserving the right to call themselves virgins. This hypocrisy demands exposure. The behavior of such technical virgins is a symptom of society's obsession with reglegating intercourse to a category apart from and more significant than other sexual acts. This arbitrary division makes standards for intimate behavior illogically rigid. This is not a revolution in sex, but one in common sense.
Virginity, which was once popularly perceived as a marital rite, still has some disciples. Whether for reasons of religion, tradition or the vaguest category of all, emotion, there is many a smart woman waiting for a ring on her finger before hopping into the sack. With all the STDs lurking around Old Dorms and fraternity bedrooms, complete sexual abstinence is truly the safest bet. Score one for the good girls. The problem does not lie with the prudes in our midst, but the hypocrites.
Many women who can rightfully defend their virginal status still engage in sexual contact that runs the gamut from manual stimulation to anal sex. Experts report that this trend is increasingly prevalent among America's youth. The New York Times quoted psychologist Marsha Levy-Warren, who asserted that many of her teenage patients claim to be remaining virgins until marriage, while admitting to having had oral sex dozens of times ("The Face of Teenage Sex Grows Younger," New York Times, April 2, 2000). This practice of separating intercourse from other types of sex is not unheard of at the University either. Christine Peterson, director of gynecology at Student Health, reports that she sees many women who are "sexually active while still remaining abstinent."
Now that we understand that a carelessly placed tampon or a bumpy horseback ride can puncture a woman's material virginity, there seems little reason to draw the arbitrary line at maintenance of a hymen. And as for avoiding those nasty diseases from HIV to herpes, let us put that fallacy to rest now. You can get pretty much any STD from oral sex. One doctor informed me that girls frequently come in expecting a strep throat diagnosis, only to discover that they suffer from gonorrhea in this unlikely body part. Enough said.And anal sex long has been considered by doctors as making the participants much more susceptible to sharing whatever they've got than traditional sex. Dr. Peterson says she sees many University women who are surprised to have contracted sexually transmitted diseases without having had intercourse. Fear of pregnancy rates as the only valid medical reason to prefer other bodily orifices to the vagina, but with the current state of contraceptive technology that argument becomes less compelling.
Humanity has long been infatuated with the concept of virginity. This must account somewhat for the fact that the act of intercourse carries with it a unique stigma. After all, we live in a country whose president failed to classify oral sex as "sexual relations." History, religion and society have ingrained in our minds that a very arbitrary and deeply cut line exists between actual intercourse and everything else sexual.
Even non-virgins succumb to the notion that true intercourse carries a heavier social weight than all else. While the "everything but" hook-up has found its place in college culture, "sleeping around" is still obliged to indicate sluttiness. There is something pseudo-mystical about the penumbra around third base that makes the homerun so much more serious than the triple.
Virginity has become meaningless in the face of alternatives. The social repercussions should not be exponentially greater for intercourse, as the physical ones are comparable. The irony is that while regular intercourse has never had any real issue with the law, sodomy, which includes oral and anal sex, was illegal in many states until recently.
In the name of openmindedness, we should stop relegating intercourse to a special forbidden category that condemns the act to bear the burden of stigma. Sex is sex -- let the judging end there.
Kimberly Liu's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at kliu@cavalierdaily.com.
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