Virgin

A virgin (or maiden) originally meant a woman who has never had sexual intercourse. Virginity is the state of being a virgin. It is derived from the Latin Virgo, which means "sexually inexperienced woman". As in Latin, the English word is also often used with wider reference, by relaxing the age, gender or sexual criteria. Hence, more mature women can be virgins (The Virgin Queen), men can be virgins, and potential initiates into many fields can be colloquially termed virgins; for example, a skydiving "virgin". In the latter usage, virgin simply means uninitiated.

By extension from its primary sense, the idea that a virgin has a sexual "blank slate", unchanged by any past intimate connection or experience, leads to the abstraction of unadulterated purity (see below). Hence, a virgin can even be used with non-human referents. Unalloyed metal is sometimes described as a virgin. Some cocktails can be described as a virgin when lacking the alcoholic admixture. Similarly, olive oil may be called virgin if it contains no refined oil and has an appropriate acidity. Unfertilized gametes and computer systems can be virgins. Females of various species, by analogy with Homo sapiens, if they have never mated, can also be called virgins.

The loss of virginity may call to mind the end of innocence and the beginning of sexual maturity. In this association "virgin" often references the first instance of a potentially extended series of like events. Just as extra-virgin olive oil is from the first pressing, so a maiden or virgin speech is an incumbent's first address. The same metaphor, using the synonym maiden, is applied to the first or maiden voyage of a ship. In cricket, a maiden over is an over from which no runs were scored. Maiden castles are those with the reputation of never having been captured.

Chastity does not imply virginity. Chastity derives from the Latin castitas, meaning "cleanliness" or "purity"-and does not necessarily mean the renunciation of all sexual relations, but rather the temperate sexual behavior of legitimately married spouses, for the purpose of procreation, or the sexual continence of the unmarried.

See also [ Born-again virgin ]

Etymology

Frank Harris (1923) claims to have given the following humorous etymology in a lecture, " 'vir,' as everyone knows, is Latin for a man, while 'gin' is good old English for a trap; virgin is, therefore, a mantrap." Other, serious, but unsupported etymologies exist in print.

The German for "virgin" is Jungfrau. Although Jungfrau literally means "young woman", a standard formal German word for a young woman, without implications regarding sexuality, is Fräulein. Fräulein can be used in German, as a title of respect, equivalent to the current usage of Miss in English. Jungfrau is the word reserved specifically for sexual inexperience. As Frau means "woman", it suggests a female referent. Unlike English, German has a specific word for a male virgin Jüngling ("Youngling"). It is, however, rarely used in this sense. Jungfrau, with some masculine modifier, is more typical, as evidenced by the film, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, about a 40-year-old male virgin, titled in German, "Jungfrau (40), männlich, sucht…". German also distinguishes between young women and girls, who are denoted by the word Mädchen. The English cognate "maid" was often used to imply virginity, especially in poetry. German is not the only language to have a specific name for male virginity; in French, male virgins are called "puceau" or "Joseph" whereas a number of indigenous Bolivians, males presenting with phimosis who injure their frenulum during first penetration are said to be "cartridge" as opposed to "cartridged" before first intercourse.

By contrast, the Greek word for "virgin" is Parthenos (πα"é�νος, see Parthenon). Although typically applied to women, like English, it is also applied to men, in both cases specifically denoting the absence of sexual experience. When used of men, it does not carry a strong association of "never-married" status. However, in reference to women, historically, it was sometimes used to refer to an engaged woman-Parthenos autou (πα"é�νος α"το", his virgin) = his fiancée as opposed to gunē autou (γυνή α"το", his woman) = his wife. This distinction is necessary due to there being no specific word for wife (or husband) in Greek.

Perceived value and "technical virginity"

Female virginity is closely interwoven with personal or even family honor in many cultures, especially those known as shame societies, in which the loss of virginity before marriage is a matter of deep shame. For example, among the Bantu of South Africa, virginity testing or even the suturing of the labia majora (called infibulation) has been commonplace. Traditionally, Kenuzi girls (of Sudan) are married before puberty by adult men who inspect them manually for virginity. Female circumcision is later performed at puberty to ensure chastity.

History evidences laws and customs that required a man who seduced or raped a virgin to take responsibility for the consequences of his offense by marrying the girl or by paying compensation to her father on her behalf. In some countries until the late 20th century, if a man did not marry a woman whose virginity he had taken, the woman was allowed to sue the man for money, in some languages named "wreath money".

Emphasizing the monetary value of female virginity, some women have offered their virginity for sale. In 2004, a lesbian student from the University of Bristol was said to have sold her virginity online for £8,400, and Londoner Rosie Reid, 18, reportedly slept with a 44-year-old BT engineer in a Euston hotel room against payment for her virginity. In 2008, Italian model Raffaella Fico, then 20 years old, offered her virginity for €1 million. In that same year, an American using the pseudonym Natalie Dylan announced she would accept bids for her virginity through a Nevada brothel's website.

Some historians and anthropologists note that many societies that place a high value on virginity before marriage, before the sexual revolution, actually have a large amount of premarital sexual activity that does not involve vaginal penetration: for example, oral sex, anal sex, and mutual masturbation. This is considered "technical" virginity, as vaginal intercourse has not occurred but the participants are sexually active. Since the early 1990s, the concept of "technical" virginity has been popular among teenagers. In 1999, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association which examines the definition of sex-based on a 1991 random sample of 599 college students from 29 states found that 60% said oral-genital contact did not constitute having sex. "That's the 'technical virginity' thing that's going on," said Stephanie Sanders, associate director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University. Sanders, as the co-author of the study, and along with other researchers, titled the findings "Would You Say You 'Had Sex' If ...?" According to a study published in 2001 in The Journal of Sex Research, over half of respondents considered that virginity could only be lost through having consensual sex.

Loss of virginity

The act of losing one's virginity is commonly considered within many cultures to be an important life event and a rite of passage. The loss of virginity can be viewed as a milestone in a person's life.

In human females, the hymen is a thin film of membrane situated just inside the vulva which can partially occlude the entrance to the vaginal canal. It is flexible and can be stretched or torn during first engagement in vaginal intercourse. Throughout history, the presence of an intact hymen has been seen by many as physical evidence of virginity, particularly alongside "proof of blood", virginity as proved by the presence of vaginal bleeding from intercourse connected to the tearing of the hymen.

The presence of a hymen is often considered to be an indication of virginity but is no guarantee given that some degree of sexual activity may occur without rupturing the hymen. The lack of a hymen is an even less clear indication of virginity lost as the hymen's shape, thickness and coverage is extremely variable, and one that does occlude the entrance to the vaginal canal may be broken through means other than sexual activity. It is a common belief that some women simply lack a hymen, but some doubt has been cast on this by a recent study. It is likely that almost all women are born with a hymen, but not necessarily ones that will experience a measurable change during the first experience of vaginal intercourse.

There may also exist varying definitions as to the type and extent of sexual activity that is considered by a person to terminate the state of "virginity" as the definition of virginity is problematized by some experiences. For example, the prevailing notion of virginity as lost only through vaginal intercourse is problematized by homosexuality, as well as by some religious youth who engage in oral or anal sex for the purpose of retaining their vaginal virginity. The issue is further complicated by the availability of hymenorrhaphy surgical procedures which repair or replace the hymen, marketed to both sexually active women to restore their "virginity", as well as to virginal women who are concerned that their hymens may not provide adequate proof of their virginity through bleeding or the perceived tightness of their vagina.

In the majority of women, the hymen is sufficiently vestigial as to pose no obstruction to the entryway of the vagina. The presence of a broken hymen may therefore indicate that the vagina has been penetrated but also that it was broken via physical activity or the use of a tampon or dildo. Many women possess such thin, fragile hymens, easily stretched and already perforated at birth, that the hymen can be broken in childhood without the woman even being aware of it, often through athletic activities.

In rare cases, a woman may possess an imperforate hymen that prevents the release of menstrual discharge. A surgical procedure known as hymenotomy, which creates an opening in the hymen, is sometimes required to avert deleterious health effects. The playwright Ben Jonson claimed that Queen Elizabeth I of England, the Virgin Queen, had a "membranum" that made her "incapable of Man", and that a friend of hers, a "chirurgeon", had offered to remedy the problem with his scalpel and that Elizabeth had demurred.

Analogies relating to virginity

The sexual partner during the loss of virginity is sometimes colloquially said to "take" the virginity of the virgin partner. In some places, this colloquialism is only used when the partner is not a virgin, but in other places, the virginity of the partner does not matter. The term "deflower" is sometimes used to also describe the act of the virgin's partner, and the clinical term "defloration" is another way to describe the event.

Virgins are sometimes referred to as bloody marys because of the blood produced from the tearing of the hymen, and the name from the Virgin Mother Mary.

One slang term used for virginity is "cherry" (often, this term refers to the hymen, but can refer to virginity in males or females) and for a virgin, deflowering is said to "pop their cherry," a reference to the destruction of the hymen during first intercourse.

A curious term often seen in English translations of the works of the Marquis de Sade is to depucelate. This word is apparently a literal translation of dépuceler, a French verb derived from pucelle (n.f.), which means "virgin". Joan of Arc was commonly called "la Pucelle" by her admirers.

Medicine and biology

In early modern Europe, prolonged virginity in women was believed to cause the disease of chlorosis or "green sickness".

For cross breedings of some laboratory animals, females are needed that have not already copulated in order to ensure that the offspring possess the intended genotype. To do this in Drosophila flies, for example, females are used that are maximally 6 to 8 hours old (at 25 °C); only after this period has elapsed do inseminations begin.

The term "coitarche" is used in a medical context to describe first coitus

Born-again virgin

An individual can claim to be a born-again virgin if, after having engaged in sexual intercourse, s/he makes a commitment to not be sexually active until marriage (or some other point in the future). This term has gained some popularity among fundamentalist Christians, who place a strong emphasis upon sexual purity and abstinence from premarital and extramarital relations.

In rare cases, born-again virgin females undergo a hymenorrhaphy to restore their hymen. Another option is the Artificial hymen.

Hymenorrhaphy

Hymenorrhaphy or hymen reconstruction surgery is the surgical restoration of the hymen. The term comes from the Greek words hymen meaning membrane, and raphe meaning suture. It is also known as hymenoplasty, although strictly this term would also include hymenotomy.

Such procedures are not generally regarded as part of mainstream gynecology, but are available from some plastic surgery centers, particularly in the USA, Japan, and Western Europe, generally as day surgery. The normal aim is to cause bleeding during post-nuptial intercourse, which in some cultures is considered proof of virginity

Varieties of the operation

The term may cover at least four significantly different types of procedure:

• Suturing of a tear in the hymen such as might be caused by sexual assault, soon after the assault, to facilitate healing.

• A purely cosmetic procedure in which a membrane without blood supply is created, sometimes including a gelatine capsule of an artificial bloodlike substance. This operation is intended to be performed within a few days before an intended marriage.

• Use of a flap of the vaginal lining, complete with its blood supply, to create a new hymen. Patients are advised to refrain from penetrative sex for up to three months following this procedure.

• The term hymen reconstruction has also been used to describe some varieties of infibulation, requiring further surgery before penetration is possible.

{footer}}