Sex without PIV still counts as such.

4 comments

1. Virginity is a totally made up concept. Give 50 BJs and get banged in the butt 17 times in a month and still a virgin? Whatever you say, random priest!

   I wouldn’t put too much weight on it. If you feel good about the kind of sex you’re having then everybody else can take a hike with their opinions.
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2. Basically, you two are having a deeply *pedantic* argument.

   What “counts” as sex”? What “counts” as fucking? These are all abritrary, ultimately.

   If someone has had oral sex with seven different people, it’s pretty safe to say that this person is *sexually active*. They’ve had sex. Just because they haven’t had *penetrative penile/vaginal sex* doesn’t negate the fact that *they have had sex*.

   Can that person still claim they’re a virgin? Not in my book because virginity is such an arbitrary (and sexist) construct to begin with that I can’t take anyone seriously if they suggest that no other forms of sex besides PIV counts as “sex” for the purposes of “determining virginity.”

   You’ve been sexually active. Both of you have.

3. The term “technical virgin” comes to mind.

   Although generally people eventually have penetrative sex unless they’re somehow physically unable to do so or they have enough of a phobia of the opposite sex’s genitalia that it finally precludes any further heterosexual relationships.

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   >What if I had been with like 7 guys and never had any penis inside, should I still say I’m a virgin?

   The reason as to ***why*** you would want to be with a half dozen guys or a dozen guys and never engage in penetrative sex matters.

   >To clarify: I gave him oral (soft served because he had performance anxiety) and he, after masturbating me, gave me some head too.

   I think a lot of guys would prefer to be a technical virgin than to admit that such a lackluster, stifled performance was how they “lost their virginity.”

4. The ancient concept of virginity is tied more to reproduction than to sexuality. A woman who loses her virginity to a man is guaranteed to bear his child (and no one else’s), and that child is guaranteed to be her first-born. This is why virgin women were once coveted and considered “pure”, because they could provide paternal certainty in a pre-modern world.

   But in the modern age where we have almost absolute control over reproduction (and paternity tests), the concept of virginity became more associated with sexuality than reproduction. A virgin isn’t someone who can guarantee a certain reproductive outcome, but rather it’s a name for someone who’s never had sex. But because the original idea of virginity was tied to reproduction, most people only consider reproductive sex (PIV) to count towards losing your virginity. While this doesn’t align with modern standards of sexuality (for example, how would a gay/lesbian lose their virginity?), because the virginity is rooted in the puritan and conservative ideology, the conservative definition has stuck. If you are progressive in your sexuality, you probably don’t value or talk about “virginity” because it’s meaningless, rather you’d talk about lack of experience which can be more nuanced (e.g. in a specific sex act).

   Therefore the answer to your question is: it depends on the cultural context.