Selling Her Virginity

… Then buying it back again.

There have been a couple of cases in the last year of women who have auctioned off their virginity, one of whom said it would be paying their college fees. Whether you believe them or not (about the fees or the inviolate hymen) you have to ask – What is virginity?

Virginity has always been synonymous with innocence. Its loss has always signalled a transition from adolescent to adult, at least in some respects. Yet the presence or absence of a thin tissue membrane (in a woman) is surely only of any real significance if the first sexual experience a girl has is with an erect penis entering her vagina.

It’s quite obvious that such a traditional view of loosing your virginity is, while absolute and clear-cut, hardly representative of today’s sexual landscape.

How many of us, male or female has had their partner’s hand in their pants early on in a relationship before their first full-on sexual encounter. Pretty much everyone I think. A step on from that is the hand job; girls do you ever compromise with a guy and wank him off rather than go the whole way? Or a blowjob, is that your preferred sexual trade-off?

I’ve even heard of women who allow partners to have anal sex with them to preserve their vaginal virginity until their wedding night.

All of those things keep your hymen intact, but where’s the innocence? Hand jobs, fellatio and anal sex are not the province of the pure of thought. At one time all of them were exotic, bizarre and possibly illegal.

So is a repaired hymen, an operation available from some cosmetic surgeons, any less real than the original one a woman was born with?