Bi-sexual virginity?

I think this is a perfectly legitimate question and I thank you for how sensitively you approach the subject.

Personally, I do not consider myself as having 2 virginities. I have only had sex with men, but I am sexually attracted to women as well. Because I have never had sex with a woman or had a relationship or even any kind of romantic involvement with a woman, people often ask me how I know I’m bi-sexual or they tell me that I can’t know until I’ve had a sexual experience with a woman. If this were the case, then I would have been a-sexual before the age of 14, when I had my first kiss.

I think in regards to this specific question, it really depends on each individual’s opinion. There are many people who no longer consider themselves virgins if they have had oral or anal sex and people who only say they have lost their virginity if they have vaginal intercourse (in the case of heterosexuals).

Well, from the people I know of that persuasion, they see their sexuality as not two separate entities, but as a part of the larger whole. In other words, they don’t see their sexuality as being compartmentalized as straight or gay, but as simply sexual. So their virginity would be a physical condition, not as, well ’ I boinked a girl, so where’s a guy to help me lose my other virginity?” I find people’s preoccupation with the sexuality of others as silly. Not you specifically, but some people decided to judge others on who they would choose to sleep with (when there is really very little sleeping going on). Who someone decides to take as their consentual sex partner is really no one else’s business. The nosy bitches should just back off!

Attraction is one thing, sexual experience is another. You can be sexually attracted to a certain type, and yet, never act upon that attraction. Does that make you whatever label people want to place on you for your attraction? Depends on who you talk to. Personally, I feel that if you are attracted to someone or something that would me immoral or illegal to act out, then you really don’t deserve the label. Thoughts are not deeds. Last time I checked, it wasn’t illegal or immoral to have bad thoughts or fantasies. I know I’ve gotten off on a weird tangent here, but sexuality is something that isn’t neatly defined in boxes or with labels, much to the dismay of the more close-minded folks in the world.

So to answer your question, I don’t see bisexuals as having two virginities. Unless you are cloned or twins, but that is a whole nuther subject. :-)

Another vote here for “one virginity.”

To me, people don’t come in just two flavors (male and female) as though they were chocolate and vanilla. It’s more like a continuum, and while there are super-macho folks at one end and ultra-femmes at the other (who are not necessarily men and women respectively), most people seem to land somewhere in the grey area. (I don’t mean in terms of genitals, I mean in gender, which can be different. For example, a beautiful drag queen might be high-femme.)

In general, I am attracted to people closer to the middle of the spectrum, whether they have boyparts or girlparts. I call myself bisexual because it’s a term that most people have heard before and can understand (at least part-way), but to be more precise I’d be “omnisexual,” in the same way people can be “omnivorous.”

Because other features of a person mean more to me than their plumbing, I can’t conceive of counting separate “virginities” for that tiny bit of the person I’m with. I figure, if I’ve been sexually intimate with someone ever in my life, that counts as total lost virginity. Otherwise, I’d have to break it up into other categories as well, like male-virginity, female-virginity, redhead-virginity, English-major-virginity, Hispanic-virginity, more-than-a-decade-age-difference-virginity. It gets complex if I start doing that, and it doesn’t add any real value to me. Although they are each a different experience, to be valued individually, it’s not a loss of virginity for each one.

I hope this makes sense. Many people divide folks into male/female as if that’s their most important characteristic – it’s so ingrained to them that it’s hard for them to understand that I do not.

@laureth I award you forty two bazillion lurve points for using the word ‘omnisexual’ which is a fine way of defining it.

I’m jumping on the bandwagon here. Laureth explained it perfectly.

I’m straight, but if I were bisexual, I think I would believe I had one virginity, and that the first time I had sex, regardless of the gender of the person, I would be losing my virginity.

@laureth: Brilliant. Amongst my group of friends, we call it “polyamarous.”

…here’s another opinion, from a 100% straight heterosexual male with no attraction whatsoever to people of the same sex:

I can’t obviously imagine the question from a homo/bisexual perspective, but I try to see it this way: if, for whatever reason, I had happened to have had sex with a man, before I had had the chance to try it with a woman, I would not consider myself gay. Nor would I consider myself to have lost my virginity. As far as I’d be concerned, I’d still be a virgin, since I wouldn’t have had the experience with the type of person that interested me. Though of course this is an extreme example, and the only way the above scenario could ever happen would have probably been through rape. Which is a whole different kettle of fish anyway.

But to answer the actual question: yes, I’d still consider myself a virgin in that case, so similarly I assume a lesbian who’s had sex with a man but not a woman considers herself a virgin.

I considered myself to have only one virginity to lose. Figured sex was sex and it didn’t really matter whether it was with a boy or girl.

@TitsMcGhee – While I am omnisexual, I am also monogamous with my partner. The way I think of it, “omnisexual” is about who I find attractive, and “polyamorous” is about actually doing it with more than one of them. :)

@laureth…Your answer was beautiful.

Taken by itself, your first paragraph could have come from a new, politically correct expansion of the D&D Player’s Handbook. Brilliant. :)

maybe they should add gender into the next version of D&D ;)

@laureth: I see your point for sure. I guess you’d have to consider it in context, but that’s what we meant :)

And me, without my d20…

If people liked that quip, they may find something of value in Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein, or The Apartheid of Sex by Martine Rothblatt. I did a lot of gender reading back in the day.

<< Wishes she could give more lurve for Laureth’s perfect answer!

Edit: Also, lurve for the way the question was asked. :-)

i see how most people could see it as one, and laureth makes a good point. but I think of myself as losing my “girl-virginity” as a different thing than losing my “boy-virginity”. Because they are just such different experiences. so for me yes, “2 virginities.”

it is kind of hard to explain, but i first had sex with a dude, so that was losing my virginity. but then later i had sex with a girl, so that i call losing my “girl-virginity.” even though i didn’t consider myself a virgin (post guy sex) the moment i had sex with a girl i felt like i was having sex for the first time (hence girl virginity).

in other words, it never crossed my mind until i did it with a girl for the first time.

If virginity is an attitude, then I think you can have multiple virginities. For example, I feel like I truly lost my virginity when I slept with my second woman. That’s when I could compare. Before that, I was doing the standard thing, and normality seemed like purity, to me. Afterwards, I could no longer be pure, as defined in the accepted way. (Personally, I don’t define it that way.)

If virginity is purely a physical thing, related to the act of penetrating or being penetrated, then there’s only one virginity.

One of my favorite quotes “I’m a virgin, I’m just not very good at it.”

Oh yeah, to touch on what augustlan said and what I meant to say in my original post, the question was written perfectly, tb1570. It was not offensive in the least. Quite the opposite. Very well-constructed.

Whatever. Virginity is more a term related to old notions of purity, that don’t really apply to the average (sane) person’s life. As far as I care, you lose the only virginity you’ve ever had the second you have any kind of sex. So it’s not really a useful term. If you’re going to say that there could be 2 kinds of virginity, why not more?

What about the first time you have an anally induced orgasm? The first time you have a threesome? Your first experience with CBT? The first time you dress up as a puppy and have a bunch of people dressed as cats scratch the shit out of you until the dogcatcher chases them away, puts a collar on you and screws your brains out? Every new experience is significant in it’s own way.

The common term for sexual firsts tends to be “cherries”. As in, “Oh man, I had my caning cherry popped last night, want to see the marks?” In this sense, yes, everyone has cherries for the things they’d like to do, but haven’t yet. If you insist on multiple virginities, at least acknowledge that the term is basically arbitrary and just refers to that which you haven’t done yet.