ROOT: Virginity an outdated concept

"I'm a virgin, and I'll be a virgin until the day I die," my boss Rob claimed one day during a customer lull.

I blinked. How was this possible? He's married! He has two cute kids, a gorgeous wife and stories that would make the likes of Dan Savage and Sue Johansson cringe. It didn't add up. Didn't being a virgin mean you hadn't had sex? Before I could totally flip out, he said, "I'm a virgin because I've never been penetrated by a penis."

While this statement seems a bit outrageous, it does bring up a valuable point. Virginity is a vague concept–one that doesn't universally apply. An older, more traditional view of virginity is that the hymen is intact, yet many women are born without one. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are women who have surgery to replace their hymens and become "born-again virgins."

Even Webster's dictionary is unclear. The first line refers to virgins being women, men aren't mentioned anywhere in the entry, and this edition was published in 1995.

Perhaps a more common definition for a virgin today is "a person who has not had sexual intercourse." However, this works for straight people, but not always for gays and lesbians, who wouldn't meet the qualifications for this definition.

If virginity is an unclear concept, how does one go about preserving or losing it? What counts and what doesn't? More importantly, why do vague concepts of virginity have so much weight attached to them? Why do millions of federal dollars promote abstinence-only sex education? According to Jezebel.com, this amount was somewhere around $178 million. Yes, you read that right. A ridiculous amount of your tax payer money is going to federal programs that promote an unclear and unrealistic concept.

Worse yet, these programs do not work. Study after study has shown this, including a recent one from Johns Hopkins University, as reported in alternet.org: "So how do these commitments to abstain until marriage affect sexual behavior? Do teens who pledge to abstain have less sex than their compatriots? Nope. Do they wait longer to have sex? Nope. So what's the effect? Teens who take virginity pledges are significantly less likely to use the Pill or condoms than their non-pledging peers."

And sometimes these "pledgers" do become sexually active with anal and oral sex, which brings us back to the question: "What counts and what doesn't?"

Taking a step back from the political, there seems to be a dangerous split between what is expected of men and women. Men, generally speaking, are supposed to be sexually experienced and know exactly how to please a woman.

Women, on the other hand, have less clear expectations. Jessica Valenti, author of "Full Frontal Feminism," explained rather brilliantly: "It's the idea of virginity that's popular, not the reality of being chaste. Look sexy, act as if you're having sex, but if you do it...whore!"

So what are we to conclude from this double standard? If women are supposed to be saving themselves to avoid the "whore" label, where are the men getting the experience from? Cosmo?

Because I couldn't wrap my head around it, I had to ask my male co-workers what the big deal with virginity was. "Well," one explained, "it's the idea that you get to be there first. You're all she knows. You get to teach her stuff, and that's incredibly sexy."

It's beyond strange to me that the idea of virginity has become a fetish. How can someone who is sexually inactive be sexualized because of their nonsexual activity?

That's something you might ask a robot to make it self-destruct. A friend of mine has a very different opinion. "Yeah, no thanks on the virgins," he said. "I like women who know what they're doing."

Then again, there are those who don't really care about the status of your "virginity" and care more about you. Keep these people around.

The concept is vague and unrealistic because it cannot possibly apply to everyone's sex life. The idea was perhaps important in the ancient world when marriage was arranged. However, like the idea of the dowry, virginity is outdated and doesn't really mesh with our modern world. Instead of obsessing about this archaic concept, let's instead focus on being honest with people we're involved with about what we've done and what we haven't.

Rhiannon Root is a freshman general studies major. Reach her at opinion@dailynebraskan.com