The Virginity Project

No introduction necessary…

And I wasn’t going to write one. But I am an unveiling an unusual creature today. A woman who knows that ‘who I am as an individual is not defined by my virginity’. A radical concept perhaps and if more people thought about it, ‘The Virginity Project’ might not exist.

Isn’t it funny how times change? Think of the stories of old, stories from people who barely knew the facts of life when they got married. It wasn’t that long ago. In the space of fifty years, the concept of virginity has been turned on its head. In today’s society, you could be forgiven for thinking that virginity is a nasty disease. Dis-ease, never a truer word spoken.

Perhaps the media landscape has pushed us. MTV, R&B, sexy ladies, sexy boys, cars, advertising and the promises made by the purchase of expensive products. Buy this and you’ll get laid, get loved, get sexy. The truth is that we don’t need any of this to be sexy, or, more to the point, sexual. We are animals, we already are sexual.

And there are a million and one ways to be sexual, none of which need involve the act of penetrative sex - that which we decree to be the loss of virginity. It’s just that somewhere along the line we convinced ourselves otherwise. Well, all of us that is except for Sally.

‘Dear Kate,

I loved reading your blog because I'm a big fan of Oral History and it's great from that perspective, but secretly, I really enjoyed it 'cos I'm still a virgin at the age of twenty-six.

I don't have any story to tell. Nothing hideous ever happened to me as a child; I was a happy (if slightly odd) adolescent. I home-schooled throughout most of my teenage years and the two years I spent in an alternative high school were mostly spent gaining confidence around people my own age -  sex wasn't even on the cards at that point. 

And then I spent ages in university figuring that I'd meet someone who I really liked and who I wanted to hop into bed with. And I met one guy who was great, but he turned out to be gay (despite the alternative school, I have no gaydar whatsoever). And there was this other guy, but he already had a girlfriend, and I stand sternly by the Commandment, 'thou shalt not endeavour to break up other peoples' relationships just so thou canst get laid.' And then I wondered if maybe I was on the other bus, because generally, I just didn't seem to meet that many men I was bothered about. 

And I still don't.  I meet a lot of men who I really like, who I enjoy hanging out with and chatting to, and mostly I don't feel like I have any difficulty communicating with them. But the litmus test always is, 'Can I picture myself in bed with this person', and the answer is usually 'NO'.

I've put far too much time and effort and occasionally tears (not to mention sweat and, erm, other bodily secretions at certain times of the month) into trying to figure out why I'm so picky. Is it biological? Is it a mental or emotional block - am I one big neuroses without realizing it? Are all my reasons for never dating anyone (I'm too busy with grad school/I'm only in this city temporarily/I don't want to have to factor my life around someone else when I don't know what I want to do after I'm done school) all actually excuses for being frigid, which I don't think I am, and, uh, the downstairs neighbours might attest to that fact if you pressed them...

Am I a commitment-phobe? Do I just come up with reasons for the unsuitability of people my friends want to set me up with because I'm not ready to have a proper relationship? (Although to be fair, would you, as a fairly committed atheist, date an otherwise very sweet man who was also very, very Christian in a Calvinist sort of way?...that was the latest adventure in the world of non-dating, although I would like to keep the aforementioned man as a friend.)

Or, and this is the slightly radical bit here, because nobody seems to want to hear this reason no matter how many times I tell them: am I a single virgin because, despite the fact that there are a vast number of people on the face of this planet who I might be into, the vast majority of them apparently don't reside in this relatively small city?  Why is it so difficult and seemingly taboo for a girl to just not fancy anyone? Or to think that maybe, just maybe, she's not bothered about men or having a relationship because she wants to, I don't know, travel? Finish school, and, goddamit, do a good job at it?  Or spend Saturday night eating popcorn and watching Doctor Who and gossiping with the upstairs neighbours? Or work on that one-act play she wants to enter into a local grassroots festival competition? Or spend two hours a day, every day, rigourously figuring out how to sing and play the fiddle at the same time?

And, quite frankly, a relationship would interfere with all of those. It would make certain activities (like travelling and masturbation) much more enjoyable, but it would curtail the time spent on others - and I don't know if I want to give all of those activities up, and compromise my life to fit with another person's right now. (Or, you know, maybe I'm just scared of change and then we're back to the whole neuroses thing again...)

Okay, I should stop drivelling on - if you want to put this on the Virginity Project you can. I just wanted to say 'Thanks', really. It's taken me a long time to understand that who I am as an individual isn't defined by my virginity. It's part of me, and I still fret and fuss over it, but it isn't the sum of my parts. And I'm sure that there's any number of excellently filthy puns to be made on my unfortunate wording of that one, so I'll leave you to it...But really, thanks. It's nice to feel that I'm not completely alone with this one. And if you post this, you can leave my real name on it.

Thanks for listening.

Best,

Sally’

It takes a nation of millions to shock the virginity project..

Now this is an interview I would like to get. Superseding Lennie Kravitz, currently in position number one with the revelation that he will not be having sex again until he meets Mrs Right and they get married, comes the rather, err, startling news that Flavour Flav lost his virginity at the age of six. 

The Virginity Project is speechless. But not so speechless that we couldn’t think of a few questions to ask if Mr Flav was game. You know where we are.

Blob for life....

Call me a sap but I just read a blog that bought a tear to my eye. Even sadder, but more expected, is the news that its subject, 108, yes, you read that correctly, 108 year old ‘blogger’ Olive Riley has passed away. The truth is that Olive’s eyesight was well beyond the point of actually being able to blog or ‘blob’ as she preferred to call it. Which is no matter because she had a small team of people who were prepared to blob on her behalf.

I applaud these people because they understand the value of what she had to say. Old people are exactly like you or I - just older, and with more experience of being a human being. Furthermore, to look at life through the eyes of an old person is to put your own experiences into perspective. For better or worse, it is always interesting to see how life has changed over the years.

Back in the day, you could cop a mouthful from an old person if you misbehaved. I’ve had a few octogenarian fists shaken at me in my time.

‘What the bleep do you think you’re doing? Our generation fought a bleeping war for the likes of you’.

Straight up! It sounds like a cliché but it’s true and it had no emotional resonance whatsoever for me at the time. What on earth were they talking about? The war was a memory that existed only in the minds of my parents. ‘Rationing’ was something that was mentioned when we wanted too many sweets. ‘Evacuation’ only if we got really unruly.

I had little concept of what life was really like for my elders until I began this project and two things happened. One, I started to interview old people, and two; I began to research the past.

‘Testament of Youth’ was the bullet between the eyes. Published in 1933, this was Vera Brittain’s account of life during wartime. Six hundred and sixty two thousand British men were killed during the First World War. Flick through your Face book page and count your male friends. You don’t need to be a mathematician to work out that many of them wouldn’t be there had the same set of circumstances played themselves out today. They would have gone to war and they would not have come back. Many of them would have been young men, eighteen years old, nineteen years old. Babies.

Different circumstances produced different people. Times were hard and people had an appreciation for the simple things that we take for granted.

On a happier note, the economy has often reflected our libido. Skip forward to the end of the Second World War and people literally had sex to celebrate the fact that they were still alive. Hey presto, the baby boomers were born and in many respects we have never looked back. Of course life is not that simple and that’s what I love about this project, the ability to get perspective by looking into the past.

One might say that it’s a classic case of swings and roundabouts.

Whilst we may shag with an abandon that our grandparents could not, - only, it must be said, because they were terrified of getting pregnant. There was no lack of desire. It’s a commonly held belief that people were prudish about sex in days gone by and I am here to tell you that they were not – modern life has bought a whole new set of issues to contend with.

Are we happier now that we can have sex whenever we like? Maybe. Is the demise of religion a good thing? Perhaps. But as my mother once said to me, a woman who does not ‘do god’, there was a hell of a lot less trouble in the streets in days gone by, when religion gave people structure to their lives. See what I mean? Swings and roundabouts.

‘Don’t ever suggest we should go back to those days’. This is what one of my interviewees once said to me, a woman who did get pregnant in the early sixties (the pill became available to married women in 1962) because the vinegar and water solution that she used as a contraceptive failed to work (now there’s a surprise).

But time marches on and our lives become quicker, less risky, more convenient and in theory, more fulfilled. What am I trying to say? Just that understanding other people’s lives and their  personal circumstances helps us to keep our own in check.

I’m not here to tell you whether any of these things are good or bad, well, not most of the time anyway. I am just here to say that it’s great to know what makes us what we are. 

Mass Observation had this idea years ago. Read about them. They are genius. When Cosmo Landesman interviewed me last year for the Sunday Times News Review and called the Virginity Project ‘a kind of Mass Observation for the internet age’. I pretty much died and went to heaven.

 Documenting our lives is a good thing. I have said this before, but it makes no difference how many flash forms of communication we invent. You’ll always find good stuff on the Internet but people’s personal stories are irreplaceable. When grandma goes, her stories go with her. Listen to her whilst you have the chance.

 

If I could turn back time...

I wouldn’t, because I am perfectly happy where I am. However, one thing does twist my melon. If I could take myself by my teenage shoulders and shake some sense into myself, a. I would look like a nutter, and b. it would go something like this: you’re great, you’re foxy and you don’t need to beat yourself up when things don’t go right with the opposite sex.

But what would be the point? Because you have to find out for yourself. No one can do your growing up for you. This is my issue with virginity pledges. ‘Don’t make mistakes’, they say. And ‘if you have sex you’ll get hurt’. Well yes, Mr True Love Waits, you might because, hey, in case you hadn’t noticed, this is real life and sometimes it sucks. These movements are doing teenagers a disservice by selling them the illusion that life is perfect.

Its not and neither are we - but trying telling that to a teenage girl, or boy for that matter. To a greater or lesser degree, insecurity and cocking things up are par for the course. We have to make mistakes, or else how will we learn?

I would also say this. You are on a hiding to nothing if you make decisions based on fear. Crystal reveals much when she says: ‘I decided at a young age that it would be better to wait until I was married so that I wouldn't get hurt both physically and emotionally’.

Pain cannot be bypassed.  People cheat on us. Man or woman, we are all just as capable as the next person of taking someone’s heart and crushing into a little ball. It’s part and parcel of being human. The best thing we can do is to take a chance on the game of life and keep moving forward, no matter what.

Well troops, that’s my pep talk out of the way. I couldn’t do it for myself when I was sixteen but I can do it now – for Crystal.

 Crystal, aged 22 from Nebraska

 Kate,

I hope that my virginity story is one that isn’t heard very often, but I really doubt that is the case.

I guess I should start off my story by saying that I had planned on waiting to lose my virginity until I was married.  I have, in the past, on numerous occasions said no to sex.  This was something I had my heart set on and really wanted to follow through with.  Well this all changed when I met a boy named Brady Bradshaw*.  We met through a mutual friend and proceeded to flirt for a year and a half because he had a girlfriend.  About three months ago he broke up with this girlfriend and a week later we were hooking up.  We decided to keep it a secret because of the mutual friends we had.

I thought it was just for fun, but I ended up falling for him.  He told me he wanted a real relationship with me, but wasn’t ready.  We continued to hook up for the next two months, doing everything but having sex.  During this time I found out that he was still contemplating getting back together with his girlfriend.  I honestly don’t know why I kept going back, I should have known better, but I liked the way he made me feel.  I also had suspicions that he was hooking up with another girl besides me, but he swore it wasn’t true and I believed him.

Over the course of the three months, my view on sex started to change.  I really wanted to have sex with him, but I didn’t want to at the same time.  I was completely torn and didn’t really know what I wanted.  Well, one night I got a little bit drunk and ended up having to stay at his house, with him and his five guy roommates. He told me that night that he and his girlfriend were done for good. When everyone else went to bed I went into his room and we started to fool around.  When he asked me if I wanted to have sex, I said yes.  We ended up going down to the basement so that his roommates wouldn’t hear us.  About half way through someone started to stomp on the floor so we stopped.  I stayed downstairs and he went back upstairs to bed. 

The next day he came over to my apartment, when we were both sober, and we had sex twice.  The sex was great and I really enjoyed it, until everything fell apart.

It turns out that his roommates heard us, which wouldn’t be a huge deal, but I am close friends with a couple of them and we had been lying about everything that was going on between us.  Everything got out of control and I ended up admitting to everything that happened.  Brady did the opposite; he tried to deny the whole thing even happened. I found out he was trying to deny it because he was still with his girlfriend and because he was hooking up with the other girl also and didn’t want to ruin his chance with them.  Things got really ugly between him and his roommates because he was lying and because he had been screwing around with all three of us girls at the same time. Needless to say, we are no longer talking and I finally realized he never meant one word he said to me.

Looking back over the last three months I realize the mistakes I made and I regret what I did.  I should have seen the signs and I shouldn’t have let my heart get so involved so fast.  I still wish I had my virginity to give to my husband, but I don’t and that is a choice I have to deal with. 

I really don’t think I would feel so bad about the whole thing if my first experience hadn’t turned out so horrible.  I really liked Brady and thought he felt the same way, but my judgment was blinded by my hope for love.  I think in the end this has probably made me a better, smarter person.  I will never be able to trust as easily as I could before and I will, hopefully, not be giving my heart to anyone that quickly again.  As for my virginity, I’m planning on saving my second round for my husband.

*All names changed to protect identity.

Growing pains....

Bum! Sorry about that guys. The video I posted last weekend got pulled - which just goes to prove my theory that you should never save things 'for best'. I'd been planning to post that for an age and I just should have got on with it.

Hey ho, as an alternative, I thought about posting this, a video that really does exemplify the true meaning of innocence and then I thought sod it. I'm kicking virginity loss to the kerb today. Instead, I'm going to remind myself why I love Mary J Blige so much. Here she is. The diva herself, chanelling pure Tina. Tina Turner that is......