It’s a first for The Virginity Project and I’m surprised it’s taken this long. Today’s story comes from a man who was born a woman. Throw the prospect of virginity loss into the mix and there’s an interesting, if poignant story. As if losing virginity by itself were not complicated enough…I wish ‘Adrian’ the very best on a big journey of discovery.
On another – not unrelated – note, The Guardian runs a feature I wrote today on the subject of people who ‘have not found love’. When I was first offered the commission, I almost turned it down on the basis that it sounded depressing and negative. Having talked to my editor however, I realized that the brief was wide open and I was free to embrace all the shades of grey (a phrase now loaded with a different meaning entirely) in between. The result was a fascinating bunch of stories told by an equally interesting group of people.
One’s work gets edited once you’ve handed it in so you don’t always get 100% control over final cuts but one thing I take away from this project is that single-dom is not the doom laden experience for many people that society might like to portray it as. Not just now, but for generations before us as well. Even ‘Mary’, the lady who lost her fiancé during the Second World War admitted to me that she wouldn’t have been able to travel and live the free-spirited life that she has had she got married.
You can make your own mind up of course. Have a read of the comments section. Its compelling reading in it’s own right.
‘I'm a 27-year-old pre-everything trans guy from New Zealand (born March 1985). I've spent a lot of my life struggling to figure out who I am, and while I was in high school I was still mostly focused on trying to fit in. I was supposed to be a girl and get crushes and date guys. I couldn't control two of those things but I could control the third, so basically if a guy asked me out, I tried to convince myself I liked him.
My first kiss was wet and he tried to put his tongue in my mouth and I hated it. I left his place pretty soon after and went home. I lost my virginity a couple of weeks before my 18th birthday, after I left high school, to a male friend. He'd picked me up after I ran some errands and we were back at his place and he'd just had a shower. I don't really remember much about it - not because of alcohol or drugs or trauma, just because it was so uninteresting to me. It hurt a bit but I didn't bleed, and it was quite boring, and eventually he finished and that was that.
I didn't really understand what everyone found so amazing about it and over the next few years I had more meaningless, boring sex with more male friends, most of which still hurt, until eventually it occurred to me that maybe I was gay. By this point though I hated my body and sexual organs enough that, though I couldn't really explain why, the idea of having sex with a woman was sort of off-putting, though I do find women attractive!
I think I was about 21 or 22 when I first started really considering that, and since then I've revised things a few times before finally accepting that most of the problem is that I was just trying so hard to be something I'm not. Sadly I'm not in a place where I can get the treatments I'd like (mastectomy, hysterectomy, possibly hormones, possibly one of those crazy surgical dicks), I'm not out to my parents or most of my siblings, I only pass as a guy with great effort and from a distance, but maybe one day I'll be able to have a body I'm comfortable with and find a nice woman who's also comfortable with it and willing to work through my baggage with me. I think if that ever happens it will feel more like losing my virginity than the first one did.
Adrian* (but for the sake of obscurity let's go with Nicholas)’ *name changed'
