Tag Archives: the first time

Sex

We Don’t Know: I’m Gay, So When Did I Lose My Virginity?

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“Can we get rid of the term virginity? Because it’s basically bullshit.” – Laci Green on the history of “virginity,” the misconceptions around hymens, and your “sexual debut.” 

We’re talking a lot about “first times” and virginity this week, but what does “virginity” mean to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals? We started asking some members of the UE community about their first times and soon realized that this wasn’t going to be a Let’s Ask. Because, clearly, We Don’t Know:

What do you consider your “first time”?

“The first time we were both naked.”
“The first time there was some type of penetration.”
“The first time it felt like a mutual event, rather than a foreplay type situation.”
“The first time I orgasmed in front of someone else.”
“The first time I had butt sex.”
“The first time genitals were touching with eye contact.”
“The first time I enjoyed it.”
“I haven’t felt the need to define it.”
“A pre-planned date we had both chosen.”

Some people consider the act of lesbian sex to be having oral sex: do you?

“I don’t understand why ‘lesbian virginity’ is third base? Then again, I have no idea what home plate is either.”
“That doesn’t make sense to me. So many couples do so many different things.”
“I don’t like giving or getting head, but I love having sex.”

A lot of people consider the act of gay sex to be anal sex: do you?

“I do. But it isn’t for everyone! I have friends who have been together for years and aren’t into penetration.”
From a ‘Dear Alice’ on Go Ask Alice: “All gays do not engage in anal sex. I know many men who prefer not to engage in this sex act. I don’t think enjoying anal sex is synonymous with homosexuality. This might comfort some of the straight men who write you and say they enjoy anal stimulation. I believe being gay is about having emotional relationships with men and not necessarily about the type of sex acts one engages in.”

If you’ve had straight sex, do you consider that your first time?

“I did at the time, but I do not now.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, but then I also had a ‘gay first time.’”
“Sometimes I think, ‘Technically, I guess I’m still a virgin, because I’ve never had straight sex.’ But I have sex all the time, so I don’t really know.”

We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Sex

Let’s Ask: Lies My Mother Told Me About the Birds and the Bees

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My mother is a pretty awesome human being by all accounts. It’s important that I make sure all of you know this. She’s been through a lot of crazy, tough stuff over the years and has clawed her way to the other side like a fucking grizzly bear. But what she did not do was prepare me in any way, shape, or form to have any semblance of a functional adult sex life.

All the sex “advice” my mom ever gave me had but one simple through-line, one motive: to convince me to never even think about having sex. EVER. For any reason. To instill in me a crippling fear of the anatomy of the opposite sex. “I’ve been there. I was a teenager in the 70s, okay?” And I had to believe her, how could I not? Now, to be fair, most of these pearls of wisdom were handed down to me when I was only about 10 years old, the year my mom awkwardly left the “What’s Happening To My Body?” book on my pillow and never spoke of it. So… maybe the whole G-rated fright-fest makes sense. But a G-rated lie is still a lie!

“Sex hurts. It’s not fun for girls, only for boys. Girls who tell you they like having sex are sluts who are just trying to make you feel uncool.”

Yikes. Way to make sure I’d grow up to be a total bitch ice queen with ZERO friends, Mom. And what exactly was I supposed to think of myself, the day I had sex and realized that I liked it? Was I, too, a slut? Are we all sluts? What’s the meaning of life? Are we alone in the universe? These are the questions.

“If you give him the milk for free, why should he buy the cow?”

Thanks, Mom, now you’re calling me a cow, too? I think this one is fairly common, textbook advice for girls. It’s also fairly ridiculous. I know plenty of people whose stable, happy relationships were borne of a random, sexy encounter one random, sexy night. The act of having the sex you want when you want it doesn’t hold the same cultural weight that it might have years ago. Guys don’t typically “lose respect” for girls if they “put out” right away. Also, can we as a generation sign some sort of pledge to do away with the phrase “put out?” It’s so dated, so very look-at-me-I’m-Sandra-Dee. It sounds so dirty, too: Put. Out. She puts it out there, guys. It. Her vagina. Shudder.

Anyway. I fully support a lady waiting a little while to sleep with a guy she’s just started dating, so she can get to know him better and make sure he’s a solid choice. But that’s different. That’s not a decision made out of fear because you’re worried he won’t respect you anymore if you do the deed. And if that fear turns out to be true, that he does lose respect for you after you sleep together, then this guy might actually be the worst. So… good riddance.

“Ten minutes of good sex is not worth the pain of childbirth.”

Because obviously every time a person has sex it automatically results in a baby being born nine months later. OBVIOUSLY. I don’t doubt that having a baby hurts like the dickens, but that’s kind of neither here nor there. Because of this, for the longest time, I thought that people’s parents only had sex the day they decided they wanted a baby. The concept of birth control didn’t really factor into this discussion until I was several years older, and I already knew what it was thanks to my friends who had courageously bought condoms and put them on bananas at a sleepover.

“Having sex is worse than saying the worst swear word you can think of.”

So… the F word? Wait. Is this what a conundrum feels like? I am ten years old and my brain just imploded. This might be my self-destruct code. Send help.

“You’re not allowed to get married if you’ve already had sex with someone else.”

It’s worth mentioning that my family was not very religious. We were the swing-by-church-on-Easter-and-Christmas variety of Catholics. But for some reason, my mom would rev up the Pope-mobile whenever it came to the subject of pre-marital sex. You didn’t do it. Period. Those were the rules—God’s rules. You can’t break God’s rules because he’s definitely gonna hear about it, being God and all. And that’s not necessarily uncommon: a lot of parents tell their kids that they shouldn’t have sex until they’re good and hitched. But my twisted, 10-year-old mind took this warning to a whole new, disturbing level by assuming that a doctor had to examine you and give you a certificate of “Nope, Never Done It!” before you could walk down the aisle. And the worst part? When I asked my mom whether or not this pre-marital medical exam actually existed, she said yes.

“Penises are really ugly.”

Well… okay, fine. I’ll give you this one, Mom. I’m glad I was prepared.

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Sex

Virginity: It’s None of Your Business

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So, you’re a virgin.

Or, you’re not.

Either way, has someone ever told you that it’s a “big deal”? That they can’t believe that you’re still a virgin. They can’t believe you lost it so young. They can’t believe you lost it with that person. They can’t believe you didn’tlose it with that person. They aren’t sure your virginity really counts, given what you told them about it when you were drunk. Given what they know from that person you were seeing, they don’t believe you’ve really had sex.

For something that seems so personal, people seem to have a lot of opinions about your virginity. It can be really hard to sort through what you want and what matters to you, as opposed to what other people expect.

It used to be that a woman—without an education, a job or the right to vote or own property—had little else besides her virginity that she could use to advance her place in the world. To a woman, virginity was something to hold onto tightly while a man, on the other hand, could be expected to “sow his wild oats” before he got married. Even today promiscuity is often expected of men and considered poor taste in women. But we live in a different time now, a time where sexuality is personal. It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) determine how far one goes in life. It can be as important or as unimportant as you want.

That idea used to sound strange to me:  society’s outdated value judgments aside, your virginity is supposed to be a big deal. It’s shackles. It’s the first time. It’s your most precious gift. Or whatever. Those are things that I’ve been told my whole life.

But it’s not true. Or maybe it is. That’s the great secret: we all get to decide. It took me awhile to realize virginity was just a social construct. It’s like the first time you do anything new—the first time you kiss someone, the first time your parents leave you home alone, the first time you ride a bike. But if it’s important to you, if it’s a moment that means something to you, then it means something. No one gets to tell you that it doesn’t.

As with most things, there is a flip side to that: virginity doesn’t have to mean anything either. It can be the first time you try something new, it can be with someone you’ve just met, or it can be with someone you’ve known forever. You can be in love, or “like,” or you don’t have to be. It can be on the fifth date, or your wedding night, or the first time you meet. You can wait until you’re 30 or 40 years old, or you can have sex for the first time at 18. Or you don’t ever have to have sex at all.

That’s right—you don’t ever have to have sex at all. You can have sex every day. You can have sex with girls; you can have sex with guys. You can have sex with people who don’t fit into society’s gender binary. You can define your sexuality or you don’t have to.

Sometimes, you’re going to struggle with it, and that has to be okay too. It takes serious mental effort to get through our socialized concepts. In spite of everything I’ve said to you here, things that I truly believe, I still struggle with it regularly. Because the social construct doesn’t go away and people asking about it doesn’t go away. Things are going to make you call into question your choices and people are going to try and force you to defend them. You may feel uncertain about what you’ve done or whom you’ve done it with. You may feel that you’re not as experienced as your friends or that you’ve given things away too easily.

Virginity is subjective. It’s socially constructed and it’s extremely personal. The person with whom you choose to have or not have sex, how old you are, when or where—none of that matters as long as you are honest with yourself about what you want. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true! In this, as in all aspects of life, the best thing that you can do is be good to yourself. Be honest. Be loud. And know that whatever you decide is okay, as long as you decide it. No one has any right to tell you what virginity means to you.

So, remember: your virginity is your business. Consent is sexy. If it’s not sexy and enthusiastic, then it wasn’t consent. And no matter who you are, no matter what gender or sexual orientation you are, you get to define sex for yourself—the first time, and every single time after that.

Photo by Sara Slattery