It is possible to get your virginity back after you have lost it

I consider myself fortunate to be debating somebody with a good head on his shoulders. They say the mark of a good sushi chef is how well she can prepare a tamago. Well, the mark of a good philosopher is how well he can construct a thought experiment. This is also Milliarde’s first debate on this forum, and he is sure to enhance the level of dialogue here.In my opening, I gave a couple of thought experiments to show that the body we have now is not the same body we had ten or more years ago. Since virginity consists in having never joined your genitalia with that of the opposite sex, and since the genitalia you have now is not the genitalia you had ten or more years ago, it follows that if you have gone ten years without sex, then you are a virgin.My opponent responded with the following words: “As I think Pro’s thought experiment is best carried out by every person individually, I won’t say what I think is the correct chair, if indeed there is a correct chair.” That’s it. That is the extent of his “refutation” of my argument. I submit that this response doesn’t even rise to the level of refutation. Since he has not attacked the soundness of any of my premises or the validity of any of my reasoning, there is no need for any salvage operation on my part. My argument has established my point.Having left my argument behind, my opponent then went on to construct an argument of his own to show that once you have lost your virginity, you cannot get it back. Note that if I fail to refute my opponent’s argument, that will not be a win for him. At best, that will leave us at an impasse since it will mean that neither one of our arguments have been refuted. But I will attempt to refute his argument so as not to leave us at an impasse.My opponent made an argument from analogy where the popping of a balloon is analogous to the loss of virginity. Even though the balloon can be repaired, it will not change the fact that it was once popped.[1] In the same way, once virginity has been lost, it cannot be un-lost. The past cannot be changed.There are a few reasons for why my opponent’s argument fails to support his point of view:First, his thought experiment does not amount to an argument. He has simply used the balloon analogy to illustrate his point of view. An illustration is not an argument; it’s just an explanation. In the end, my opponent merely asserts that virginity cannot be regained, but he doesn’t give an argument for why.Second, while it is true that you cannot undo the fact that you once lost your virginity, that is not the same as to say you cannot get your virginity back. Saying you can get your virginity back presupposes that you once lost it. By analogy, if I lost my cell phone, then later got it back, the fact that I got the cell phone back doesn’t mean I didn’t once lose it. In the balloon analogy, my opponent is only making the modest claim that no matter how well the balloon is repaired, it will still be the case that the balloon had once been popped. But that doesn’t mean the balloon will forever be in a popped state.Third, the balloon thought experiment is not really analogous to human beings. In the balloon thought experiment, when the balloon is returned repaired and inflated, it’s the exact same balloon that was once popped. But in the case of people, the body we have ten years down the road is not the same body that lost its virginity in the first place. So even though we can rightly say that the intact balloon we get back at the end of the thought experiment is the same balloon that had once been popped, it’s not true that the body we have now was the same body that lost virginity ten years ago. If you have gone ten years without sex, then the penis or vagina you have now has never been engaged in sexual activity. That makes you a virgin.That concludes my portion of this debate. Thank you very much to my opponent for an interesting exchange, welcome to debate.org, and congratulations on participating in your first debate here. And thank you to the reader for your kindness in carefully reading and thinking through our arguments so as to make an informed vote.[1] Am I the only one who laughed at the subtle innuendo?