President Clinton reminded us all of this during his testimony. But no one buys it. With the definition used in the Jones deposition, the law did its best to outline what does and does not constitute sex, but the description is slippery and evasive, as Clinton has shown. There is oral sex, there is anal sex and then there is sexual intercourse. If you have sexual intercourse, you are suddenly no longer a virgin.
Virginity has and does connote sexual purity, innocence and inexperience.
The traditional white wedding dress is symbolic of virginal purity, a purity soon relinquished upon consummation of the mar riage. She no longer is a virgin, property of her father, but wife, property of her husband. So, historically, virginity has been closely linked with issues of patriarchy and sexual dependence. The plot of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold recounts the murder of a young man who allegedly deflowered a new bride before the husband could have the honor - literature teems with instances like this one. Although notions about men's ownership of women through sex are not part of popular thought, they do influence attitudes, albeit subconsciously.