page_title: Virginity
section_title: Concept
hierarchical_section_title: Virginity / Culture / Concept
caption_attribution_description: Chastity (a virgin and a unicorn). Oil painting by a follower of Timoteo Viti. Iconographic Collections Keywords: Timoteo Viti
context_page_description: Virginity is the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. There are cultural and religious traditions that place special value and significance on this state, predominantly towards unmarried females, associated with notions of personal purity, honor and worth.
  Like chastity, the concept of virginity has traditionally involved sexual abstinence. The concept of virginity usually involves moral or religious issues and can have consequences in terms of social status and in interpersonal relationships. Although virginity has social implications and had significant legal implications in some societies in the past, it has no legal consequences in most societies today.
  The term virgin originally only referred to sexually inexperienced women, but has evolved to encompass a range of definitions, as found in traditional, modern and ethical concepts. Heterosexual individuals may or may not consider loss of virginity to occur only through penile-vaginal penetration, while people of other sexual orientations often include oral sex, anal sex or mutual masturbation in their definitions of losing one's virginity.
context_section_description: The concept of virginity has significance only in a particular social, cultural or moral context. According to Hanne Blank, "virginity reflects no known biological imperative and grants no demonstrable evolutionary advantage."
  Medieval bestiaries stated that the only way to capture or tame a unicorn was by way of using a virgin as a lure, due to her implied purity. The topic is popular in Renaissance paintings.
  Although virginity has historically been correlated with purity and worth, many feminist scholars believe that virginity itself is a myth. They argue that no standardized medical definition of virginity exists, that there is no scientifically verifiable proof of virginity loss, and that sexual intercourse results in no change in personality. Jessica Valenti, feminist writer and author of The Purity Myth, reasons that the concept of virginity is also dubious because of the many individual definitions of virginity loss, and that valuing virginity has placed a woman's morality "between her legs." She critiques the notion that sexual activity has any influence on morality or ethics.
  The urge of wanting one's spouse or partner to be never engaged in sexual activities is called a virgin complex. A person may also have a virgin complex directed towards oneself.
caption: Virgin with a unicorn
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