A month or two ago, I remember reading a thread (or part of one anyway) on AVEN started by an asexual who is attracted to virgins. Several others piped up, saying that whenever they found out that someone wasn’t a virgin, they were immediately turned off by that person.

One member in particular had an unreasonable, extremely negative, judgmental view of anyone who had ever had sex, and the thread quickly devolved into an argument with this person (who IMO made a total ass of him/herself). The thread was at least six pages long, so I didn’t read all of it. I read just enough to get the gist of the argument, and see that it wasn’t going anywhere–it was like arguing with a fundamentalist. This person was beyond being disgusted by sex. S/he HATED sex, and seemed to put a great deal of time and effort into avoiding it. Such an extreme viewpoint, to my mind, casts doubt on a person’s claim to be asexual. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say this person might actually be a person suffering from sexual anorexia, or just regular old sexual repression. It seemed dubiously similar to the kind of fortresses that people in denial build to keep reality out. This sort of “us and them” mentality, this militant rejection of ANYTHING sexual, is something that I think damages our cause. After all, how are we ever going to get sexual people to accept us if we won’t accept them? For this reason, I think it’s important for asexuals to be sex-positive.

But enough about that. What I wanted to talk about was virgins.

I honestly find myself a little perplexed when most people talk about virginity. Not too long ago, I had one of my friends introduce me to an anime called Loveless, wherein all virgins had cat ears which they lost when they lost their virginity. I found it completely unrealistic and, more to the point, really stupid, especially in the way the characters related to one another. It was an interesting idea, I suppose, to make one’s status as a virgin or non-virgin visible to others in such an obvious way, but it veered so far off into the realm of the ridiculous that I felt less than compelled to continue watching. Still, it did bring up ideas about virgins having some sort of special status over non-virgins.

This, I don’t really understand. Why are virgins considered pure and innocent and often more desirable than non-virgins? I’m aware that there is a certain portion of the population that gets off on “deflowering” (or even defiling) innocence, but I suppose I probably will never understand because I don’t consider virgins innocent. Sure, some of them may be, but not all. I don’t consider sexual experiences a criteria for determining whether or not one is “innocent.” Forget purity; I’m not even going to touch religion’s role in all this. As Loveless shows, even relatively less religious societies like Japan seem to give virgins a special status.

At any rate, I suppose I can understand why some sexual men might prefer virgin girls, on a physical level (ahem). I suppose I could also understand that maybe some people like to choose virgins to be their sexual partners, because showing someone else the ropes gives them a feeling of empowerment. I can’t relate, but I can understand.

I don’t know about the asexuals who prefer to form relationships with other virgins. I guess I can understand that they feel they can relate to them better than with someone who has had all these experiences they can’t even fathom having (or rather, wanting to have), but I dunno, it seems a little risky to me. At least if they are involving themselves with sexual virgins. Losing one’s virginity seems to be a very, very significant event in the lives of sexual people, after which sexual activity becomes more important. I would be worried that, should a sexual person completely give up on having those experiences due to their involvement with an asexual, it would lead to a lot of resentment later on. Or, if the asexual is willing to compromise and have sex occasionally, once the virgin becomes a non-virgin, it would lead to a significant increase in pressure to have sex on the asexual person. Or they would just up and leave the asexual standing in the dust.

Personally, when it comes to trying to form a romantic relationship, I avoid sexual virgins like the plague. As an asexual who is willing to have sex, I would be afraid that it would have a damaging effect on a sexual person’s psyche, to lose their virginity to me and then be told that no, I don’t particularly want to try it again. Not that I wouldn’t have told them in the first place, but as we have seen, sexuals can be quite dense sometimes, and it would be even more likely to hurt someone who is freshly not-a-virgin. Plus, I do need quite a bit of care whenever I engage in sexual activity, mostly due to the increased vulnerability that comes with acting outside my natural orientation, and I doubt very much whether a virgin would know how to provide that for me. Nor could I really show them what to do, since it doesn’t come naturally to me. It would be an awkward and potentially painful situation for both of us, and the whole thing would make me incredibly nervous.

Asexual virgins, of course, are a different matter entirely.

Really, I just find it interesting how wide a variety of people there are in the asexual community. We all have in common a disinterest in sex, but there’s just so many differing views out there on things like virginity. I may not be able to relate to all of them, but hey. Different strokes for different folks, after all.