Virginity is a weird concept. I find it utterly bizarre that the concept exists. Essentially, the state of not having gotten around to doing something gets its own word. Usually, a concept only gets its own word when it means deliberate abstention - and we already have a word for deliberately abstaining from sex: chastity. If you look at the range of meaning that is encompassed by "virginity" but outside the range "chastity," it is populated mostly by people who haven't had an appropriate opportunity yet - they haven't been able to get a suitable partner into a suitable situation.
I don't think there's any other concept like this in the English language. Whenever the absence of an action gets a label, it's because of a deliberate decision. I don't think there are any other labels that mean "I haven't had a chance yet."
If you don't drink as a matter of principle, you're a teetotaller. If you have nothing against drinking but it's just that no one has offered you any wine yet, there's no label for that.
If you don't eat meat, you're vegetarian. If you just don't have access to meat...well, you're probably poor or sheltered, but those concepts have nothing to do with meat per se.
If you deliberately choose to remain faithful to one partner, you're monogamous. If you have no particular loyalty to your lover but no other opportunities have come along, there's no word for that.
If you don't eat pork because you're Jewish, you're Kosher. If you don't have any pork, you don't have any pork.
If you've never ballroom danced or been to Venice or tried caviar, you don't get a special word for that. But if you've never had sex, you're a virgin. That's very odd.
I wonder how it would affect our society if virginity wasn't its own concept?
2 comments:
Of course, the term comes from a time when it was used to rank and value that useful commodity, women. "Virgin" was a selling point in acquiring a dowry. And the opposite of virgin is, essentially, "spoiled".
Come to think of it, aren't "unmarried" or "childless" concepts similar to "virgin"? Although they are negative versions of existing concepts, I guess.
That's true, if you make a deliberate decision not to have children, you're childfree. But if it's just happenstance, you're childless. So both possibilities have their own word.
And unmarried is actually a backwards word like virgin - it has no implication of intent whatsoever, and is most often used in cases of happenstance. But I don't think there's any specific term for deliberately unmarried. The closest I can think of is if the phrase "confirmed bachelor" were taken literally, but it isn't taken literally, it's an old-fashioned euphemism for gay. Actually, I just googled deliberately unmarried to see if there were any words I'd missed, and it seems to sometimes be a euphemism for gay too.
So I don't know what to make of this. It seems the closer you get to sex, the more likely you are to have a specific term for non-deliberate abstinence. I'm not sure what to conclude from that.
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