It is another freezing night on Sabado Tarde Road, and I’m mindlessly watching “Next” with my roommates, cattily commenting on the stupidity of the suitors and mocking the unwarranted arrogance of the primary dater. Suddenly my roommate gasped at one of the suitors – the Bible-toting Jesus lover she recognized was a total butt-slut from her high school. She flaunted her virginity and spouted about waiting for marriage, all the while taking it in the booty. I have known girls to have oral sex, anal sex and masturbate while still glorifying the purity of their position to wait for marriage to lose their virginity and finally have vaginal intercourse with their newly beloved.

This isn’t to say that I don’t have the utmost respect for people who really believe in saving themselves for the one person they are going to spend the rest of their lives with or for waiting on true love. If you are true to your beliefs, I feel like that is a commendable goal that should be praised. However, there are more and more people retaining their so-called virginity through the loophole of other sexual contact, which brings in the question of hypocrisy. Virginity today has become a matter of subjective opinion. So when is chastity lost and virginity no longer pure?

According to Dictionary.com, the word “virgin” has 19 definitions, including “a person who has never had sexual intercourse” as the first definition, followed closely by “an unmarried girl or woman.” According to the latter, I – along with all of my friends, acquaintances and most of the people I don’t know at UCSB – am a virgin. However, since I feel that this lax definition is not widely accepted in today’s society, I will focus primarily on the first definition listed. To further divulge in this debate, one must also define sexual intercourse. This is the point at which things become messy. Does oral sex count? Anal? Tittie fucking? Heavy petting? Masturbation?

The definition of a virgin as solely someone who has not participated in vaginal-penile sexual intercourse is one that I find deficient at best. Not only does it say that people who can fit an entire fist up their ass are virgins, but it blatantly refuses to account for those of us who are not in heterosexual relationships. My gay best friend has only had anal sex with males, but he doesn’t consider himself a virgin. Nor do any of my lesbian friends who have only had sex with other women. The absence of a penis or vagina in a relationship doesn’t mean that people are not experiencing sex.

In fact, returning back to my oh-so-trusty Dictionary.com, sexual intercourse is defined as either “genital contact, esp. the insertion of the penis into the vagina followed by orgasm” or a “sexual union between humans involving genital contact other than vaginal penetration by the penis.” What the fuck? So either we’re having sexual intercourse if we’re having vaginal penetration, or if there is any amount of genital contact other than vaginal penetration. Also, if the orgasm is thrown in there as a mandatory component of sexual intercourse, I can discount most of my sexual partners as what? Extensions of my vibrator?

Throughout these contradictory definitions, I considered myself to have retained a varying degree of virginity – say, 25 percent – until I had sexual intercourse complete with vaginal penetration. I didn’t have anal sex before then, but if I did I would have considered my v-card permanently swiped by the guy who put it in my booty.

Basically, do not assume that the next virgin you meet is still a virgin by your own definition. Everyone has a subjective definition, so instead of using the oversimplified classification of the “virgin,” try being honest about your sexperiences because curiosity isn’t shameful and shouldn’t be hidden under a label. I have personally decided to reclaim the second definition of virgin and retain my newly reinstated “virginity” – legitimized by Dictionary.com – until I am legally married.