Don't Lose Your Virginity, Discard It

I have the biggest fan-crush on Jessica Zalia, author of The Hymenization of Virginity: Examination of Sociolinguistics, Historical Roots and Consequences. It was this trio of well-aimed paragraphs that smote my feminist heart:

Pairing the two word "losing" with "virginity" accomplishes two goals. First, we only lose what we consider valuable (e.g. "I lost the race," "I lost my notebook," or "I am lost."). We also lose things we presume we ought to have kept (e.g. "I lost my temper," or "I lost your phone number.") Coupling "losing" with "virginity" implies that virginity is something of value that we ought to have kept.

Second, pairing "losing" with "virginity" is problematic, since losing is never something we do purposely in any other given situation.[i] After all, we cannot deliberately lose our keys. That is precisely why they are "lost." And even if you intentionally lose a game of chess to your younger sister, you have not truly lost it. Rather, you have forfeited, and this move is an active one. Therefore, to lose anything is passive.

How, then, has this passive verb found its way into our (hopefully) active sexual experiences?

Le sigh. Oh, and another sigh to Feministing for pointing me to Zalia's article in the first place.

UPDATE: Hey, and tip of the hat to Judgesnineteen at Girly Thoughts for cutting through the BS and telling us just what we can do with the whole concept of virginity, writing "How about we discard the entire notion of virginity?" Yeah - we do act as if "there’s a clear line between virginity and whoredom lost virginity" rather than considering sexuality as a spectrum of experiences. So, virginity - let's chuck the whole concept.