Product DescriptionPurchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher’s book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Celibacy, Courtly Love, Erectile Dysfunction, Virginity, Asexuality, Romantic Friendship, Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, Involuntary Celibacy, Unrequited Love, Spinster, Boar Taint, Genophobia, Antisexualism, Albanian Sworn Virgins, Platonic Love, Erotophobia, Cuddle Party, Spiritual Marriage, Sexless Marriage, Sexual Inhibition, Singles Awareness Day, Sexual Arousal Disorder. Excerpt: A virgin (or maiden) originally meant a woman who has never had sexual intercourse. Virginity is the state of being a virgin. It is derived from the Latin virgo, which means “sexually inexperienced woman”. As in Latin, the English word is also often used with wider reference, by relaxing the age, gender or sexual criteria. Hence, more mature women can be virgins (The Virgin Queen), men can be virgins, and potential initiates into many fields can be colloquially termed virgins, for example a skydiving “virgin”. In the latter usage, virgin simply means uninitiated. By extension from its primary sense, the idea that a virgin has a sexual “blank slate”, unchanged by any past intimate connection or experience, leads to the abstraction of unadulterated purity (see below). Hence, virgin can even be used with non-human referents. Unalloyed metal is sometimes described as virgin. Some cocktails can be described as virgin, when lacking the alcoholic admixture. Similarly, olive oil may be called virgin if it contains no refined oil and has an acidity below 2%, or extra-virgin if it comes from a cold pressing with an acidity below 0. 08%. Wool, computer systems, and unfertilized gametes can be virgin. Females of various species, by analogy with Homo sapiens, if they have never mated, can also be called virgin. The last instance also incorporates yet another association of virginitythe notability of its los. . .
