But one question went unanswered… What exactly made her a virgin? Who was to know if she had or hadn’t? She seemed like a savvy girl. She had just made $45,000 for a one-night stand. Was she just taking us all for a ride? And who was the man willing to pay such a huge sum? Did he have a fetish for being the first?

As we near the end of 2010, virginity is still a subject of much obsession. We have a culture that likes ticking boxes. Male, female. Gay, straight. Virgin or not… But as blurred as sexuality is in our modern age, nothing is more obscure than virginity. Instead of throwing away the term, we have instead created a lot of footnotes.

Losing your virginity in the strict sense is to have intercourse with someone of the opposite sex. Countless poems, movies and books in western culture have been born from recognition that losing your virginity is one of our important milestones. Could there have been any plot line in American Pie if virginity didn’t matter? As teenagers, the marketing of virginity goes into overdrive. You find a nice guy and ask those two deal breaker questions: “watz ur star sign n r u a virgin?”

What we fail to realise in our sweet teenage years is that it is far from simple. How do you even prove such a thing? We can’t tell if a man is a true virgin. However, men have a delusion that they can pick a virgin. The hymen, it seems, is the medical trump card. The sad truth is the hymen is often broken long before sex—tampons, playing sport, medical exams. The hymen is the wild child who can’t be tamed. So why do some people still cite this as real proof?

An article in 2004 stated that after all the studies that have been conducted, it was confirmed that “A doctor cannot determine from a vaginal examination whether a women is a virgin or not”. The scary thing about this is in many countries examinations of this kind are carried out to determine if a woman is a virgin before she gets married. And these results are taken as unquestioned medical proof, meaning serious consequences for the women involved. How could I explain the only affair I had was with a tampon?

So if we cannot prove virginity physically, who then are the real virgins? How did Miss $45,000 prove her meat was fresh? Men seem to take a rather more causal definition of virginity. If it goes in it counts.

However, there is the growing trend among women of the ‘technical virgin’. Virginity is now everything but the act of entering through the vagina—so you can still be considered a virgin after a lot of oral and anal sex. Many extreme Christian schools in the States are dealing with the implications of this motto. The vagina was seen as the only hole that counted. They turned a blind eye to all ‘back door’ action. Without any proper sexual health education, pregnancies were on the rise (born-again), and rates of STIs went through the roof.

I went to a girl’s school with its own pregnancy problems. But virginity was always a good talking point. My technical virgin friend had discovered a problem. She referred to it as having been 99.9 per cent roasted. The boyfriend went in, but it was over after one push. She did not want this to be her story, the one she couldn’t forget. He may have counted it. But she was a lady with high hopes for herself and this was a job well below par. We decided for a full roast there needs to be at least three pumps. But then my lesbian friend pointed out, did she have to be a perpetual ‘virgin’? She is far more Magdalene than Mary, yet men all call her a virgin. She was told the only homosexuals who lose their virginity are gay men.

Virginity has always whipped out horrible clichés for women. If you lose it you are a slut, if you don’t you are a prude. But for me this was the final straw. She is not a virgin, plain and simple. So why do we have to hold onto this male mentality that it takes a cock to make it pop?

As I mused over my missing cherry, I asked my friend to recount his story. At 17 he stumbled down Queen Street and decided his moment had come. He walked into a brothel ready to become a man. The cash was laid down and clothes were lost. He said he wanted to get it out of the way, and what better way than to see the guru of virgin stealing. Sadly, alcohol and erections don’t always work together. And after some awkward limp inning and outing they got in a bath and just ended up talking about her kids.

He left feeling confused. Was he now a man? Finally he could just be one of the guys. Yet after all that hype he couldn’t shake off the disappointment. That was sex? Nobody can prepare you for what it is really like. Everyone has such different stories; we are never going to have a clear test. It is time to stop being judgmental. It is time to embrace virginity 2.0.

We can sell it, buy it, save it. Rebuild it, lie about it and become a born-again. The hype shouldn’t be in the what counts, instead it should be what you think counts. You get to choose when; you get to choose with whom. Where, and what to wear while it happens. People have really shitty stories about losing their virginity. It was awkward, painful, drunk, quick and average. Why should that be a memory you are not allowed to forget? Since physically we can’t determine a virgin, it has become a state of mind. Virginity will always be a grey area to define. But it doesn’t have to be for you.

Those lines were the last thing I wanted to see, but they finally confirmed the fears I had been blocking out of my mind. What now?

Discovering you’re pregnant is, for some women, one of the happiest moments of their lives. For me it wasn’t. It was panic, followed by loud cursing. I knew that the only two options I could consider were an abortion or to follow the pregnancy through. The problem was I naively believed that this decision would be a gut instinct. Once the pregnancy was confirmed, I thought that the right answer would appear—I peed on a stick and it turned into a fortune cookie. I wanted a miracle. Mary got an angel telling her what to do, where the hell was mine?

The next morning after a sleepless night I called my boyfriend who was living in Auckland.

“I am pregnant.”

Silence.

“Fuck, I guess we are having a baby… Holy crap”.
This wasn’t the answer I was expecting. Now I was faced with the prospect of pushing his baby out of my vagina.

I felt so trapped; my mind was cut right down the middle. I knew that I would love it once it arrived, but should my first reactions have really been dread, panic and disappointment?

In an attempt to make this all disappear I made an appointment with Family Planning for another test. Maybe I had a faulty test? Though nothing could alter the fact my boobs had already gone up a cup size. The test result was positive. I burst into tears—how could this happen to me? The nurse told me I needed to make a choice. You can’t just wait this one out. I called my doctor. I was having an abortion.

It was the hardest decision I have ever made, but if I didn’t do it, I would become a mother. Not only was I filled with fear, but also with shame and guilt. I come from a huge Catholic family where pregnancy means birth and a baby. But I didn’t want a baby; did that make me a horrible person? I lived like a shadow around the house, locking myself away to cry into my pillow and hold my stomach. I couldn’t walk out the door without morning sickness gagging my throat.

My best friend stood by me and took me to my first appointment. We entered through the security door into the abortion services. I waited to see the doctor and counsellor. The waiting room contained a fuzzy television, a radio and silent teenage daughters with their mothers. People came and went. We all stared at the television.

I told the counsellor every fear, thought or question I had. I finally felt that what I was doing wasn’t ‘wrong’. She showed me the size of the foetus; it was a baked bean, a cluster of tissue. It didn’t even have a sex. I cried a lot, but more than anything it was from relief. I was no longer trapped. This pressure from society constantly calling a foetus a baby had made me hate myself, but now it was lifting.

I had started to believe I was a killer. But then I realised the people who don’t believe that women should have a choice don’t know anything about having a termination. All my life I had heard the abortion debate through history, media and religion. Yet before I entered this situation, I had no idea of the complexity of the emotions it can produce in a woman. I never thought it would happen to me. But it did, and everything changed. I have always believed in the right for women to choose. The thought of being forced to carry a baby that I didn’t want made me feel sick.

But I was in for another nasty surprise. While I was at peace with my decision and knew it wasn’t a bad thing, I was yet to learn who had the final say. Turns out the state had rights to my uterus.

I went against my father’s beliefs in order to have this abortion. And that was hard because I care about him and I knew he would be hurt. I didn’t let my friends, family or the church make this decision for me. It is my body; I have the final say, so how did a law become the supreme ruler of my body?

I had to lie about why I needed the abortion. I just didn’t want a baby. Yet in our law that means nothing. I had to say that I believed it would damage my mental health. It was humiliating. I had been dealing with so much both physically and emotionally. Yet my decision, “I don’t want a baby”, is criminal. If the government had really given a crap about my mental health then they wouldn’t force me to lie and to treat it like a ‘necessary evil’.

I am so tired of being scared of what other people think. I care about human life. I care about all the lives of the women who have been in my situation; I care about all the girls who one day might be. I wish I could care about a cluster of tissue but it just doesn’t seem to compare to real lives. This law isn’t just about services; it is trying to sit on the fence. You may have an abortion, but you better lie about why you had it. Be thankful we gave it to you. Be ashamed and silent. We need to keep the pro-lifers happy.

I went to the hospital for my procedure. I felt calm; this was the right decision for me. I lay on the table awake as they removed the foetus. I felt no pain, just the constant voice of the nurse holding my hand and keeping me talking. Once it was over I got wheeled to my bed to have a nap before returning home. It was gone.

I lay in bed with a hot water bottle and I cried harder than I ever have. I grieved what I had lost. All the stress, panic and sadness finally released itself. It was a strange emotion. I was relieved and didn’t doubt my decision. Yet I was still sad for what could have been.

I had to guard it as a secret for so long. Then I realised that was what was damaging my mental health. Because it was a decision I made, I felt I couldn’t express all the emotions I was feeling. Some people are so hateful—can you imagine what it is like to be called a murderer by people who have nothing to do with you? I couldn’t understand how this natural and widely accepted choice for women over centuries had become such a taboo subject.

Men have the choice of taking drugs to keep a dick hard for five hours. Yet women still don’t have a drug to fully protect them from getting pregnant. The amount of times I heard the “that baby could have been the next Einstein” was unbelievable. My abortion prevented a special life—could I make the same argument every time a boy leaves his juices in a condom? As a man do you feel guilty tossing your sperm away? When you put on a condom you are actively stopping creating another life.

Not being able to talk about what it is really like to go through an abortion openly confirms the myth that it should be a dirty secret. The idea that I could have a one-year-old now never leaves me. But at the end of the day I still feel that I made the right decision. This is something I should never have to justify or feel the need to hide. It is 2010. Sadly, this doesn’t mean much for feminism. Both Canterbury and Auckland Universities have very active pro-life clubs. These clubs protest to make abortions harder for women.

I am one out of every three New Zealand women who will at some point in their lives have an abortion. And this is one story.