Ah let him alone, Shreve said, if he’s got better sense than to chase after the little dirty sluts, whose business. In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said it’s like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn’t matter and he said, That’s what’s so sad about anything: not only virginity, and I said, Why couldn’t it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said, That’s why that’s sad too; nothing is even worth the changing of it, and Shreve said if he’s got better sense than to chase after the little dirty sluts and I said Did you ever have a sister? Did you? Did you?

From “The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner

The narrator of this chapter of the novel expresses a broadly-held view. The stigma of male virginity lingers on.  Boys often make up false reports about shedding their   virginity,   which is considered a shameful burden.  In the past, their exaltation at the loss of this prerogative contrasted with the obsession with the preservation of their prospective brides’ maidenhood.  If all those lies had been true, with whom each of them would have lost their virginity except with any of the young women that someone else had endeavored to ‘protect’?  The importance of sexual immaculacy has been overrated: “Father said it’s like death: only a state in which the others are left …” Nowadays, men and women in our culture consider chastity an option—a precious jewel for the religious and a cheap trinket for the adventurous.  Its real value falls between these two positions.  It one surrenders it, it should be with a caring lover; someone one holds dear.