SUBJECTIFYING VIRGINITY: THE CONCEPTUAL; THE CORPOREAL

This study attempts to underscore the gender positions taken up by young men and women with regard to virginity. This research has been an endeavor aimed at understanding the experiential space that the youth comes from and the subjectivities they derive from their perspective on their own sexuality. Using the qualitative research technique of discourse analysis, the focus was to develop an image of the sexual life of the participants specifically converging around the notion of virginity. From an analysis of the narratives it became apparent that the idea of virginity was much bigger in the minds of the female participants than the males. Though there has been a slight shift wherein the women give themselves some accountability with regard to agency and choice, however, it is obvious that their basic ideology about virginity still remains in the clutches of the dominant discourses of societal morality. The male participants held an easy going outlook towards virginity and thought of it more as a rite of passage than anything else. This study could be an entry point into whether there has been a shift in gender roles and subjectivities with regard to virginity and whether this is just a physical phenomenon or has been made into much more than that by attaching societal and personal decrees to it.