Of Course I'm Not a Virgin

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Everybody Has Lots of Sex is a concept so ubiquitous in modern media, that the very idea that any character, for any reason, is a virgin is something that comes off as alien and bizarre. As a result of this, when a group of characters is discussing something and the discussion vaguely implies that one character is a virgin, the script will quickly throw in an anecdote or line explaining how the character in question is most definitely not a virgin.

As a narrative device, this sometimes provides for background exposition or a throwaway gag. Just obviously not one where a character explains her virginity. This trope is most common with characters who, given what other information we know about them, would have logical reasons to be a virgin.

Can sometimes come off as rather clunky in the script when used intentionally, along the same lines of Have I Mentioned I Am Sexually Active Today?. This is for the simple reason that most people don't consider their sexual histories as topics that are appropriate to bring up in unrelated conversations. Well, most of the time anyway.

Can overlap with Nerds Are Virgins, when they deny their virginity.

A subtrope of Sex Is Cool. See also A Man Is Not a Virgin.

Examples of Of Course I'm Not a Virgin include:


Anime and Manga

  • Subverted in Bakemonogatari when Senjogahara accuses Koyomi of being a virgin, which he denies. We later learn that they're both virgins.
  • Inverted in Hellsing. Integra has no qualms admitting that the reason why her blood is so delicious is because she's a virgin. Seras more traditionally subverts this trope- she was clearly uncomfortable when Alucard asked her and in all likelihood only answered honestly because she realized that if she answered dishonestly she probably would have been killed on the spot.

Film

Joe Friday: "Prepare the virgin [for a virgin sacrifice]?" I don't like the sound of that."
Pep Streebeck: "Let's just hope they're not referring to you."

    • Also, Connie Swail allows others to introduce her as "the virgin Connie Swail." (Until the last scene, that is...)
  • When the Title Drop for Never Been Kissed happens, the other characters assume that this means what it sounds like: that Josie has never had a serious romantic relationship. Josie explains that "never been kissed" is actually a metaphor for a "real" kiss, which she proceeds to define.
  • In the horror film The Hazing, the film ends with one surviving male winning the day, with a girl on each arm. The girls joke that he probably never could have even dreamed of such a thing happening, and throughout the film, he's frequently mocked under the assumption that he's a virgin, as well as geeky and weak. After their final mockery of him at the end, he gets fed up and explains to them that he lost his virginity when he was 15 to his (female) baby sitter. She's mentioned twice in the film otherwise, so it's sort of foreshadowing.
  • Attempted and failed in The Graduate:

MRS. ROBINSON "Benjamin, is this your first time?"
BEN "Is this - what?"
MRS. ROBINSON "It is, isn't it? It is your first time."
BEN "That's a laugh, Mrs. Robinson. That's really a laugh. Ha ha."
MRS. ROBINSON "You can admit that, can't you?"
BEN "Are you kidding?"
MRS. ROBINSON "It's nothing to be ashamed of...."

  • How the plot of The 40-Year-Old Virgin is kicked off: the main character trying to espouse this trope as his buddies recount their sexcapades, bragging that he's felt breasts before. "Like bags of sand, man!"
  • Averted in the original The Wicker Man, as the inhabitants of Summerisle somehow know Sgt. Howie is, and he doesn't deny it.

Literature

  • In The Sound and the Fury, Caddy asks her brother Quinten if he's ever had sex. He emphatically replies that he has, but she doesn't believe him.

Live-Action Television

  • In Community, Annie has this when Britta and Shirley assume she's a virgin because Annie has never seen a penis before (it's because her first boyfriend would have sex only in the dark).
  • Averted in 3rd Rock from the Sun with Dick and Sally; they were aliens before being changed into adult Earth bodies and thus never had any experiences as Earthlings at first.
  • On Red Dwarf, Lister and Rimmer are trapped, presumably to Lister's inevitable death on an ice planet, Lister asks Rimmer to tell the story of how he lost his virginity. When Rimmer hesitates, Lister insinuates that he's a virgin and Rimmer relates the ancedote in short order.
    • Word of God has it that Rimmer's anecdote is a lie - he isn't a virgin, but he was too embarrassed to admit he lost it at the age of 31. So he panicked and he used his first attempt at kissing a girl.
      • Rimmer is all over the map on this one anyway. It's pretty well established in-story that Rimmer only had sex once, with Yvonne McGruder, but we don't get an age attached. We don't get an age attached in Marooned, either. The only time we do get one is 15, when Rimmer thought he got lucky and it turned out all the time he had his hand in warm compost. Pretty much all three work, too.
      • One of the books definitively states that he was 31 when he lost his virginity to Yvonne McGruder. Despite these being an Alternate Continuity, they do stay consistent with the characters' backstory. Mostly anyway.
  • Mad Men:

Joan: This isn't China. There's no money in virginity.
Peggy: I'm not a virgin.
(We know Peggy isn't a virgin, but Joan doesn't.)

  • Pushing Daisies: Ned was defensive about his "experience" when questioned about it in "Bitches". He claimed, when Emerson and Chuck asked, to have had girlfriends before Chuck, though it's arguable whether any of those relationships were consummated.
    • Oh, they were. Apparently there was an incident on a bearskin rug. Remembering Ned's special abilities...
  • The Doctor in the Doctor Who episode "The Doctor Dances".

Nine hundred years old, me. I've been around a bit. I think you can assume that at some point I've 'danced'.

  • Modern Family gets into its third-season episode "Virgin Territory" when Alex hears her father saying "Haley's aversion" as "Haley's a virgin" and laughs, which is how he learns she's not.
  • Jay from The Inbetweeners to the point of ridiculousness. He claims to have had sex with more women that he's probably actually met in his entire life. By series 3, these claims get so hilariously ridiculous that they involve copious amounts of Squick.

Video Games

  • In Quest for Glory V, there is a unicorn head mounted on the wall of the Adventurer's Guild. Looking at it produces the line, "They say that unicorns are only visible to virgins. You pretend you can't see it."
  • In The Longest Journey, if April asks Flipper Burns how he lost his legs, he wants to know first if she is a virgin. If she says she is, he won't believe her and make up a joke answer to her question, whereas if she says she's not, he'll tell a more plausible tale. It's not clear if April really is a virgin (though her personality would make it likely) but the real issue here is that Burns simply can't believe a pretty girl like April would be one.

Webcomics

  • Shortpacked - When Amber tells Robin that she had sex with Ethan, Robin assumes (due to her Shrinking Violet personality) that Amber is a virgin and just lying to piss her off. Nope, not only has Amber slept with Ethan, he wasn't even her first.

Real Life

  • In Real Life (And by extension, on the Internet), most people who talk arrogantly about their sex life (and tease people with it) are like this.