WARNING: This post contains content that some may find offensive.
I recently found myself in a situation. It involved a boy and it involved sex, but that's where the familiarity stopped. We met a while ago; there was A LOT of excellent snogging, some drinks and...it's never been anything more remotely interesting than that. As a result, it quickly became very boring and after a 4am phone call telling me he was on his way over and another one five minutes later telling me he'd changed his mind, I decided it was time to put a stop to it. His explanation the next morning...? He was a virgin.
"A what?"
"I'm a virgin. I believe in God."
"Ahhhh. God."
If there was ever a stereotype for what a male virgin in his twenties looks like, he is the EXACT opposite and quite easily one of the hottest boys I have ever seen in my entire life. But that was that, because there's nothing less sexy than bringing God into things.
Except that wasn't that. Perhaps it's because I showed him moderately less interest than I would paint drying, or something equally disinteresting, but that's when the sexting started. Now, I'm all for a bit of sexting but this was with a VIRGIN who BELIEVED in GOD. It was very confusing and as I wasn't sure what to reply for fear of accidently scarring him, I generally ignored them. But it didn't stop him, so we got into argument as to what the whole point of it was.
And that's when he said this:
"Don't worry, I'll still let you give me head and we can have anal sex."
Oh, thank goodness for that, HEAD and ANAL SEX, that's okay then. WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK.
*quickly reaches for the dictionary and looks up the definition of virgin*
Yep, as I thought. - "A virgin is a person who has not had sexual intercourse". Maybe I'm not down with the kids these days but surely anal sex is still sex. If not, it must be a pretty big loophole to be able to get round the God Almighty. It's like being a vegetarian then gorging on T-Bones with a sticky ribs chaser every weekend - I don't think Paul McCartney would be so forgiving.
And then I hunted round the Urban Dictionary.
Saddlebacking: 'The phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities'
Saddlebacking , Technical Virgins or the Everything But generation (Butt being the operative word) is becoming steadily more prominent since it first arose among US Christian teens in the early 90s. Aside from the obvious issues they very clearly have, the main problem with this arrangement is the lack of protection they're using which is causing an increase in the spread of STDs.
Unfortunately, this is largely down to the limited amount of Sex Education they're getting in school - because they're staying virgins they apparently don't need Sex Ed - combined with an amazing lack of common sense. Because they're not supposed to be having sex, they're not learning about STDs and because they're not learning about STDs they're not buying condoms because ultimately it's fairly difficult to get pregnant through anal sex.
It's pretty ironic that Christian virginal teens are partly responsible for the spread of STDs and goes to show that there's no room for naivety when it comes to protecting ourselves. And although God and I are rarely on the same page, I'm pretty sure he's not 99% effective against herpes, syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea and unwanted pregnancies. As a result you should always use some form of protection against becoming infected with anything, it's much easier and less messy in the long run.
In the meantime, I will be steering clear of hot boys. And virgins.
This post originally appeared on the Awesome Women of Twitter website.