How can one "lose" one's virginity?
Does it fall off and disappear under the house or somewhere, get run over by a car, or eaten by the cat or dog.

Historically losing ones virginity has always been a business transaction and in many places and cultural groups still is. Dowries and family honor for instance. Blood on the sheets from a deflowered hymen the morning after the wedding night to prove that the bride was a good woman or not soiled/tainted.

It has always been surrounded with all kinds of restrictions and covenants all of which have been essentially driven by economic imperatives. The survival, consolidation and expansion of the economic power and influence of the family and clan.

So why not sell or auction "it" on the internet?

Providing sexual services no more strips people of their humanity than does providing other services. A prostitute is not selling “her body”. She is selling services, which she needs her body to provide. And so do dentists, waitresses, and parliamentarians, but no-one hyperbolically accuses them of selling “their bodies”.

The author’s argument depends on his premise that sex is intrinsically negative. But he makes no attempt to explain why.

It’s not, so he’s wrong.

“In stating that people give virginity away for free, these women show they assign no deeper value or understanding to virginity.”

No they don’t, they show that they understand that the wider society places a certain higher value on having sex with a virgin.

“Ultimately this has lead [sic] to their view that sex is devoid of intimacy and revolves around the exchange or trading of a good or service for material benefit.”

How would you know what their view is?

That’s like saying, because someone sells food for money, therefore she sees food as devoid of nutriment and enjoyment and revolves only around filthy lucre.

It’s like saying, because someone uses the services of a waitress, they are indulging a vicious desire to enslave someone else and carry out a master/slave fantasy, and why aren’t restaurants against the criminal law?

There is no valid comparison with slavery, which by definition is non-consensual, unlike all the transactions the author refers to.

And as for organ donation, the author fails to distinguish consensual from non-consensual transactions – a complete fail.

The author’s argument would apply equally to criminalizing all prostitution. (This was tried for centuries and only enriched the police and mafia.) But why stop there? The essence of a service is doing something that someone else values. Since this is so offensive, why not criminalise sex itself? The author’s argument cannot answer.

Other people’s private consensual sexual activities are precisely none of the author’s or the government’s business, and moral horror is not a proper ground of legislation. The author would rule society on the basis of the prejudices of long-dead sex-hating monks.

An interesting article.

I recall reading the piece in Mx on my way home, as, I am sure, did many thousand others.

For the few moments consideration that I felt it deserved, I found my my thoughts turned more to the potential purchaser, rather than the vendor. What is it, I thought, that causes the virginity of a total stranger to command such a high price? And it had to be a high price, as the article mentioned being "set up for life" on the proceeds.

This article concentrates on the girls' attitudes. Frankly, if they see this form of prostitution to be an acceptable career move, then good luck to them. The market is a broad one, with price differentiation occurring at many levels. They have chosen a lucrative once-off transaction that I am pretty sure makes other prostitutes green with envy, as they hadn't thought of it themselves. Any follow-on business they participate in will, of course, will not command the same premium.

But the purchaser's motives are far more complex. By definition, the level of experience he encounters will be low, which is unlikely to make the act itself particularly memorable. Added to which, the absence of even the remotest familiarity - let alone any form of affection - will ensure that it is the most mechanical and impersonal event.

So there must be another angle, that escapes me. Is it some form of power thing? Surely not - you can't buy power over another. Is it perhaps a deep psychological need of some kind - revenge against childhood neglect, or even worse, a form of channelled aggression against the entire female gender?

Whichever way you look at it, it is pretty tacky.

"... the absence of even the remotest familiarity - let alone any form of affection ..."

How do you know?

"So there must be another angle, that escapes me."

Perhaps they don't share the negative presumption and approach that you and the author share?

A sexually-discriminatory article.
Its perspective is wholly with female virginity - what price male virginity?
And what is loss of virginity?
For a female - does it necessitate coitus with a male; or is it applicable to some accidental byproduct of strenuous exercise, or accident while bike-riding, or summer-time child playing in the heat of day over hose-sprinklers on the lawn?
For a male - is virginity only lost with a female (or, heaven forbid, male perhaps) partner; or will a thirteen-year-old’s wet dream suffice, or (heaven forbid once more) masturbation?
It is long past time that this issue was relegated to the dustbin of unsavory history

Trying to find the source of the river of negative attitudes that Christians have towards sex, I have scrutinized the scriptures. Pretty much every mention of any kind of sexuality is negative all the way through, so you have to go back to the Book of Genesis to find the origin.

The starting point is that God created everything, and behold, it was very good.

Then, next thing you know, human perfidy is discovered (it was the female’s fault), and our progenitors became ashamed of their nakedness. But there is no explanation why. What was it about nakedness that is intrinsically shameful? What was the connection between sin and sex?

Well there’s never any answer. Sex is just bad, that’s all. It’s shameful, and sinful, and wicked, and degraded, and degrading, and repugnant, and loathsome, and generally negative. And on it continues for the rest of the Bible.

(The only exception is sex between heterosexual couples who marry as virgins, remain faithful to each other all their lives, and die as virgins. Everything else is a distortion of human sexuality, apparently. However in reality, this model describes only a small minority of actual human sexuality, is hopelessly lacking in explaining power, and hopelessly excessive in gratuitous sexual horror and hatred.)

And so, for centuries, we have attitudes like the author’s. He perceives sexuality which doesn’t comply with the Church’s nutty model, instantly condemns it, and would like the parties imprisoned. But still there is no sensible explanation why. All we get is the same blind sex-hating attitudes of St Jerome, that old misogynist.

This to me has to be the most unpleasant and offensive part of Christianity.

I prefer the view of the ancient Taoists. They regarded sex as normal and natural, an expression of the opposite yet complementary nature of the world. Learning about sex is categorized under learning about health. There is none of this vicious hating of females as immoral, and despising men as beasts, just because we have sexual interests. Sex is “the flowery battlefield” which harmonises the spirit of male and female. That’s better.