I don't want to get into a private slanging match in these columns, but it does annoy me a bit that people who post under their own name can be attacked in print by those who use the cover on anonymous.

People who have never had sex probably feel anxious about it, so it is a good idea to try to focus on making your partner feel good, rather than on your own anxiety.

The suggestion about faking the orgasm actually comes from feminist writer Faye Weldon's new book What Makes Women Happy.

After reading some of the postings, I was able to make some sens eof this previously unknown phenomenon. I had no idea that women in my age group were ending up involuntary virgins.

After reading the postings, I could see people finding a virginal, unexplored balance point between the two extremes this culture swings in: the one, aggressive, commodified, mass-produced sex, which has nothing to do with intimacy or even just fun, and the equally perverse buttoned-up repression of "saving oneself for marriage" and pushing sex education out of the classroom into a dark dirty box (which conveniently plays into the first extreme).

Now I see thid virginity could be a way to stay balanced in a sexual culture gone mad, or a maybe even the result of being shy, as a poster said, or having suffered sexual violence, and some of the other reasons written by responders.

Sadly I feel I'm learning more about the issue from these postings. The article felt detached from the real issues here - it was all surface treatment, journalistic gloss of an issue that remains to me almost completely unexplained. Was it cut to bits by the editors? A lot feels missing.

For eg, Why focus on women as virgins? Can't you guys say anything about women in my age group that doesn't somehow loop back to our pussies?

I say either really get in there, tell us why this happens, without the pink bordered gender treatment, or just get out. I feel condescended to, why is that? Pink PInk PInk -

Just what is your demographic reading level anyway?

Why do the women's issues stories in the magazine sound so chatty all the time, so unserious?

I don't want to attack the writer, but I am beginning to see the pattern in the magazine as whole.

that's what pissed me off about this article. All pink on top and no actual content.

the real question is: can a mature woman get a decent article about sexuality in this magazine?

And I know lots of others. We're not religious. We're not prudes. We own vibrators. We've had sexual experiences. We refuse to have meaningless sex.

I went to a top university. I'm slender. (And offended that the assumption is that all virgins are obese or ugly. How 1950's.) I have a large group of friends. I don't have any "psychological problems." I had a serious relationship. And in this serious relationship, the fact that I was a virgin became an Issue, because my boyfriend was clearly terrified that devirginizing me would be traumatic for both me and him, and it was much more of an emotional commitment than he could handle.

Commitment is really the problem, as the article hints at, and other posters make clear. The other girls I know in the same position want a meaningful relationship with meaningful sex, and we won't settle for less. Not because we're "hung-up" or because we want to marry the first person we have sex with, but because the thought of screwing a stranger to "get it over with" is repugnant. We could go out to a bar tonight and make that happen, we could go on Craigslist and make that happen. But we won't.

so much so that he had to drag out a real live feminist to make himself feel better about it!

"my suggestion to her would be to go on vacation alone somewhere where no one knows her and screw the first presentable man who comes along. No one will ever know her secret."

This comment demonstrates perfectly why this issue will never be resolved on the boards of Salon.com -- people keep presenting something that the other side would never ever want as something "easily attainable." Men on this site in particular keep dangling this "easy" solution in front of women without getting it into their brains that for your average female, doing these kinds of things (Craigslist ads? anonymous vacations? and other such) are DANGEROUS for starters and also about as fulfilling and appealing as a swim in a nice fresh toilet bowl.

By and large, most women do not wish to f*ck random strangers (no offense to those who do, and no disrespect either, that's a tangent and completely beside my point) and suggesting that it would be easy for them to do so is about as logical as suggesting that it would be easy for a human being stranded on the ocean to drink saltwater. Sure it's all around in plentiful abundance, but hello? Saltwater? Now if aforesaid human were instead a creature that had evolved to a point where saltwater was condicive to health and survival, it would be a different story, wouldn't it?

Because I also enjoy hobbies like beating my head bloody agasint brick walls, why don't I give it another go? Here we go.

It's like -- let's say "having sex" equals "not dying of starvation." You're close to starving, I'm close to starving. I have unlimited access to chocolate, which is exactly what you crave. However, I am allergic to chocolate. My physicality is not equipped to opereate at optimal levels on chocolate. What the hell good does it do for you to tell me "You should have no complaints, look at all that chocolate you have, you have all the avantages and life is so unfaaaaaair!" when chocolate is bad for me, is not what I want and would make me unhappy and/or actually sick -- and I'd do far better with and would rather have peanut brittle??? Both are paths to not dying of starvation, but they are not the same thing. Why the hell should they be? Men are not women. Women are not men. It's not the same thing.