You get a great big hug and kiss from me.

There are all these rafts of disgusted Salon posters who find it unthinkable that anyone should have any physical imperfections, textures, or odors. You know, a BODY. When I read responses to these kind of articles (which I try to limit to once a week), I have a little mantra that I have to say to myself: all over the world, people are desiring and having sex with other people who have crazy body hair, pungent smells, rolls of fat, and zits. It could be people with all four or more! It's happening right now!

but stupidity, ignorance, and vaginismus is.

Compared with most of the fat chicks I know, sexually I'm evidently the most vanilla children's librarian on the planet. Totally monogamous and hetero, not into bondage or group sex, would rather masturbate than "do it" with someone I don't love. Even most women of my acquaintance who are 100 or 200 pounds larger than I am are "wilder" than I am, I'm afraid.

I don't think being an "involuntary virgin" well into adulthood has jackshit to do with weight or looks. I think a lot of it has to do with wanting one's first experience to be wonderful and loving, and holding out for that, even if you don't have the foggiest idea of how to make that happen (probably because no one ever taught you or modeled that kind of behavior for you at home).

I'm actually sorry I didn't hold out, because all the casual sex I had in college (when I was much thinner and "hotter") was never enjoyable for me, and it wasn't until I had my first serious relationship at age 23 that I actually enjoyed sex. (How girly and pink, I know. YMMV, of course.) And I think that man would have been honored to have been my first. Significantly, we were "friends first," and knew all the nitty-gritty about one another before sex ever came into the picture. If you go about things in that fashion, it shouldn't take long to find out whether someone is going to freak out about the aspects of your life that aren't "standard issue," well in advance of doffing your Underoos.

Only a woman would assume that this is a realistic option for everyone. As someone once said of the elder Bush, he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. When it comes to sexual options this is the position that an awful lot of women seem to be in.

I was fascinated by Yael Kohlen's article which very much reflects my own experiences with losing my virginity. I didn't have sex until I was 24 which seemed freakishly old at the time. Luckily the person that I was dating didn't make a big deal about it. I have friends who had similiar experiences but this is a subject that people usually don't talk about. Thanks for bringing attention to a complicated and mostly ignored subject.

it assumed --- no, actually it stated --- that the only reason women would still be virgins at an older age was because they were Christian conservatives or were shy with body-image problems. I was a virgin until 30, and I did encounter situations before age 30 where I felt some regret, but when I look back, there is no man I met that I wish I had had sex with. There were probably a couple of times where it would have been okay, but many more where it would have been a bad idea. Leaving aside the risk of disease, the men in my past were either crushes, friends, or creeps. What exactly would have been the point of having sex with any of them? This article appears to be advising women that they better have sex by the time they're out of college. But it doesn't seem willing to consider that there might be other emotional ramifications from deliberately pursuing sex with someone you don't love and whom you don't really want to have sex with. And it doesn't ask any of these women who are no longer versions whether they wish they'd done things differently.

Will her next article be: Avoid the humiliation of having small breasts --- get plastic surgery so you'll better fit in or you'll regret it! And make sure to get drunk and do a few drugs, and get rid of those pounds whatever it takes, and dress this way and talk this way and....

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.

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And men who are literally trying to have sex every minute with nearly anything that moves still only get it occasionally, and generally go through life sexually frusterated. Can you only imagine how little a man would get if he actually held the standards of the average woman for a sexual partner. The simple ability to have the option of being so picky about your partner is a privilege most men do get the luxery of enjoying. Women have the luxery of choosing the best of the bunch available to them, and men are forced to accept whomever chooses them. That is a huge avantage. Also the stigma of virginity is destructive for women but absolutely devestating for men. Men are judged by their confidense and strength, especially in the bedroom, and the desperation of a male virgin is beyound emotionally crippling.