The social and symbolic meaning ascribed to virginity has been profoundly reconfigured between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, with a decline in the importance of female virginity upon marriage, along with the de-Christianization of its conception, among others. While it partly lost its social meaning, the loss of virginity remains an important and intimate personal moment for both men and women, one that actively contributes to the social construction of gender identities.
Being a virgin, which is to say never having had sexual relations, represents a supreme state of spiritual purity for Christianity for both men and women. Yet it was female virginity in particular that drew attention in nineteenth-century Europe, for at a time when the mechanisms of fertilization were not well understood and contraception was forbidden, it ensured the purity of lineage.
Anatomical-clinical medicine emphasized this sexual dimorphism by affirming the existence of the hymen, a supposed proof of female virginity, thereby creating a double standard in which female virginity was protected while the loss of male virginity before marriage was encouraged, as it contributed to virility. The latter often involved a domestic servant or a brothel, as described by Stefan Zweig in his autobiography The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European , published a year after his death.
This situation endured during the twentieth century throughout Europe. This male rite of passage was experienced with groups of young friends pandillas or with kin, as demonstrated by the film historian Roman Gubern, born in , who was accompanied to the brothel by his grandfather.
It was thought that channelling male sexuality made it possible to protect premarital female virginity, which had taken on substantial social importance. This prestige was based on revived devotion to the Virgin Mary and female religiosity during the nineteenth century. For thousands of young women of all social backgrounds, the choice of perpetual virginity by joining a religious order offered freedom from paternal and conjugal supervision.
