Okay, so you’ve seen this week’s title. Now it’s time to tell you, then, that I was that kid who was constantly being called a virgin.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you are asking yourselves, at this point, what the big deal is about being a virgin. For a long time I’ve also been asking myself the same thing.

But I wasn’t always confident enough to ask those that teased me why I “needed” to have sex. In fact, I believed every word they told me about the importance of sex to a young boy. I can remember my first experience with all that pressure to have sex. I was very, very young.

My friends, who were a year or two older than me, told me that only boys who were “moffies” were virgins. And because being a “moffie” was considered such a bad thing, I felt a lot of pressure to have sex.

And as if being told I needed to have sex wasn’t bad enough, I was also told that having sex once wasn’t enough so I needed to find myself a girlfriend.

Having just told you all of this, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you are shocked. I’ve realised that some people out there were lucky enough never to feel pressured into having sex. They didn’t have older brothers, friends and bullies who told them that sex is the most wonderful thing in the world and that if you didn’t have it you were a loser.

Unfortunately, though, for a lot of people it’s never been as simple as that. My friend, Nosicelo, for example, had a different experience. She went to the salon last month hoping to get a solution for her dandruff problem, but she got way more than that.

At first the salon ladies were ignoring her and talking about sex amongst themselves, but soon the focus turned to her. She told them she was a virgin, but that made them even more curious about her sex life. Apparently, they refused to believe that a twenty-two-year-old could still be a virgin nowadays when even fourteen-year-olds are having sex. She told me that if she didn’t have confidence in her reasons for being a virgin, she would’ve walked out of that salon feeling like something was wrong with not having sex.

The sad thing is that not everyone is as confident as Nosicelo. For others, being a virgin is something to be ashamed of. And because of that, I was always on the look-out for a chance to lose my virginity.

Finally, when I was eleven years old, it happened with the older sister of a friend of mine. And for a long time thereafter I felt proud of it. I thought it was an achievement to lose your virginity at such an early age. But now I know the truth. Now I know that I was just a victim of peer pressure – nothing more. I was a young boy who was eager to believe that everyone around him knew what they were talking about, but ended up losing something very important in the process – his innocence.

But now the focus turns to you, ladies and gentleman.

What is your experience with being a virgin?

#ChatBack: Do you also believe that being a virgin means you’re a loser?

Or should people be allowed to make their own decisions about when, where and with whom they want to have sex?