Virginity is of concern here, that is its utter messiness. At once valuable and detrimental, normative and deviant, undesirable and enviable. Virginity and its loss hold tremendous cultural significance. For many, female virginity is still a universally accepted condition, something that is somehow bound to the hymen, whereas male virginity is almost as elusive as the G-spot: we know it's there, it's just we have a harder time finding it.Of course boys are virgins, queers are virgins, some people reclaim their virginities, and others reject virginity from the get go. So what if we agree to forget the hymen all together? Might we start to see the instability of terms like untouched, pure, or innocent? Might we question the act of sex, the very notion of relational sexuality? After all, for many people it is the sexual acts they don't do, or don't want to do, that carry the most abundant emotional clout.Virgin Envy is a collection of essays that look past the vestal virgins and beyond Joan of Arc. From medieval to present-day literature, the output of HBO, Bollywood, and the films of Abdellah Taïa or Derek Jarman to the virginity testing of politically active women in Tahrir Square, the writers here explore the concept of virginity in today's world to show that ultimately virginity is a site around which our most basic beliefs about sexuality are confronted, and from which we can come to understand some of our most basic anxieties, paranoias, fears, and desires.

Covers topics including commodification, postcoloniality, religion and religious expression.

Introduction: "Our Tantalizing Double": Envious Virgins, Envying Virgins, Virgin Envy - Jonathan A. Allan, Cristina Santos, and Adriana SpahrPart I: Too Much Pain for Such Little Reward1. "I Will Cut Myself and Smear Blood on the Sheet": Testing Virginity in Medieval and Modern Romance - Amy Burge2. Between Pleasure and Pain: The Textual Politics of the Hymen - Jodi McAlisterPart II: Blood, Blood, Blood . and More Blood3. The Politics of Virginity and Abstinence in the Twilight Saga - Jonathan A. Allan and Cristina Santos4. Lady of Perpetual Virginity: Jessica's Presence in True Blood - Janice Zehentbauer and Cristina SantosPart III: Men Be Virgins Too: Queering Virginity5. The Queer Saint: Male Virginity in Derek Jarman's Sebastiane - Kevin McGuiness6. Troping Boyishness, Effeminacy, and Masculine Queer Virginity: Abdellah Taïa and Eyet-Chékib Djaziri - Gibson NcubePart IV: F*ck: They Entrapped Us in Social Issues and Politics7. Bollywood Virgins: Diachronic Flirtations With Indian Womanhood - Asma Sayed8. The Policing of Viragos and Other "Fuckable"' Bodies: Virginity as Performance in Latin America - Tracy Crowe Morey and Adriana Spahr