There is a pro-sex take on virginity that is frequently ignored. For me it comes from the pro-sex perspective of Hassidic Jewish practice.

The idea is that, of course people should be virgins until marriage... but marriage had (damn well) better happen by age 18 or 20 because, please, be real, people have needs. (And besides being without a partner is not compatible with approaching God...)

That seems reasonable to me. What is not reasonable is expecting people to remain virgin (or even chaste) if marriage is not in the offing in the very very near term. A 17 year old virgin (man or woman) holding on to chastity because there is a certain marriage awaiting within a year or two or three, is not an unreasonable sight. He or she may not be happy, but the personality is not distorted, and hope is on the horizon.

A 24 year old virgin, with no certainty of marriage, is a distorted, unhappy and pathetic personality. The cult of virginity is reasonable if it is tightly coupled to a cult of early marriage, (and of course applied equally to men and women.) The cult of virginity is sick if it is decoupled from early marriage, and results in twisted distorted personalities, in people who lie to themselves, in people who deny themselves the normal autoerotic pleasures, and in people who redefine "virginity" a bit too creatively, and on and on.

Virginity? Sure... but only if there are strong social efforts to end it quickly in socially legitimate ways, particularly, in early marriage. Without that commitment to early socially supported marriage, virginity talk is just nonsense, and completely out of touch with human nature. It is a formula that will produce unhappiness, and attract only those who seek unhappiness.