Content note: This article describes sexual assault in detail, and discusses sexual trauma and domestic violence.

Recently, I found myself at a friend’s party playing a game called Confessions. Seated in a circle, the game involved each person taking turns to roll a die printed with five categories: money, career, relationships, family and sex.

Each turn required rolling for a category, drawing from an increasingly probing set of question cards, and answering honestly to the group.

As we gradually inched closer to my turn, my stomach churned thinking about the one category I didn’t want to answer. 

Image by: Dominika Király

I am nearly 30 years old, and I have never had sex.

I could try to piece together an intricate personal history for you now, conducting a post-mortem of my own abstinence. Or I could paint a picture in a few sentences.

I’m not religious, nor intentionally celibate. I am a Chinese-Australian, cisgender, bisexual woman in my late twenties. I do desire sex. But I have never had sex with anyone else, of any gender.

Essentially, I have anxieties around accidental pregnancy, and early-set apprehensions – instilled in me by my mother – that all sex, particularly intercourse, is painful and harmful.

The year I turned 21, my mum told me that before marrying my father, she had been in an abusive long-term relationship in China as a young woman.

Her abuser would sit in the kitchen, knife in hand, threatening her so she would make dinner exactly how he wanted. Her days were spent navigating the slipstream of his forcefulness, his anger.

Hearing this helped me understand my mother’s complex love for me: equal parts anxiety, devotion and resentment.

It also explained her damning attitudes towards sex. She wanted me to know sex was as much about danger as it was about pleasure.

Back at the party, surrounded by curious onlookers, I rolled a die gingerly across the table.

As soon as it landed on “sex”, my stomach sank. The card I had picked read: “Describe, in detail, the first time that you had sex.”

It took everything in me not to wince. How was I supposed to respond to a question I didn’t exactly have an answer for? Because in truth, when I say I have never had sex, it’s for simplicity’s sake.

The truth – as truths often are – is more complex and elusory.

The first answer I considered was the catch-all response, “I have never had sex.” It’s categorical, definitive, and leaves no room for question.

In theory, I have no qualms saying that to other people. I’d like to think I’m a proponent for sexual liberty,  which of course also applies to sexual abstinence.

Plenty of people do not have sex for a myriad of reasons. In an ideal society, there would be no value judgement – positive or negative – attributed to being a virgin.

But with each passing year, I feel more shame at my own virginity, as well as feeling ashamed for feeling shame in the first place.

In theory, I could’ve laid it out to everyone, plain and clear as a freckle on a nose.

But seated in a circle of people – unfamiliar enough for me to feel self-conscious, but familiar enough to prick at my ego – I just couldn’t do it.

My hesitation made me feel pretty hypocritical: subscribing to sexual autonomy and open-mindedness, yet not being able to model what that looked like in the moment.

But sex can feel so complexly tied into desirability, attractiveness, maturity and physicality – admitting to never having had sex felt like admitting to a deficiency in all of those things.

In the end, I simply couldn’t bring myself to say I have never had sex, in that unfamiliar setting, to a mostly unfamiliar crowd.

If I tried to explain the truth, maybe I would’ve started with, “I’ve tried to have sex, but it hasn’t worked out.”

I have attempted – multiple times – to have penetrative sex before with cis male partners.

I would fantasise about finally having sex with someone I desired, only to find that when it was actually about to happen, I couldn’t – my body would freeze up and tighten.

A few years back, a friendship with a male friend turned physical after we realised we had a mutual attraction.

We tried intercourse a couple of times, with him knowing about my struggles, fears and previous difficulties with penetration – as well as my requirement that he wear a condom whenever we were trying.

Both times we tried, he couldn’t insert himself further than a couple centimetres. And then, a month later, during some playful flirting, with me on top of him, he forcibly entered me – without a condom, without asking for my consent.

He was inside me for less than 10 seconds before I asked him to stop. And unlike what I thought rape looked like, it was awkward, uncertain, and at first I thought I might have wanted it too.

Only afterwards did I understand I never would’ve wanted things to happen the way they did. So I don’t consider that sex, because how could it have been, when I didn’t desire it?

Sex is an act borne out of desire, but he had made me feel the most undesirable I’d ever felt in my life.

The thought of having to explain this assault during a party game made me feel even more shame, and more hypocrisy.

Though I firmly believe we should be discussing sexual assault more openly – that silence is the antithesis of progress – I couldn’t bring myself to explain that I hadn’t had sex, but I had been raped.

I couldn’t endure the strange blend of pity, alarm and discomfort it inevitably would have induced in everyone around me. 

Ihad to answer the question somehow.

I remember looking around the room, eyes laid expectantly on me. There was so much I could have said, but I just couldn’t find the words.

In the end I said, “I’d prefer not to talk about it in detail. But it was… quite unpleasant. I’ll leave it at that: quite unpleasant.”

One girl piped up, a hint of pity in her voice, as I passed the die onto the next person.

“That’s sad,” she said, half to the room, half to herself.

I don’t think her comment was delivered with any judgement, but my cheeks blazed, and I had to lower my gaze.

It is a strange limbo to be in: someone who has had experiences tangential to sex, but not sex itself.

Sex is still so widely assumed as foundational to a relationship that it makes me question how I define my own experiences.

It feels strange to claim I have been in a “situationship” or a “friends with benefits” arrangement, when sex has never happened in these months-long connections – or when I had a years-long relationship.

Even the word “ex” is embedded inextricably into “sex”. Can I say I have exes from casual relationships, when the very existence of a “casual” fling is often predicated on having sex without feelings?

There is a struggle to conceptualise the space between sexual inexperience and abstinence.

Our society doesn’t have the vocabulary for it either: the term “involuntarily celibate” – or “incel” – now refers to a subculture categorised by misogyny, male anger and violence.

But technically, I am involuntarily celibate, just without any of the other horrible attributes. So where do I fit in?

Sexual confidence, pride and autonomy often come with the presumption of sexual experience.

I’d like to think I can try being a proponent for all of the above, even if my journey looks different.

And that’s what my relationship with sex is: different, not lacking. I don’t want to think of myself as lacking anymore.

If this story has brought up any issues that you want to talk about, please reach out for support:

• Say It Out Loud has a list of the LGBTIQ community-controlled services for each Australian state/territory. The organisation encourages LGBTQ+ communities to have healthy relationships, get help for unhealthy relationships, and support their friends.
• QLife is the national LGBTIQ peer-support telephone service for people wanting to talk about issues including sexuality, identity, gender, bodies, feelings or relationships.
• For Victorian residents, Rainbow Door is a specialist LGBTIQA+ helpline providing information, support and referral to those experiencing a range of issues including family and intimate partner violence, relationship issues and sexual assault.
• There is also a growing list of mainstream domestic and family violence services, like 1800 RESPECT, that are committed to LGBTIQ inclusion.

You are never alone.