Is a lesbian a perpetual virgin?
That depends on how you define virgin for a female.
Intact hymen?
Never had sex of any kind?
Never penetrated by a live penis?
Each of these can produce different answers.
Some women have sex with a man before they become a lesbian.
If you check the definition of virgin, it is someone who has never had sex. It does not indicate the partner's sex. If you are considering loss of the hymen, sexual activity with toys can break the hymen.
I think this is completely an 'eye of the beholder' thing.
For instance, the large number of people (going back decades - not a new thing) who consider oral and/or anal sex to 'not count', with only vaginal intercourse counting.
Someone else may use a different definition and thus disagree, but both of them can be 'correct' from their own perspectives, since there are multiple disparate definitions out there.
Usually when a variation of this topic is raised in the forum, Michael Loucks is around to plead the case of lesbians having sex with men for the sake of experimentation, pregnancy etc, as is a common meme in his AWLL stories. But according to his blog he's away for a while so he can't.
AJ
As weird as losing virginity to a tongue could be as a concept for some, I think that's however could be the case there.
The definition of sex itself is very fungible. When a particular act of sex is seen as meaningful enough, virginity is deemed lost, that's how I would attempt to generalize. Perhaps the most universal definition would be, receiving orgasm from another person. However, I haven't seen that used by anyone, perhaps because it would seem either too early or too late.
For possessive heterosexual men female virginity is important as control measure, a way to make it more certain the children are his. There's also this irrational, but extremely virulent magical belief that the first male partner magically imprint on the woman making all her children his even if technically sired by someone else later. It may not be voiced or even consciously considered that way by most, but that's what explains most of the fuss and irrationality around the female virginity, especially from male perspective.
To contrast or compare, in gay male relationships, who is losing virginity when? For example, in Russian prison culture, to fuck someone's ass is not even considered gay, only receiving counts as deviant (and demeaning). I don't know is that ever the case, but in theory, someone who's never penetrated a female, and whose ass had never been penetrated may conceivably try to claim to be a virgin in that context even despite having regularly fucked other men assholes. However, I would expect most self admitted gay men to consider virginity had been lost in that situation. The opposite, is a gay bottom who had been fucked a lot but haven't had his penis stuck inside anyone anywhere, is such a guy a virgin? Someone could certainly claim he's virgin with girls and even be right, but I strongly doubt the guy would consider himself a virgin.
For lesbian women, there's certainly a lot of leeway to claim virginity lost or retained, as deemed desirable. It most probably boils down to a personal opinion about meaningful emotional experiences, if ever is considered worthwhile to ponder at all.
In https://storiesonline.net/s/49108/the-preacher-man a very misogynistic culture defines virginity as a state of mind. They go to great lengths to ensure female virginity prior to marriage. The marriage ceremony includes treating the bride with drugs that destroy her ability to create long-term memories. So for the rest of her life, she remembers only what she knew the morning of her wedding creating a mental state of perpetual virginity. The main character spends most of the story attempting to circumvent and eventually purge this procedure from the culture