For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you've never had sex, you're a "good" (i.e. "moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise.
Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women
ethics, feminism, purity-myth, virginity