my opinion is it doesn't matter if you lose it at 16 or 70 and doesn't change anything about you as a person, it certainly didn't for me.
its a made up social construct anyway, women's hymens can break from other things, can heal and arent necessarily broken by penetrative sex
as for men theres no physical change at all.
to me whether you're a virgin or not is self determined, what about anal and oral sex does that lose your virginity or not? after all if it is all about penis in vagina penetration there would be many virgin gay men and virgin lesbians out there, most of these would rightly not consider themselves virgins.
i think men are more likely to be shamed for being virgins because in society men are expected to and even encouraged to sleep around, women are more likely to be shamed for being sexually active and sleeping around because society expects innocence which is equally unfair. both virgin and "slut" shaming are different sides of the same coin of archaic gender stereotypes and roles.
of course someone not wanting to sleep with you because they want to be with someone with more experience who knows what they're doing is not virgin shaming but just their personal preferences (not everyone cares), theres a massive difference between virgin shaming i.e actively judging someone and making them feel bad about being a virgin vs declining someone because you're not interested based on their inexperience but being respectful and kind about the other persons virginity.
its also not virgin shaming to decline someone out of not wanting the pressure of being someones first, it can be a lot of pressure to meet someones exaggerated expectations and make the other persons first time special and not everyone wants that which is also fair enough.
when i first (only time) fell in love, i chose to lose my virginity in a hookup just so the person i loved wouldn't have the pressure of being my first and id have some experience to make it good for them. i wouldn't have done so if i didn't have this aim of preparing myself for my love in mind.
why cant we live in a society where we dont judge others for their own personal choices/circumstance.
j.