This article describes the experience of six young women born in France who define themselves as lesbians and whose parents come from the Maghreb. It explores how both the social norm of heterosexuality and their North African origins forge their experience of entry view of sexism, they share with other lesbians a situation of social vulnerability and the need to pass quickly through the stages into adulthood in order to protect themselves from possible violence. But they stand out from the others in the way they use the principle of virginity in order to fend off the obligation to be heterosexual.