Virginity and Power:
For Dove, It's Not an Issue
Many female characters, not just in comics, but in wider literature, movies, and pop culture, have been given the graceful mantle of light and goodness that Dove successfully wears throughout the Hawk and Dove series. In some ways, Dove is painted as nearly angelic, especially during her time in Druspa Tau.
How Characters Like Dove are Usually Treated
Generally, these qualities of "light, grace, and goodness" come paired with virginity, at least for female characters. And if such a female character should lose her virginity, well, that "angelic" aura is suddenly gone, and most often her power (whether mystical or social) is gone with it. (See: DC Comics' Mary Marvel and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles for just a couple of examples).
Dove is Different!
For Dawn Granger, however, the issue of virginity--well, just isn't one. Dawn is a classy and modest woman, but she isn't coy about dating; she acknowledges her feelings for Captain Arsala, and isn't too shy about pursuing the relationship. Sex may or may not be part of Dawn's life during the 28-issue series, but it's not even a plot point. In later comics, there is even one brain-twisting plot about her being raped (don't bother trying to understand it, it's just a massive "HUH??"). Yet the loss of virginity, whenever it happens or whoever it happens with, does not change her ability to be Dove, nor does it create a crisis of guilt in her. WOW!
Why This Matters
Making virginity a non-issue for Dove makes her a very unusual female character--her light, grace, and goodness have nothing to do with sexual purity, but instead with her mental and emotional self. Being a good female without being a virgin IS entirely possible, both for fictional characters and for real women, but often our storytellers do not let this happen. They depict instead how sex irrevocably changes a woman's identity, her social connections, and even her intelligence (and usually for the worse, unless it happens in a male-dominated marriage). For Dove, it seems, this change has not happened; she's the same woman and the same superhero she's always been, whether virgin or not. Strange, and yet, not strange at all--refreshing, in fact.