Every word has a history, a meaning. Whether that be its dictionary definition or a definition that has evolved over time. The society that we live in shapes the meaning of a word and its impact on people. Words have baggage. A past which affects its present. The word ‘virginity’ has a past, it has a present, but what’s it’s future?
I wrote this poem when I was fifteen years old:
Slut.
What a word.
For so long it’s been word filled with hate.
Because it is a word that is used to control us,
used to suppress us,
used to put us into a cage
and used to ignore us while we rattle the doors.
Do you know what the male version of a slut is?
A hero.
We get shameful head shakes,
while they get proud high fives.
We get backed into corners.
while they get brought out on stage.
Our voices are silenced,
while their moans are heard through megaphones.
We become used goods because
they put our bodies in trophy cases.
They take sledgehammers to our temples.
But what they don’t know is
that we are really forests.
Because when cut down,
we regrow.
Virginity is just a concept that’s been coined to separate those who’ve had sex or those who haven’t. Yet, the patriarchy got its tight grasp on virginity and allows it to be a tool for shaming and controlling women’s sexuality.
Historically, women have been seen as property. Property of their fathers and when married, the property of their husbands. Hence why during a marriage ceremony, the father walked the bride down the aisle and gave her away to the husband. Women had to keep their “sexual purity” for when they got married. If they had sex before marriage, they were seen to have lost their value as a wife and no longer a suitable choice for marriage. The historical double-standard existed as it was common for men to have slept with people before marriage, yet if women had they might have been exiled or even killed for bringing shame upon their family.
Still today, virginity frames a woman’s worth as inversely proportional to how much sex she’s had. The idea of this reinforces shame introduced by many religious institutions and colonial ideologies while pushing the patriarchal agenda. Mainstream media has allowed for this to continue which isn’t allowing the conversation to change. In the popular film “Easy A”, the character Rosemary says to her daughter Olive, “before I met your Dad, I had horrible self-worth”, after saying that she was a slut in high school.
The idea of virginity as something that can be “lost” continues to perpetrate virginity as a way to shame women. For example, people view promiscuous women as “dirty”, with universally known slut-shaming that is sometimes even internalized and further perpetrated by women. Personally, I can recall dozens of conversations degrading women based on their sexual lives. Whether that be claiming that, “If she dresses like one, of course, people will think she’s a slut” or “I can’t believe that she’s lost her virginity already”. Not only does shaming a woman for her choices around sex affect her personally but slut-shaming reinforces a sex-negative mindset. Peer pressure or pressure from romantic partners can also occur because of the way that virginity is talked about. Young people don’t want to be seen as a virgin, as most societies have made it seem as if that’s embarrassing. Mainstream media often shows portrayals of young people that are desperate “to lose their virginity” before they leave for college or turn a certain age.
Not only does virginity shame women, but it’s very cis-heteronormative. The criteria for losing your virginity leaves out LGBTQ+ people and therefore contributes to the erasure of their valid sexual experiences. By using such a limited concept to describe sex, it results in the disempowerment of many different groups within the community. On the Internet, people quite literally debate whether lesbians have lost their virginity, or if they have even had sex.
The word “virginity” has had its moment in the spotlight in our history, and it still has an effect on our present, but there is no need for it in our future. It’s an outdated, unnecessary and damaging way to describe sex. Everyone deserves to be comfortable with their experiences with sex, including those who choose not to have sex. Let’s lose the stigma around sex.
amazing.