The belief that virginity is valuable and sexual purity is of prime importance is coerced in women from a very young age. Losing it before marriage makes them “damaged”, “desperate” and even “sluts”. Women are shamed for having sex but men are rewarded for it.
Virginity typically means never having had sex. However, sex has different definitions for different people. For many people, the idea of virginity is limited to the penetrative penis-in-vagina intercourse. But that leaves out the whole LGBTQ community who engage in other types of sex (like oral or anal) which would equate to losing virginity. Thus, the notion of virginity may also differ from person to person and is more of a social construct than a medical terminology.
Nevertheless, having sex for the first time is a pretty big deal. People, especially teenagers and young adults, have different reasons to engage in sex but the most common of these are:
- Curiosity: it is one of the motivating factors behind most first times.
- Partner’s Demand: in order to maintain the relationship or make it stronger
- Peer Pressure: it is easy to feel like the odd one when everyone around is talking about sex
- To feel loved: sex can make a person feel special. However, not always.
Although it is maintained that any reason to not engage in sex is good enough, it is common that young people, especially women, choose to abstain from sex before marriage. Some of the common reasons are as follows:
- Fear of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases because condoms aren’t always reliable.
- They aren’t emotionally ready and want to wait until they are absolutely sure.
- It is a question of moral factor, personal values and family attitudes or religious beliefs
- Fear of slut shaming and not being accepted.
Everyone’s opinion about sex is different. Even though the other person may have useful advice to share, in the end, the decision to have or not have sex is completely up to you. People decide to become sexually active at different ages, and some people never feel the urge.
That being said, there can be many myths and misinformation about sexual health, especially that of a woman, circulated on the internet and among friends that can be incredibly harmful. Among those, the most common and damaging one is that the hymen is the absolute marker of virginity.
There is utterly no such physical characteristic that can indicate a person’s virginity. Hymen is just a remanent tissue left over at the vagina’s opening during embryonic development. It can be completely absent in some women. Moreover, it is not rigid and penetrable but rather stretchy and flexible, which means it does not necessarily tear with penetration.
It is common for women to not bleed the first time they have sex. Furthermore, hymen can break due to physical activities like cycling, gymnastics, intense exercise or even by use of tampons. Therefore, it is impossible to tell whether a woman is virgin and associating a tissue with purity is absurdity.
In fact, WHO released an article that called for a ban on virginity testing and said that the term ‘virginity’ is not a medical or scientific term but rather a social, cultural and religious construct that reflects gender discrimination against women.
It also added that the stereotyped notion about female sexuality is harmful for women and girls across the globe.
Nonetheless, even in today’s date, a woman’s morality is questioned based on the status of her virginity. |
In many cultures where public recognition of a man’s sole access to penetrative sex with his wife is defining of adult masculinity, newly wedded women have to prove that they are “untouched”.
Women who aren’t virgins when they marry can be exiled or sometimes even killed, particularly for dishonouring and shaming their families.
This has led to women opting to rejuvenate vaginas by recreating fake hymen. It is particularly distressing because the so-called progressive women have still not been able to give up on the despotic notion.
They have incorporated this misogyny so much that having done something for the pleasure of their own body creates a guilt and shame in them and they feel the pressing need to correct it by whatever means possible.
However, the important question here is Why. The topic of sex is still a taboo for majority of our country.
Sex education has received almost no attention and the discussion on this topic still hasn’t found its way around in the family which paved way for disbelief and superstitions.
Society’s idea of a woman being an ideal life partner for marriage relies a great deal on something as trivial as her virginity. However, men get a free pass from this quite conveniently seeing that there is no test to prove their virginity. The patriarchy enforces virginity as a way to commodify sexuality and reinforce sexist attitudes. By exerting a control over women’s sexuality, patriarchy has been able to maintain a firm hold over the society.
Hypocrisy and double standards are seen when the men that claim to believe in equality desire a virgin wife whereas they themselves take pride in losing their virginity before marriage.
If you are willing to talk about equality, let it be inclusive of virginity too. Would you still stand for gender equality?
