Virginity is a social construct??

[PatisserieSingleton]

Just come across this statement in a recently released ‘controversial’ music video (Smiley Miley’s) I know all the Madonna/Whore crap that burdens womens’ lives but isn’t virginity actually a thing? As in it means a person (male or female) that has never had penetrative sex? All the baggage that goes with virginity is mainly a social construct (purity, goodness etc.) but the thing itself exists doesn’t it? Is this a feminist trope? Shame the video didn’t have the slogan ‘Gender is a social construct’ or did it? I kind of got distracted during it and maybe didn’t concentrate as hard as I should. Loved the vagina dentata though and the CS staples.

Well. What is virginity?

The breaking of a hymen? Which can be broken many ways, through sport or masturbation or just spontaneously.

Is it the lack of penetration?

Are you no longer a virgin if you've masturbated with a dildo? Or your fingers?

Are you still a virgin if you've had a digital medical examination?

A smear?

Or do you only lose your virginity when an erect penis enters your vagina?

So lesbian women can have sex with dozens of partners, use strap ons etc.... But still be virgins?

Do we only class the penis as able to 'deflower' us?

Do men hold that power over us too? Sex is inky sex if it involves a man's erect penis?

Well yes, I agree that "not having had penetrative sex" is what I would define it as. But most lesbians would not consider themselves virgins, so it's not entirely straightforward.

I would assume the point that they are trying to make, is that defining "not having done something" as "a thing" is a bit odd. There's nothing that materially changes after you have sex for the first time.

Virginity isn’t a social construct, but the value we place on it is.

I don't really have an issue with the word as I suppose you need something to describe the state of before a person has had sex but I do object to the as another poster has said the value or judgment placed upon the word.

This is also a major issue for people who have had unwanted unconsensual sexual experiences before they "lost their virginity" for many children/young people this is a very hard part of an already horrific experience. They find themselves having lost a label which holds so much power and importance in society through no fault of their own.

Some just discount it and choose to still use the label until their first consensual experience but for many they feel tainted in the eyes of the world, they don't have the "story" of how did you lose it which for some reason is a conversation many people think is a normal topic to talk about even in places like work etc where you wouldn't expect to be asked.

The value we place on this label marginalises and places judgment on big chunk of the population.

I suppose you need something to describe the state of before a person has had sex

This is actually what I find quite strange. Why do we need to describe that state? What's wrong with "someone who has never had sex"? It's not a shift in state, that changes anything else about you. It's just a thing you've done (or not).

We don't have words to describe the "state of being" of not having done other important things? Or at least none that I can think of, there must be some.
Someone who has never had a job? Someone who has never had a child? Someone who has never graduated from university? They're all just things you haven't done.. actually the more I think about this, the more I think it is a social construct

I agree with you and I think that's the point I'm trying to (obviously clumsily) make, nothing changes except the word. I suppose I just meant that that most language uses descriptive words to reduce a sentence to a word. In this example virginity is that word.

A different example could be, someone who is not in a relationship would be reduced to the word single or two people in a relationship would be reduced to the word couple.

All I'm saying is it isn't the word I have an issue with just as I don't have an issue with the word single or the word couple but I do have an issue with the connotations attached to the word virgin or virginity.

Although thinking about it virginity doesn't have an equivalent word for the afterwords! There isn't a word to reduce the sentence someone who has had sex, hmmm odd.

If women are virgins until they have had penetrative sex with a penis... What is the classification for men? Virgin until they have penetrated a vagina?

Surely it's the act of sex with another person - male or female?

Yes, it's the not having equivalent for afterwards that makes it strange. We don't usually define things by the absence of something else.
"Single" is a reference to your current state - you are a single person - I think the equivalent to virginity would be referring to all single people as "partner-less" (or similarly unmarried - which often gets backlash for assuming that married is the "default" state) - it's just odd that we define virginity by the absence of something else.

Well yes @daisychicken but that's a circular argument because you still need to define sex - and that means different things to different people - which was the point

I have a 50+ year old lesbian pal who takes great glee in the fact that she is a virgin ie never been penetrated by a penis 😂

And all the penis in vagina as the defining act of virginity "loss" leads to all sorts of crap, like girls having anal sex to preserve their virginity, and a focus on piv sex which means that most women will experience their first orgasm in company on a completely different occasion to the first time they have a chance penis in their vagina, and it puts an emphasis on penis in vagina as "real" sex and everything else as a sort of lesser value act.

Someone who has never had a job? Someone who has never had a child? Someone who has never graduated from university? They're all just things you haven't done..

The only one I can think of is childless which I suppose is a state.

EndofDays sums it up frankly. Despite what societal standards suggest. Your "virginity" could technically be impacted by so many different things. That it almost comes down to a personal decision as to whether it can be a hinderance to sexual exploration or something that should be maintained. Must state that this is ONLY an option for women/girls that have a choice. Not really an option for those subjected to abuse or rape.

I think it's a real thing. There are lots of things you could say about it which pp have brought up, and clearly context is a factor. But it can be used in non-human contexts as well, I remember as a young person reading a book about pig farming and laughing when it said that virgin boars sometimes don't seem to know what they are supposed to do when put together with a sow. And it's used at times in medical contexts as well.

If we say that all words that have any blurred edges aren't real things that's going to be a lot of not real things....

I can't really see that virginity has any real relevance.

I think it's a social construct.

This Ted talk is very interesting on why it's not rooted in biology in any way.
www.ted.com/talks/nina_dolvik_brochmann_and_ellen_stokken_dahl_the_virginity_fraud

I heard once that 'virgin' (or perhaps it was 'maiden'- can't recall) originally meant 'unmarried', not someone who hadn't had sex.

The value/importance placed on it is ridiculous IMO. Dick isn't magic and transformative.

Also, how does virginity work when it comes to lesbians, who may never have had penetrative sex?

I think it's a past it word. Redundant and of no value.

Agree^

DfD was raped repeatedly as a child. We explained that she is technically not a virgin, because her hymen was broken and she was penetrated. However, she IS a virgin in that she has not had willing, consensual sex.

To my mind, she is no different physically from a girl who has broken her hymen riding or through self exploration.

STating that she is not a virgin because of her traumatic past makes her less worthy? pure? somehow contaminated? There's a lot of value judgement placed on the term.

An interesting fact is that The Bible was mis-translated, Mary was not originally meant to be "a virgin" she was an "Almah" meaning young woman of childbearing age in Hebrew, which was incorrectly translated to mean "virgin".

The OED defines virgin as someone who has never done this:

Sexual intercourse
noun
Sexual contact between individuals involving penetration, especially the insertion of a man's erect penis into a woman's vagina, typically culminating in orgasm and the ejaculation of semen.

So some "gold star" lesbians may well indeed technically be virgins despite having orgasmed in other ways. Girl on girl sex isn't technically sexual intercourse, but man on man, if it goes up the bum, is.

Virginity is a sexual construct as much as anything is, but losing your virginity is a major right of passage into adulthood, so we should have a word to describe the thing.

True there isn't a name for a non-virgin, only virgin, then nothing, then slag if u do it too much. In other languages there probably is a name for a non-virgin. The English language isn't perfect.

Hmm, interesting.

Funnily enough I sometimes wonder when I actually lost my virginity, because I had a couple of experiences where it sort of went in but he didn't come or whatever (because things are awkward sometimes at that stage aren't they) and I did actually bleed then, before I feel like I actually had 'proper'
sex.

A bit like Regina in Mean Girls when she says 'I was half a virgin when I met him'. I feel like a was half a virgin for a while!

I don't know really...

virgin (n.)

c. 1200, "unmarried or chaste woman noted for religious piety and having a position of reverence in the Church," from Anglo-French and Old French virgine "virgin; Virgin Mary," from Latin virginem (nominative virgo) "maiden, unwedded girl or woman," also an adjective, "fresh, unused," probably related to virga "young shoot," via a notion of "young"

(https://www.etymonline.com/word/virgin#etymonlinev7817)

And I can help notice a similarity to vir, "man" in Latin. I wonder whether they are connected?

Sexual intercourse
noun
Sexual contact between individuals involving penetration, especially the insertion of a man's erect penis into a woman's vagina, typically culminating in orgasm and the ejaculation of semen.

Whose orgasm?

Yes it’s entirely a social construct as others have outlined above. It’s also entirely focused around one form of sexual activity that is based around the male experience- ie the notion that anything that isn’t penile penetration doesn’t count.
The hymen itself is not a social construct through and it can be broken in all forms of ways. Nor is the penis a social construct. But the notion of virginity is entirely about the meaning that is given to a particular act.