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.

There's also the judgement on people who choose not to have sex, think of the ridicule of Anne Widicombe for being a virgin or films like the 40 year old virgin.

I have a friend who has chosen not to have sex because of her religious beliefs of waiting for marriage. She is terrified of all but her closest friend finding out because she thinks people will see her as some kind of freak.

DpWm how is it a major rite of passage when it is only focused on one type of heterosexual sex that is basically male-centric? It excludes anyone who does not want to or cannot have that form of sex. The idea of virginity and what it means is also mainly used in negative ways to label women.

Losing your virginity is when you finally bring yourself to orgasm via masturbation.

Whether you are male or female.

It has nothing to do with penetrative sex with a penis.

You also hear about girls, especially in more religious parts of America, who 'only' give blow jobs because they don't want to 'lose their virginity'.

Because putting a penis in your mouth isn't intimate or sexual at all...

placemats that is a better definition. I am all for a wider and more inclusive approach.

It's a word I never used as it makes no sense to me. A word to describe someone who hasn't done something is an oddity. Even more so when having the experience then means you have lost something.

The whole concept is bizarre.

It means different things to different people and is valued differently for everyone, personally to me it’s having penetrative sex for the first time and is very important, to other people it’s completely different. Everyones view of it is equally valid and equally important to that individual.

I prefer the Rocky Horror Show concept of virginity. Not Janet, the audience: the first time you do anything, you're a virgin.

As a sexual concept it is patriarchal and woman-shaming. Generally an offensive and irrelevant social construct.

yes its a social construct. There is no difference between someone that has had sex once and someone that hasnt. Its just something theyve done, but society gives it a special name and value. Its gross and a way of making a hiearchy of value in women

How is it a social construct? There’s a lot of debate on here as to which material act it is referring to, but it is clearly referring to the materially real.

Also, Mary is in the New Testament, which was written in Greek. It has nothing to do with Hebrew words.

A similar concept in nature would be wilderness. You can have all kinds of debates over what does and does not constitute a wilderness and what values can be placed upon that, but it’s still a debate about a materially real state.

Social constructs are things like money, star signs, national borders, gender.

I very much dislike the concept of "virginity" because of the price (for the want of a better term) it has traditionally placed on the 'value' of women & girls.

The concept of a woman being "ruined" a couple of hundred years ago by having sex before marriage.

The concept of Thai girls being sold as virgins to tourists.

The concept that a woman has somehow been tainted by having sex, deflowered, that a man desires virginity and purity in a woman, but is expected himself to sow his wild oats.

I find it completely nauseous. The man I 'lost my virginity' to (ugh) had no idea that he was my first sexual partner, because I didn't tell him. I wanted it that way.

I think it’s a construct.

I was a very old virgin, not by choice - no one ever tried to sleep with me or wanted a relationship with me. I didn’t tell a soul and most people just assumed I had had sex like most “normal” people. Despite a very religious and strict cultural upbringing which forbid sex before marriage and placed virginity (and blood on the sheets the morning after your wedding) on a huge pedestal, I personally never valued virginity or saw it as a “good, pure” thing. From about 12, I couldn’t wait to have sex for the first time. By the time I was 30, the word virgin didn’t seem at all appropriate to describe me. I’d never felt “pure” or “chaste” or “innocent”. I was sexually aware and sexually “awakened” from a young age...I just hadn’t physically had sex. I didn’t ever feel like what a “virgin” was supposed to represent. I’d been having orgasms from being a tiny child ffs! I hated and resented the word because on the rare occasion I’d have to admit I’d never had sex (to a HCP for example) and they said in a simpering voice, “Oh! You’re a virgin“ something inside me screamed out “No! I just haven’t had sex!”

A big part of why I wasn’t open about it was because I knew I’d be excluded from certain conversations and treated like a child or something less than because I hadn’t had the same opportunity or male attention as my peers because I was a virgin. It felt like being less than fully human in other people’s eyes. However, I was fully able to discuss desires, drives, fantasies etc and take part in conversation about whatever the people who were having sex wanted to say but, had they known I wasn’t sexually active, they just wouldn’t have thought I could contribute or understand.

Anyway, long story short, I don’t like the word or the idea of it. It’s unhelpful and yes, a social construct.

Are posters trying to say that not having had sexual intercourse is a material reality and that virginity is a social construct connected to that reality?

In a similar way to the difference between sex and gender?

The act of having PIV sex for the first time is obviously a real thing. The fact that society has decided PIV sex = "real" sex, is a social construct. The fact that we've decided to demarcate the time before PIV sex and give it a specific name for the purpose of policing it and giving it value, is a social construct. So the concept of virginity was socially constructed by taking certain acts and giving them significance, but obviously the acts themselves are real. If we decided that "losing your virginity" referred to the first instance of any sexual contact, that's what it would mean. The concept of virginity only exists because of the social value placed on PIV sex (which is, as others have said, about promoting/ centering heteronormative sex for male pleasure/ procreation).

I'd love to see an end to the concept of virginity. I've heard too many stories about teenage girls being coerced into anal sex in order to please their boyfriends without losing their virginity. I think it's a really harmful concept.

I don't think that penis in vagina sex is seen as worth noting is arbitrary at all. No on would have even considered that perspective before the 20th century, it's relevant because it makes women pregnant and that is hugely significant.

Also, Mary is in the New Testament, which was written in Greek. It has nothing to do with Hebrew words.

And maybe more to the point, Mary wasn't surprised at being told she was pregnant because she didn't have a husband. Context is important in translation work.

Are posters trying to say that not having had sexual intercourse is a material reality and that virginity is a social construct connected to that reality?

Something like that yes. Historically, virginity has been placed on a pedestal and all sorts of personal qualities have been attributed to being a virgin - being “good”, pure, somehow more worthy of respect, innocent, unaware, unawakened, with no libido etc. Sometimes the qualities associated with “virginity” are supernatural and other wordly, “angelic” etc. Virgins of the female sort have been seen as having more worth than women who have had intercourse, even if it was without consent - a very damaging narrative. Male virgins however are seen as inferior to other men...you don’t become a “man” until you have penetrated a woman.

The material reality as you put it is that one has either had sex for the first time or not. That’s it. No superhuman or freakish qualities, no weird beliefs about value etc.

Take this phrase - “He took my virginity”...what does that mean? In real terms “that man was the first person to put his penis in my vagina”. But he’s not actually taken anything has he? He doesn’t have ownership of something. The person hasn’t just been transformed into a totally different person. Their inherent value hasn’t changed.

And then there are all the other issues around lesbian sex, anal, other sexual activity. Is it just the breaking of a hymen that counts as losing virginity in a woman? Because in that case Frida Kahlo “lost” hers when she was in a bus crash during which she was impaled as a young girl. I would have “lost” mine age 8 during a pelvic examination. So in that case what was the first time I had sex?

Are exclusively lesbian women virgins until they die? I’d say no!

This has been really interesting to read and very thought-provoking.

It’s not material reality ‘as I put it.’

If there are things that are social constructs, there are also things that are not.

Sexual acts are a material reality.

‘Something like that yes.’

Okay, so in what ways is it not that sex is a material reality and virginity is a social construct? What else is being said here.