Validating Virginity: Ignoring Society’s Stigmas
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Sex is a big part of most of our lives, but it's not without its complicated measures and messages. While we do have sex for pleasure, and sometimes we have sex to procreate, sex, when you're young, is full of confusing expectations and messages from not only potential sexual partners but society as well. It is fair to assume that the majority of adults have had, or plan to have, sex. But not everyone is in such a rush.
Virginity is a huge deal in society. People assume that the process of losing your virginity has to be special. It has to be with someone you love. It has to be at the right time, the right place. All of these necessities are okay, but they’re not necessarily necessities for everyone. Plenty of people lose their virginity during a one-night stand. Plenty of people lose their virginity to a boyfriend or girlfriend, the way they're "supposed to," and it’s not special. With such high standards set, it makes sense that a lot of people would want to wait.
However, with these standards set, there’s also the rush to lose one’s virginity. If one doesn’t lose it by a certain age, they may be seen as a prude. A young woman named Carly told me that whenever she tells her male friends that she’s a virgin, they always act as if “virginity has an expiration date.” [Carly is only 19]. They may get made fun of for choosing to wait, even though the choice to lose your virginity belongs to the virgin in question.
I talked to a few young adults who have decided to wait on having sex. Along with that, I spoke with Jacqueline Bible, Post-Doctoral Fellow and Instructional Assistant Professor at Illinois State University. Bible has a PHD in Family Science and Human Development. Her main area of focus is how cultural messages influence our comprehensive sexual health. With her background, I knew she’d be the perfect person to talk to about this topic.
Bible starts off with telling me, “From birth, we are inundated with messages from all of these different sources about sexuality. A lot of the time [these messages] are really conflicting.” She is completely right about all these messages. There really is a lot of conflict in what the “right” levels of sexuality are. It seems as though everyone is on one end of the spectrum, either “too slutty” or “too prude.” And for these young adults, this can make their sexual exploration very confusing.
The first young adult I spoke with was Ally (age 18). Ally told me she’s waited to have sex because, “it has never been important to me to have the full dating experience.” She explained further that she didn’t want to succumb to the pressures of "just getting it over with." It was important to her to focus on other things (school, career, etc.) and to just let it happen when it was going to happen.
Katherine (age 21) was also following a similar timeline. Katherine told me that she wanted to wait until she found “the one.” She told me that, “I'm probably overly dramatic about it, but I am also really scared of the idea at times because I have no idea what to expect.” It’s fair for one to be nervous of the idea, as it is a completely new experience. Similar to riding a bike for the first time, sex can be scary for many reasons—you don't know how to do it, you might fall and hurt yourself... but once you get it right, it's a fun, liberating experience. However, the first encounter we have with sex may not always be good and can lead to fear for the future. Katherine shared that she had been assaulted and then viewed sex as something to be afraid of, which added to her view about waiting. She tells me, “There are times when I want to be in a relationship but then I think about the sexual part and become a little nervous about it and I worry about getting taken advantage of.”
Carly is also not in a rush to lose her virginity. Carly told me about how the movie Kids made her really become serious about remaining celibate. As she grew older, she told me, “I noticed how sex affected my friends and the issues it caused.” Some of the issues it caused for her friends included unplanned pregnancy and worries about having an STD. She decided the best situation for her was to wait until marriage.
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Bible and I discussed how media portrays a role in these social constructs and how this can create a lot of pressure on young adults. Kids, for example, helped Carly to make her choice to remain celibate, but that’s not the same reaction for everyone. Bible says, “With the media, in popular movies, portraying sexuality in college is you get drunk, and you have sex. That can create a lot of pressure for people who are either not interested in that, or maybe haven’t lost their virginity yet, to enact those scripts.” Even outside of movies, she adds, “People feel pressured to enact sexuality; however, they think they are supposed to.”
While speaking with these young women, I realized for them, it might be a little more accepting to remain a virgin. Women are often trashed as “sluts” if they’re sexually active, while men don’t often get degraded for their sex life. I began to wonder how remaining a virgin would affect men.
Bible and I discuss the differences between men and women. She says, “Socially, there’s a sexual double standard for men and women. That happens for people who are engaging in sexual behavior and for those who are not.” Furthermore, we talked about how masculinity is tied in with hypersexuality. Although it doesn’t make anyone less of a man for remaining a virgin, some may see it that way. For women, they are often shamed for wanting to explore their sexuality. But still, when they choose not to, there’s still the shame of “what are you waiting for?” and being seen as a prude.
The first young man I spoke with was Jaden (age 20). Jaden’s thoughts were similar to Katherine’s; he wanted to wait to find someone special as well. He told me that when he often shares his choice with others, saying, “I surprise people and they think I am lying or I get made fun of for it. It sucks and sometimes it makes me upset, but hey... If I'm the 40-year-old virgin, so be it.” He also adds that this hasn’t affected any of his relationships, because his potential partner can either choose to accept it or not, and that’s on them.
Aiden (21) didn’t have a set answer as opposed to the other young adults. He began by telling me there wasn’t really a reason he “chose” to remain a virgin; it just sort of happened. He said, “I think as a guy, people are just surprised to hear that I just haven't found the right person, as it is just rare to see a guy with that mentality.” He tells me that he was never really seen as a prude, but more of seen as a conquest. Many of his friends try to pair him up with girls, but so far, none of those have really worked out.
As we can see from these 5 adults, there are a multitude of reasons why one may choose to remain a virgin. In the end, each of these reasons are valid.
As Carly previously stated, she saw the way sex affected a lot of her friends lives. I decided to speak with a few women about how losing their virginity was actually a bad choice for them, whether they wish they could take it back, or have grown to live with it.
I first talked to Jordan (age 21). She told me she was fifteen when it happened and it was with her boyfriend at the time. She said, “It happened because I felt like I needed it to do it with him since he had been more experienced than me and I felt bad to have him wait on me.” She explained that she had regretted this experience for a long time and only grew content with it as she realized she can’t ever take it back. “I felt like I needed to have sex with him to keep him,” she added.
Harper (age 20) told me about her experience with losing her virginity. She was eighteen, and her boyfriend at the time kept begging her for it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, but she felt guilty from being raised in a conservative Christian family, so she felt as if she needed to wait. She now feels shamed often at her Christian college, when many of the girls talk about how “dirty” they feel premarital sex is. However, in the end, she says she feels as though she gave in to him, but she doesn’t regret the experience.
Finally, there's Kary (age 20). Kary felt pressured as she felt all of her friends were having sex at the time when in reality, that wasn’t true. When she lost her virginity at 16, she explained that “He was one of the first boys to show interest in me beyond being friends so, when we were finally alone together, I almost felt as if sex was expected of me because of the way my friends and the world around me made sex/boys seem. At the time, I wasn’t thinking of sex as something I wanted to do or even had a desire to do, but something that was expected of me in a way.” In the end, she added that after this experience, she decided to wait until she was 18 to have sex again, as she felt she had not been ready.
Kary’s story brings “born-again” virginity and its validity into the question. I decided to speak with Kim (age 20) about her experience.
Kim was 18 when she first had sex. She told me, “He told me that he could "help me out" knowing I didn't want to leave high school as a virgin—later I would realize he was definitely only helping himself out.” She said she regretted having sex with him (not sex in general), but she still had just wanted to get it over with. Since then, she hasn’t had sex. Since the experience was so terrible for her, she wanted to wait until she found someone worth her time.
My final topic with Bible was about “born-again” virginity. She says, “I think being a born-again virgin is absolutely legitimate for whoever wants to take on that identity. We also have to think of sexuality in a holistic way.” At the end of the day, anyone deserves whatever title they so wish to choose. If we have to be forced with labels in this world, one should be able to choose how they wish to be seen.
The two main takeaways from my conversation with Bible are empowerment and knowing yourself. She tells me, “Be empowered to do what you want to do” and “It’s all about knowing yourself, feeling safe in your interactions, and doing what feels good to you and not listening to these social pressures. No matter what, you’re never going to fit someone’s perception of who you should be.”
Whether you’re a virgin or not, remember the main message, that often fails to be broadcasted: feeling empowered with your own body. With all of the conflicting messages about sexuality out in the world, you’re never going to be able to please everyone. You might as well choose what makes you feel happy and safe because it’s about your standards, not society’s.
*Some names have been changed to respect anonymity of interviewees.