Virginity Re-Thought or Not

A hot topic of conversation among virginally interested feminist and anti-feminist bloggers this week has been the “Rethinking Virginity” conference, which was organized by former sex blogger and recent Harvard graduate Lena Chen and was held at Harvard on May 3rd. The conference was organized in part as a response to the university’s “True Love Revolution” abstinence movement, which is reportedly one of the strongest in the nation.

I did not attend but based on web reports, topics of discussion included the standard feminist sexuality fair…slut-shaming, virginity as it relates to commodification of women and girls, defining virginity when the penis isn’t involved, and lastly aligning abstinence with sex positive language.

Because I collect the women’s stories of virginity loss, I should care about all of this and I’m wondering why I’m not that interested. It’s not that I don’t care at all, I’m just not sure what the conference was aiming to accomplish aside from creating a buzz to counterpoint the message of the True Love Revolution. All of these discussions end in the same conclusion - wouldn’t it be great if girls were taught to identify and trust their own feelings and to behave in accordance with those feelings when it comes to sex? Yes…but this is not possible for people who have not had sex before. The ability to know and trust one’s own feelings about sex comes from having sex – and getting it wrong and then right and then wrong again. Sure, people learn some things fooling around before they have sex. And based on the stories that I receive, most girls feel as ready as they ever will be when they have sex that first time. It’s only afterward that they can identify the aspects of sex they weren’t yet prepared for.

Simply put, no amount of sexual health education prepares anyone for the various ways individuals experience sex…and while trusting one’s feelings should be the goal over time, I’m not sure it’s completely applicable to the “virgin” experience. Perhaps a better message might be that it’s alright to get it completely wrong the first time as mistakes are as common in sexual relationships as they are in math. Furthermore, it’s OK to make twenty mistakes figuring out what feels right emotionally AND physically…personal value is not negated by those mistakes that are inevitable along the road to self-trust.

As for issues surrounding the definition of virginity – some think the term virginity should be done away with altogether because it’s definition is cloudy in many circumstances. But this is never going to happen. Our cultural identity is simply too defined by Judeo-Christian tradition. People will not stop defining their first sexual experience as a loss of virginity. Moreover, most people, straight and lesbian, seem to be able to define their own first times. They may divide their virginity into multiple experiences or believe in multiple virginities, but they can tell a story about losing their virginity…whether it involves classic penal penetration or not. I’m fine with allowing women to define this and I hope that the stories on my site empower young women to define their own virginity story however they see fit.

As for the term slut, and it’s use to induce female shame regarding sexual behavior, the feminist argument usually centers around a presumed cultural resistance to female pleasure. But, I don’t think slut is used solely or even mostly to shame women who enjoy sex. Rather, I think it is used to shame women who use sex for reasons other than pleasure (i.e. power, manipulation, commodity, experimentation). Is this right, NO! But it is a much more complicated issue than simple shaming over pleasure, which is clearly related to the desire to maintain patriarchal control. More of my thoughts on this later. But for now, suffice it to say that nuances in the term’s use need to be addressed for the conversation to become interesting and current to me. Otherwise, it just feels hackneyed.

Perhaps I’m just not as interested in a theoretical discussion about issues of virginity and female sexuality because I believe the personal narrative more successfully challenges the status quo and changes the core views of individuals. For feminism to continue to advance it’s fundamental aims of seamless equality, those core views are what must change. Deconstructing the past and theorizing about what equality would or should look like has it’s place in feminism, and on a different day, I might be excited to engage in such intellectual wonk talk…but today, I’d rather direct my energies elsewhere.