This myth is false on a number of levels.
What about a female-bodied person whose sexuality does not involve being penetrated? Are her sexual experiences somehow less valid? Part of rethinking virginity has to include incorporating a more nuanced and more queer-friendly concept of sex and virginity that doesn’t serve to devalue the experience of any person or group of people. But yesterday’s panelists noted that it’s important for us to create and reinforce alternatives to this heteronormative penetration-focused view of virginity and how it’s “lost”. As the panelists yesterday pointed out, heterosexual vaginal intercourse is often privileged above other sexual acts because of its association with reproduction (and because of good old-fashioned heteronormativity and homophobia), and so people often rely on a problematic concept of “virginity” that can exclude, marginalize, and ignore the experiences of queer folk. I can do without that kind of “protection” thanks very much.
From forced child marriage, female genital cutting, and breast ironing to slut-shaming to the deliberate withholding of information on reproductive and sexual health, the emphasis on preserving virginity has pernicious consequences for girls in the West and beyond. As I discussed on my panel, “Virginity: A Historical and Cultural Primter,” violations of girls’ and women’s sexual and reproductive rights and health occur every day in the name of preserving and protecting girls’ virginity, delaying sexual activity, or controlling the circumstances under which girls and women lose their virginity. In fact, valuing virginity puts girls and women at risk of violence, abuse, and assault by members of a society that believes a woman’s worth lies in her sexual behavior. Myth #2: Valuing virginity protects girls and women. In part for this reason, back in December, a Swedish sexual rights group renamed the hymen the “vaginal corona.” So the idea that there is some magical vaginal barrier that only virgins have is oversimplified at best. “What we recognize as the hymen today was not always considered as such….If we trace the etymology of the word hymen from Greek through Latin to English, we can observe how the word progressively narrows in meaning, first denoting any sort of bodily membrane, then referring to the womb, and finally coming to mean almost exclusively “virginal membrane” in the early modern period.The hymen is an overdetermined, widely misunderstood sign precisely because it has never been a fixed part of anatomy…the hymen is both an anatomical part and a metonym.” At yesterday’s conference, Professor Kathleen Kelly of Northeastern University discussed the history of the hymen and highlighted the way our understanding of the hymen has become misinformed. There is no one physical trait that indicates virginity or sexual activity- not even the presence of a “hymen.” I put hymen in quotes because I’ve come to learn that it is really a nebulous entity. Myth #1: The hymen is THE definitive marker of virginity. I’ve compiled ten myths uncovered- and debunked- at yesterday’s conference: One of the most interesting parts of the panel was learning how much misinformation exists around issues of virginity, sex, and our bodies. The conference was organized by Lena Chen and the Harvard Queer Students’ Association, and brought together an incredibly diverse and impressive group of feminists, who dropped some serious knowledge on all things virgin-themed. Yesterday, I had the privilege and honor of speaking at the Rethinking Virginity Conference at Harvard University.