Reclaiming is a weekly news and commentary roundup for intersectional feminists of all genders. Paid subscribers get the sub-newsletter, A Little Bit Election 2024, and the full archive. ✊
Ready for some nostalgia? If you’re my age, you grew up renting the following movies from your local Blockbuster:
American Pie
Cruel Intentions
Clueless
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
And then we were teenagers when the following films came out:
Easy A
Superbad
Girl Next Door
Saved!
These films have one very important thing in common: they all have a main virginity plot. This means that when we were growing up in the 90s and 00s, a ton of the media we consumed taught us that the absence of a first time having penetrative sex with the opposite gender is, itself, a part of our identities. We learned that “losing it” is a big deal, and we were very uncool if we hadn’t had sex before a certain milestone (turning 18 or going to college, usually.) And the people who “took” our virginities enjoyed an exalted status in our lives.
To add to the confusion, if you grew up in evangelical purity culture like me, we learned that we were sinful and dirty and used up if we did have a first time experiencing penetrative sex before we were married. This was especially true if you were socialized as a girl.
Our resulting teenage years (when we are, developmentally speaking, beginning to learn about and explore our sexualities) were a clusterfuck of sexual confusion and mixed messaging about when to first have penetrative sex. And there was just so much shame.
I promise this millennial nostalgia (half nostalgia?) has a purpose: the combo of age and virginity was in the news last week when actor Rebel Wilson shared that she was 35 years old when she first had sex. During my ensuing morning journaling sessions, I was surprised to witness my thoughts on virginity shift dramatically in a few days. Many feminist commentators are relieved that a high-profile star is finally sharing something that most have been conditioned to see as shameful (see all those movies above), and many folks who lost their virginities later in life are feeling seen. But I think there’s more to this that we can’t overlook: The concept of virginity itself is an outdated, made-up weapon of the patriarchy. It’s not enough to change popular opinion about virginity or destigmatize being a virgin at any age. Until we refuse to acknowledge the idea of virginity completely, we’re just continuing to play the patriarchy’s game.
First, we should quickly examine the main feminist arguments against assigning value to virginity. These include, but are not limited to:
Virginity is almost always used as a weapon to control girls’ bodies and sexualities, especially in the church. As young women, we learned our value wasn’t inherent - it was tied to our moral character, and our moral character was compromised by having PIV (penis-in-vagina) sex. If we stayed obedient to a purity code, we kept our value/worthiness intact. This obviously leads to abuse and manipulation.
The status of one’s virginity is used to shame young people, especially women. This is why Rebel’s testimony is so important: she is rejecting the shame of being a virgin. Reinforcing sexual shame, again, is a mechanism of control and abuse and is unfairly placed in higher concentration on women and queer/non-binary folks.
Virginity is so disgustingly tied to white women, and WOC rarely even have the chance to ever be seen as sexually “pure.” Our culture has historically sexualized Black women without their consent to a violent degree, yet their early sexual experiences are rarely part of the conversation in the same way. Furthermore, the experiences and challenges related to virginity are shaped by multiple intersecting factors that are rarely addressed in white spaces. TL;DR: harping on one’s virginity upholds white supremacy.
Conservative culture’s obsession with virginity leads to a grotesque lack of sexual education, with the consequences falling mostly on girls, women, and queer youth, perpetuating the system of control by design.
Obviously, there is a huge double standard when it comes to sexual purity and virginity, and women are held to much stricter standards than men - sometimes to an exploitative degree. See: “alpha” men shaming a woman for her “body count” and seeking one whose count is zero.
Here’s where my solution comes in (although the ultimate solution is the complete dismantling of our system): we alter the way we talk about early sexual experiences.
I wish that, instead of destigmatizing age and virginity by using high-profile people like Rebel, we would simply fold new language into discussions about our sexual debuts. Rejecting virginity shame is not enough; we need to act like virginity doesn’t even exist. We need to unabashedly share the joys, embarrassing moments, and challenges that accompanied/accompany our early sexual experiences and treat them as only one chapter in an individual lifetime of intimacy. (Note: this conversation takes a much more nuanced turn when we take asexuality into account. I would love to hear someone who identifies as ace weigh in on this.)
This is a huge change for me, too. Last year I wrote an article about losing my virginity before marriage despite my purity vow for Insider and, going forward, I plan to address early sexual experiences in a completely different way. I, too, need to do this work because each human has a unique story of their sexual debut, and not everyone has PIV virginity to lose, anyway. When feminists frame this discussion in terms of reclaiming an outdated and patriarchal concept like virginity, no matter how well-intentioned, it continues to uphold white-cis-hetero-capitalist patriarchy.
Whenever you had your sexual debut, whatever kind of act of intimacy it looked and felt like, and whoever it was with - it matters only as much as you want it to matter, like any sexual encounter. I know we have been deeply conditioned to see our virginities as a huge part of our adolescent identity (or, as Rebel shows, adulthood identity) thanks to movies like American Pie. But let’s vow together to stop calling it “virginity” and instead reframe our conversation to include a wide array of early and diverse sexual experiences, with the value only what we determine it to be.
That’s it for this week, reach out with any questions/comments.
xoxo,
Sarah
P.S. Despite its barely-veiled misogynistic moments, American Pie is still one of my favorite film franchises and to this day has one of the best soundtracks ever; this essay does not change those facts and multiple things can be true at once 😉
Rec of the Week
Some of my previous jobs broke so many of my personal boundaries and caused me so much unfair burnout that I decided to leave the marketing profession altogether. This is why I’m so glad to see California trying to make it illegal for bosses to call us after work hours EVEN IF WE ARE SALARIED. A salary does not mean your company/boss owns you around the clock. This is a gift link, so no paywall! Read about the proposed law here.
Ask the Witches
Feminist News Bulletin
Biden asked for a ceasefire, finally. This comes after the United Nations vote last month calling for a ceasefire and the Israeli military striking on a World Central Kitchen aid convoy that was traveling in a “deconflicted zone” between Northern and Southern Gaza. Seven workers from WCK were killed. Over one million people are experiencing famine conditions in Gaza right now. Free Palestine.
Thousands of Black patients awaiting kidney transplants are now discovering that they were the victims of racially biased medical testing which “overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning,” according to AP. The specific race-based calculation that skewed the test has now been removed, and the more updated test found that approximately 14,000 Black patients were not added to the transplant list as quickly as they should have been.
Beyoncé’s COWBOY CARTER debuted last Thursday, and her entrance into the country genre has highlighted the many other Black country artists that remain criminally overshadowed by white ones.
Something I’ve wanted to share for a long time and will go into depth about soon: Tr*mp’s allies have laid an extensive policy foundation for his return. The right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank has developed an agenda called Project 2025, which proposes to dramatically slash the ranks of the federal civil service, curtail abortion access, and rein in the federal government’s ability to address climate change. It sounds bad, but when you get into the weeds of it - it’s absolutely terrifying. Reminder: check your voter registration now.
BIG ABORTION NEWS. Florida’s Supreme Court issued a decision to allow the state to ban abortion but separately allowed a ballot measure for voters to decide whether the constitution should protect abortion rights. The second part is a big deal. If voters protect access in November, Florida would be the closest state for many pregnant people in the South to get an abortion. If they don’t, pregnant people in the South will have to travel to the closest state - in some instances, Illinois - which is expensive and only attainable for white and upper-class women. Florida needs this. Stay tuned.
The US government will begin to offer federal employees generous fertility benefits. Woo hoo!
A Texas woman is suing the prosecutors who charged her with murder after self-managing an abortion. This is the future if Republicans gain control in November.
New York City will pay $17.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by women who were arrested by police and forced to remove their hijabs in their mugshots.
An Alabama hospital will stop providing IVF treatments by the end of the year, citing litigation concerns following the state supreme court ruling.
Hard yes on this. Virginity doesn't exist. Hymens aren't broken, they exist in the womb to prevent fluids from getting into the vagina, then they're open and disintegrate. Blood isn't from "breaking the hymen", it's from vaginal tissue tearing due to friction and a lack of lubrication and arousal.
And that's just talking about PIV sex which as we all know, not how all people engage in sexual activity if they engage in it at all.
Love, love, love this!
Love and agree with this entire article. Thanks for writing it! ✨🙌🏻✨