Perfect virgins, dirty girls

Coming up with a definition for virginity was very difficult for me. I never actually had to think about how I would define it. I would characterize virginity as not having had sexual contact or a sexual experience. However, I did not always view it this way. I was taught that being a “virgin” meant not participating in vaginal intercourse. In high school I realized that this definition totally excluded the gay and lesbian population. This is when I sought out a new definition.

I grew up in a Christian household where my parents always preached abstinence and saving sex until marriage. I always thought that my parents were hypocritical because they themselves had premarital sex, which ultimately lead to an unplanned pregnancy (ME!). My mom would tell me that she was worried about my well-being and did not want me to make the same mistakes she did, or end up being in a failing relationship or becoming a single parent at a young age.

Being abstinent and chaste was relentlessly drilled into my head as a teenager. It got to the point where I actually developed a fear of sex. My parents would constantly throw statistics at me about STI’s, the failure rate of condoms, and the emotional damage premarital sex can have on you. Valenti mentions that “the increase in STIs is a result not of casual sex, but instead of the predictable outcome of teaching a generation of young people that contraception doesn’t work” (60). This statement brought me back to my high school sex education classes. I remember them separating the boys from the girls (I never understood why they did this. Did we not learn the same thing?), and using their “scare tactics” to influence our views on sex. Valenti discusses abstinence-only classes and pledging to remain “pure” (31). I was also one of those girls who grudgingly signed a little card pledging to remain abstinent and save sex for marriage. Even though I disagreed, I was too scared to discard the card and not sign it.

It upset me to read the some of the comments in Valenti’s book made by abstinence educators regarding sexually active young women. We are described as “dirty,” “impure,” “bare stems,” and the most shocking, “used lollipops.” It really frustrates me that this whole virginity movement solely focuses on girls. You never read that guys should save sex until marriage. Everything is always directed towards young women; you can even see it on billboards that read, “Wait for the bling” and “The ultimate wedding gift is your virginity” (39). We should be instilling other values such as self-respect, confidence, pride and self-worth instead of only focusing on purity.

I really hope that one day virginity won’t be viewed as a commodity. Valenti says is perfectly at the end of chapter two: “By colluding with the cultural obsession over young women’s sexuality, the virginity movement not only gets extra attention from the mainstream, it also ties women’s sexuality with its larger agenda – to roll back all women’s rights.”