Virginity As a Social Construct
This posts serves as an introduction to Uterish’s new product: The Virginity Shirt. With it, we hope to demonstrate how deconstructing the concept of virginity is an inherent part of the fight for reproductive justice.
The concept of virginity is socially constructed and reproduced to assign value to a set of behaviors associated with a woman's sexuality. Many societal institutions uphold the construction of virginity such as the church, the state, and the medical establishment. The sociological significance of virginity represents a major divide in how young men and women view their sexuality. Women tend to feel as though they have lost something prized by society, while men tend to view virginity as something they’re entitled to take. The very phrases we use to talk about it reflect our belief that virginity is somehow material. We say it can be taken, stolen, and kept or saved; like it is a delicate flower waiting to bloom, or a perfect gift waiting to be opened. Virginity is defined as a prize, a gift, a bounty, reserved for a boy. The construct of virginity functions as a tool to police female-assigned bodies.
Among other things, the myth of virginity
permits the U.S. government to slut shame women and deny them critical health care based off biases about their perceived sexual histories.
compels schools throughout the United States to miseducate their students.
reinforces heteronormative constructions of sexuality that define sex strictly in reproductive terms, excluding all other sexual acts and purposes.
allows religions around the world to manipulate the dignity of and impose psychological stresses on their followers.
associates white bodies with sexual purity and bodies of color with sexual deviance.
Virginity is made up! And, like all made up things (see: imaginary friends, or bitcoin, or gender, but more on that later), we retain the power to assign value to them or not. All people should have the right to bodily autonomy, and to their own beliefs about their body. For some, this means caring deeply about their first time having sex. For others, their first time may lack any personal or cultural meaning. Regardless, the personal choice to assign value to sexual acts should be just that: personal. The social construction of virginity undermines a person’s agency. Thus, rejecting it is inherently linked to Uterish’s mission to dismantle societal beliefs, policies, and institutions that police the actions and autonomy of all people, and particularly female-assigned people.
Love and solidarity,
Uterish