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Virginity: On waiting

There’s an odd art to patience and waiting. Like waiting for a text back, a shoe to drop or a red flag to rear its ugly head. Whether two hours or two years, our lives are structured around waiting for affairs that timing can’t dictate. 

This begs the question: In the things, we can control, like losing our virginity, is it worth the wait? 

The topic of virginity and waiting is one that permeates the young – and sometimes old. It feels like a thing of worship or disdain, lacking a middle ground sanctuary. 

Society (and Billy Joel) tells us if we stay virginal, we’re crying with the saints and if not, well we’re laughing with the sinners. 

I say, don’t listen.

Society’s not the boss of me

The societal opinion isn’t concrete, distinct or unchanging. 

Over time, we’ve become detached from our bodies. They aren’t ours anymore, but rather ideas of bodies, stationed in our own heaven of ideas and conceptions. 

Virginity can be and mean different things to different people. Depending on how you choose to define “losing your virginity,” the act can be accomplished in ways other than traditional cis methods of intercourse.

In my opinion, virginity doesn’t carry any more meaning than what we give to it. It’s simply a social construct. It functions so society can label personal worth. 

The language surrounding virginity, such as having “lost” something, is perplexing and suggestive. It seduces us into believing there’s something for the taking and once it’s gone, you’re no longer the good vestal virgin society either beg you to be or not to be.  

Society easily conflates sexuality with morality. Therefore, your morality’s worth can be tied to the notion of virginity and be embedded within one’s choice to wait, or not. 

In extreme cases of judgment, if you wait, you’re unbreakably attached to a notion of purity and naivety. If you don’t, your morality can be conflated, especially if you’re a woman. Because of this, values of virginity are placed into a painful binary of virgin or slut. 

Saint or sinner. 

I’m the boss of me

The capitalist patriarchy that taints society frames women’s bodies as commodified objects. It turns women’s bodies into blank canvases that seem to be painted on by male gazes and fantasies. 

In the spirit of conquest and virginity arises the notion that the latter can and should be conquered and controlled. 

So, what choice do we have? Do we wait and let society judge us for our innocence? Or do we have sex and let society judge us for loose morals? 

Fortunately, not everyone thinks this way. 

Screw the collective self

Negative views on virginity are embedded within the collective of western society, but individually, I’ve found people don’t always judge virginity this way anymore. 

We’re evolving from the tyrannical ties of virginity to purity that once dictated society. Specifically, from the escalating dislocation from church and religion. 

I believe we must pull the ugly notions of virginity from the cusp of slipping further into the historical and place it into the contemporary. 

Virginity isn’t something you lose; it isn’t something that denounces your morality or dictates your worth. Sexuality is something we should have agency over. It shouldn’t be evaluated as making you any different before or after. 

In reality, no one truly cares about whether you’re a virgin or not. It may seem like everyone around you is talking and thinking about sex, but in my experience, it’s only in relation to themselves. 

In some cases, you may feel isolated as a virgin, the only untouched person out there, but that’s so far from the truth. It seems that way because your virginity means so much more to you than it does to others. 

If waiting is the path you wish to take in your sexual journey that’s a perfect reason to wait for the experience. If you don’t relate to the feeling of needing to wait, that’s also okay.

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