virginity=purity?

a SYTYCB entry

You’ve probably heard of purity balls (recap- girls promising their fathers they won’t have sex before marriage). Putting all the creepiness aside, even though the creepiness is outstanding, I’m wondering why virginity is synonymous with purity.

Maybe because society has turned sex into something terrible- especially for women, especially pre-marital. If you’re a virgin, you’re pure. You’re clean, you’re generally a good person. You’re the kind of person that society smiles upon. But if you’re not… you’re dirty. You’re someone that no one can have a conversation with, if they know. If you’re a virgin, you’re pure. That’s it?

But there’ the other side. If you’re a virgin you’re uptight, you’re a tease, you’re a prude. Maybe you’re pure to your parents, but to other people you’re just a bitch.

When you look up “pure” in your thesaurus, “virgin” doesn’t come up. But things like “clean” and “intact” do. But when you look up “virgin,” “pure” is there, halfway through the list. And what does this say? If you’re not a virgin, you’re dirty, you’re broken, you’re not a viable human being.

But I don’t think this is true.

And I think that we should change the definition of virginity. It’s just a word, just a thing, it doesn’t make you any better or worse or cleaner or fuller than anyone else. And I think that we need to change the way we look at it.

Because I don’t think, and a lot of people don’t think, that losing your virginity makes you a bad person, or that it makes you dirty, or broken, or the ever-popular “deflowered.” And having your virginity doesn’t make you an unloved bitch, either. It doesn’t make you pure, it doesn’t make you unreasonably amazing.

And having sex isn’t going to change who you are, either, and suddenly break you and make you disappear.