Because I am a Woman

fuckyeahsexeducation:

Virginity is a social construct, meaning it’s not an actual physical thing. Having sex, any kind of sex in no way changes your body. It may change the way you view things, but it may not. Virginity as a concept can be damaging. People view virginity different. People view sex different. For some people sex is just a penis in a vagina but that’s a very narrow view. For many people sex is oral sex, manual sex, frottage and many other things. With any of these kinds of sex it’s possible to pass STIs or even with some to get pregnant. What constitutes sex then, and what constitutes virginity? We all have sexual things we haven’t tried, new things to discover and new things to experience but why draw that line in the sand? I understand wanting to communicate “I haven’t had sex”, but then you have to explain what sex means to you. 

The word virgin itself and the concept has been used for many years to harm. virginity as a concept was made as a means for men to own women. If you look up the history of the concept (and really the concept of marriage as well) it was a way for men to ensure that they were in charge of their lineage and women were literally treated like objects. They were sold and if they weren’t “virgins” they were killed. Because the Hymen isn’t exactly the way we were taught  women were taught that they had to kill an animal and save its blood to spill on their wedding bed so that their new husbands would be reassured that they were “virgins” and wouldn’t kill them. 

These are things to take into account when you use the word “virgin”.