Features TheVirginity Myth

Jess Blissitt Features Writer

I’m staring at a plastic cup, swirling the liquor inside.

Everyone else sat against the metal railings slightly bobbing to the heavy grime music. She’s looking at me, expecting an answer to the question, “So… have you done it?” No one needed to determine what ‘it’ was, we all knew. This was the one question that bonded you with fellow freshers. Who’s done it? Who’s doing it, who’s done it with too many people, and who’s not done it all.

I was in the middle of a sexual hiatus, better known as the second lockdown, and the anxieties of ‘losing it’ before university had dwindled along with my social interactions. My logic was flawless - if I couldn’t high five my friends, how was I meant to be having sex? I wasn’t pathetic, I was following the lockdown procedure! And yet, when a group of first years are thrown into a flat together with little shared experience and even less in common, our conversation inevitably drifts to sex.

It hadn’t occurred to me to be anxious about this, because I innocently assumed everyone had had the same isolated experience as myself, and that no one had broken rules for a cheeky shag. Turns out, I was wrong, so I lied. With the worry of meeting new people weighing on me, I decided to try and repress my actual personality in freshers. When asked about my virginity my answer was similar to the other parts of me that had been perfectly crafted for university, “Yes, of course. With my ex, only once.” Looking back, I’m not annoyed I lied but rather the fact I felt I had to lie. Was the truth really so awful?

I’m not going to tell you my virginity story, because truthfully, don’t we have a billion of them? What is considered losing my innocence and purity? Should I have held onto my virginity more tightly?

I read Losing It by Sophia Smith Galer, and this sentence struck me, “In English [language], virginity is lost or taken for one time use - a perishable good” she argues that virginity isn’t as simple as that, and growing up with the conception that it’s not a big deal is a massive privilege. ‘Losing it’ means different things to different people.

The truth is, when I did lose it, I felt unchanged, the only thing that had changed was the intimacy between me and my partner. So why was I so eager to say that I wasn’t a virgin in freshers? Now I can say that to me, virginity is a myth, it can be whatever you want it to be. Or it can be nothing to you, the world’s fixation has nothing to do with our bodies. There’s no age limit as to when you should lose your virginity, it’s all about personal preference, so it’s time to vanquish this myth and butt out of people’s business.