Pt. 1 of Your Virginity as an aspect of Rape Culture

"When you really think about it the whole hetero-normative [1] dialogue around young women’s sexual lives is couched in the language of monetary transactions: you lose your virginity the way you lose money when the market crashes. You save yourself for marriage the way you might hoard pennies and dimes to chip away at your college tuition. Your virginity is a gift for your future husband.

All of this language implies that your worth is between your legs - and it’s worth a lot, it’s worth everything. If you don’t have it then you’re not worth taking home. “The type of girls that would sleep with you in a heartbeat aren't the type of girls i’d want to take home anyway.” (And note that verb - “take.”)

But nowhere in any of this is there talk of this thing between your legs being valuable to you. You can save, and save, and save, and finally spend, and you’ve either given a man a gift or you've lost everything.

When you save up, or when you give something away, don’t you get something in return? Or are you just there to have a gift taken from you?

When you have sex for the first time - consensually, on your own terms - the fact is that you don’t lose anything. You are not less than you were the night before. If anything, you've gained something, a new experience, deeper understanding of yourself and of another person. You are not tarnished and you are not impure. You are the same person you always were."

-via lalondes



[Hetero-normativity refers to  the body of lifestyle norms that hold that people fall into distinct and complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles in life. It presumes that heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation or only norm, and states that sexual and marital relations are most (or only) fitting between people of opposite sexes. Consequently, a "heteronormative" view is one that involves alignment of biological sex, sexuality, gender identity, and gender roles (e.g feminine women and masculine men). Heteronormativity is linked to heterosexism and homophobia. Heteronormative views denotes or relates to a world view that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation.]