Virginity as the bane of the female existence

“Did you know that when I married your mother, she was a virgin?”  So, I was walking past my t.v. and I heard this and had to do a double take. What? Now I wasn’t surprised at this because I think virgins are needles in a haystack or anything absurd like that. I had to do a double take because I’m like how can you judge the quality of an individual by whether or not they have a hymen. Really! I think what really got me was the image of a woman nodding in her head in agreement of this illusion of self-worth. Bonjour a tous, welcome to the fucked up reality in which we exist. Now I have got a couple issues with the aforementioned situation, firstly how backward and juvenile it is to judge an individual based on whether or not they have a hymen, and why this concept of virginity is the bane of the female existence. I will try not to digress too much. Anyways back to the issue.

How can you? and what right do you have to judge a woman’s character based on whether or not she has a hymen. Really, well for those of you that didn’t really listen in biology class a hymen is that little piece of skin, or whatever, that rips when a women is “disvirgined,” (I actually don’t agree with the use of the word disvirgined because it tends to denote that something has been lost)

 I think I would be more okay with it if it was used in the same way on both sides or carried the same weight. Anyways, yeah so you have sex for the first time, you lose that little skin and then you are on your way to sexual deviancy! Voila! So easy.  Now my problem with this is, how can you tell if I am a good person, or even a serial killer who will scoop your eyes out, by whether or not I have a hymen; I know very sexual virgins and very prude non virgins. I know girls that only have anal, because they want to “protect their virginity,” or girls that would do anything but have vaginal sex because “they are keeping it for their husbands.”  Really? And I am not saying there is anything wrong with being sexually expressive, apart from the possibility that you will burn in hell, along with those judging you #party! I just don’t understand why being a virgin is given so much power in our society. Because I have found that a nice amount of people, in this fun and highly backward country of Nigeria feel the need to do this to a lot of women. They assume that once a woman “loses” her virginity, she is somehow less clean or pure; and for me, if that is what you want to believe that could be okay, but it has to apply to both sexes. We exist in a world where it is okay for a guy to be sexually expressive but it is a no-no for a woman. A guy I was dating once said in the most chauvinistic air possible, that “if a key opens many locks, it is a master key and if a lock gets opened by many keys it is a bad lock.” This was the point I really started to doubt the relationship. Why is my vagina a lock? And do you really think your penis is a key? It was absurd.

I’m digressing, anyhoo…My problem is, what gives a man the right to tell me or any other women whether or not we are clean. Especially if that man is one of those who probably changes girls like he changes his boxers. And why do we as women let them perpetuate that bullshit. And this, ladies and gentlemen brings me to the second point.

Virginity as the bane of the female existence. Imagine if there was no such this as being a virgin, or at least there was no way to know. That’d be weird right, how would you be able to tell if someone was a slut or a pure untouched flower. Well I dunno, unfortunately that is not the world we live in. The problem with virginity is not so much that it exists; it is that we as women give it so much power, and it is that power that the men use against us. That is why you see people with an air of arrogance proclaim “ I am still a virgin,” at that point I usually want to be like whoopty-do you did not have sex, do you want a medal or a high-five? Yes, we live in an overly sexualized world, but really I don’t think it is that big of a deal. And because we as women constantly push this message that our virgin status somehow supersedes who are, men the dogs that they are, feel that need to capitalize on this.

And we let them, because for some of us it is a sense of pride, a pride that we have grown up with, a pride that is closely tied to who we are as individuals and we don’t want to let the cursed privilege free. We want to hold on to it for as long as we can benefit from it. So while we are still virgins we smile when people complement our strength and self-preservation and once we lose that skin, we scream and cry out injustice about the thing we once held so dear. So in the end we build ourselves up to be torn down, and then we complain.