My first time having sex was with my boyfriend, and I was expecting to bleed a lot. From my mother and other sources I had looked up, I had been taught that when you lose your virginity as a woman, your hymen (a thin tissue that covers the vaginal opening) would break and you’d consequently bleed. However, the multiple towels that I placed on the bed underneath us ended up being completely unnecessary. Not only did I not bleed, but I also felt barely any pain or discomfort signifying that my hymen had ripped, which led me to believe I had tore it years ago.

I have a distinct memory from my childhood of riding a scooter around my daycare when I was about eight. I had been balancing on one leg until I inevitably fell. I remember that “down there” hurt more than my scraped hands and knees, and even bled a bit. Looking back, I’m quite certain that I tore my hymen then from falling on the scooter. But in a society where a woman’s virginity is thought to be physically indicated by if her hymen is intact, and whoever tears it open “takes” her virginity, wouldn’t that mean that the scooter that tore my hymen in turn took my virginity?

If this sounds ridiculous to you, it’s because it is. The very concept of virginity being connected to the hymen is pointless. To use the hymen as an indicator of sexual activity is to ignore the fact that many vagina-owners can tear them at any point in their lives from doing things completely unrelated to sex. A hymen can be torn by tampons, intense exercise, or, as in my case, riding a scooter or bike. Some women can even be born without a hymen or with very little tissue. This renders the whole idea of the hymen as a signifier of purity untrue.

This connection between the hymen and virginity is often used as a way to scare women into waiting to having sex until their marriage. If a woman didn’t bleed after penetration, her husband could determine she was not indeed a virgin. This ideology typically tied to religion is used to confine women to a specific set of expectations that may simply not be anatomically possible for them. Shaming women for having torn their hymen one way or another is intrinsically shaming women for not fulfilling the patriarchal standards society pushes on them.

Even the concept of virginity itself is something that has been manipulated by these standards. The loss of one’s virginity is often regarded as after the point when someone first engages in sexual intercourse (which is most commonly defined as penetration). While for some people, penetrative sex may be what they consider their “first time,” first sexual encounters can look very different for different individuals. Virginity cannot be tied to the event of first penetration because not everyone has sex that way, and not everyone would choose to identify a certain point in time as the “loss” of virginity. Thus, if we cannot connect virginity with a specific event or part of the human sexual experience because of everyone’s different interpretations of it, it’s fair to say that virginity is simply a social construct.

Dr. Jane Fleishman, a sexuality professional from Massachusetts, says that she is wary of even using the term virginity. She prefers to use the term “sexual debut,” so as to include all first sexual experiences. To limit sexual debuts to penetrative sex is to completely disregard the validity of oral sex or other sexual interactions. Dr. Fleishman says that “Historically, virginity has been a term that has been used… as a prescriptive term for heteronormative sex for centuries. For these reasons, I find the term difficult at best.” A singular definition of sexual debuts excludes many’s experiences.

When interviewing some Emerson students about their own definition of virginity and first sexual experiences, I was not surprised to find that everyone’s answer varied While some students defined virginity as their first act of intercourse, others argued that virginity doesn’t exist. One Emerson student, who would prefer to remain anonymous, didn’t consider her sexual debut having sex as when she lost her virginity. “I would say that my first time was with my ex-girlfriend… I did all the work and she finished, but I never did. So I wouldn’t count that as me losing my virginity,” she says. So, for some individuals, the loss of virginity is tied to the achievement of an orgasm. On the other hand, Orly Morris, a freshman who identifies as bisexual, says, “I don’t believe in virginity. I think it’s a social construct because sex is whatever you believe it is.” She also explains that she never really had a definite moment where she felt like she wasn’t a virgin anymore, but rather acknowledged that she’s shared an intimate experience with someone else.  

The toxicity of the concept of virginity can come into play when it is used to try to invalidate the sexual experiences of others. Another problem with virginity that Emerson freshman Isabel Degrandi brought up is that “There’s a whole concept of I’m either giving something to somebody or somebody’s taking something from me.” To refer to virginity in terms like “given,” “lost,” or “taken” suggests that it is a tangible thing that determines the wholeness of a person. Putting so much value in the idea of virginity allows others to try to reference it to exert power or discredit sexualities. 

First times in media can be highly romanticized, seeming like a life-changing moment. But this oftentimes not the case in real life; the level of significance associated with sexual debuts is different for everyone. The social construct of virginity imposes a number of expectations (hymen-related or otherwise) that we are expected to accept, but sexual experience is ultimately up to your own interpretation. Confining everyone to one universal definition of virginity is as ridiculous as saying a scooter took mine.