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Losing the V-plates

Virginity! It’s what Australia’s talking about right now – and whether teens (read: teen girls) should regard it as a “gift” to give away lightly. Writes Alexandra Adornetto (a 17-year-old virgin whose pro-virginity opinion piece is accompanied, ironically, by a somewhat come-hither photograph):

My recommendation would be to wait [to have sex]. Wait for the right moment, the right person and the right situation. Becoming sexually active is not to be entered into lightly. I have seen too many girls damaged by a decision that was not carefully considered.

Assuming you’re safe and responsible, is sex itself actually what’s damaging? I reckon it’s certain attitudes to sex that are damaging, not the act itself. For starters, virginity’s not a “gift”. Blergh. Sex isn’t something you give. It’s something you have. This is an important distinction, because “sex = gift” implies an imbalance in the sex, and/or that you’re losing something of yourself if you “give” it away. (Not to mention that “sex = gift” typically translates to “gift given by women, who must guard their sexuality and moral fortitude, to men, who have no impulse control and demand/need sex always”. Double blergh.)

My advice to teens: have sex, or don’t, but don’t reduce your identity to sex. You are more than someone who has or hasn’t done it. Believing otherwise leads to trouble – if your self-image is rooted (no pun intended) in whether you’ve lost your virginity, of course you’ll feel you’ve lost something if you’ve “given” it away.

I actually agree with the fundamental proposal of Adornetto1 and Tony Abbott, the Catholic Australian politician whose comments kicked off this whole virginity brouhaha: Teens shouldn’t have sex willy-nilly (again, no pun intended). It’s not something to rush into.

But at the same time, sex isn’t that big a deal. You’re still the same person after you lose your virginity. So don’t stigmatise it. And you know what? At some point you’ll probably Do It with someone you’ll wish you hadn’t. But this won’t make you a bad, immoral skank. It won’t somehow spoil you.

Be responsible. Be safe. Think it through.

  1. I disagree, though, that there are teens who would actually use the phrase “Did you sex him?” [↩]

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Op-ed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Kira

    Thanks for that. It’s really nice to be told that because you’ve not based your life around hush-hushing sex (shush! Oh! Such a taboo! Aren’t I naughty, being a woman and talking about SEX! Oh, my!) and ZOMG had ess-ee-ecks out of perfect, wonderful, 1-in-3-divorce-rate marriage that you have no self respect. Thanks for that. Thanks for pushing your views on others and losing the respect of thousands by stating that you will ‘give yourself’ to a man. Lovely! According to you, your body now belongs to someone else. Sorry, darling, but that’s not how it works. Humans are not lobsters. They do not typically mate for life. It’s a biological fact. In fact, it’s more than that. It’s the fact that people are allowed to do what they want with their bodies and therefore sleep with who they want to. It’s the fact that we do not live in the fifties any more, and are not expected to follow backward, pointless social rules that closet those who are not afraid of their sexuality.
    Hey, I could talk to you about this all night, but really, there are things I’d rather be doing, like watching paint dry. Let me just say that your argument reminds me of an informative video I once watched called “Men like tight vaginas.” I would love to read your thoughts on both homosexuality and divorce. Tell me; if two virginal men are in true, deep love with each other, should they stay virgins forever? Considering that the western world is pretty much still as bigoted as it always was, and certain people who are in love are not allowed to be married, how are they supposed to express the ULTIMATE act of love and self-respect if they cannot enter wedlock? How do these people fit in to your cut-and-dry view of sex and virginity? Tell me that!Or, you know, maybe you’re just as ignorant in that area as you are in this one. What a waste.All of this, ergo: Your argument is invalid.