Social Construction Of Virginity

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Virgin and virginity are terms applied to both men and women who have not yet had sex. It also represents an idea of purity, particularly with girls. The concept of having something special or precious that you give away or lose when you have sex is a very damaging social construction. It is used to scare and shame girls, and makes them fear their own desires and sexual beliefs. This idea that penis and vagina sex have some kind of special meaning or power over us seems strange. What if you both have the same sex organs, or what if you do everything but normal intercourse? Does that still make you a “virgin”?

The concept of virgins started in the neolithic era when men controlled and owned everything, including their women. Virginity started
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Slut shaming is society wide problem of both genders putting down women for expressing their sexuality in a way that we don’t like or approve of. ‘Slut’ is a word used to silence and attack women. There’s many ways sluts are described, as women who have a lot of or too much sex, they don’t respect themselves, they are stupid “it takes logic to decide to be with one person”. There are a lot of myths and excuses as to why sluts are deemed to have a different status. They are gross, their vaginas are stretched, they have a lot of diseases, they are more likely to cheat, and so on. These of course are ridiculous. Just because a girl decides to have sex or have sex with multiple partners doesn’t make her any less smart or respectable than any other girl. Sexuality is not tied to self respect or worth. For women casual sex still carries a stigma. Several studies have proved that women are just a likely as men to want one night stands, but the fear of judgement causes them to lose interest. One researcher, Terri Conley, wrote a paper about this issue, and set up 4 experiments at her university. In the first one 195 volunteers read a story about one student asking another to have sex, and the second student saying yes. Half of the volunteers’ stories named the second person as Mark, the other half read it as Lisa. They were then given a questionnaire about their perceptions. Lisa was determined as more promiscuous, less intelligent, less competent, and more risky than Mark. In the second experiment 174 people were put in the same situation as the story. The women were less likely to agree because they percieved they would be evaluated more negatively than men. Two more experiments supported this, one from an online questionnaire and the other from 2059 people’s experiences. Men are given more sexual freedom to engage in sexual activity than women. They are often even

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