Reframing Virginity: A Sociological Construct, Not a Biological Fact

A statement made by sex educator Elizabeth Adewale recently sent Nigerian Twitter into a frenzy. Her tweet read, “Virginity is a social construct and should not hold any value”. While this statement pointed no finger to a particular gender, the responses were overwhelmingly gendered and seemed to demand virginity and purity from women, thereby institutionalizing virginity as inherently female.  

A member of the mob even asked the question “Something you were born with is a social construct?”, a retort rooted in a biological misunderstanding of virginity. Virginity isn’t a physical trait. It is a social concept used to define the state of never having had sexual intercourse. The confidence behind this misconception stems from many myths about the hymen that has been paraded around society as facts. The hymen, also known misogynistically as the “virgin seal”, is a “thin fold of mucous membrane situated at the orifice of the vagina’. It is not a covering because if it covers the vagina, menstruation would be impossible. 

Nina Brochmann & Ellen Støkken Dahl, authors of the book The Wonder Down Under (Gleden med skjeden) likened the shape of the hymen to a doughnut or a halfmoon with a large central hole though its appearance varies. “Sometimes hymens can have fringes, it can have several holes, or it can consist of lobes. In other words, hymens naturally vary a lot in looks” they explain in their 2017 TEDx Talk; The Virginity Fraud. 

Hymens are also elastic; they can stretch without sustaining damage. For other women, it might tear during intercourse, while in others, it can be affected by a simple activity such as running.  Some women are even born without a hymen. It is because of this natural variation that so-called “virginity checks” are medically unreliable  and implausible. A study carried out on 36 pregnant teenage girls who were examined for penetration (virgin testing) found that medical professionals could confirm penetration in only two cases.. The result rules out virginity as a biological concept and shows the futility of using physical examination to determine sexual history. It is a sociological concept as sex itself is sociological. While sex involves physical and biological elements, the act is fundamentally a social activity.

The topic of virginity has existed for decades. In early societies when inheritance laws were prominent –and women were not accredited selfhood or individuality but seen as properties to be passed down from father to husband—high value was placed on virgin women. Inheritance laws stated that husbands be sure that the women bore their biological sons as wealth and the transfer of property relied on the succession of direct blood lineage. Thus, women were encouraged to stay chaste until they were married and to remain completely faithful and subservient to their husbands. 

Religion also helped foster the gospel of virginity. A major fixture of the catholic church is the Virgin Mary who is revered by Catholics. Her role as the virgin woman who bore Jesus, the Son of God, may have helped entrench the idea of women as purity emblems.

In discussing virginity and purity, the underlying issue becomes evident when it is apparent that  only women are saddled with the responsibility of upholding this morality. “Virginity is not a social construct, rather it is a woman’s pride, it is proof of her innocence, her modesty, decency, graciousness, beauty and worth” surmises a Twitter user. When confronted about male virginity, the user replied “Men don’t view their worth from the standpoint of sexual chastity. In fact, in ancient civilizations like the Roman Empire, men were accorded honor for their assertiveness, sexual experience & dominance”. Unfortunately, this still holds true even in present times. Men are celebrated for their sexual encounters; it is a beacon of their masculinity. However, women are chastised for it because it soils their femininity. 

Virginity and purity are one of the tools the patriarchy uses to separate “good women” from “bad women”. It utilizes it by punishing women who refuse to bend the knee.  At the core of virginity and purity discourses lies a cancerous need to police and control women’s bodies. Take for instance, South Africa’s now outlawed “Maiden Bursaries” which gave scholarships to women on the basis that they remained virgins. If they become sexually active, the scholarship is revoked. It stripped women of their autonomy and regarded their bodies as properties belonging to hypothetical husbands. Honor killings emphasize this belief as it targets women whose actions—actual or suspected—violate the honor of their families and this honor is stringed to their sexual purity. Within this context, surveillance is made justifiable. 

The idea of purity discourages female sexual curiosity and expression which flattens or worse,  erases their sexual desires. This is made apparent in the language men use in describing sex with women. This language is quite conquest-like. Phrases like “I don sample the babe”, “I knack am”, “I smashed her”, “I tapped that” are popular amongst men. These phrases do not acknowledge women as active participants in sex but frame them as passive while centering the male sexual experience. 

This victor-esque view of sex also sheds light on the ego trip that sex is for some men as broken down by this reddit user who responds to having a preference for virgins, “ I would get pleasure in a domineering way from being the person that ‘introduces’ them to sex. The reason I’d prefer a virgin is the same reason I’d prefer a younger woman, and that’s because as a man I want to be able to give them things they haven’t been given before among other things, and a virgin will never have had experiences with anyone yet so I get to be the one that does.” 

While virginity and purity can be a marker of sexual discipline, it is important that society recognizes women as sexual beings with innate sexual desires, and give room for them to exercise their bodily autonomy. We must resist narratives that tie women’s worth to their sexual histories. If a man cannot be “ran through” neither can a woman because as the Orange prize novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said in her book , Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions: “If you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women.”