By Julia Healy, Contributor
CW: Mentions sexual violence
Sex and I have a fraught relationship with one another. As a girl growing up as a lesbian in a fairly conservative religious environment, my parents, teachers and peers frequently insinuated that queer attraction, particularly attraction between women, was attention-seeking and a phase. This stereotype made me constantly doubt my feelings and kept me securely in the closet during my high school years. But, once I left home and entered the secular world of university, I was determined to come out.
In first year, I began to feel like I had missed out on a lot of romantic experiences by remaining closeted for so long. While I hadn’t even tried flirting with a girl, my 2SLGBTQ+ friends would tell stories about their past high school flings and recent hook-ups at parties. One story that that I would hear and unfortunately internalize starred straight girls who had supposedly just wanted to “experiment,” and had left my queer friends feeling heartbroken and used.
Being told that my sexuality was “just a phase” by people back home and by society at large was enough to make me doubt myself. Having this sentiment seemingly confirmed by the experiences of fellow members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community was terrifying. I internalized the idea that I could be misunderstanding my feelings, and that I was just constructing these attractions to seek attention, or approval from my 2SLGBTQ+ peers. I became fixated on the need to validate my identity and thought that having sex with a woman was the only way to settle the nagging fears inside my head.
I became fixated on the need to validate my identity and thought that having sex with a woman was the only way to settle the nagging fears inside my head.
Unfortunately, as an awkward first year who had never even kissed anyone, this plan was easier said than done. I worried that I would somehow mess up and embarrass myself, or, even worse, that I would realize I was straight all along. This idea made me so anxious, I didn’t even try to date. First and second year went by without a single a kiss to show for it.
In the summer of second year, my sexual life completely shifted. After just one lacklustre date with very little chemistry, I went back to a girl’s apartment and stayed the night. She didn’t know that I had experienced my first kiss and had lost my virginity within minutes of each other that night, and she didn’t seem to care about my nervousness. Although, in hindsight, I recognize that this encounter was not very healthy, I felt immense relief at the time that my attraction to women was not a figment of my imagination.
Despite this experience, I still hadn’t fully dispelled the negative stereotype about seeking attention, or the fear of falling behind on sexual experiences, from my brain. I started to seek out sexual encounters to validate not just my identity, but also my desirability and my self worth. The fears that I held onto have led me into some unsafe situations. I’ve rushed into sex with people before I was ready, to prove that I am, in fact, a lesbian. I’ve had sex with people before talking about STI status because I didn’t want them to feel like I was stalling out of disinterest, or for them to lose interest in me. I’ve never been able to properly communicate not being in the mood for sex, wanting to slow down or wanting to stop, even with partners who I knew would have respected my boundaries. I’ve had people hurt me during sex and, perhaps most damaging of all, I have frequently verbally consented to situations while my brain screamed at me to run away.
My lack of sexual experience once seemed like nothing but an obstacle between myself and the formation of a healthy queer relationship with a loving partner. However, after ignoring my own boundaries for so long, I feel like I’m farther from forming whatever a “healthy relationship” is than ever before.
My lack of sexual experience once seemed like nothing but an obstacle between myself and the formation of a healthy queer relationship with a loving partner. However, after ignoring my own boundaries for so long, I feel like I’m farther from forming whatever a “healthy relationship” is than ever before.
The unhealthy attitudes that I have developed towards sex started with the desire to not only validate my lesbian identity for myself, but to have that identity recognized by other queer women. My conservative upbringing started my self-doubt, but it was ultimately the emphasis placed upon sexual experience and the suspicion surrounding virginity within my own community that pushed me to seek validation through sex. I am only beginning to unlearn my unhealthy attitudes towards sex and to reconcile with my identity on my own terms.
At the intersection of sexism and homophobia, queer women face a lot of pressure from society to perform our sexuality in specific ways, often for the gratification of others. Rather than reproducing these pressures within our spaces, we as queer women should uplift one another, no matter where on our sexual journeys we happen to be.
This article is part of our Sex and the Steel City, our annual sex-positive issue. Click here to read more content from the special issue.
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Anonymous*
Staff Reporter
Have you ever asked someone if they’re a virgin?
I have, and in hindsight, I have a really hard time justifying why. Why did I feel the need to know if someone identified as a “virgin”? Why was this essential information necessary to help carry me forward in my daily life? Why did I care?
The short answer is that I didn’t. The long answer is that I didn’t know I didn’t care. I thought I cared. I thought the notion of virginity was legitimate and important and a great indicator of someone’s sexual experience (because you should definitely inquire about that)!
Different people have differing opinions around virginity, whether being a virgin is a good thing or a bad thing, a respectable thing or an immoral thing, a choice or a responsibility. The majority of people have some sort of opinion about virginity even if that opinion is “I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
The notion of virginity is often talked about in social circles, most of the time in extremely problematic ways. Even the people that “don’t care” are contributing to the larger problem that the notion of virginity has created with their indifference.
Virginity is an outdated concept rooted in myths and sexism and heteronormativity. It has perpetuated a culture of inequality and exclusivity that we’re trying to leave behind.
Somewhere along the way, virginity became a concept used to shame girls for their sexual lives. It implied that having sex was a life-changing experience, a loss of innocence and purity. The concept has contributed to centuries of oppression against women and has been used to justify innumerable instances of violence. It has perpetuated the idea that women’s bodies aren’t their own and has been used to constantly police them.
It’s essential to address the main myth associated with virginity for people assigned female at birth. Unfortunately for the famous euphemism, there ain’t no cherry to pop. Vaginal penetration doesn’t fully tear the hymen as this deceptive phrase would lead you to believe. Yes, you’ve been deceived your whole life, but that’s okay. Take comfort in the fact that this isn’t the only thing our society has lied to you about. Hymens are as diverse as people – they come in different thicknesses and levels of elasticity, as well as different sizes of openings. Sometimes vaginal penetration just makes the opening a little bigger and sometimes it doesn’t. The idea that we can physically tell whether someone is a virgin by examining them physically is, therefore, anatomically inaccurate.
Anatomy aside though, as the concept of virginity was sustained by these false facts and a deeply engrained misogyny in a patriarchal society, it is now serving to sustain these outdates ideas even though our society’s moral progress is to a better place (for the most part). We’re becoming more accepting of queer communities – or, at the very least, we tolerate them – and we try to create spaces where people who have been oppressed feel safer.
Virginity is a concept that very blatantly promotes the very opposite of that. Discussions around queer sexuality have complicated our definitions of sex, exposing some undeniable flaws with our notion of virginity. Queer people might not have sex or even think of sex the way a heterosexual, gender-conforming couple does. A queer person might not identify a “virgin,” but in a heteronormative context, they would be. These invalidations of sexual experiences can be harmful and pose serious threats to our ultimate goal of universal inclusivity. It can be difficult for queer people to even know how to categorize themselves in the first place, creating unnecessary confusion around a concept with a history of oppression.
Virginity places too much importance on having or lacking a sexual life. It pushes some people to the outside and it oppresses others inside. It creates problematic links between virginity and masculinity, or virginity and gender inequity.
The notion of virginity promotes values of a society that our society no longer aims to resemble. It is clinging on to an oppressive past, to lack of sex positivity and education, and it’s about time we left it behind.
*Name has been removed on request.
