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Part 2- The Myth of Virginity, or Not<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
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“vir\u00b7ginity is the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Welcome to part 2 in the four-part series we are calling,\u00a0<\/span>“What’s sex got to do with her? Exploring deeper elements of female sexuality among Christians”.<\/span><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0In this post, we shall uncover the myth or truth about the notion of “virginity.”\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

In my young girl years, there happened to be a club in my lovely city. The club was called “THE VIRGINS’ CLUB.” It was founded by my childhood best friend’s mother. It was an enjoyable moment in my life as every Sunday evening, I hung out with my friends from school and met other girls my age. That was my ulterior motive for joining the club. Oh, and the occasional parties and field trips made it even more enticing. But the real purpose of the club was, as you can deduce from the name, to educate teen girls about sex and abstinence. That was the first time in my life; I vividly recall having a ‘comprehensive’ understanding of the word ‘virgin.’ At the club, we were taught about STIs, teenage pregnancy and others. One thing heard time and over again was the phrase “Do not lose your virginity.”<\/span><\/p>\n

You see, I have always been an analytical and curious person, so I recall, even as a young girl, how the phrase “do not lose your virginity” sounded wrong and problematic to me. But hey, who to ask or what questions to even ask. We were constantly admonished not to “lose our virginity” for various reasons such as:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The boy wins in that situation<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. You have no more value or less value as a girl<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. You can’t undo it, and once it’s done, it is done.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But the problem lies within the language “losing.” Losing means\u00a0<\/span>to be defeated, to fail to win, fail to keep, something that has been taken away and cannot be recovered”.\u00a0<\/span><\/em>In essence, what is communicated is that once you have sexual intercourse, you have lost something that cannot be retrieved or something has been stripped away from you. I agree that something is indeed stripped away from you, and that is your innocence. Outside of that, you have not lost your value, your dignity or worth as a woman. Being told from childhood that “do not lose your virginity” screams once you have any sexual encounter, you cannot recover from that, which is not the whole truth. The other part of this language is that once you “lose your virginity,” some irreparable damage has been done to you. As such, the tale of policing the sexuality of women is as long as time. \"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

    The whole notion of “Virginity” is presented to the woman, in this context, the single Christian woman as a measure of her sexual purity. Virginity is, for some reason is tied to her value and dignity as a woman. The science behind the virginity of a woman, or the physical marker for virginity, is the presence of the hymen. <\/span><\/p>\n

    Misinformation and circulated myths about the perceived relationship between the hymen and a woman’s virginity can be incredibly harmful to women. Research had misinformed that the presence of the hymen determines a woman’s sexual purity. My recollection of how the hymen was explained to me as a young girl was that it was an elastic membrane that every girl had. And that elastic membrane can only be breached if there is penetrative sex. Hence, many cultures stuck to the examination of the hymen as proof of a girl’s virginity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    However, recent research has offered a more scientific basis as to why the hymen cannot be relied on as a physical maker on a woman’s virginity and why equating the virginity of a woman to the presence of the hymen is untrue and harmful. So, what is the hymen?<\/span><\/p>\n

    In simple, non-medical terms, the hymen is a remnant tissue just inside the vaginal opening that is leftover from the formation of the vagina during embryonic development. A tiny amount of excess tissue in a crescent-shaped or ring-like structure around the margin of the vaginal entrance is the most typical symptom. Many people are startled to hear that the hymen serves no medicinal or physiological function. For some women, there is almost no tissue at all. Others believe it is a membrane that covers the vaginal opening. That situation is uncommon, and it can interfere with sex or tampon use, but it can be surgically removed. The most common misconception about the hymen is that it is “intact” until it is broken during vaginal penetration, at which point it becomes a physical marker of virginity. Though many women do experience a small amount of bleeding from hymenal tearing during their first intercourse, this is by no means a universal experience, as many women have very little tissue there, to begin with.<\/span><\/p>\n

    With the misconception on the relationship between the hymen and the virginity of a woman established, let’s talk about the topic of today’s discussion, is virginity a myth or not? Below, I discuss 3 myths associated with the virginity of the woman. \"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n