The concept of virginity is a very loaded issue in American culture. If a woman loses hers when she’s too young she can be slut-shamed. If a man remains a virgin for too long, he can be bullied for not being manly enough. There is also a whole slew of religious mind games associated with virginity that can give people some serious psychological problems associated with sex.
Losing one’s virginity has also been blown up way beyond proportion. It’s often believed that it’s a magical experience—it’s usually not. Or that after having sex for the first time people can really start to enjoy living life—not the case. What if we just dropped all of the stigmas surrounding virginity and instead, replaced them with healthy attitudes toward sex and relationships?
Writer Cayce LaCorte is going viral on TikTok for the simple way she’s taught her five daughters to think about virginity: They don’t have to.
Lessons in “purity’ unfortunately start very young for many girls. Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash
LaCorte shared her parenting ideas on TikTok in response to mom-influencer Nevada Shareef’s question: “Name something about the way you raised your kids that people think is weird but you think is healthy.”
“I’m gonna get a lot of shit for this, but what are you gonna do?” she said in the video. “I’m raising my five daughters to believe that there is no such thing as virginity.”
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When it comes to explaining the “why,” LaCorte had some extremely strong words on the matter.
“It is a patriarchal concept used to control women and serves no purpose other than making women feel bad about ourselves,” she explained. “Just because some guy randomly sticks his penis in you at some point in your life, it does not change your worth. It does not change who you are. It doesn’t do anything other than it happened.”
LaCorte isn’t wrong. Many cultures place a high value on virginity, almost always on female virginity, and the concept is heavily linked with male-ownership and tracking male-lineage. In the middle ages, it was widely believed that if a man had sex with a woman, that he “owned” her and any man shown to have married a “false virgin” was entitled to compensation. The methods for determining and proving virginity were barbaric and akin to the Salem witch trials. Safe to say, there wasn’t a lot of due process available for women then!
The mom also responded to those who may criticize her for encouraging promiscuity.
“Sex is important. It’s a big deal; it should always be a big deal. It has nothing to do with your first time. It’s just ridiculous. The whole concept is ridiculous,” the video explained. We can teach our kids to value sex and be extremely careful about who they share physical intimacy without tying in outdated ideas of purity, or that something will be “lost” after they engage in sex.
You don’t “lose” anything when you have sex for the first time. Giphy
LaCorte also believes that sex shouldn’t be so closely associated with one’s moral character. In other words, so what if someone is promiscuous? Does having a lot of sexual partners make you a bad person? Again, it’s a double-standard applied far more heavily to girls. Men who have lots of sex are revered for it.
“I’m raising them to be good people and have solid foundations and make their own choices and make intelligent choices. Not because some book says not to,” she concluded the video.
The video made a lot of people realize that virginity is so ingrained in our society that the concept is rarely questioned.
“I never really thought about this to be honest,” one commenter wrote. “I will absolutely be adopting this!! Thank you for sharing.”
“I have 2 girls, and I think this is how I will teach them when they are older. This would have made me feel more self worth when I was younger,” Samantha wrote.
Women are judged for losing their virginity; men are mocked for failing to do so. Giphy
LaCorte’s comments about women and virginity need to be heard. But there should also be more discussion around how men also fight the stigma associated with virginity.
Another user added, “The boys need to hear this too – we need to change the conversation and misconception,” making the astute point that boys are mocked for not having sex, or for not having enough of it. For kids all of sexes and genders, we need to remove the idea that being a virgin, or not, has any sort of weight on your value as a human being.
There’s an unwritten law that says men must lose their virginity by the age of 18 or by at least 21 or that somehow they are less of a man. For men that are virgins into their 20s, “Sex goes from being something to be enjoyed to a giant monolith of titanic proportions that casts a shadow over everything they do and who they are,” dating coach Harris O’Malley writes.
Sex is a tricky issue that everyone should be able to approach in their own way, at their own time. It’s great that LaCorte’s video has gone viral for illustrating the fact that virginity is just another obstacle on the road to sexual maturity that shouldn’t factor into whether we decide to have sex or not.
This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.