So, you’re a virgin.

Or, you’re not.

Either way, has someone ever told you that it’s a “big deal”? That they can’t believe that you’re still a virgin. They can’t believe you lost it so young. They can’t believe you lost it with that person. They can’t believe you didn’tlose it with that person. They aren’t sure your virginity really counts, given what you told them about it when you were drunk. Given what they know from that person you were seeing, they don’t believe you’ve really had sex.

For something that seems so personal, people seem to have a lot of opinions about your virginity. It can be really hard to sort through what you want and what matters to you, as opposed to what other people expect.

It used to be that a woman—without an education, a job or the right to vote or own property—had little else besides her virginity that she could use to advance her place in the world. To a woman, virginity was something to hold onto tightly while a man, on the other hand, could be expected to “sow his wild oats” before he got married. Even today promiscuity is often expected of men and considered poor taste in women. But we live in a different time now, a time where sexuality is personal. It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) determine how far one goes in life. It can be as important or as unimportant as you want.

That idea used to sound strange to me:  society’s outdated value judgments aside, your virginity is supposed to be a big deal. It’s shackles. It’s the first time. It’s your most precious gift. Or whatever. Those are things that I’ve been told my whole life.

But it’s not true. Or maybe it is. That’s the great secret: we all get to decide. It took me awhile to realize virginity was just a social construct. It’s like the first time you do anything new—the first time you kiss someone, the first time your parents leave you home alone, the first time you ride a bike. But if it’s important to you, if it’s a moment that means something to you, then it means something. No one gets to tell you that it doesn’t.

As with most things, there is a flip side to that: virginity doesn’t have to mean anything either. It can be the first time you try something new, it can be with someone you’ve just met, or it can be with someone you’ve known forever. You can be in love, or “like,” or you don’t have to be. It can be on the fifth date, or your wedding night, or the first time you meet. You can wait until you’re 30 or 40 years old, or you can have sex for the first time at 18. Or you don’t ever have to have sex at all.

That’s right—you don’t ever have to have sex at all. You can have sex every day. You can have sex with girls; you can have sex with guys. You can have sex with people who don’t fit into society’s gender binary. You can define your sexuality or you don’t have to.

Sometimes, you’re going to struggle with it, and that has to be okay too. It takes serious mental effort to get through our socialized concepts. In spite of everything I’ve said to you here, things that I truly believe, I still struggle with it regularly. Because the social construct doesn’t go away and people asking about it doesn’t go away. Things are going to make you call into question your choices and people are going to try and force you to defend them. You may feel uncertain about what you’ve done or whom you’ve done it with. You may feel that you’re not as experienced as your friends or that you’ve given things away too easily.

Virginity is subjective. It’s socially constructed and it’s extremely personal. The person with whom you choose to have or not have sex, how old you are, when or where—none of that matters as long as you are honest with yourself about what you want. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true! In this, as in all aspects of life, the best thing that you can do is be good to yourself. Be honest. Be loud. And know that whatever you decide is okay, as long as you decide it. No one has any right to tell you what virginity means to you.

So, remember: your virginity is your business. Consent is sexy. If it’s not sexy and enthusiastic, then it wasn’t consent. And no matter who you are, no matter what gender or sexual orientation you are, you get to define sex for yourself—the first time, and every single time after that.

Photo by Sara Slattery