I don’t believe in virginity.  I mean, conceptually, I understand what it means–untouched, pure, unadulterated, unspoiled.  In women it’s historically been tied to the presence of a hymen.  In dudes, it’s “have you been inside a woman’s vagina, Y/N?” On the surface, virginity is a fairly uncomplicated thing, but the moment you scratch that surface, you start to uncover . . . stuff. Problematic stuff.

Girls often break their hymens doing innocuous things.  Sports in particular can deflower, but physical strain doesn’t have to be present for that little barrier to go the way of the dodo.  If the girl’s hymen is gone, is she still a virgin?
Penetration is confusing.  Does it specifically mean penis into vagina?  If so, does that mean manual stimulation with fingers or other objects doesn’t count?
What’s the deal with gay sex?  For above reasons of Other Things Inside in the case of lesbian sex, but if your definition of sex is penis in vagina, well, that doesn’t happen during any gay sex at all so can you go ahead and mess around with your own gender and still come out smelling like a Big Virginal Rose?
Are you still a virgin if no one’s penetrated you but you gave or received head?  In some ways putting someone’s genitals in your mouth is as intimate (arguably moreso) than intercourse itself?  So do you get to wear your purity ring if you’re offering beaners in the gym parking lot?

QUESTIONS!  I HAVE THEM!

Long has a woman’s value been tied to her purity.  In the days of dowry, if you weren’t untouched when you went to the marriage bed, you could be (and often would be) cast aside–either that or your actual dollar value would drop.  Dad got fifty less sheep because Tammy gave it up to the stablehand.  No hymen?  You’re out (even though these were the days of horseback riding and if anything is going to shatter a flimsy piece of skin it’d be repeated jostling.)  The bottom line was, if there was any question that the man marrying you couldn’t be the one to stake his genetic claim by being the only penis inside of you, well .  . . toss that chick, get another, preferably younger so there’s less chance for muddying the waters.  It didn’t matter that he had forty bastards and enough wang stank to level Europe.  SHE had to be his and his alone. Because she was, effectively, property.  His sex property.

Fun stuff, huh?

For about a trillion reasons I don’t have time to list and you don’t want to read, I’m not down with that perception.  When I see PURITY PURITY PURITY, I flinch because it hearkens back to a time when girls were deemed trash for their sexual choices.  Women were berated, beaten, and sometimes killed over The Virginity Unicorn, and in some parts of the world, still are.

“You save it for your husband because of _______ reason.”

Subtext:  you save it for the dude that owns you.

HEY WORLD, THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO ARE CALLING AND THEY WANT THEIR SEXUAL MORALITY BACK.

Look, I fully acknowledge that some teenagers are going to pick purity (or some definition of purity, whether that’s just no vaginal sex or no oral sex or manual stimulation at all.)  They aren’t ready, they don’t feel a desire to explore their bodies or sex, they just aren’t into the scene, it’s a religious choice.  All the power to those teenagers for making those choices.  I simply hope they didn’t make those choices because some adult came in and told them they were weird or dirty or freakish for WANTING it, and I fear in a lot of cases, that’s exactly what happened.  “I don’t want my kid answering the call of their completely normal bodies, so I’ll just go ahead and make them feel bad about it and punish them when they disobey.”

The problem with that approach is that the kids are surrounded by other kids who are having sex, and while parents would like to pretend they control their children twenty four hours a day, they don’t.  A lot of other things are at play.  Peer pressure for one, hormones for two, and a perception of what romantic couples do for three.  Don’t underestimate curiosity and a love of all things that feel good either.  ALL of these things are working against the parent shaming their kid for wanting to do the nasty.  So what happens?  The kid often does it anyway but now feels compelled to hide it.  A dialogue that could have covered things like pregnancy, disease, verbal consent, and respecting your body and your partner is stymied because your kid fears talking to you about it.  So they go ahead and do it without the proper protection and without the emotional support of their parents.  Newsflash!  That’s when misinformation happens!  “Joan will give head but not go all the way so she’s fine now?”  You can still get herpes from oral, Joan, sorry about the lifelong sores.  Herpes is the gift that keeps on giving!

I wrote THE AWESOME because I wanted to approach sex as a shame-free rite of passage for a female protagonist. Janice talks to Maggie openly about sex, about the complications of sex, and about the need to respect yourself and your body.  She talks about things like pregnancy.  She talks about condoms and sexually transmitted diseases.  Maggie, meanwhile, experiences sex and all of its emotional pitfalls, because having sex is overwhelming sometimes, especially when you’re new at it.  Maggie’s afraid and curious and excited all at once, and that’s a lot for an adult to process, never mind a teenager.  Lucky for Maggie, she doesn’t have a disapproving shadow to contend with like so many other teenagers do.  The added slant of parental/social shame can and does heap onto a pile of already convoluted feelings regarding basic human anatomy.

Thanks for the hangups, Mom and Dad!  You’re peaches!

So yes.  I wrote a book that places the importance of virginity far below self respect.  I wrote a sex positive teen novel that doesn’t make a girl’s purity all that damned important in the vast scheme of things.  THE AWESOME treats virginity as a magical thing (vampires can smell purity) because I don’t buy into the myth of virginity.  I don’t see untouched flesh as a marker of a person’s worth.  I put far more stock in self-love and intelligent choices for the body.  If that means I wrote a problematic teen novel?  So be it. I wrote a problematic teen novel.  I’m okay with that.  I stand by the choice and hope other do, too.