Chronicling the ongoing intersectional struggle to liberate women — inclusively defined as the legacy kind and transgender individuals — from the Patriarchy™, one microaggression at a time.
Virginity is a ‘myth’ manufactured by The Patriarchy™ to control women, is akin to slavery, claims feminist poet
As a member of the intersectional feminist community not known for its sense of nuance or rationality, British poet Hollie McNish likens the “frightening” concept of virginity — which doesn’t really exist in her estimation but is rather a “myth” invented by oppressive tyrants in order to keep women barefoot in the kitchen (or something to that effect) — to slavery and stoning.
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Via BBC (emphasis added):
When the poet Hollie McNish lost her virginity at the age of 19, she stared at her face in the mirror for half an hour, expecting some sort of transformation.
She wondered how to stand like a non-virgin so her family would not guess, and worried her parents were looking at her weirdly across the dinner table, while they all ate mashed potato.
The word virgin might only have six letters, but not many other words carry as much power, she says.
"Virgin is my least favourite word in the English language," she tells an audience of hundreds at Latitude Festival, in Suffolk.
"Life is full of first times but nothing else is sold as being powerful enough to change our entire state of being - from virgin to non-virgin."
The concept of virginity, and love in general, are the focus of the the 43-year-old's latest collection, Virgin.
McNish, who lives in Cambridge with her 16-year-old daughter, first heard the word aged five, performing in her school nativity.
"I knew it was virginity that made Mary special. Joseph's virginity was never mentioned.
"I've always found it weird and kind of frightening the way we speak about this concept."
The question "have you lost your virginity yet?" was a recurring one with friends throughout her teens.
McNish says virginity is a man-made myth created by those in power, in times that "also spoke positively of slavery and stoning".
It has been used across cultures to control, shame, praise, and define people, especially women, she adds.
At the risk of being literal about it — as this lady, I presume, based on the context, is using “myth” figuratively here — words actually signify things, or at least they used to.
I understand and appreciate that, of course, postmodernists — which third-wave intersectional feminists are, even if they aren’t aware of what informs their ideology — don’t subscribe to objective reality and view words merely as weapons in their war to reshape the world in their image.
Still, for language to continue to function as a medium for conveying ideas, and thus facilitate the propagation of human knowledge passed down from generation to generation, as it has for thousands of years, we simply have to agree that words, such as “woman” or “virgin,” mean certain things.
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“Virginity,” therefore, actually means something: the state of having never had sexual intercourse.
One can assign a moral value or not to that status, but, actually, no matter what British feminist poets might claim to the contrary, “virginity” is not a “myth.”
