These past few weeks have been rather unpleasant, as far as geek culture goes. I won’t recap in depth, but let’s just highlight the fact that Anita Sarkeesian was driven out of her house, Zoe Quinn has recieved constant harassment and tons of other women in the games industry have generally been made to feel unsafe.
Unfortunately, some of the responses to this harassment haven’t been great. There’s a trend by many who defend feminism to respond with insults – and I won’t comment on whether I think this is good or not, as that’s not what this is about. I agree that we should be angry – angry about the harassment that women experience in video games, angry at the lack of representation. I’m on Anita’s side, Zoe’s side – the side of all the women in video games who’ve been treated despicably.
But there’s one ‘insult’ people use in anger in particular that I really, really disagree with the use of.
‘Virgin’ is not a bad thing, and should not be used as an insult.
I understand the point people are trying to make by using this – it’s the ‘you can’t get female attention because you’re so misogynistic’. But that’s not what comes across. What comes across is that you think a person’s worth and maturity is focused on them having had sex.
Well, get this: I’m a 23 year old asexual* girl, and guess what? I haven’t. I’d like to think my thoughts are of value despite this, but you’re not convincing me.
*Asexual: Asexuality is a sexual orientation, just like hetero/homo/bi/pansexual. It means not experiencing sexual attraction.
In all seriousness, the use of virgin as an insult is really exclusionary. From an asexual point of view, it’s just another point in a long line of why sex-positive feminism can be the very opposite of a safe space for us.
Teenagers – regardless of gender and orientation – already feel substantial amounts of pressure to have sex. Often, for asexual teens, it can be even worse, as they don’t experience sexual attraction so are already feeling a bit lost. I was lucky – I was raised to be stubborn, and I never did anything I didn’t want to. I know many people who weren’t so lucky – who had been convinced just having sex would fix them, or that they wouldn’t be respected without trying it. As I said, this is a problem for all teens – but asexual teenagers are especially vunerable to it as there’s an intense need to conform, to pretend you’re the same as everyone else. There’s the ‘how will you know til you try it’ lines, the ‘everyone has sex at some point – you’ll grow into it’ and even ‘that must be a medical problem’ (many of us have had hormones tested, what have you. Nothing shows up. Not that that should matter, but still).
When I first started learning about feminism, I thought it was amazing. Here was a group of people who agreed with me – agreed with me that my college Physics tutor was misogynistic for refusing to speak to me because I was a girl (no, really), agreed that street harrassment was inappropriate, that all those drawings I’d grown up on in the X-Men were part of a problem. Except, they didn’t agree with me. Not on everything.
Sex-positive feminism likes to claim it’s about sexual choice, but some of the rhetoric around it isn’t ideal. There’s lots of talk about sexual desire as healthy and natural and everyone experiences it (clue: I don’t. I don’t experience attraction OR have a libido). There’s even more talk about ‘enthusiastic consent’ – and trust me when I say, I will never be enthusiastic about sex, but I will be consenting. I still have agency.
Asexual people have different feelings about sexual activity – some are completely repulsed, some enjoy the physical stimulation but don’t really get anything else about it, and some, like me, are completely indifferent. I don’t particularly care about it. I don’t like it, but I don’t hate it – it’s just a thing. But I have agency and I could, if I wanted to, consent to sex. But it wouldn’t be enthusiastically.
By using virgin as an insult – by deliberating framing it as a negative, bad attribute of someone, all you are doing is reinforcing everything I’ve ever been told by a male-led society. You’re telling me that worth comes from my sex life – that to have not had sex is a bad thing, and that I should feel bad about it.
When feminists use this word as an insult, it sounds exactly the same as when misogynistic people do.
It tells me the same thing. It tells me that, without having had sex, I’m not a full person to you. My opinions don’t matter to you. My worth is reduced.
Like I said, it’s a good job I was raised to be stubborn because if there’s one thing worse than society’s pressure in general? It’s the pressure that comes from within a group you otherwise align with. If you’re all about sexual freedom – if you don’t believe that calling women sluts for having sex is okay? Then you need to acknowledge that choosing not to have sex at all is okay – and to stop using virgin as an insulting term.
Because here’s the thing:
I haven’t had sex. That’s not a bad thing. It does not devalue me.
So the next time you go to call out someone by using the term virgin (or anything similiar!) think about me. Think about the fact that what you’re telling me, as you say virgin like it’s a bad thing, is that your movement has no place for me either.
I really appreciate this thoughtful post. I’ve been feeling this way as well within various communities, and it’s just nice to have my feelings validated by another. I wish the feminist community as a whole could be a bit more inclusive; it feels like it hurts the greater cause to alienate certain groups, especially when that alienation goes against what feminism stands for.
Well said. Very thoughtful and echoes my feelings on the topic exactly.
“Virgin” as an insult, especially when applied exclusively to male targets, creates a nasty double-standard: Men are worthless if they have never had sex, and women are worthless if they have had sex.
I think it best that I start by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and some of your other posts and I hope to continue reading them. I’m 23 and asexual as well and I would consider myself a sex-positive feminist. Rhetoric that deals in absolutes such as “everyone experiences it” are, in my limited experience, unhelpful, but I feel that sex-positivity in regards to sexual individuals is beneficial. Something about this post made me question whether you would agree with this sentiment and curiosity got the better of me. Thanks for the read! =D
I personally describe myself as ‘sex-neutral’, but I do like quite a bit of the ideals of the sex-positivity movement – I just think they sometimes forget not everyone is sexual 🙂
first off anita is getting this negative treatment bc she hasn’t been doing ACTUAL research on all her shit she hasn’t yet been threatened or got sexist comments sent to her she isn’t being targeted bc shes a girl BUT bc she isn’t reserch right and in the gaming world we respect everyone we play with boy or girl we treat them how they treat us and we get on those who are being jackasses so idk what kinda gamers you hangout with but i highly doubt they even exist
Yes, yes, this. Every part of this.
This is the kind of thing that contributes to me not wanting to define myself with some label. On principle, I don’t like Anita Sarkeesian – I don’t agree with the way she presents facts and how she chooses them, but I don’t think it’s helpful to go there right now.
What I’m more focussed on is that, frankly, “virgin” is the least I’ve seen said to people on the other side of the argument regardless of how how logic or aggressive they were. I’ve seen people wishing death on those siding with the #gamergate movement, telling them to kill themselves, that they were a disgrace to other women if they were female themselves because they were siding with the misogynists, that they were against people speaking up for social issues if they disagreed with Sarkeesian and they should just shut up. Yep, that’s how it works in arguments with people who disagree with you.
What I got from it is that if I – someone who doesn’t think that threatening someone else’s life when they disagree with them, and feels quite offended to even have to state it clearly -disagree with anything that Sarkeesian’s said, I’m suddenly less of a human being and it’s perfectly fine to insult me and harass me and wish death upon me.
It’s not just about one’s sexuality, it’s the idea that it’s us against them, and it’s fine to dehumanise ‘them’ because ‘they’ are all in one lump and because some people who disagree with Sarkeesian in this case resorted to threats (it doesn’t matter if there’s no way certain to know who and why did that).
What this teaches me is that when I deal with some groups I better keep my mouth shut lest be made to feel less of a woman because I have my own opinion on something so trivial as video games, and this opinion happens to be different to theirs. It also reinforces my belief that I’m not going to align myself to some group no matter how much I yearned for one when I was younger and how much harassment and bullying I received for my own way of being different.
Lastly, no matter how poisonous some of these people are, on both sides, I’m not going to step down to their level because if there’s one thing that I’ve been taught, is that the respect for myself is what I should never give up to. Sometimes it’s really hard, sometimes I fail, sometimes it feels like I should just give up – but I’m also pretty stubborn.