I'm Sophia Smith Galer and I believe
we need to rethink how we talk about first-time sex.
It's really likely that if you've ever talked about or heard about first-time sex,
it's actually been framed as 'losing virginity' –
the idea that overnight or in one singular moment, we go
from being something to being something else, and
somehow that a status is conferred, that something about our identity changes.
In some cultures, it could be a positive thing to 'lose' your virginity.
You may lose stigma in doing so.
In other cultures, it can be extremely taboo,
especially cultures which police female virginity specifically.
Virginity itself, as a phrase, literally comes from a time
where all women were expected to be virgins when they got married.
And this was to ensure primogeniture: the idea that when a man dies
his property is inherited by his children, and to ensure
that they're his children, he made sure that his wife was a virgin when they married.
I honestly do not think we can really use the phrase 'virginity' without it
still being burdened by that history.
Part of the work I've done is attempt to debunk the 'virginity myth'
and challenge why we're still somehow weirdly obsessed
with this concept now in 2022.
One of the most shocking statistics
that I came across was the Natsal finding.
It found that about 40% of young women and 26% of young men
do not feel that their first sexual experience happened at the right time.
One in five young women were not as equally willing
as their partners the first time that they had sex.
Think in a general population how many people that is.
Behavioural scientists judge young people by sexual competence.
Now this isn't what you think it sounds like.
Sexual competence is simply behavioural scientist jargon for being ready.
They actually have four criteria for what sexual competence looks like.
One is that you have reached the age of consent.
The second is the use of contraception.
The third is having a sense of the right timing.
And the fourth is both partners being equally willing.
So if you go back to those statistics I brought up earlier,
an awful lot of young people in Britain are not sexually competent.
They're not ready the first time they have sex.
In my work, I've interviewed people around the globe and
this is certainly not something that only exists in a British context.
You only need to spend a certain amount of time on the Internet
to see that young people often have anxieties for all the wrong reasons.
Lots of them also have complaints about their sex education –
that is has not prepared them for the realities
of the sexual lives that they go on to lead once they're mature enough.
You will often find that a lot of sex education
really prioritises 'bugs and babies'.
So the avoidance of STIs, the avoidance of pregnancy.
What if our sex education did a little better in discouraging the sense of pressure
around first time sex, framing it not as a singular moment,
but a set of experiences that are formative
and emerge as you're growing into your sexual maturity?
Comprehensive sex education has been found in studies,
in fact studies funded by US Congress, to delay sexual initiation.
So more knowledge and more awareness around sex
in general does encourage young people to take it seriously,
but also not to rush, and to do it at the right time.
I honestly don't think we're going to lose phrases
like 'virginity', 'virgin' overnight.
It's more about using them as phrases a bit more mindfully, maybe challenging
or countering them when you think they're being used unfairly.
When it comes to first-time sex and indeed any time sex,
we have nothing to lose.
We actually have everything to gain if we want to have sex.