Get your hands off my daughter Tony Abbot (or what I will tell my child about virginity)

Thanks to our opposition leader Tony Abbott, the topic of virginity (specifically, women’s virginity) has been a media talking point lately.  Those unfamiliar with the Tony Abbott ‘virginitygate’ might want to click here to read A Shiny New Coin’s awesome Abbott-smackdown. She writes

The fact is, we don’t want politicians to moralise while they tax us. We don’t want politicians who don’t trust us to do the right thing by our own selves. We want politicians who make sure the garbage is collected and the trains run on time and there is health care, education and safety provided to every person in this country regardless of gender, age, race, ability and class.  The smart, capable women in his own family, in fact, are among the several million others in the country who don’t give a shit what he thinks. Perhaps it’s time he started listening to them?

Well, this smart, capable woman would have a thing or two to say to Tony Abbott if I ever had the displeasure of his company. But right now, this issue has got me thinking and talking about what this concept of female-virginty-as-gift means to me as the mother of a daughter.

My little Bean barely even knows that her body is her own – but soon she will know that there are people, many people, a majority of people even, who would like to tell her what she is and isn’t allowed to do with it. Sometimes, those people might be me or her father although we will both try not to be those people, at least not too often.

Frequently, those people will be men who don’t have a body like hers. Sometimes, these men will be influential and persuasive. Sometimes they will be doctors or preachers or television personalities - or politicians.

And so I tell her this now, and will repeat it in different ways as she grows and understands more about the world:

Your body is your own, and you get to decide what you want to do with it. Even – no, especially – when it comes to sex.

One day we will talk about safety and consent and privacy and health and relationships and social ramifications and ethics and family expectations and ideology and emotions. All of these things (and more) will influence what you do with your body, as they influence what I do with mine. But the deciding vote lies with someone and that someone is you. Just you.

Your body and its ability to experience and give sexual pleasure is a precious gift, just as some people say. A gift for you. I hope you enjoy it and make the most of it in your own way on your own terms in your own good time, and safely. But I won’t tell you to save it up to give to someone special because it cannot be regifted. It’s yours, all yours. When you’re older you’ll probably want to share it and that’s wonderful – and optional – and either way it won’t define you.

Some of the people who want to tell you what you can do with your body also want to define what sex is. They want to say that the real kind of sex, the kind that counts, is penis-in-vagina (PIV). They want to say that there is something especially significant about PIV, because it involves a woman ‘giving herself’ to a man, and because it is the kind of sex that can lead to pregnancy. They want to say that until you have PIV sex, you’ve not had sex at all, and that the first person you have PIV sex with is the person who ‘takes’ your virginity and should only be someone you are married to.

Well,  Bean, you don’t have to believe what they say because those people are at best simplistic thinkers and at worst, offensive bigots who wish to deny all expressions of sexual love that do not fit into their boxes marked ‘hetero, cis, married.’

Sex can be with another person of your own gender, or a person of a different gender.  Sex can involve no penetration at all. So the first time you have sex might not be the first time you have PIV (if, indeed, you ever have PIV sex, or sex at all.) And the first time you have sex will probably not happen with the person you marry, if you marry. And there won’t be fanfare: no public holiday will be declared, no parallel universe will be revealed, no one will be able to tell that this has happened just by looking at you.

And all of that is okay, and it is private; it is not the business of any person who would wish to control your body and what it does, especially if that person is a politician.Your body is your own. Love it, care for it, enjoy it, own it.