Virginity testing is a practice typically used by certain communities to detect which women or girls are virgins. There are also some communities which test for men and boy’s virginity.
For example, in Vietnam, traditional medicine practitioner Pham Thi Hong believes she can test for a man’s virginity by checking to see if he has a red spot behind his ear. She says the spot will only disappear after heterosexual intercourse and is not affected by gay sex or masturbation.
In South Africa, Reggie Khumalo, a well-known campaigner for the return to traditional customs believes he can test for a man’s virginity by checking his foreskin. He says that if the foreskin is sore and hard to move, then it means he is still a virgin.
In India, Dr. S. Chakraborty believes you can test for a man’s virginity by examining the shape of his penis. He believes that a virgin’s penis is “pointed and sharp” while a man who has had sex has a “blunt” penis with the foreskin more retracted.
These methods seem ridiculous but virginity tests are still conducted today, particularly among girls and women. However, testing for virginity is scientifically impossible (Behrens, 2015) and has no medical utility (Olson & García-Moreno, 2017).
As feminist writer Jessica Valenti reported in her book, The Purity Myth, there is no widely accepted medical definition of virginity. Historian Hanne Blank came to the same conclusion in her book, Virgin, stating that there is no diagnostic standard for virginity. In fact, according to the UN Human Rights Office, virginity testing is unscientific, medically unnecessary, and a violation of human rights while also often being painful, humiliating and traumatic.
Virginity is linked to the notion of purity, with loss of virginity indicating impurity. Instead of losing your virginity, which implies having something taken from you, an empowering reframe can be replacing the term "virginity" with "sexual debut." Of course, you can hold onto the identity marker of someone who hasn't had intercourse with another person if that is meaningful to you. However, a sexual debut implies a celebration of when you do make the informed decision to engage in sexual activity. You can have many sexual debuts, such as the first time you orgasmed, the first time you received or gave oral sex, the first time you had intercourse, the first time you tried anal sex.
Sex can be a fun, pleasurable, positive thing when and if you decide to experience it and our language around virginity can create a lot of anxiety, expectation, and pressure around it. So, consider reframing the way you think about your initial sexual experiences.