The word is imprecise, and rather than being used to get to know someone and their sexuality, it is used to categorize (slut or non-slut) and judge (good or bad).

Margaret, does that help with the general point of the post?

And as for it being creepy that adults pay such close attention to and care so deeply about adolescent sexual experience: Do you disagree? And I think it’s particularly, and highly, problematic when fathers claim their daughter’s virginity (as they do at Purity Balls) to keep safe until the daughter marries - when the father hands it over to her new husband. This is gross. This is creepy. This is fathers owning their daughters, but because our society has such high-strung feelings about whether or not someone is a “virgin,” everyone thinks that maybe it’s really best for the girls.

And yes, Dorian, I do reject the word “virgin”! I will only use it in quotation marks much like my use of the term abstinence-only “sex ed.”

But the reason I reject “virgin” is because I want nuanced conversation, I want people of all ages to actually talk about sex and sexuality, rather than using highly inspecific, highly emotional terminology.