Poet Hollie McNish has discovered something truly shocking: a concept invented by society to control people is, in fact, being used to control people. The word ‘virgin’ has spent centuries doing exactly what it was designed to do, and now we’re all supposed to act surprised.
The mechanism is elegant. Attach shame to a biological state. Make it a moral measure. Use it to police bodies, especially those of women. Then act confused when people internalize the shame and spend their twenties either desperately shedding the label or desperately clinging to it. What could possibly be wrong with that system?
Here’s the thing nobody wants to admit: virginity isn’t real. It’s a cultural checkpoint we collectively agreed matters, like a video game save point that only counts if society witnesses it. Two people can experience identical physical situations and have wildly different ‘virginity status’ depending on which definition you’re using this week. Medical? Legal? Religious? TikTok?
The real absurdity is that we’ve built an entire emotional infrastructure around something we can’t even define consistently. Sex education classes dodge it. Religious institutions weaponize it. Therapists spend hours unpacking it. Dating apps monetize anxiety about it. And somehow, in 2026, we’re still treating a mythological state as though it has material consequences.
McNish is right that the word has been used to shame and control. She’s also pointing at something deeper: we’ve collectively decided this myth is too useful to kill. It’s the perfect tool. Blame the victim, call it tradition, sleep soundly. The absurdity isn’t that the myth exists. It’s that we keep pretending it doesn’t.