I've Got No Use For Innocence

[redbrunja]

(It was hard picking which ~provocative~ icon to use for this post, let me tell you.)

The combination of a conversation I was having with fairest1 and reading the first Psy-Changling book (Slave to Sensation, which I’d heard raves about and is not living up to the hype) reminded me that a lot of fandom and the larger cultural context (especially with romance novels) seems to think it’s just so. damn. sexy. to have a virgin heroine. And I am just 100% not on board with this trope. Just… no. It’s almost 2014, can we please, please, please stop with this.

I’m not even going to go into how virginity is a bullshit patriarchal and heteronormative construction (but it totally is, and the more you learn about how and why it was constructed and the very real consequences of that, the more horrifying it is), I am going to stick with the fact that I JUST DON’T FIND VIRGINITY SEXY.

I come to fandom and romance novels for entertaining, titillating fiction, and do you know what I find sexy? People who know what the fuck to do in bed. People who have previous sexual experiences (good and bad) that inform how they interact and what they feel about their current partner.

I am so not down with the whole virgin protag that I don’t even like the male subversion where he’s the virgin and she’s more experienced (those two Steve/Darcy fics, excluded, you know the ones what I’m talking about).

Comments

[mollivanders.livejournal.com]

Something I find most disturbing about the virginity trope is that it is often used in the context of making one's OTP their only sexual encounter (usually just for the woman). Like - are we going to pretend that Felicity has never had sex and her first sexual encounter is Oliver? (I haven't seen this particular example but I'm sure it's out there; I just have managed to skip past all the virginity centered fic for a long time). Seeing it with teenagers is more...understandable? realistic? but I still don't like it.

There is nothing wrong with virginity by itself - as a state of being, as a choice - but the way fandom interacts with it can be very, very gross.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Something I find most disturbing about the virginity trope is that it is often used in the context of making one's OTP their only sexual encounter (usually just for the woman). Like - are we going to pretend that Felicity has never had sex and her first sexual encounter is Oliver?

Exactly. I HATE when fandom does this and I am SURE that Oliver/Felicity fic exists. It just fetishizes the female's inexperience and has super gross connotation where it's fine if HE has a history of sexual experiences but she can't, she has to be pure.

There is nothing wrong with virginity by itself - as a state of being, as a choice - but the way fandom interacts with it can be very, very gross.

Word to the hundreth power.