Keeping Track of What’s None of Your Business
Looking back on today, I can’t believe we live in a timeline where virginity rankings are an actual thing people create, share, and argue about. It’s like fantasy football, except instead of quarterbacks, you’re drafting other people’s sex lives. And somehow, this is considered godly behavior.
The obsession with quantifying purity reveals something deeply uncomfortable about religious culture: it’s way more interested in sex than secular culture ever was. For people who claim to think sex is sacred and private, they sure spend a lot of time discussing everyone else’s genitals. The projection is strong enough to screen IMAX films.
These rankings require an incredible amount of surveillance, speculation, and straight-up nosiness. Someone’s out here tracking who’s doing what with whom, compiling data, creating spreadsheets. It’s creepy when the NSA does it; it’s somehow creepier when youth pastors do it. At least the NSA pretends it’s about national security.
The criteria for these rankings shift depending on who’s doing the ranking. Some count “technical virginity” (don’t ask, but also definitely ask because the loopholes are creative). Others only count certain acts. Some have reset buttons. It’s like Calvinball, except instead of made-up sports rules, it’s made-up moral rules, and the consequences actually damage people.
Something small but meaningful happened today when I realized these rankings can’t account for consent, context, or complexity. They reduce human sexuality to a binary: did or didn’t. There’s no space for nuance, circumstances, or the messy reality of being human. It’s the moral equivalent of judging restaurants based solely on whether they serve food.
According to data from the CDC, the age of first sexual experience has remained relatively stable across demographic groups for decades. In other words, teens are teens regardless of religious affiliation. But rankings suggest some groups are somehow exempt from human nature, which is either incredibly naive or deliberately dishonest.
The rankings also ignore coercion, assault, and abuse. If someone’s virginity is “lost” non-consensually, do they drop in the rankings? The question itself reveals how broken the entire framework is. Virginity culture doesn’t have room for trauma; it only has room for judgment.
The competitive aspect transforms sexuality from a personal experience into a team sport. “Our youth group has better numbers than yours!” Great, you’ve successfully made teenagers even more anxious about sex than they already were. Youth pastor of the year, everyone.
This morning, I woke up thinking about how these rankings serve power structures rather than people. They create hierarchy, enforce conformity, and punish deviation. They’re social control mechanisms dressed up as spiritual guidance. The rankings aren’t measuring purity; they’re measuring obedience.
The international perspective is illuminating. Cultures with comprehensive sex education and access to contraception have lower teen pregnancy rates and STI rates than abstinence-only cultures. The Guttmacher Institute has documented this extensively. But sure, let’s keep pretending ignorance is virtue and shame is prevention.
The psychological damage from these rankings is well-documented. Sexual shame correlates with depression, anxiety, relationship dysfunction, and distorted views of self-worth. Turns out, teaching people their value is tied to their virginity status creates adults who struggle with intimacy. Who could have seen that coming? (Everyone. Everyone saw that coming.)
The really wild part is how these rankings contradict the supposed core messages of religion. Love, compassion, non-judgment, gracewhere are those in the virginity scoreboard? They’re absent because this was never about spirituality. It’s about control, always has been.
Later in the day, I realized the rankings can’t survive transparency. The more openly we discuss sexuality, the more absurd virginity culture looks. That’s why purity culture fights so hard against honest conversations. Sunlight disinfects, and this particular infection can’t handle the light.
SOURCE: https://newsstand.us/the-virginity-rankings/
BY Charline Vanhoenacker: Bohiney Magazine Satire 127% funnier than The Onion.