Breaking news: virginity is irrelevant, and water is wet.

Expectations on our sexuality are placed on us, starting as early as when we first learn to speak. If you were a boy, your parents would constantly be told “what a lady killer” you’d turn out to be; if you were a girl, the cliche they heard was “you’ll have to beat away the boys with a stick!”

Already, this shows the double standard between men and women when it comes to relationships and sex. Men can have as much sex as their little hearts desire, and women are supposed to stay “pure.”

How are boys expected to have sex when girls are supposed keep their virtue? On top of that, why is virginity allowed to dominate our views on someone? While, yes, men do have unreasonable expectations placed on themselves to get a couple notches in their belts, the expectations placed on women are more severe, arguably affecting women more so than men.

Words like “easy,” “slut,” and “whore” are thrown at women who happen to sleep with more than one partner before marriage, and the effects of those words are damaging. According to “Mic,” last April, Nicole Mittendorff, a Virginia firefighter, was found after committing suicide.

On an online forum called Fairfaxunderground, investigators found that she was the victim of sexual harassment and slutshaming online. They discovered comments such as “Nicole Mittendorff at 32 is already sleeping her way around the county” were floating around on the server.

Mittendorff isn’t the only woman to have committed suicide after being slutshamed. In 2012, 15-year-old Felicia Garcia jumped in front of a moving train after being sexually harassed and bullied on campus after having a sexual encounter with a member of her school’s football team at Tottenville High School in New York City.

The fact about slutshaming is that it’s all about one thing: superiority. Even though those who slutshame can’t stay virgin gods and goddesses their whole lives, they still believe the status of their sexual history gives them power over others.

It all boils down to the dehumanization of a person, simply because of whether or not their hymen has been stretched out. And when women do this to other women, they also dehumanize themselves. Yes, if you’re a woman guilty of slutshaming, you have equated other women, including yourself, to nothing but a hymen with legs.

Maybe back in the medieval era this was somewhat reasonable, back when marriage was seen as a business partnership rather than an act of love. But this isn’t the medieval era. Women have rights now, and are actually viewed as people.

However, when you decide that virginity trumps actual humanity, you take those rights away from them. We have a right to do what we want with our bodies, whether it be eating a third slice of pizza or having three sexual partners.

The “importance” of virginity is irrelevant now. Virginity, nowadays is just a romantic gesture to save yourself until marriage, and it’s totally your choice; however, as a society, we shouldn’t allow that choice to infringe on another person’s decision to have premarital sex with as many partners as they so choose.

So remember, if you’re a virgin and you find out someone you know isn’t, you can pick from one of two options: A) smile and be happy for them because they obviously enjoyed it if they’re talking about it or B) keep your mouth shut and cope with the fact your virginity doesn’t equal superiority.