About a week ago, a friend and I sat in a Waffle House and watched as the only two other patrons in the building selected a song from the jukebox. The two remained standing and started dancing as a live version of Betty Wright’s “Tonight is the Night” played.

Being the live version, it felt as though Wright was calling everyone in the building to remember his or her first time, placing emphasis on her female audience, asking, “When did you become a woman?”

And that’s when I decided I’m not a fan of Betty Wright.

Her song and attitudes perpetuate the mythology surrounding virginity—a mythology that is entirely heteronormative and inherently sexist in design.

So here are five myths we often hear about virginity and explanations as to why they are, in fact, nothing more than cultural mythology.

Myth one: Virginity is a thing.

According to Everyday Feminism writer Melissa A. Fabello, “there is no medical or biological definition of virginity.” The only definition we have of virginity is the one in the dictionary that says it is “the state of never having had sexual intercourse.”

There are a few things wrong with this definition. Namely, it excludes pretty much every type of sex other than penetrative, vaginal sex, which  typically occurs between heterosexual couples.

It does not account for our varying concepts of sex.

For virginity to be all inclusive, it would have to rely on personal discretion. Varying from person to person leaves little room for collective or social understanding.

In essence, one person may consider him or herself a virgin, but another might disagree. When the meaning of a word is subject to such disagreement, that word is effectively useless.

Myth two: There is anything to lose.

People tend to think the measure of a woman’s virginity can be measured by whether her hymen is in tact. 

The hymen is a very thin wall blocking the entrance of the vagina. It can be broken in a number of ways, the most common not being sex but a combination of menarche and playing sports, according to Fabello.

Thinking that a broken hymen somehow indicates having had sex completely excludes biological males (who cares about their virginity anyway?) and disregards basic and fundamental information about female physiology.

Because virginity really can’t be quantified (as we learned from myth one), it seems likely that calling attention to the hymen is just an attempt to support a social construction with faux biology.

This myth keeps women believing that the blood they might see when they lose their virginity is a result of the hymen breaking, when, according to Dr. Pisaster of Pajiba, it’s usually the result of vaginal tearing (due to inadequate lubrication and dryness).

Myth three: The first time is special.

Let’s be honest. The first time is rarely special. It’s more often awkward and uncomfortable. And that’s that.

Myth four: Non-virgins are not pure.

This idea comes from the belief that men have the ability to change a woman’s life forever (as do many of these myths). 

Men want to feel like they’ve taken something from a woman, something she’ll never be able to get back.

Chalking up someone’s degree of purity—another vague concept—to whether he or she has had sex is nothing more than an attempt to keep women from having sex, so guys will get to marry women with tight vaginas, which brings us to myth five.  

Myth five: Losing virginity loosens the vagina.

A common belief among men (and women) is that vaginal looseness correlates positively with an increasing number of sexual partners (heterosexually speaking). On the flip side, tightness is often paired with virginity.

According to “The Rare Truth about ‘Tight’ and ‘Loose’ Women,” an article by Michael Castleman in Psychology Today, no amount of stretching the vagina will loosen it permanently—with the exception of tearing.

In the same way that we can stretch our cheeks any number of times and still have them return to their original place, so can a vagina stretch and return.

Castleman explains vaginal looseness as a result of sexual arousal. In other words, If a woman’s vagina feels tight, she is simply not aroused enough.

(That’s right, guys. When you brag about how tight your most recent one-night stand was, you’re only bragging about how unappealing you are.)