A Canadian 'sexual freedom philosopher' reckons it's time to cancel the term virginity when we're talking about chastity and our first sexual experience.
Nicolle Hodges believes the term is a little outdated and doesn't really encapsulate a person's sexual journey.
According to the BBC, 'virginity' has also connotations for women of being a 'treasure' or 'gift' and it's something that can be 'lost', 'stolen' or 'taken'.
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Hodges told the Beeb: "We still have this old, rickety word that encapsulates what's supposed to be an expansive time. It's such a limiting idea, and a limiting phrase."
The philosopher believes the term in 2021 is 'obsolete' and doesn't fit well into the emerging realm of 'sexual expression and liberation' as well as 'female empowerment against patriarchal expectations and the expanding array of gender norms'.
So, instead of virginity, Hodges and other campaigners reckon we should use the phrase 'sexual debut' because this 'doesn't reinforce that virginity is the end of a journey or a transition itself'.
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We already use debut to describe whenever a person steps into a role for the first time and having sex should be no different.
She hopes this updated term will empower people to use it as a springboard into their own sexual journey, rather than think of themselves as pre-virginity and post-virginity.
At the end of the day, Nicolle reckons it will be both empowering and inclusive to people of all genders and sexualities.
Laura M Carpenter, an associate professor of sociology of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, also told the BBC that a person's (usually a woman's) first experience with penetrative sex has been described very differently over the years.
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It's previously been referred to as 'virginity loss', 'first coitus' or 'first vaginal sex' in proper clinical studies.
Sexual debut has been mentioned in 'multiple academic publications' as back back as the '70s, however it's usually used as a 'euphemism' to 'sanitise' the rate of people having sex.
Prof Carpenter added that a 'loss of virginity' was also fairly non-specific and could mean multiple things. Sexual debut could also mean lots of things as well though.
Nicolle Hodges said: "It's not just replacing virginity with a new term - it's saying virginity is a concept that doesn't exist, because your sexual journey never ends.
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"That's a sexual debut: it's one of the moments in your life that are profound shifts in your understanding of yourself, and your becoming a person."
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