Virginity fetishism is at heart about the idea that women are objects, and that those objects become less valuable when they’ve been “used” by someone else. A shiny new hymen on your wedding day is, apparently, the Bentley of the Religious Right — a fairly rare acquisition and therefore a major status symbol. The fact that it’s attached to an actual person is less of an issue. Just look at how religious groups discuss reclaiming “lost” virginity:
“Have you already unwrapped the priceless gift of virginity and given it away?” asks the Web site for the Pregnancy Resource Center of Northeast Ohio, where Watts began working part-time after she reclaimed her virginity. “Do you now feel like ‘second-hand goods’ and no longer worthy to be cherished? Do you ever wish you could re-wrap it and give it only to your future husband or wife? Guess what…? You can decide today to commit to abstinence, wrapping a brand-new gift of virginity to present to your husband or wife on your wedding night.”
Because a husband or wife who thinks you should be a virgin until marriage is the last person who’s going to think you’re second-hand goods, right?
And a woman isn’t a gift. Neither is a vagina. But that’s the conservative vision of sex and marriage: It’s an economic union that entails a simple exchange of sex, child-rearing and house-keeping for financial security and social status.
Some women are going even further and having their hymens surgically rebuilt. Occasionally, it’s for pretty important reasons — like saving your own skin:
Many of Dr. Red Alinsod’s patients are not looking for a new state of mind, they want a new hymen. They come to his clinic in Laguna Beach, Calif., and pay $5,000 because their honor, and sometimes their lives, depend on it.
“Right now is the start of my busy time,” he says, “because in spring, or during summer vacation, the women go overseas and get married and they have to be all repaired by the time of their arranged weddings in the lands of their birth.”
Alinsod’s typical patient may have been born and raised in the United States, but with significant family in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, the Middle East. Without evidence a new bride is a virgin, she risks being rejected, or, worse, the victim of an “honor killing.”
“These women are very scared,” Alinsod says. “The majority do fear for their lives. So this is a life-saving procedure in the majority of women I deal with. They are afraid they will be killed by the youngest member of their family, or the youngest member of the groom’s family,” because young men are often given light jail sentences for the murders.
It’s interesting how we look at those crazy brown immigrants who fetishize virginity with generalized horror, but as long as the message is coming from good Christian white folks, we teach it in public schools. The virginity obsession is a staple of just about every fundamentalist religion I can think of, and it permeates societies across the world, but it’s only really criticized by conservatives and the mainstream media when it can also be used to encourage xenophobia and Islamophobia.
Virginity fetishism is fucked, whether it’s in Indonesia or Colombia or Spain or the United States of America. And right-wing misogynists who promote this women-as-objects worldview need to accept some responsibility for the thoroughly screwed up messages they’re sending to women, girls, boys and men.
Also, note to crazy virginity fetishists: Losing your virginity sucks. Yes, the first time you have sex can be a great milestone, and it can be nice and romantic and emotionally lovely, but at the end of the day, someone is using his penis to break through a membrane inside your vagina (assuming that an intact hymen is an accurate indicator of virginity, which it most certainly isn’t, but that’s another post). Does it hurt for everyone? No, but it’s not usually a comfortable experience, and if you’re married to (or preparing to be married to) a dude who thinks it’s hot to make you repeat the physically painful experience of having your hymen broken just so he can feel like his new purchase is vacuum-sealed — or if part of the reason he’s marrying you is precisely because no one’s “unwrapped the present” — it’s time to DTMFA.
Most women aren’t taking the extreme step of surgically re-forming their hymens; they’re simply deciding that their virginity has been magically restored. Men, it should be noted, don’t seem to get all upset over this virginity thing — perhaps because they aren’t constantly shamed for being “damaged goods” just because they had sex before marriage like 95 percent of other Americans. The reporter, who just published a book about sex in America, writes:
The fact that some women believe they are able to recapture a kind of sexually virginal state underlines the idea that virginity is not nearly the black-and-white issue most of us think, that it has come to be as much a concept as a fact.
I kind of like this virginity-as-concept thing, because it illustrates just how out of touch with reality the religious right truly is — and if you dig a little bit, it demonstrates how dangerous their ignorance can be.
Sure, it’s kind of funny that people decide to simply “re-claim” their virgin status, but at the end of the day I don’t think virginity is really all that important, so if you want to say you’re a virgin, re-claim away — as the article says, it’ll only end up damaging the virginity movement, since the entire concept of being a virgin will be rendered meaningless. I’m all for that. Where it gets dangerous is in education. To most people reading this article, the virginity fetishists sound like nutbags who are simply entertaining fodder for a weird story; but in reality, they’re the people who are getting paid to teach your kids about sex. The abstinence-only movement is at the forefront of virginity reclamation, and their message is that the only 100% way to avoid pregnancy and STDs is to remain a virgin until you’re married — and once you’re married, you’re totally safe. Condoms and birth control are never necessary, and besides, the abstinence-only crowd says that they fail most of the time anyway. Setting aside the fact that such a calculus doesn’t actually work in the first place, it definitely isn’t going to work if virginity is nothing more than a state of mind. The first virgin in the article, for example, has two kids. The abstinence movement is laying the groundwork for a major public health crisis when they tell people that they can re-invent their sexual histories and God will magically wipe the slate clean. Couple that with a big dose of sex-related shame, and it’s not going to be surprising when the virginity crowd is less likely to use contraception and condoms, more likely to get STIs, less likely to know they have an STI (and therefore more likely to spread it), more likely to misrepresent their status to their partners, and generally more likely to be a part of all sorts of public health problems.
In other words, this is a two-pronged issue. The first problem is the fetishization of virginity and what it means for women when we’re not treated as people, but as objects to be given in marriage who therefore have an obligation to keep ourselves in “new” condition for our future husband. And the second is the broader public health issues that arise when sex is considered shameful and wishful thinking becomes more important than reality.
But if virginity is nothing more than a state of mind, what else can I re-claim? Rent has gotten really expensive lately — think my landlord will buy it when I tell him that Manhattan is just a state of mind, and because I’ve decided to reclaim my status as a Brooklyn resident? Hopefully that’ll fly when my rent check is $500 short of what he’s expecting.
Thanks to Medical Miracles, I’m giving my future husband the gift of a sexually experienced partner who doesn’t have any diseases or children. I think that’s a very nice gift and it doesn’t require me to deny all my own desires to give it.
“Second-hand goods”–gawd. I may have multiple partners but I’m still under the original owner: freakin’ me.
“Second-hand goods”–gawd. I may have multiple partners but I’m still under the original owner: freakin’ me.
My favorite response ever….on any topic.
This is one of those crazy things I’ve never understood…for me losing my virginity was actually painful. Not fun…not sexy…and a complete mood killer. Why on earth would you actually desire that? Love someone enough to try to make it as pleasant an experience as possible…sure…but actually find your partners pain or at least discomfort a gift. Bleck – or rather vomit.
How do you “unwrap the priceless gift of virginity”? Don’t you pretty much automatically get that when you’re born? And does that mean that if you want your son or daughter to be a total tramp, you can give him or her “the pricless gift of sluttiness” instead?
Lord, why can’t the AMA do something to discipline the cretins who profit from this crap? I know, I know, it’s just like any other elective cosmetic surgery in the minds of some, but sheesh.
I don’t know how many lovers my wife had before me, but I’m sure there were quite a few. The real gift she gave me when she became my wife was choosing me to spend her life with. That’s the only gift that matters to me, and whether I’m #1, #30, or #467 on her scorecard, all I care about is that mine is the final name on the list. That’s what love is, and anything else is fetishization and control indeed.
From the article Jill linked:
“Though the relationship lasted for seven years and produced two beautiful children, a part of Watts always felt guilty. She wished she could step back in time and recapture her lost virginity. Thinking of how “I could have ruined one of greatest fulfillments of my life,” the first time having sex with a husband, she wanted to “have that opportunity again. I know my [future] husband deserves a whole person.” ”
Because women without hymens do not qualify as a whole person? I have nothing more to say, really….
Hugo, I can’t blame the doctors who do hymenoplasty on women who face possible honor killings. Neither the doctors nor the women have the power to change the fucked-up societies they come from where a woman’s life is worth less than a tiny piece of tissue over their vaginas, and using medical technology to adapt to such a society is an improvement over letting it totally rule your life. It also puts women who don’t actually believe in that shit back into the society safely where they can have an impact on it. How many of the women who had re-virgination surgery would let their youngest sons murder *their* daughters in twenty years for not being virgins?
However, it’s one thing to do this surgery for a woman who might actually be killed if her family-appointed rapist finds out she isn’t a virgin. To do this surgery for women who actually have a choice about who they marry, and could choose not to marry a cobag who cares this much about a useless piece of tissue, does seem pretty hinky.
When I was about 11 or 12 or so, my parents sent me to one of those religious camps where ya pray all day and go to chapel and such. And after a week of brainwashing and making us feel guilty for existing, we all had to sign virginity-until-marriage pledges. Everyone did. Because if you didn’t, your counselor went and had a little “talk” with you. And then you signed the pledge.
They made one girl in my cabin feel so bad (she was probably 15 or 16) because she’d already had sex. She was bawling her eyes out. And then the counselor told her she could “reclaim” her virginity. “As long as you don’t have sex again until marriage, you can be a virgin,” she was told.
Now, first of all, no 11 or 12 year old should be made to sign a pledge about sex. I hardly knew what sex was, let alone knew what I wanted to do with my body. Sex is “gross” to most 11, 12-year-olds, of course they don’t have a problem being virgins.
Of everything that happened at that camp, that’s what I remember most clearly, and sometimes I still feel bad for sleeping with multiple people and not being married, despite how much I disagree with the perception that virginity=worth. These ideas are being engraved in people’s heads and it’s utterly wrong to make young women think and feel and act as though their bodies are the only thing that gives them value. Because that’s the underlying meaning, not that marriage is holy or anything of the BS excuses they come up with.
That image at the top of the post freaks me the fuck out.
Value of Virginity? It’s all bullshit to control women. Spinning chastity in girls to make it seem like virtue when it’s the opposite for boys is what it is. The same double standard handed to women in nearly every arena from sex to business. Be a team player, care what others think, sacrifice for the greater good.. but only if you have a vagina.
But you know what? From a completely different stand-point, I support vaginal rejuvenation. I had a long crazy birth with my daughter and it required an epis (which was unsuccessful since I tore anyway!) The doctor did her absolute best making sure baby and I were healthy but I felt like Raggedy Ann afterwards, all stitched up the back. 2 years later, I still don’t feel the same. The nerves must be cross-wired, the seams unaligned, I swear my ankle itches when I come. It’s ridiculous.
If I could be convinced that my happiness and pleasure were kept in mind I would be first in line for a vaj rejuv. Fuck what Playboy thinks I should look like, sex is just as much for women as it is for men and I think having pleasure in it is worth surgery.
If these people are thinking they will be “unwrapping” a woman’s virginity. their sexual education has clearly been a bit too abstinent.
But this whole secondary virginity thing is on a par with the whole “if you promise never to sin again, the sins you’ve done so far don’t count” endless get-out-of-jail free card that the Lame-vangelical Christians have come up with. There is no accountability, no consequences. You can see why they attract so many converts. The idea of getting a fresh start, being a blank slate can be awfully tempting.
If you live in an environment where life is hard, children are needed for labor, and you literally pay for your wife, then maybe virginity is of use. Bride-price is notably huge is those areas that still practice. Would you pay top-dollar for second-hand merch? Especially when it is the equivalent of the top-of-the-bubble house price?
You-all laugh at dirt farmers that barely eke an existance and how they live. You sneer at the idea a woman is only worth two cows and a goat. Try checking out the relative wealth. The entire family may only have two cooking pots. The walls of the house are dung and the heating/cooking fires are very likely the same.
You don’t have the luxury of an extended adolescence. Once she’s ready, you breed her. Just like the rest of the herd. You can’t wait for her to find herself, decide on her career, or worry about Britneys 1.0 and 2.0. Life is hard, brutal and to the bare essentials.
In Modern West, we have the choice to not be pastoral.
Mold – Are you trolling? Poverty isn’t an excuse for misogyny. The fact that you don’t have luxuries doesn’t mean women need to be bought, sold, and “bred.” There are plenty of developing countries where women are respected and they don’t starve to death for lack of a “herd.”
Treating women like independent human beings is not a Modern Western luxury.
This who neo-virginity mania is pathetic. One thing that made me sick was when Jessica Simpson’s father expressed how happy he was that Jessica waited until after her wedding to Lache to have sex. Well, she had sex and now they are divorced – so what the &*%#? It is all about controlling women and how women feel about their bodies.
I know this is radical, but I think it is biologically normal for young women to explore sexuality. Through my late teens to early twenties I was very comfortable with my body and never felt there was anything wrong with not waiting until I got married.
When I was in high school they had an entire assembly for this speaker who spoke about being a second-virgin. How you could reclaim your virginity (apparently it took about 2 years. Maybe it grew back?) and you future husband/wife would love you even more. I remember thinking it was all a bunch of bullshit. My parents had raised me to wait until love, not marriage, for sex. And my personal goal was to make it out of high school… I didn’t. And I never regretted it. In fact, there are times I wish I had lost it earlier to a different guy!
Sometimes I’m glad that these nuts don’t count what I do with my girlfriend as sex anyway, so I *AM* a virgin in their eyes! Haven’t had contact with a penis in 5 years!
Mold is always trolling. The “think of the poor ignorant savages” line is a little openly racist for him, though.
To do this surgery for women who actually have a choice about who they marry, and could choose not to marry a cobag who cares this much about a useless piece of tissue, does seem pretty hinky.
Well, it is her body or not? If she wants to have her hymen stitched up, is it the doctor’s job to be all paternalistic and tell the foolish missy to pick another husband?
Now, doctors who market this surgery with the second-hand-goods bullshitk, that I’d call hinky.
Unfortunately, that mentality is common in many parts of the world. Moreover, this sentence reminded me of a story, however rare, that sometimes the male’s own family may toss him out for being promiscuous.
This was exactly what happened to an older uncle of mine during the 1920′s in China. Word got back to my grandfather that he was sleeping with female classmates and prostitutes against family instructions to concentrate on his university studies when he was around 18-19. When he checked, confirmed those accounts, and found the university had expelled the uncle for his conduct, my grandfather immediately disowned him and instructed the rest of the family to never meet or correspond with him.
My hymen must have broken some time before I had vaginal intercourse, since I didn’t bleed at all my first time. That makes me really glad that I wasn’t raised in a house where virginity was a prize to be given on marriage, beyond the general suckiness of that kind of life. How horrible would it be to actually have stayed a virgin, but without the vacuum seal intact? I highly doubt she would be believed, otherwise why would they put so much importance on that damn hymen?
well…on a positive note-at least it addresses both sexes and not just one…although i dont know how a man would recover his virginity or “wrap it up” so to speak ;)
When I was working on dishonor killings in Jordan, I came to believe virginity is completely over rated.
Nonetheless, hymen repair surgeries are life saving in the region. Numerous hospitals in Jordan quietly perform them for a few hundred dinars (JD1.00=US$1.40). Until the laws are overturned that offer such leniency to dishonor killers that the average sentence is just six months, these surgeries are the better of two lousy options. Unfortunately.
Ellen R. Sheeley, Author
“Reclaiming Honor in Jordan”
“However, it’s one thing to do this surgery for a woman who might actually be killed if her family-appointed rapist finds out she isn’t a virgin. To do this surgery for women who actually have a choice about who they marry, and could choose not to marry a cobag who cares this much about a useless piece of tissue, does seem pretty hinky.”
Absolutely. Isn’t it basically aiding and abeting fraud? If you think someone’s going to be murdered then I’m not going to argue, and you can claim necessity. But short of that – doing it for reasons like honour or reputation – is pretty dubious.
Even here, the once wealthiest nation on earth, there exists a preference for virgins. Purity balls, Orthodox Judaism, Hispanics, etc. Many feel justified in treating the “used” merch as lesser. Maybe not in the evilbig city, but certainly out in Dumbf**kistan. A great deal of abuse is tolerated because “she slept around”. Used to make me drink.
Not every culture values people the same. ERS has personal experience with that as do many others (LGBT).
In societies without modern meds, how do you acquire healthy breeding partners? You enforce codes that only allow safe behaviors. No matter how much whining is done, abstinence is the safest route. Gathering material for breeding is very prevalent in our society. Look at the trophy wives, the age difference between spouses, and the very irritating comments on the size of “wallets”. Donald Trump is worth dating?
Hmm. Marry a K-Fed or Dr Wanker? Which would Mom/Dad approve of. Remember, you get no college, no trust fund, no gainful employment. You are NOT free, white, and over 21. There is no entitlement at all.
Survival is paramount. You will marry at a young age to get enough to eat. Yes, it has been done here in the US. Try listening to some Depression-era folks. The ladies’ tales may give you insight. Many of our citizens did things to survive. Sleeping with a man for food, clothing , and shelter is just one. Putting up with marital rape is something I assumed you would be familiar with. I sure am.
Most areas that I am aware of do have Western influence. But, I am old enough to recall the triumvirate of female choice in the US. Teachermommy, nursemommy, and secretarymommy. I LIKE the current choices.
Perhaps I quibble, but the hymen is not inside the vagina. It is an external membrane.
Thats what SHOULD matter. And I will admit (without all the details) that it took me a long time to fully realize this.
And regarding Faith’s quote, I hope that woman’s children never read that.
seriously, this is a worry i have had for a while, for women in these fucked up situations; there are lots of ways to have your hyman “broken” that dont include sex, and in lots of other cases it is just somehow missing. (in the first, horseback riding is a sure way to lose your hymen, for whatever reason…)
so, in one of these countries, what happens to the poor virgin without a hyman? i’m not joking, it really bothers me…
Back in college, I read an op-ed in the student paper where a girl blathering about being a “lady” and “virgin” said that she wouldn’t have anything else to offer her husband other than her virginity on her wedding night. I wrote a response that asked what the rest of her marriage would be about since the only thing she had to offer was her virginity.
My friend and I joked about making T-shirts that said “Abolish Virginity.”
I also love how there is the notion that a woman can do “anything but…” and still be a virgin. Anal or oral sex…still a virgin! It is like magic!
Reading all these comments made me envision a marriage interview between a young feminist and a prospective suitor:
Young feminist: So, are you feminist?
Prospective suitor: …….
YF: Okay. Are you… pro-contraception?
PS: …….. I guess.
YF: Have you had sex?
PS: Uh. No?
YF: This interview is OVER! *storms out*
It makes me a bit sad that it might never happen.
I’m not putting down those people who genuinely do enjoy their virginity in order to make sure their first time is a good time; I just think an exploration of sexuality, knowing what you want and being able to express it clearly is a good idea.
so, in one of these countries, what happens to the poor virgin without a hyman? i’m not joking, it really bothers me…
They often die unusually young. Strangely, there have been cases where women with an imperforate hymen ere killed by their brothers because the backed up blood can swell your tummy and make it look like the early stages of pregnancy.
Apart from avoiding pregnancy – no. You still get a great deal of fancy STD’s from dirty toilets, yourself if you have e.g. diarrhea or didn’t wash your hands properly, “plastic” underwear. Everybody should know you can get AIDS and Hepatitis from blood transfusions, so yea, even people who never had sex can be ill and should not be considered as suitable for condom-free fun.
… you CAN’T get STDs from toilet seats.
What the heck.
And AIDS from blood transfusions? Are we talking 20 years ago or are we talking developing country here?
Wow. I think my brain just died a little bit.
Mold is simply wrong, anyway – in medieval English farming towns, in Colonial America, in 20th-Century rural Greek Islands, a bride was EXPECTED to be pregnant because otherwise how could a couple know they could have kids? That they weren’t marrying someone who, um, “had no courage in him” or wasn’t able to “catch” and then being stuck with them in the pre-divorce days? This “virginitiy fetishism is good rural sense” claim is ahistorical bullshit.
Oh, and Fordham’s website has medieval European medical texts describing the different ways women faked virginity back then, from astringent shrinking ointments to pessaries with sponges full of chicken blood… because in ancient and medieval Europe displaying the bloody sheets at the “morning after” family breakfast was a tradition, at which point the happy husband would hand over some MORE property to confirm the transaction…
An imperforate hymen (one without any holes) isn’t the same as a missing hymen, or one that breaks long before having sex.
I imagine those girls are in danger of honor killings as well. And those girls probably wouldn’t even be educated enough to know they might “need” re-hymen surgery to prove they are virgins, since they know they are virgins. My hymen was long gone before I had sex, so I feel really sorry for those girls. Not that it’s any *better* if they did have sex, or any less disturbing that they’re forcing young boys to kill them. It’s fucked up all around.
Mold, I think your argument is silly. If I was concerned about buying a breeder, I’d be more prone to buy a proven breeder. How horrible would it be to hock my cows and my only two pots and find out I got a barren wife?! tsk!
The thing I like about people that are upfront with their misogyny is it’s easy to spot and thus avoid them.
I’ve wondered, since I first heard about the BAVAM people (“Born Again Virgins of AMerica”) if maybe the whole second virginity thing isn’t a psychological dodge for women who want to reclaim their sexuality from a male-focused vision of sexual liberation.
We often talk here about the twin evils of sex-phobic fundamentalism and the sex-centered rape culture, and how these can often combine to produce an environment where women feel they only have only two roles available to them: chaste woman (i.e. “virgin until marriage”), and whore.
In such a situation, I can see BAVAM as an adaptation strategy: it is saying “Yes, I am not a virgin. I still am not going to sleep with you.”
Of course, I think that it’s a highly flawed adaptation strategy, since a second act of intercourse puts you right back where you started. A much better strategy would be a full embrace of feminism and of the concept that a woman’s body is her own, but if there’s some reason feminism isn’t available, I can see the appeal of the whole “second virginity” thing.
It’s far easier to claim ‘traditional family values’ if you don’t actually look into the history of American family values, that’s for certain.
I agree with the ahistorical claims. Just look up the history of “bundling” in Europe and colonial America. While useful for *comfortable* non-procreative pre-marital make-out sessions, it was also frequently procreative, and all under the watchful eyes of the family. Quelle horreur.
On a modern twist, my dad was of the mind that birth control and condoms were the order of the day (mid 70s) for my sister (high school time) and by the way he’d rather she and the lover of moment were safe in our house and not out somewhere weird late at night. He was your prototypical hard-working macho-impressive prairie farmer at the time, raising us kids by himself. Frankly, he raised a few of sis’s lovers too. They’d keep coming by just to visit him when she moved on to someone else, and everyone stayed civil.
I just get weirded out on the days I’m *sure* it’s going backwards from attitudes like that, instead of forwards
In law school we decided that we had become “common law virgins.”
Hey, if worked for marriage, why not sex? A person who hasn’t had sex in a significant period of time can reclaim virginity.
alyssa,
Do like dog breeders, check the bloodlines.
Ok, so I had no idea what a hymen was, so I had to go *ahem* digging. On the internet. I kind of figured it was a membrane, but thought it would be inside. Thanks to Poetry for clearing that up. Even so, reading some stuff on the origin and form still didn’t help. I found this gallery of hymens in different “states”, with descriptions. Wow. That helps.
http://healthystrokes.com/hymengallery.html
@ EoL:
Even though we’re talking about developed countries, some Las Vegas hospital just found out syringes were used more than once and not sterilized in between. Every hospital will at some point find a charge of blood that was not tested. Living in a developed country means you minimize the risk, not that mistakes will never happen again.
Further I am not talking bout a toilet trying to grab and put a disease on you. But viruses and bacteria are nasty little creatures of which you only need one and a compromised immune system to get 100.000 of them and a proper disease. The invention of underpants and use of water, soap and sinks before and after a visit to the toilet have let to decreasing numbers of infection, not their abolition.
Mold, buying a purebred dog is a luxury purchase. “Buying” a wife in a dirt-poor rural area that you’re describing is not. If your dog turns out to be barren, then you just have a very expensive pet. If your wife turns out to be barren, and you expected her to make lots of children to carry on your name, children that have to work on your farm to keep it going, that’s a much bigger problem. Especially when you’ve sold the most value things you had, including your sister, to get her in the first place. So, not only are those practices sexist and cruel, they’re stupid. Besides, why do wives ever have to be purchased anyways? In that situation, women probably need husbands at least as much if not more than men need wives, so why can’t you just let everyone pick for themselves instead of selling her like a slave?
What’s so fabs about being a virgin anyway? My first time sucked. (Most of my girlfriends concur about their own).
Simple…look at the wife’s Mom. That’s what you’ll get in X years. Works closer to the female…possibly because paternity is somewhat iffy.
If the cow won’t breed…get another…
There is also the purchase of children…..
@Mold
So if a woman is fertile, that must mean that all of her daughters are fertile too!!! So by that logic, every woman who is born is fertile and no one is barren because they wouldn’t have been born in the first place!!!
You’re logic sure is flawless
/sarcasm
I meant ‘your’, not ‘you’re in my post above.
I always thought the picture they [my fellow Christians] painted of purity was a little perverted, too.
There is no real importance placed on virginity as an object of desire in the Bible. It wasn’t about women being objects to be “used” or “kept new” so much as virginity was an indication that a person had not “bonded” with or to another person. Since sex was meant to be between just two people, a way for them to physically and emotionally unite, having sex with someone you weren’t spending your life with was looked down upon (and particularly for women, simply wasn’t wise in those days). Virginity was just as important for men as for women (to God) and that was especially stressed in the New Testament by Paul the apostle.
A man and woman who had sex were expected to marry (that is, spend their lives together as one unit) because sex was what was seen as the thing that brought two people together. If virginity was so highly valued religiously, then widows would not have been allowed to remarry, but they were. In God’s eyes, when a woman or man’s “other half” passed on, they were free to go in search of a new partner because what sex (and God) had put together, death had taken apart.
Why did I “save myself” for my future husband? So that I could give him the “gift” of my virginity? Psh, like a feminist like me would ever think in such a fashion! No, I did it for me and for the relationship I expected to have one day. It wasn’t about giving my hymen or what-not but about simply not wanting to connect so intimately with someone who wasn’t investing their life into me. That seems almost selfish in light of this other way of thinking, but I expected I’d marry a wise kind of guy and that he would likely do the same for himself. When I met who I am married to today, I found that he had also not wanted to invest so much in someone who wouldn’t be around for good, and I was happy about that.
The only thing we gave each other was, well, each other. The only magic to being virgins was that we got to experience the newness together and didn’t have to worry about old memories popping up or something like that. Of course, OF COURSE, we still had to worry about pregnancy and -yes, omg- STIs! Stupid conservatives! People can be born with those too ya know!