In Europe, a debate over Islam and virginity. Not shockingly, I think virginity fetishism is pretty ridiculous and misogynist. But when it’s deeply entrenched in your culture, I certainly can’t blame individual women for doing what they need to do and getting hymen-repair surgeries. I wish that women considering marrying — or already married to — dudes who fetishize virginity had the power to just DTMFA, but that’s not an option for a lot of women. I wish that religious and cultural views on sex didn’t have to routinely shame women and treat them like property. That, obviously, is not reality. But secular French courts certainly don’t have to buy into it:
The furor followed the revelation two weeks ago that a court in Lille, in northern France, had annulled the 2006 marriage of two French Muslims because the groom found his bride was not the virgin she had claimed to be.
The domestic drama has gripped France. The groom, an unidentified engineer in his 30s, left the nuptial bed and announced to the still partying wedding guests that his bride had lied. She was delivered that night to her parents’ doorstep.
The next day, he approached a lawyer about annulling the marriage. The bride, then a nursing student in her 20s, confessed and agreed to an annulment.
The court ruling did not mention religion. Rather, it cited breach of contract, concluding that the engineer had married her after “she was presented to him as single and chaste.” In secular, republican France, the case touches on several delicate subjects: the intrusion of religion into daily life; the grounds for dissolution of a marriage; and the equality of the sexes.
“She was presented to him as single and chaste”? She was “delivered to her parents’ doorstep”? Ugh.
I dislike virginity fetishism, but people make their own arrangements and their own marital choices. Fine. But part of living in a country with a secular legal system is abiding by that system; as I discussed in the previous post, maintaining your individual religious beliefs is great, but expecting a secular society to re-shape itself to fit you is not. I don’t object to them getting divorced or getting their marriage annulled; I do object to the French courts claiming her hymenal status was part of the marriage contract (an “essential quality” of the woman the man in question wanted to marry).
And then there’s hymenoplasty.
But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.
Like an increasing number of Muslim women in Europe, she had a hymenoplasty, a restoration of her hymen, the vaginal membrane that normally breaks in the first act of intercourse.
“In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt,” said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery on Thursday. “Right now, virginity is more important to me than life.”
Clearly, if the choice is to have the surgery or be treated as sub-human, a lot of people are going to pick the surgery. It’s tough because this has been branded a “Muslim issue,” and is already being used as just another stick to beat Muslims down with. But you know, conservative Islam is hardly the only religion to fetishize virginity, and Muslim women are not the only ones who are treated poorly in their communities if they’re sexually active. I think we can criticize this where we see it without assuming that it’s only a problem with them over there.
Ellen Goodman discusses this further, and while I think she misses the mark in some places, she gets it right here:
This has led to a controversy not just over sex and equality but the ethics of surgery that’s designed to retrofit a woman to a rigid culture. On one side, the French gynecological organization condemned the practice as a “submission to the intolerance of the past.” On the other side, a doctor who performs the surgery said, “My patients don’t have a choice if they want to find serenity — and husbands.” And some of the patients describe it flat-out as a matter of life and death, acknowledging that they are in real danger from their families if their ‘dishonor’ is discovered.
Now, before we dismiss this whole restoration project as Europe vs. fundamentalism, remember that American doctors are also offering to repair hymens in website ads promising privacy and like-a-virgin results — thank you, Madonna.
Bioethicist Alta Charo squirms over the idea of hymen repair but then says we ought to “put it in the larger context of how far women will go to make themselves marriageable and sexually attractive.” Just what will secular, modern women do to fit their own cultural stereotypes — breast implant, anyone? What will they do to stay employable — face-lift, anyone?
I do think that hymen-restoration surgery is a little bit different than having a face-list, mostly because hymen surgery is wrapped up in really regressive ideas about women as the keepers of sex and women’s bodies as objects for men to own (where men apparently want their items vacuum-sealed). But on the other hand, it’s easy to focus on hymen surgery just because it sounds so weird to a lot of us — and of course in the meantime, women here have vaginoplasty with some regularity to “tighten up,” and go under the knife for all kinds of other reasons that mostly have to do with maximizing economic and romantic benefits. And hymen surgery is hardly just a French Muslim thing: the Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute of Los Angeles (seen on Dr. 90210!) offers not just hymoplasty, but a whole series of “Designer Laser Vaginoplasty.” Why? Because:
“Our mission is to empower women with knowledge, choice, and alternatives.” We encourage patients to participate in their healthcare and surgical design. In one of our patient surveys, women were asked; do women want to be loose or relaxed or do women want to be tight? Women answered 100% -women want to be tight. LVR® can accomplish what ever you desire.
Yes, nothing screams “empowerment” like a surgically tightened pussy. But I do love the co-opting of feminist language: Choice! Knowledge! Empower! What Women Want!
And what else do women want, other than tighter vaginas?
Many people have asked us for an example of the aesthetically pleasing vulva. We went to our patients for the answer and they said the playmates of Playboy.
And what gives the “Playboy aesthetic” is called female genital mutilation by the World Health Organization:
Laser Reduction Labioplasty with Reduction of Excess Prepuce (excess skin along the sides of the clitoris) can provide the true playboy aesthetic look. Women tell us that they want the skin to drape neatly over the clitoris. The reduction of the excess prepuce provides the desired aesthetic enhancement of the clitoral skin. The majority of women having laser reduction labioplasty need the reduction of excess prepuce for a complete aesthetic result.
Again: I can’t blame women who choose to get these procedures done, especially women for whom the “choice” is between not having surgery or being shamed and shunned from their communities. But I sure as hell reserve the right to blame the jackasses who peddle virginity as a virtue of utmost importance, and who pin a woman’s personhood and value on her sexual status — and that certainly includes the abstinence-only crowd in the U.S.
I’m with Goodman on this point:
Government-promoted virginity lessons are not simply an attempt to protect our daughters — and, oh yeah, sure, sons — from a culture that sells sex like Pop-Tarts. Nor are they just about helping them delay and think twice about hooking up. They too are based on fear and control.
And consider the father-daughter Purity Balls dotting the country. At these deeply creepy events, fathers promise “to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.” How far is that protection from the protection racket where fathers oversee their female property until it’s passed on — intact or else — to a husband?
I’m guessing I’m not going to get an answer that explains this, but I have to ask: If you voluntarily had premarital sex, why would you want to marry someone who needed the lie of a reconstructed hymen? Maybe I’m too caught up in my secular-judeo-christian perspective, but I can’t imagine starting out my life-partnership with deception like that. Or perhaps these women regret their decision to have premarital sex, and agree with their suitors that no hymen means no virtue? I really don’t get it.
I’m a liberal Muslim feminist and that NYT article pissed me off so much. Ohhhh yeah, Muslim men want virgin wives!!! So do many other men from the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain, Britain, and everywhere else on earth!!!
It’s hilariously pathetic how so many people think that women and girls have to be CLEAN, PURE VIRGINS while boys and men… go around and play.
I don’t have an orthodox view of Islam, BUT from an orthodox perspective, the Qur’an clearly forbids Muslim men from engaging in pre-marital sex, too. so both males and females are equally guilty if they both engage in pre-marital sex. I am so frustrated and angry how orthodox Muslim immigrants in Europe have twisted the Qur’an around to fit their sexist, homophobic, anti-Western ideas and sentiments.
anyway, Jill, thank you for pointing out that this issue is NOT just limited to Muslims. the whole Vaginaplasty trend in this country is seriously disturbing. Totally random trivia: I read somewhere that porn star Jenna Jameson had a vaginaplasty to feel “fresh.” That was when I first learned about the trend.
Le Sigh.
I dont know. The article doesn’t say, but my guess is that perhaps some of these French Muslim women are entering into arranged marriages, whether by consent or by “force” (I hope not, though). My guess is that they would be willing to marry sexist assholes is because they want to have babies and have a “nice” life. because you know, women everywhere are still being pressured to settle down, make babies and be “normal.”
Anyway I forgot to add one thing to my earlier comment. It’s frustrating how the Western media views Muslims as “rigid” people, when in fact, way before the Europeans came and destroyed our cultures, Muslims used to be so liberal, progressive, sexually open-minded, and adventurous.
Afghanistan used to be liberal. Afghan women used to wear short skirts on the streets. Afghan men and women both drank alcohol openly. This was all before the Soviets decided to come over and destroy everything.
Mughal India, under Muslim rule, used to be very sexually progressive before the Victorian British assholes came and destroyed our culture. So now many Muslims in South Asia have sick backward Victorian ideals and interpret everything that the Western colonialists have taught them, which includes virginity. sorry, but I had to rant.
“DTMFA”? Ditch the mother-fucking asshole?
Close. Dump the motherfucker already.
If you voluntarily had premarital sex, why would you want to marry someone who needed the lie of a reconstructed hymen? [...] Or perhaps these women regret their decision to have premarital sex, and agree with their suitors that no hymen means no virtue?
Sometimes. But I think most of the time it’s not a matter of wanting. I think for a lot of these women, marrying somebody who doesn’t care about their virginity isn’t really an option. Either they’re in an arranged marriage, or they’re expected to marry somebody within their conservative Muslim (or conservative Christian) community. Marrying outside the community would have the same effect as not being a virgin on the wedding night – rejection from her community and family and possibly violence by male family members.
Also, if you read the article you’ll see it’s not always a matter of the woman wanting/needing to decieve her husband to be, it’s a matter of her wanting to decieve her family (to avoid punishment) or to decieve her future in laws (who demand to see proof of virginity before okaying the marriage).
Why? The court only said that virginity was an important part of the agreement for *this* couple, not for any other couple. I don’t like virginity fetishisation any more than you do, but if two people willingly decide that it’s important to them I can see no reason for the courts not to take that into consideration, just like any other important factor would be. That’s precisely what appears to have happened here, strongly evidenced by the facts that the woman never contested the annulment, and that the man’s cause of action was mainly based on her alleged misrepresentation. That the subject matter of the misrepresentation is distasteful in secular society does not prevent a secular court from ruling on the misrepresentation itself.
I also have some trouble drawing the line – if such a line is to be drawn – between what secular family courts should and shouldn’t tolerate. Given the nature of the institution, pretty much all marriages involve troubling assertions/implications about the role and status of women. Virginity fetishisation is different in degree, but not in kind, from traditional marriage.
Being from the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain, Britain or anywhere else is not mutually exclusive to being a Muslim.
Just an FYI: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7464356.stm
Fuzz, the problem is this: Annulment is not the same as divorce. If they had filed for divorce and the court had granted it, fine. But under French law, annulment means that the marriage never existed, and the way you get an annulment is to prove that one of the parties to the marriage misrepresented an “essential quality” about themselves. So it’s not any misrepresentation, it’s a fundamental misrepresentation. It is up to the French court to decide what qualifies as “essential” — and “essential” is not a relative term to be determined by the couple. It’s a legal standard. So the subject matter of the misrepresentation matters very much, because it represents where the court draws the line in defining what “essential qualities” of a marriage are.
Fuzz, which is possibly why she said, “Many other men from…”
Interesting point jill, what are the essential qualities of a marriage? Related to this, at least I think, what if one partner told the other they were fertile, knowing they werent, so that the other would marry them? I know its not the same thing but I think perhaps somewhat related. Does essential quality, as far as an annulment go, include education, income, genetic deformity, etc? Or is this one issue especially charged over any other?
I just hate the whole issue over the provability of virginity. Obviously in this case the women did confess that she was not a virgin but what if she had contested it? What would the court have done in that situation?
Not that this guy isn’t a douchebag (because, he really is), but how is his fetishizing virginity and the subsequent annulment any worse than people like Heart claiming that being trans “vitiates consent”?
Also, Jill, I believe you are mistaken regarding the legal import of “mistaken” (although I haven’t taken any sort of comparative law, I’m just working off of the analysis I’ve read of the case). My reading was that “essential” was a fact-based determination from the individuals involved: if one party felt that a particular representation was “essential” to the relationship, it was considered “essential” for deciding the disposition of the case.
I’ll certainly agree, however, that virginity fetishization in general, and Purity Balls in specific, are epicly fucked up.
This makes me uncomfortable on several different levels.
I’m not sure that I want any court deciding, from start to finish, what the essential qualities of marriage are. What’s essential in mine, may not even be relevant in another and vice versa.
I would also have a problem with virginity being legally determined an essential quality of marriage. But then how do we specifically exclude it unless we have a list of “essential qualities of marriage” to exclude it from? And do we really want such a list?
So let’s say the line has been drawn; the court has decided on a list of “essential qualities” and virginity is not it. Good! What would be an acceptable list item?
Some things just aren’t so black and white. I think this is one of those things. Like it or not, “essential qualities” are relative in the context of marriage.
Do you think it’s possible to allow the courts to decide this kind of things on a case-by-case basis while still operating within certain specified boundaries? Could we set guidelines for determining what “essential” means without making a specific list of essential qualities?
The term “best interest of the child” suddenly came to mind. Isn’t that determined more by guidelines than by a specific list of what “best” means? Could a similar principle be applied to determining “essential qualities”?
I don’t know… I’m really just thinking out loud at this point. All I know for sure is that I don’t want any court deciding what is or is not essential to my marriage. So I can’t very well justify wanting a court to make that kind of decision for someone else’s, regardless of my personal feelings about what they consider essential.
That makes perfect sense. I don’t see how it can be any other way.
I understand this in the case where it is literally a life or death issue for a woman but other than that, the performance of these surgeries are disgusting. The medical establishment is profiting from this. These surgeries can range from 3-5 K. What happened to the vow to do no harm? With the few disposable dollars that women have, spending it on designer vaginas and hymen replacement is a sign of how devalued the natural female form is.
I also find it disturbing that the woman in question is regarded as ‘disposable’ because she had been ‘used’ before her wedding night. Clearly she and the man she married had sex. But because he didn’t break her freshness seal, she’s just … disposable.
Mughal India, under Muslim rule, used to be very sexually progressive before the Victorian British assholes came and destroyed our culture
Umm. No. Aryan/Vedic culture (Hinduism) was sexually progressive
and all the naked paintings, art, sex, kama-sutra etc., ALL of it was
banned and destroyed by the Mughals who eviscerated Hindu culture and imposed a foreign Semitic/Islamic point of view, utterly alien to India. Temples were destroyed en-masse for their nude art/sculpture to say nothing of more serious matters like the holocaust of millions of Hindus (“unbelievers”/infidels) by early Mughal invaders.
Here’s what Laila Lalami had to say about this. It’s short, but worth the read.
This made me think of Marjane Satrapi’s Embroideries. which deals with most of the compromises women make t maintain a marriage in a patriarchy, and in a way that’s painfully familiar for women who grew up in America’s culture, too.
I thought of it because it includes a hysterically funny story about a woman who tries a, er, creative solution to covering up the fact that she’s not a virgin on her wedding night.
I don’t think the attempts to excuse Muslim backwardness with the idea that the West does unnecessary plastic surgeries can hold any water. In the end not being a virgin can put you at a real risk of being killed by your own family which I don’t think can happen if your vagina isn’t tight enough.
There are some interesting comments on the legal aspects of the case by Marcel Berlins who is a British lawyer of French descent. It looks like the French law on the grounds for anullment of a marriage are far broader than the English ones. Though in England you can still annul your marriage on the grounds that your spouse was suffering from a communicable STD or pregnant by another man at the time of the marriage. I guess both the French and English laws are the remnants of ideas on marriage developed at a much earlier date.
Yep, this is widespread and not limited to Muslims. Heck, it still exists even if you isolate yourself in the most progressive liberal sections of NYC or San Francisco as there is still cultural inertia and backlash from it being so dominant in our own society…along with many others.
There is still a widespread belief people, especially women who aren’t virgins before getting married may not be as committed to maintaining that relationship because the previous sexual experiences may cause the individual concerned to seek more sexually alluring partners that may come along later.* Unfortunately, this standard is often mainly applied to women when this argument can easily be made for the male gender…and it often ignores non-heterosexual relationships altogether.
One impression I have is the underlying fear that without the policing of virginity and sexual mores by society, that people, especially women would be free to join and leave family units at will which many would see as encouraging the rise of greater social chaos. Societies often preferred people being grouped into small easily controlled families** that remain relatively static so they could be better controlled by the ruling elite.
The statement a commenter made on another thread about how societies attempt to gain greater control over individuals by normalizing nuclear families as the only acceptable social unit summarizes this phenomenon in a nutshell.
* For the psychology majors/professionals, would this be considered a Freudian fear?
** Seems like many regimes in past history also hated large extended families as they were harder to control by the ruling elite.
My reading was that “essential” was a fact-based determination from the individuals involved: if one party felt that a particular representation was “essential” to the relationship, it was considered “essential” for deciding the disposition of the case.
That makes perfect sense. I don’t see how it can be any other way.
In the U.S., annulment law is state-by-state, and there are two camps. The majority of states apply the rule Jill described: annulment ONLY if the deceit was about “the essentials” of the marriage. The minority rule, which New York uses, is that you can get an annulment if for YOU, the deceit was fundamental and you wouldn’t have married the person if you had known the truth.
Divorce is part of the mix. Most U.S. states let you get a divorce even if your spouse wants to stay with you and has done nothing wrong enough to constitute “grounds.” New York doesn’t–so I assume it makes the annulment exit easier in part as a tradeoff.
“Obviously in this case the women did confess that she was not a virgin but what if she had contested it? What would the court have done in that situation?”
Probably punted it to divorce court, or denied the claim based on lack of evidence and then left it to them whether they wanted to come back and file for divorce.
More importantly, women should be allowed to sue their husbands for lying about penis sizes and doing half the chores.
…and yikes, a facelift is horrid enough; it cripples your ability to be expressive, and you probably won’t feel that hand on your face as keenly as before.
Sewing small the vagina is way worse, because a vagina is even more functional than the face. The vagina isn’t just still during sexual intercourse, its /muscles/ actually stretch AND grip. Taking the knife to it will take away the sensation, so you’ll be less responsive, and for the guy it would be like fucking a fleshy blown-up doll.
Kegel exercise would be much better for sex. It’s a good idea for people who don’t have het sex too, because it could help prevent urinary incontinence when you get older.
I have a question, and hopefully it won’t offend a bunch of people. But don’t you think that there is a point it becomes entirely irrelevant what western feminists with little or no cultural context to Islam (or Africa or India or etc.) think about cultural practices in that culture? While I can appreciate the outrage, doesn’t it become distasteful to drown out Muslim women’s voices in that outrage? In other words, it matters that Muslim women might (or might not) want this procedure available. And lets leave behind discourse on “how poor muslim women are so oppressed they don’t know they are oppressed” please. (And yes, I borrowed that phrased from Laila Lalami’s wonderful essay, the missionary position)
Honestly, no. I think that human rights norms are universal in nature — I think we need a greater diversity of voices when it comes to constructing those norms, but I don’t buy the cultural relativist arguments. And I don’t buy them in large part because what gets written off as “culture” is often quite political — and calling it “culture” buys into the idea that the most powerful people in a given society, who are calling the shots, are the ones who get to define what culture means, when in fact their actions are political. I don’t think Muslim women are so oppressed they don’t even know they’re oppressed — and I don’t see many people here making that argument. I think it’s clear that women all over the world stand up for themselves and challenge the status quo. But what’s also clear is that there are significant barriers in the way for all of us. And when political barriers get erected, it’s easy to write those barriers off as “culture” when we’re talking about brown people or people in developing nations. You rarely hear the actions of more powerful Western actors being written off as “culture” when non-Westerners criticize it.
These are purposeful political acts, not solely cultural ones. Dismissing it as “culture” feeds into the norms established by the most powerful, and takes away the agency and self-determination of all the people who don’t believe that their culture must condone harm to women. I think Laila Lalami’s point was about the pitying of Muslim women and the simultaneous targeting of them — the hypocrisy of that. Certainly not that we can’t collectively challenge patriarchal and harmful social structures — just that “we” should really mean all of us, not Western women telling other women what to do. It should mean equally allowing women to define their own issues and concerns, and helping each other out where possible — not expecting “other women” to ask “us” for help, since we’re up shit creek, too. And that political actors shouldn’t use the plight of women as a smokescreen to justify inflicting even worse harms.
For anyone who’s interested, Sally Engle Merry has written a lot about the construction of the concept of “culture.” One of her pieces is here. An excerpt:
She’s actually writing very critically about human rights norms as they’ve been enshrined into international law, with “culture” as the constant boogey-man. But I also see the opposite coming from well-meaning progressives — a need to unthinkingly equate “culture” with the bad political acts that harm women, and using that to say that we should back off of criticism. Two sides of the same coin, IMHO.
She has another article about how cultural acts are actually political, but I’m not able to find it right now…
I agree with you. I think you raise some good points, especially in terms of which issues are “cultural” and who decides the terming. You are right, it’s usually history-writers.
But also, with all due respect, these hymen-repair surgeries are not human rights violations. And when human rights violations do take place, muslim (and other) feminists have taken up that fight quite ably. I just believe that these women (and men) are in a far better position to make those judgments than westerners. As Lalami pointed out, the case itself didn’t primarily had to do with hymens or lack thereof, that’s something that was generated through
I don’t prescribe to cultural relativism either and it’s not what I am talking about. Stoning women is not okay, in any culture. Even in ones where it does occur. I just happened to be a brown girl born and raised in a South country who has listened to one too many discussions from Western feminists on what we need to do (without any regard to what we have actually done). Including my professor in grad school. I definately have my biases.
My point is it’s a slippery slope into imperial feminism, and it doesn’t hurt anyone to be aware of this. It is difficult, if not impossible, to untangle culture from certain culturally-specific practices. I would posit that we value that women do make these choices (in this case go through hymen-repair surgeries) and in prescribing motivations and making cultural assumptions we are merely talking for them, instead of with them.
Also. I was confused by
I am not sure if I misunderstood. But I hear actions from Western actors being written off as culture all the time.
Look, I’m no law scholar – Jill is probably way more informed about this than I am – but I’m curious about this idea of condemning this court decision in the name of “secularism.” Someone could make a lot of different arguments that the courts ruling on this case was unjust, but an appeal to secularism implies that secularism = impartial and more just, and that is not the case. If anything, Muslims in France have been persecuted in the name of secularism.
If “the West” had in fact reached modernity and we in fact lived in a secular society, I would say, “great, religion has no place in the courts!” but that is not the case, and to ignore that is to ignore the inherent xenophobic Christian bias built into the law.
My understanding is that lots of people get annulments that do not necessarily conform to the letter of the law, because it is legally easier than divorce. It’s used as a legal shortcut. People wake up from a bender in Atlantic City and have to do this all the time. Am I wrong? I could be.
Is the problem here that this couple did for religious reasons? I mean, it’s not like her mother-in-law threw acid on her*. It didn’t work out. They got an annulment. What’s the deal?
* I’m using this an intentional example of the kind of very real atrocities that are exploited by the Western media in order to convince Western consumers to characterize Islam as “backward” and “barbaric.”
apologies if this had been said before-as a muslim women i was outraged by this hearing and i have commented about it on another site. what i would like to stress is that it is unfortunate that culture is often misrepresented as religion-Islam being the most prolific example. yes islam asks that both men and women refrain from sex before marriage-hoevere islam also says a womans honour should not be based on her virginity or lack their-of, and that women should not be just seen as sex objects to be used. ok-so she was’nt a virgin-however his treatment of her i would feel would be condemned by islam.
Well maybe it’s a bit late, but since we talked a loooot about this case here, i think i can give some juridical precision:
@Jill:
“the marriage misrepresented an “essential quality” about themselves. So it’s not any misrepresentation, it’s a fundamental misrepresentation. It is up to the French court to decide what qualifies as “essential” — and “essential” is not a relative term to be determined by the couple. It’s a legal standard.”
Actually, it is a bit more complicated than that. While the law only talks about “essential quality”, the “jurisprudence” (i think the english word is case law ?) has a more open reading and considers something to be essential if it is determinant for one of the two people engaging marriage.
So actually it is a bit of a relative term – the judge who decided the annulment argued with something like this (this is a poor translation):
“Given that it is important to remember that the error on the essential qualities of the spouse implies not only to demonstrate that the demandor concluded marriage under the influence of an objective error, but also that such an error was determinant in his/her consent,
Given that in this case, [the wife] agreeing to the annulment demand based on a lie concerning virginity, it can be deduced that this quality was indeed perceived by her as an essential quality determining her husband consent to the projected marriage.”
I still thinks that it’s a problem that the law mentions the term “essential quality”, but on the other hand I also think that interpreting this as something perceived as the couple instead of an absolute list is the most sensible thing to do.
[...] I’d like to think that there isn’t some creepy fascination with virginity (and the ‘taking’ of) anymore. I’d like to think when a guy has sex with a virgin, he isn’t getting his rocks off an added extra bit because he is ‘conquering new territory’, so to speak. Cause, y’know, that’s creepy for a variety of reasons. [...]