I hate the term virgin. I hate the whole concept of young women being little flowers of delicacy with something secret and beautiful to protect until they find a special little bumble bee, with a diamond ring, for whom they can spread open and blossom.
Gag.
Come on, we know that first time usually sucks. My first experience looked just like Jennifer Jason Leigh with that bad boy, Mike, in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It was quick, uncomfortable, and kinda boring.
Sazz is talking about men winning women’s virginity and wearing it like a badge of honour. I commented that I tossed my virginity at the first opportunity. It was a burden to me. Like waiting for that first scratch on a brand new car. Once broken in, THEN you can stop worrying and really enjoy it. Firsts are highly overrated. It's the most recent sexual experience that counts!
But beyond that, other ideas around the term get to me. Sazz discusses sexual abuse in her post, but let’s explore how the idea can damage a caring, non-abusive relationship.
A virgin is pure, a non-virgin tainted. As soon as sex starts, the woman has jumped from good to bad, virgin to whore. How can she possibly still be respected under this ideology? The idea that it’s something to save to give only once, an experience elevated beyond all other sex, is to introduce a power imbalance to what could be an equitable relationship on all other fronts. She has something she’s unwilling to share, and he’s got to try to convince her to give it up already. Or, she wants to share, and he’s trying to convince her to hold out longer so she’ll remain a respectable woman in the eyes of the world (or just his). He wants to continue loving her, but only dirtbags put out. It’s a double-edged sword. If you are, you’re a prude, but if you aren’t, you’re a slut (a little Breakfast Club for the fans).
And of course it’s entirely heterocentric to conceive of virgin as a non-penetrated woman or non-penetrating man. If I only slept with women, I could be having crazy hot sex several times a day with tons of different people and still be a virgin! It’s a nonsensical term. It was originally meant to imply a person who doesn’t have carnal knowledge, but many people are having lots of really good sex without that one act that shifts their status. We’ve found ways around it; why not just obliterate it.
I see sex as an experience that sits on such a gradual continuum that it’s difficult to draw boundaries around what it really is. I say I’ve had sex when there was no penetration, so that definition is tossed already for me. Is it when someone orgasms? Because I’ve had sex without anyone getting off. Perhaps it’s the act of being aroused with another person. But I’ve also had really intense conversations in which I think we were both aroused, but I wouldn’t call it sex. Okay, maybe it’s the intention to arouse. But if I try to turn someone on, and it doesn’t work, we’re not having sex. Does it have to involve contact with another person’s genitalia? I don’t think contact by another party is necessary because I call it sex if we’re both watching each other masturbate. I don’t think masturbating alone is sex (including phone sex), so it must involve at least two people. But what about this: if I just give head I don’t think of it as sex, but if my guy goes down on me, if I’m the one getting it, then I think it is. So, if two people are involved, and there’s contact with my genitals, then it’s sex?
Oh, who cares! What does it matter in our society in which de-flowered women are allowed to marry (or just live), whether or not we’ve done the big nasty? Can’t we put out a public service announcement directed to pre-teens that teaches them that they should have sex, safely of course, when they, and the person they’re with, really want to. Period. No guilt trips, no flowers and bumblebees, no gatekeepers, just pure desire leading the way.
Sure there’ll be some regrets. But right now some girls cry that their first choice wasn’t the one, and they gave away something precious too soon. Bullocks. Chalk it up to experience, and move on. You might never find that one, but you might enjoy a few runners up along the way.
Sex shouldn’t be a reward given out if someone is good to us, but something to be shared between people because we’ve connected somehow. Every connection we make is precious. Every one. Don’t waste time ranking them. They’re all good.
But will sexual openness lead to young teens or even children getting it on with every person that also likes tamagotchis? Do we need the virgin/whore dichotomy to keep young teens from having sex until they’re mature enough to deal with all the ramifications of a sexual relationship (which is when? – I’m still waiting). Threat of pregnancy and disease and a statutory rape charge might do that for us. But fear of being labelled a slut might do it better.
I rarely give my 12-year-old daughter direct orders without explanation. But I’ve already told her to wait until she’s 16 to even think about it. Because I say so. I’ll keep you posted on how that works out.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
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14 comments:
Labels are usually meant to exclude or include people within groups.
But I suspect that soceity is a bit behind in keeping up with the changes happening in it and around it.
But using terms/labels like virgin = pure and non-virgin = whore is like listening to that Diana Ross song 'Love Child' and looking for meaning in it in the soceity we currently live in.
butterfly cauldron just did a post on this as well, fwiw:
http://butterflycauldron.blogspot.com/
and well yes. Besides all the cultural mishegos about sexuality per se--one thing that really drives me crazy about The Eternal Subject Wars in feministville is that -i- think that it reveals a great big ol' blind spot wrt a lot of peoples' supposedly radical unpacking of patriarchal hooha; like, ever notice that -before- all the pole-dancing classes and 'Net porn and Playboy-logo'd shorts and so forth, there was one fuck of a lot more emphasis for women on "just don't do it at all"? and "your sexuality makes you inherently tainted"? like, you know, a couple millenia's worth? and that maybe oh just maybe that hasn't entirely gone away and might be worth looking at every once in a while, between sports-corset-rants?
...anyway, besides or maybe behind all that, i think there is a big ol' problem with the very concept of "purity" in the first place.
and is -also- maybe a part of what bugs me about the Eternal Subject Wars, or rather actually some of the You're Not A Feminist business, more specifically, here.
as in: the goal is actually not so much to live well and be happy (for everyone, that is) but to purify, purify, purify, of the evil taint of Patriarchy or whatever it is.
as i was starting to talk about with the Angela West book, in a way this is taking the original Orginal Sin trope (and all that comes from it) and simply standing it on its head.
mebbe not so "radical" after all, then, at that, that bit at least.
("tamigotchis?")
Dial-up - it's funny that it didn't occur to me that this is just another label, even though I've written specifically about the harm of labels before!
BD - Tamigotchis are hideous toys/"friends" that kids play with and collect (typically kids under 10 or so). They can connect to one another and have dates. They were actually a great ice-breaker for my kinda shy daughter, so I can't berate them too much.
BD said, "your sexuality makes you inherently tainted"? like, you know, a couple millenia's worth? and that maybe oh just maybe that hasn't entirely gone away and might be worth looking at every once in a while
An excellent point! You just turned a light on for me. I also makes me wonder about the "innocence of childhood" in the first place.
We've shifted from "If you do, he'll think you're a slut," to, "If you do, it means he's repressing you whether you know it or not."
If it feels good, just do it.
Oh, hell, I just wanna get laid, ya know? I want that rush of desire and need and anticipation where the simple act of unbuttoning a shirt can make me tremble on the edge. I want the smell, the taste, the weight of it all. I sure as hell don't feel oppressed and frankly don't give a damn if anyone thinks I'm a slut.
All the infighting that seems to go on among feminists -- oy gods! When are we going to remember that other women are not the enemy?
I don't have a daughter, but if I did, I would go out of my way to counter the message my religious family would try to give her. No, her body isn't something to be ashamed of. No, her feelings and desires aren't anything to be ashamed of, either. No, it's not dirty or sinful or any of those stupid things I got told. And that shit they'd have about original sin? HA! Oh that would soooo not be allowed in my home...
You know, you can have a healthy attitude about sex and desire and not end up pregnant at 16. In fact, that attitude is way more likely to keep you non-pregnant than the fear we get sold is. Grrr.
yeah, the "innocence of childhood" thing is something i had given some consideration to, especially when i was writing a play about John Ruskin and Kate Greenaway. it's rather related to the "woman as angel in the house" thing--very 19th century, and very much 1) class-and-white related and 2) a kind of "undoing" for the way well women in particular were seen before that (instead of being ravenous hyper-sexual Liliths, now women in their natural states are "pure" and more virtuous than men...well, some women, anyway) 2a) but so children, at the same time the whole sentimentalized google-eyed innocent thing is going on, a lot more actual children are working their asses off in the "dark satanic mills." You see how this works.
Ruskin in particular is sort of interesting in this regard: he was, you know, a pedophile of some sort; i was primarily interested in this very odd sort of three-way love affair he had with Kate Greenaway and the -drawings- she did of this sort of Edenic paradise full of sentimental "girlies" (Ruskin's term; no, no creepiness there). anyway she fell in love with him, you know, big important critic, such a man; and he kept pushing her to draw more of her girls just for him.
but so anyway you can see from his bio and his work that for him, as with many at the time, esp. in England i would venture, the "innocence" of childhood is inextricably linked to a kind of pastoral paradise lost, which would resonate with people who were living in the height of the Industrial Revolution (again with the dark satanic mills...)
...as well as, of course, the sexlessness; and Ruskin, like i -suspect- many pedophiles (not really much study done here; or if there is i don't know of it), had a particularly harsh and joyless childhood, ascetic, punitive and dreary; it's not a surprise that he idealized what he never really had, in some ways.
which is kind of what you see in say Michael Jackson (oh, so very much to unpack THERE, of course)...ironically, it's that very fetishization of childhood-as-innocence that leads to a more literal sort of fetishization, it seems like. i think it's a combination of, yes, deprivation of those years, a particularly harsh and frightening experience/teaching of adult sexuality, and...well, whatever else it is.
but, you know, the dirty secret behind all the hysteria a la McMartin and so forth, and of course we clamp down on porn and whatnot for the sake of "the children" (always an abstraction), is that we all know all too well just how little we collectively value the little people, now and always. maybe better now than we used to; but for centuries kids were, well, there wasn't much idealization going on: put 'em to work and get them on the road to productive adulthood. oh and meanwhile get as much use out of them as you can, including, yep, sexually.
it's economic and it's also a product of let's call it unconsciousness. authoritarianism, certainly. well, Alice Miller has a lot to say about this; but it's this sort of backassward bargain which says that you grin and bear whatever abuses you receive until you're old/big enough to finally dump your psychic load on the next generation; all carefully disguised as "pedagogy" and "for your own good."
Meh, I fuck a lot. Guess what? I want (and have) a man who respects my humor, smarts, and no bullshit attitude and could honestly care less that I am a "slut"...hell, he was no virgin when I met him, and frankly both of us find the expectation that a human over the age of, oh, 20 is/should be/ a virgin totally outdated...if they are, more power to them, that is their choice...but come on, the virgins are no better than the sluts, and vice versa....
people put too much emphisis on sex. sure, great sex is nice, but there really should be more to a relationship that is going to last longer than one night than sex...
I was just thinking to myself yesterday while flipping through the dial and coming across the insipidly inane movie Jersey Girl and watching as the little girl said to Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck after catching them in the shower together, "only married girls show their girl parts to boys," that maybe, just maybe, it would be better if we didn't run around telling our little girls this lie. Maybe, just maybe, it would be better if we encouraged a healthy attitude towards sex and sexuality - their own in particular - and stopped making it all tangled up with morality and domination and etc.etc.etc. Why can't sex just be sex?
Sage et al, you must've read Promiscuities, by Naomi Wolf? if not, run and get it, it's such a good descriptive analysis of this slut-virgin bullshit.
I'm still wondering about the 10-16-year-olds.
Can we obliterate all repression and end the stereotypes of the slut and virgin and still keep young people from having sex? Or is this question just a sign of my own repressiveness? Is there a problem with children having sex? If they're young enough, then pregnancy isn't a concern, is it!
I think there is good reason for kids to wait at least until 16 (because that's how old I was, mainly), but I'm not really sure what that reason is.
sage:
because they are not emotionally equiped to deal with it.
RE - but is there an age that people actually become equiped to deal with sex? To be quite honest, I really don't feel any differently now than I did at 16. I might be better at containing my emotions in public, but that's about it.
well, there goes my theory then :)
I feel MUCH differently about sex now than I did then, but I suppose for everyone it is different.
I don't get it.
What *is* being emotional equipped enough for sex?
I find there's a lot of emotions that get tied into someone when I have sex with them.
but I don't see those emotions as particularly different then when I crush hard on someone mentally.
Either way I'm still emotionally wrapped up in a person.
I guess I just don't see the emotional requirement to be ready for sex. [that wouldn't be present in a slower or chaste relation]
If there isn't an emotional requirement, or one that's attached to age, is there some other reason we're so disturbed by the idea of 12-year-olds having sex? (Well, I'm disturbed by it anyway.) Is it just that their bodies are still childlike so we want them to stay in that childhood arena and not venture into the adult world? I'm picturing a young Jodi Foster trying to blow DeNiro, and him pushing her away. Yuck.
"it's rather related to the "woman as angel in the house" thing--very 19th century, and very much 1) class-and-white related and 2) a kind of "undoing" for the way well women in particular were seen before that (instead of being ravenous hyper-sexual Liliths, now women in their natural states are "pure" and more virtuous than men...well, some women, anyway) 2a) but so children, at the same time the whole sentimentalized google-eyed innocent thing is going on, a lot more actual children are working their asses off in the "dark satanic mills." You see how this works."
Spot on. I also think that we've been here before. I heard a theory once that human societies change in cycles of 7 generations. Very few people can have this kind of frank discussion with their great grandparents. The 1780's seem a pretty wild time, masquerade balls were well known for the promiscuity that went with them (I'm fairly sure at least some people were taking psychedelic mushrooms around that time too. Masquerade balls would have been really fun on mushrooms!).
But after the party comes the hangover. Syphilis was lurking in the background while the Victorians were launching their moral crusades, religious revivals and all the rest of the hypocrisy, just as AIDS is in the background today, while all the major religions exhibit "fundamentalism" (patriarchy would be a better word).
The statement: "I don't like the abuse of women and children in prostitution and I'm concerned about the spread of STD's" tends to get confused with "I don't like sex" and and in the past, the only way to express either opinion was through religion. This kind of religion is a gift to closet homosexual men who can become paragons of virtue by resisting all those "evil feminine wiles".
The reverse is also true: the statement: "Let's talk openly about this" is often taken to mean: "anything goes" rather than "let's find out what we all genuinely want, where the problems lie and what is and is not acceptable to everyone"
"...anyway, besides or maybe behind all that, i think there is a big ol' problem with the very concept of "purity" in the first place.
Yes. In many areas of life.
I believe that the manner in which someone loses their virginity, and especially how they experience their first orgasm influences their sexual preferences and choice(s) of partner(s) for the rest of their life. WHEN is less important than HOW, WHO and WHY.
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