What constitutes “virginity”? When is it right to have sex? Sophomore cell biology and genetics major Brian Drupieski has an answer: Virginity is “one of your most valuable possessions” and to “simply throw it out and ‘get laid'” means “selling yourself out.”
He’s hardly alone in placing a high value on his virginity.
In keeping with traditional ethics, religious attitudes have reduced “sexual unions” to naked reproduction (“Be fruitful and multiply”). Sex, when sanctioned only within marriage, appears to be a way of repaying a debt to one’s family and to one’s community for giving one biological existence.
An alternative ethical approach to these questions will be instructive. We might begin in an odd place: Bishop St. Ambrose, governor of Milan in the fourth century, ruled a virgin who had been violated without her consent was innocent of dishonor, i.e. still a virgin, according to Eloquent Virgins from Thecla to Joan of Arc by Maud Burnett McInerney.
How could this be, in light of the fact that the “prize of her virginity” had already been ransacked?
The bishop put forth the controversial claim that the moral character of the woman was a better indicator of her chastity than whether she’d been physically penetrated.
Virginity was therefore not a material possession, but a state of grace.
Yet the proprietary notion of “remaining pure” persists, and harkens back to a patriarchal order where woman’s “treasures,” never her own, were handed down from her father to her husband.
Since the women’s liberation movement, it has become clear these restrictions on women’s freedom to decide their own fate are exploitative and wrong, not to mention incompatible with a democracy respectful of equal rights for people of all genders.
Ironically, an obsession with “staying a virgin” (presumably to avoid the advances of womanizers) reinforces a view of womanhood male chauvinists can really appreciate: woman as male property.
What’s more objectifying than defining the gift of one’s love as opening the vagina like a Christmas present? What’s more immoral than defining intimacy purely in terms of genitalia?
When a mature person is considering whether or not to have sex for the first time, she or he faces many risks and doubts about pregnancy, STDs and overwhelming new emotions.
None of this is made any easier by bombardment by senseless dogma.
In fact, if the sole reason to engage in sex is for the sake of reproduction, then why haven’t the sexual puritans called for an end to sex altogether, because artificial insemination makes intercourse unnecessary? If virginity is defined as penetration, then is a life-long lesbian – with a proclivity for oral sex – also necessarily a life-long virgin? This would mean fundamentalists should consider homosexuals the most chaste people on earth!
If virginity is an illusion, it relies on another deeper one – the myth of a “golden age” when marriages lasted, when there wasn’t graphic sex on television, when Viagra was just a word that rhymed with Niagara…back when people had morals.
But how many women saw those “lasting marriages” as brutal cages of humiliation and today seize the opportunity to divorce? When there were fewer ways to educate oneself on erotic matters, I’m willing to bet there were a lot more unsatisfied lovers. Is a frown from a nun too high a price for increased knowledge, skill and pleasure?
I’d advise my readers to avoid a dangerous risk of sexual inactivity – the risk of regretting a missed opportunity for seduction. The truth is, while societal mores ebb and flow, the potential for an intimate bond between committed lovers remains unbroken, and passionate moments are never lost.
In this sense, anyone can be like a virgin, touched for the very first time.
Emily Apatov is a junior government and politics major. She can be reached at eapatov@mail.umd.edu.
