I really shouldn't read the news. For one thing, Bush is mentioned constantly, and just the sight of his name is enough to give me hives. And then I stumbled on this gem in the NY Times (I really, really have to stop reading the NY Times - the Guardian is better for my blood pressure...) "Women who get operations to restore their virginity". (Here). At first I figured, what the hell, they can do what they like. But reading on, I discovered women terrified that they will be beaten, abandoned, or shamed because they lost their hymens. When I read one woman's claim that to lose one's virginity was to become dirt, I decided that women were fools, and men were dolts to insist on something so mundane. After all, there's nothing special about virginity. We're all born virgins. It's stupid to prize something so common and so easy to fake. Why not prize intelligence? Common sense? Independence?
I won't ever, ever, prone virginity to my children. Safe sex, yes, but virginity? Never. Life is too short to obsess about something so ridiculous. Sex is an important part of any marriage, and you wouldn't buy a car without driving it first, would you? Or buy a house sight unseen? What if you married someone without finding out if you were sexually compatible? Wouldn't that be awful?
I say to hell with virgins. (Stomping off to find a good erotic romance to read...I know I have one by Summer Devon in my docs. That should cheer me up.)
14 comments:
The focus on virginity like this really turns a woman into a commodity, not a human being. I agree with you, why not judge a person's worth by the content of their character, not the existence of their hymen.
Maybe EC should send Bush's wife a bunch of steamy romances. :P
That's crazy. I agree with your take.
Gabriele - I can't for the life of me imagine Laura Bush reading anything but 'The Little House on the Prarie', just as I think the picture book about the goat was a little over Dubya's head.
You hit the nail on the head "life is too short". even my Grandma (R.I.P.) told me near the end of her life that life was too short, when I told her that Greg was moving in with me without the binds of marriage. Bush is an ass!
After all, there's nothing special about virginity. We're all born virgins. It's stupid to prize something so common and so easy to fake. Why not prize intelligence? Common sense? Independence?
Great lines!
Some men won't drive a used car.
ha ha ha on the goat book comment. and philly... oooh.
I'm totally with you on this, Sam. It is so terribly sad that women (or anyone) could be made to feel they need to change themselves physically or get beaten up. What an awful feeling that must be.
How did these misogynist aspects of various "cultures" ever come to be in the first place?
I ain't saying it's right.
fair 'nuf
To be fair, I can see where a guy (or a gal) would think it pretty cool if their spouse were the 'very first one' - it adds a little something special.
But to take that and make it into a law unto itself is, as you said, pdg - misogynist and ultimately harmful.
It's amazing how backward mankind appears some days.
What specialness does it add?
I dunno - it never seemed special to me - but from the articles I read about the 'Virginity Promise' and the 'Virginity balls' (that sounds like an oxymoron...) I conclude that some people do think it's special. (Like baby teeth, I guess, you're born with them but logically you lose them when you grow up...)
:-)
Who was it said "I'd rather I was my wife's last than her first"? Maybe no one...
Anyway, woman as commodity, woman as pure-for-breeding (many of the cultures that prize virginity began as cultures that have no clue about how fathering works - it used to be that if an Arabian mare was ever once covered by a worthless stallion, she was worthless for breeding from then on), woman as inexperienced sexual partner who has (a) no idea what's normal and (b) no idea of whether her mate is any good in bed or else (c) no idea that "good in bed" is a quantifiable skill ... there's your virginity as value.
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