It is heartbreaking that this whole hullabaloo of pre-marital sex has escalated into such a huge issue. This should not be the case. Instead, consider the real issue behind this prejudice anyway. To contextualize this, the issue lies herein mainly on the purity of the bride during marriage. From a very young age, she’s told to save herself for her husband because her purity is the greatest gift she can ever give her husband. It ingrains and instills into her a feeling of guilt and an extreme dislike of any form of sexual activities. There are cases that even after marriage, that guilt still lingers and it makes them feel dirty.
By teaching this view, society is basically telling women that all of their worth lies on whether or not they are virgins; that it is the responsibility of men to defile women like trophies. In fact, men are encouraged to. From a very young age, men are told to have a lot of sex, to collect women, so to say. But there’s a really big loophole there; men are encouraged to have a lot of sex, but women aren’t allowed to, gay sex is discouraged, bestiality is wrong, and masturbation is a sin… You get the deal. Because of the huge value society puts on virgin women, every young woman, probably starting from pre-teens (and isn’t that already a huge problem), is already objectified and hypersexualised. This whole concept of the value of virginity reduces women to how men should perceive them, as sexual creatures responsible for the sexual gratification of men.
Another problems lies, however, in what actually constitutes a virgin for women. If you define virginity as the penetration of a penis to the vagina, then majority of lesbians are probably still virgins. Seriously, this whole concept of virginity is heteronormative. It erases other forms of sexualities from homosexuality to asexuality. It reduces sex to male penetration to the vagina. Newsflash for everyone, just in case it isn’t already obvious, there are many forms of sexual acts and penetration is just one of them and is probably not the most sexually pleasing.
This creates power towards defiling women and making them impure through male penetration. It creates and reinforces rape culture which are practices majority think are normal. This poses a huge problem among victims of rape as well. They lost their virginity without their consent and are thus no longer of value to society. That’s such a harmful way to think!
On a related note, if sex is reduced to male penetration, then women should have a lot of sex with other women anyway and it wouldn’t be wrong.. But wait, according to the church, homosexuality is bad (even if Jesus never said so, and his whole sacrifice was meant to repeal the old testament anyway). This whole definition of sex is already, in itself, problematic. There is no clear distinction between what is good and what is bad, but one thing I know for certain is that it feels good, and if your God doesn’t want you to feel good, then I’m not sure I want to follow that God anyway.
Furthermore, society will still judge women anyway for whatever they choose or not choose to do. If women have sex before marriage, they’re called sluts. If they don’t, they’re a prude. And if they call you out on it, they’re a bitch. It doesn’t make sense but it’s the simplest of truths that women have to live with as long as patriarchal concepts are still rampant. That, I think, is the real issue at hand.
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Crossposted from FamiPOP Bloggers (original post)
