Comments on: Artificial Virginity?

By: 866 Toll

866 Toll — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:11:30 +0000

In most cases I don?t post on blogs, but I would like to mention that this post really forced me to do so. Really nice post!

By: Maggie

Maggie — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:42:55 +0000

I trust these woman to know what is right for them and their bodies. There is nothing I find more distasteful than a western feminist telling women from other countries what to do when we obviously don’t understand. We can’t have a women’s rights movement for them.

By: Kath

Kath — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:25:00 +0000

I’ve had pretty much the same experience as Maria D., and it was equally as frustrating. I waited until I was 18 to have sex and I was treated like some kind of freak for not wanting to have sex with my boyfriend of 2 years (I never had intercourse with him, and that’s fine with me!). I didn’t understand the big deal! I just didn’t wanna risk getting pregnant and I think that’s a perfectly good reason not to have sex (for me, not for everyone of course).
Now that I’m no longer a minor and I’m more comfortable with my sexuality/reproductive choices, I have sex. And nothing fundamentally changed for me. The floodgates didn’t open. I didn’t suddenly emit some mature, womanly aura.
I practically expected someone to shake my hand and say “welcome to The Club.”

Another thing that irks me is that hetero sex is considered THE sex that “de-virginizes” you, yet masturbation is just as valid a sexual experience as intercourse. Therefore, I could consider myself no longer a virgin from the time I started exploring my sexuality on my own.

By: Para las lectoras. XXVI « El Rincón del Ornitorrinco

Para las lectoras. XXVI « El Rincón del Ornitorrinco — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:17:32 +0000

[...] noticias menos alentadoras, en Turquía la práctica de la cirugía de himenoplastía o reconstrucción del himen para “recupe…. Y lo que es peor es que en algunos casos puede salvar la vida de las mujeres que la llevan a cabo. [...]

By: wandering soul

wandering soul — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:52:42 +0000

i think virginity of both gender should be imposed!!!! we should not have sex before any marriage! divorced should be crossout. marriage should should be bonded until death.

By: Maria D

Maria D — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:54:40 +0000

On the flip side of the ‘virginity=purity=good’ perspective is the ‘modern girl’ thought that your virginity is something that you have of get rid of asap. Also, that being experienced is a sign of maturity and wisdom.

During the 60’s, women rebelled and ‘gave away’ their virginity, expressing their disgust and displeasure at having so much value put on their virginity. I appreciate the sentiment. However, in the process, they just twisted it around. Now, sexual experience is valued among many women, and a woman who remains a virgin is often treated as more of child or put in some other condescending role.

Personal story and minor bitching begins here. Feel free to stop reading.

Most of my female friends lost their virginity in their teens and all of them are sexually active now. I’m nearly 21 and I’m still a virgin. I CANNOT talk to them about sex or any of this stuff because, for those who do know, their first thoughts were ‘why aren’t you having sex?’ and ‘we must find you a guy now. or a girl. whichever works for you.” And always, ‘you must loose this dreadful thing so that you may become a REAL woman.” What, like Pinocchio? do I only have a toy uterus now, to be replaced in a magical uterus ceremony after I have sex?

The idea that I don’t like any of the guys I now enough to want them to touch me that way is irrelevant. Just pick a guy, any guy. Get it over with so that you may join the ranks of womandom.

The ironic part? Before they knew I was a virgin, I was considered the most mature, worldly, and levelheaded girl they knew and the one most of them went to for advice or a shoulder to cry on. Now I’m a child because I lack ONE human experience. Blarg.

By: KS

KS — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:20:15 +0000

Obsession with virginity really is disgusting… in some Southeast Asian countries, sex trafficking has a lot to do with virginity. Young girls -and I mean YOUNG- are kidnapped and the prices go up if they are virgin because many men in the region still believe in virginity’s “power of immortality.” What’s even worse is that brothels would be mutilate these young girls’ genitals to make them seem “virgin” (or “de-penetrated”) so they can re-sell their products. It’s really horrifying…

Weddings have so many virginal impositions as well. The white dress… the grooms don’t have to wear white. Plus, the bride walks the aisle with her father who literally hands her over to the soon-to-be husband. And the bouquet for other single women in the room -the bouquet they would one day throw to other single women in a white dress of sinless purity.

And don’t even get me started on the magazines. Patriotic sex kitten just says so much about this country…

By: Lucy

Lucy — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:16:31 +0000

You know what thoroughly amazes me more than anything else in this whole ‘virginity as value’ schtick? That – in this modern, technologicised culture of Turkey, which is a country member of the EU, full of qualified and highly trained doctors, therapists, scientists and experts of all kinds, just like in a ton of other countries where there are beliefs that virginity equates to ‘purity’ and the possession of a hymen, and even maybe a little here in the US, where beliefs about the ‘hymen’ still pervade – a single, tiny, and I’d say rather unreliable part of a woman’s physical anatomy, in this case her hymen (you know, a part which medically speaking, can be defined just like every other single bit of a woman’s body without any particular social meaning attatched to it; like ‘the appendix’ or ‘the ribcage’) can somehow it’s still held up as the absolute expression of a woman’s virginity! I mean, cooooome oooooooon, we KNOW this isn’t true. Any doctor could tell you about the notorious inability of the prescence or abscence of a hymen to define a woman’s ‘virginal’ status, yet the womens’ culture and even the women themselves seem to accept that their entire social status rests on this prescence of an ‘objective’ part of their bodies – like the prescence or abscence of an appendix.
Waaaay to separate the whole “women as objects” /
“‘purity’ [here dressed up as a hymen] totally = respect” debate, you guys!
Doctrine like this, I find, also represents a serious lack of trust in all the women inside the ‘virginity culture. You’re seeing women here as all being or becoming potential “offenders”, as being universally untrustworthy and lying about their sexual history, and ultimately as being just that inferior to men – their whole seems to be able to be reduced down to that of an “object” -or at very least the presence or abscence of one. And it’s that issue – of women as objects, as women as being the ‘inferior’ party in a situation that’s meant to be based around mutual love and respect, of women as intransient conferrals of status on men – that I find so damn hard to grasp here. And THAT makes me so damn unhappy

By: Lucy

Lucy — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:14:37 +0000

You know what thoroughly amazes me more than anything else in this whole ‘virginity as value’ schtick? That – in this modern, technologicised culture of Turkey, which is a country member of the EU, full of qualified and highly trained doctors, therapists, scientists and experts of all kinds, just like in a ton of other countries where there are beliefs that virginity equates to ‘purity’ and the possession of a hymen, and even maybe a little here in the US, where beliefs about the ‘hymen’ still pervade – a single, tiny, and I’d say rather unreliable part of a woman’s physical anatomy, in this case her hymen (you know, a part which medically speaking, can be defined just like every other single bit of a woman’s body without any particular social meaning attatched to it; like ‘the appendix’ or ‘the ribcage’) and yet somehow it’s still held up as the absolute expression of a woman’s virginity! I mean, cooooome oooooooon, we KNOW this isn’t true. Any doctor could tell you about the notorious inability of the prescence or abscence of a hymen to define a woman’s ‘virginal’ status, yet the womens’ culture and even the women themselves seem to accept that their entire social status rests on this prescence of an ‘objective’ part of their bodies – like the prescence or abscence of an appendix. Waaaay to separate the whole “women as objects” /
“‘purity’ [here dressed up as a hymen] totally = respect” debate, you guys! Doctrine like this, I find, also represents a serious lack of trust in all the women inside the ‘virginity culture. You’re seeing women here as all being or becoming potential “offenders”, as being universally untrustworthy and lying about their sexual history, and ultimately as being just that inferior to men – their whole seems to be able to be reduced down to that of an “object” -or at very least the presence or abscence of one. And it’s that issue – of women as objects, as women as being the ‘inferior’ party in a situation that’s meant to be based around mutual love and respect, of women as intransient conferrals of status on men – that I find so damn hard to grasp here. And THAT makes me so damn unhappy

By: Toongrrl

Toongrrl — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:40:15 +0000

Okay girls, I know why virginity is important to the Religious Right. What I said was: why is IT out of all things, still important?