Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Virgin worship, anal sex and oral sex

So much for today's gratuitous search engine baiting in the blog heading. It is a source of continuing amusement to me how many searches for sexual terms get pointed to this blog. All those horny desperadoes finding themselves on a web page that contains more words than pictures. And no porn. Never mind, horndogs, at least you might find an entertaining diversion here.

This post is actually a (semi) serious response to an issue raised on Suroor's blog. Why the hell are so many people so obsessed with virginity? The focus tends to be on female virginity (admittedly, there are some people who place an almost equal stress on male chastity but they're a small minority) which raises obvious issues of double standards. Why is it so often the case that men are excused if they have sex while women are expected to be virgins?

One contributor to focussing on female virginity is that there's an artefact that ostensibly proves or disproves female virginity - the hymen. But this is where it devolves from an unhealthy obsession into pure insanity. A hymen in and of itself proves nothing. There are a plenty of reasons besides sex for the potential absence of a hymen (from medical procedures to accidents and doubtless other causes). And there are plenty of things a woman with an intact hymen can do that stretch any concept of purity way beyond breaking point.

There is this whole purity/chastity pledge/born again virgin routine that's popular with American evangelicals that is absolutely astonishing in its hypocrisy. And another point, why is it so often the case that media reports about virgin obsession in Islam focus on it being the oppression of women while reports on Christian virgins are all about purity and the celebration of God's love? Those damn brown people...

Anyway, while many reports are keen to point out how many eager young Christians are taking the "virginity pledge" they're likely to gloss over how narrowly those teens define "virginity". Apparently, these teens are way more likely to indulge in oral and anal sex than "impure" teens. Who knew taking it up the butt was the path to eternal salvation? It reminds me of the scene in "Clerks" where the girl gets pissed off at her boyfriends because he's had sex with about six other women while she's only has sex with two men which makes him some sort of slut. The it turns out she's sucked 37 dicks.

Now, if you really put these hymen worshippers on the spot they'd say that all the anal and oral sex is wrong too. Most of them would, anyway. But where do you draw the line? Is kissing/groping/making out OK? So a woman who had sex with one man she loved is less pure than a woman who makes out with a different football team every night (but never has actual sex)?

And as I was saying before, often the weird obsession isn't even about sex, it's about the hymen. I remember reading a story years ago where a father was saying he wanted to sue the driver of a car that ran into his daughter's car because she "lost her virginity" in the accident. I was intrigued and read on - were the daughter and the other driver overcome with emotion and commemorated their shared experience by having sex? No, it turned out the father was claiming the impact broke his daughter's hymen meaning she was no longer a virgin. The other driver had therefore devalued his daughter and should pay compensation.

This attitude is nothing short of fucked up. It's the sort of mentality that leads to the hideous practice of surgically "re-creating" the hymen. Nothing will get through to idiots who believe this is a sensible way to behave. Actually, a few solid punches to the face might work. Even if it doesn't work, it would be fun to try.

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