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Let Auntie Jill solve all of your dating problems.

Jill

Someone should pay me to be an advice columnist. I will definitely stay under the word limit. Here, let me help you all out:

My fiance wants to marry a virgin. DUMP HIM. Ohmygod dump him. Especially dump him since you’re not a virgin and he thinks women who aren’t virgins are filthy whores.

Your boyfriend jackhammers you for four minutes before falling asleep, and won’t make an effort to sexually satisfy you even when you’ve been asking for several years? DUMP HIM, ohmygod dump him, and quit saying he’s amazing and selfless. He is the worst.

He strongly disagrees with your right to have an abortion and he does stuff that you aren’t comfortable with or consenting to? DUMP HIM, because Christ, what an asshole.

You’re welcome.

264 thoughts on Let Auntie Jill solve all of your dating problems.

  2. Jill,

    This reads like a DTMFA week from Savage. Not that I don’t agree with you, but I have to ask why the effort?

    1. Jill,

      This reads like a DTMFA week from Savage. Not that I don’t agree with you, but I have to ask why the effort?

      Eh, because it wasn’t really that much effort.

  4. “I am a virgin who wants to share my first and only sexual experience with the one woman I plan on spending my life with and because I value that I also want her to be a virgin.” does not equal “Women who aren’t virgins are filthy whores.”

    1. “I am a virgin who wants to share my first and only sexual experience with the one woman I plan on spending my life with and because I value that I also want her to be a virgin.” does not equal “Women who aren’t virgins are filthy whores.”

      Actually it kind of does. Sorry, even if you’re a virgin too, I think requiring virginity before marriage is fundamentally fucked up.

  5. Uh, gotta disagree on the first one. There is nothing in that letter that suggests that he thinks women who have pre-marital sex are whores, especially since it says that he has remained a virgin himself because of his beliefs. I mean, she should dump him if she doesn’t want to be with someone who has those views, but it seems like the issue is not that she has a problem with him not wanting to have pre-marital sex, but that she is concerned about having lied to him.

    Lots of people don’t want to have sex before marriage, and want to be with partners who feel the same. That doesn’t mean they think women are whores if they do otherwise. I’m not one of those people, but I still find it pretty repugnant that the LAW asked her fiance about this before they started dating and then, knowing it was something he cared about, has implicitly lied to him about it since day 1 of their relationship. That is super fucked up, and she needs to tell him now so he can decide if he wants to marry her.

  7. Jill: Actually it kind of does. Sorry, even if you’re a virgin too, I think requiring virginity before marriage is fundamentally fucked up.

    It really doesn’t. You’re free to not date or marry those people, but the fact that you don’t agree with them doesn’t meant that they all think women are dirty whores.

    1. Well, Esti, the fact that they even believe virginity is a real thing that people have or don’t have, and that it’s only acceptable to maintain your virginity until marriage, does speak to a world view that is awfully difficult to explain without some misogynist underpinnings. Yes, they are welcome to have their beliefs, and to date (or not date) whoever they want. But I’m not going to pretend like those beliefs are a-ok.

  8. Gay = listen to Madonna ? Oo’

    “Every single male friend he’s ever had have ALL been gay.”
    You’re gay or you’re … what ?

    I find the second one funny !
    But i’d be a bit more respectful about the first one. He stayed a virgin as well. His belief might be quite old but he kept to it wathever, and will probably soften his point of view over time.
    But she should definitively tell him before they get married ><'

  9. Jill: Actually it kind of does. Sorry, even if you’re a virgin too, I think requiring virginity before marriage is fundamentally fucked up.

    Yeah, I’ve never heard a reason for it that wasn’t essentially “sex is dirty and only for marriage, especially for women”.

  10. We don’t know what religious or cultural background the man in question in the first one comes from but if the standard is purported to be an expectation for both men and women I don’t know how its fundamentally more misogynist than it is misandrist. Yes, you can say in practice that women are expected to hold the standard in salient ways that men are not, but you’re saying that in theory it is fundamentally misogynist. In any case, the woman in this case is in the total wrong; she’s the one who’s been lying to her fiancee the entire time. If they do get married, he’s got a total case for annulment.

  11. About the first one, the guy said “I don’t want to be with someone who had sex before marriage” not “I don’t want to have sex before marriage”. The second one is a defensible personal stance, the first one is a judgement on others. Jill is absolutely right in describing the first one as wrong, misogyny may not be the correct form of wrong; it could just be general bigotry, vanity, or self esteem issues. Yes he may have a right to set about whatever requirements he needs for comfort, and she should have disclosed her contradiction with those rules. But the guy’s point of view was wrong from the get go.

  12. It’s quite possible the guy is a misogynist–but he’s a virgin and he wants to marry a virgin, so he’s not a hypocrite and he doesn’t have a double standard. He might just be squeegee about sex. The problem, though, is that the woman in question is lying to him about her sexual experience. She’s totally free to say, “You want to marry a virgin? That’s messed up! I’m outta here!” What she’s not free to do is pretend that she is a virgin and deceive someone she supposedly loves. If she thinks his values are crap, she should break up with him, not ignore them.

    1. It’s quite possible the guy is a misogynist–but he’s a virgin and he wants to marry a virgin, so he’s not a hypocrite and he doesn’t have a double standard. He might just be squeegee about sex. The problem, though, is that the woman in question is lying to him about her sexual experience. She’s totally free to say, “You want to marry a virgin? That’s messed up! I’m outta here!” What she’s not free to do is pretend that she is a virgin and deceive someone she supposedly loves. If she thinks his values are crap, she should break up with him, not ignore them.

      Yeah, I agree — she shouldn’t have lied, and that’s totally fucked up. But hypocrisy isn’t the only thing that makes a belief system suspect.

  13. the guy said “I don’t want to be with someone who had sex before marriage” not “I don’t want to have sex before marriage”.

    He said both actually, since he’s also waiting until marriage.

  14. Jill: Well, Esti, the fact that they even believe virginity is a real thing that people have or don’t have, and that it’s only acceptable to maintain your virginity until marriage, does speak to a world view that is awfully difficult to explain without some misogynist underpinnings. Yes, they are welcome to have their beliefs, and to date (or not date) whoever they want. But I’m not going to pretend like those beliefs are a-ok.

    The fact that virginity doesn’t have a single universally applicable and agreed-upon definition does not mean that it’s misogynist to want to save, and to want a partner who has saved, certain sex acts for marriage. Some people think anything more than kissing should wait until marriage; some people think that only PIV sex should wait, or that all penetrative sex should. None of those views automatically mean that you think any women having sex before marriage are whores. And wanting to only engage in certain sex acts once married does not imply that “it’s only acceptable to maintain your virginity until marriage” any more than you engaging in pre-marital sex implies that it’s not acceptable for others to maintain virginty after marriage. It’s not like those of us having pre-marital sex are less likely to expect that sex is going to happen after the wedding takes place (unless, of course, you and your partner have discussed that, and of course shit changes and people’s sex drives can get really different over time, etc., etc.).

    Look, I understand that the belief that you should not have pre-marital sex has a strong correlation with holding other views that are wildly misogynistic, and maybe the LW’s fiance thinks all kinds of bad things about women. But misogyny is not inherent to the idea of wanting to only have sex with one person, and of wanting that one person to have compatible beliefs. Until I was about 19, I very much wanted to wait to have penetrative sex until marriage, and ideally I wanted to marry someone who felt the same way. That didn’t mean I went around thinking that women who felt differently were dirty whores — my best friend in high school started having sex with her then-boyfriend, now-husband when we were about 16, and I was happy for her and supportive of that choice even though I wanted something different for myself (and now I’m the one who’s had sex with people I won’t marry, and she’s the one who will only have sex with her husband: irony!). How people feel about sex is deeply personal, and the idea that everyone should be “YAY SEX” in all circumstances, which I see a lot of in sex-positive feminist communities, really bothers me. I don’t feel comfortable judging other people’s personal sexual preferences as long as a) everything is consensual; b) you’re upfront with potential partners; and c) you don’t judge other people for their sex lives/beliefs.

  15. Wanting to marry or have sex with someone who shares your ideas about sex does not make you judgmental, or it does, but there’s nothing wrong about “judging” someone as a potential spouse based on those criteria.

    And really, the implication that someone only gets to choose their partners if their standards match with yours is gross. I’m somewhat on the fence about how I feel about sex before marriage, but the idea that having a clear preference on the subject, clearly stating it to a potential partner before starting a relationship and having that partner refuse to be honest with me about how she feels about that preference makes me the asshole…it is so ridiculous.

  16. the fact that they even believe virginity is a real thing that people have or don’t have, and that it’s only acceptable to maintain your virginity until marriage, does speak to a world view that is awfully difficult to explain without some misogynist underpinnings.

    So wanting to decrease one’s chances of getting an STD or having an unwanted pregnancy is fundamentally misogynistic? Look, I know that abstinence-only education fails as a one-size-fits-all approach to pregnancy/STD prevention, but it actually does fit some people’s lifestyles.

    1. So wanting to decrease one’s chances of getting an STD or having an unwanted pregnancy is fundamentally misogynistic? Look, I know that abstinence-only education fails as a one-size-fits-all approach to pregnancy/STD prevention, but it actually does fit some people’s lifestyles.

      Abstaining from certain sexual acts is different from believing in the whole concept of “virginity,” and expecting your partner to be a virgin.

  17. don’t mean to derail this thread, but i didn’t know where else to turn: does anyone know what is happening with twisty over at blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com? her site is down, and has been for a few days.

  19. Abstaining from certain sexual acts is different from believing in the whole concept of “virginity,” and expecting your partner to be a virgin.

    How? If I’ve abstained from certain sex acts, and it’s important to me that my partner has also abstained from those acts, why is that different than the concept of virginity? Having to write out a list of sex acts a person hasn’t performed and doesn’t want their partner to have performed seems unnecessarily complicated when the generally accepted definition of “virginity” already covers what they are looking for.

  20. Kierra: He said both actually, since he’s also waiting until marriage.

    Yup, should have reviewed that one more carefully, the second was supposed to be “Don’t care who you’ve slept with, I will be a virgin before marriage”

    Thanks Kierra

  22. Virgin guy should be more original. Why is it always PIV they’re saving? Why does nobody ever say, “I’m saving fisting and suspension bondage for the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, because I just think that waiting to do those things with someone I love will bring us closer”?

  23. Some people have preferences that their significant other must be like them- virgin marrying virgin (with the couple discussing what this means to them), Black women only marrying Black men, Muslim seeking Muslim, Mormon seeking Mormon, gay man seeking man, ….. Hell, I’m Catholic and sought out a Catholic and married him!

  24. How about, people who mislead others about their sexual histories to fulfil their own goals at the expense of their partner’s convictions fully deserve an advice-columnist smackdown?

    Seriously, Jill, your response to this sounds like a right-wing parody of feminist beliefs. I hold many feminist positions myself, but I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage (or an equivalent commitment, where marriage is not yet possible for all couples), and, personally, I would never marry someone who didn’t uphold that same conviction. It doesn’t mean I think of sex as ‘dirty’, but rather that I think of it as sacred, and as intended only for one’s life-partner. But this kind of demeaning of others’ core values under the guise of ‘sex-positivity’ is among the reasons many of us from outside a Western, secular framework have no interest in identifying as ‘feminists’.

  25. To illustrate the problem with the concept of virginity: Would this woman be acceptable to her fiance if she’d had only non-penetrative sex? Sex with women only? If the penetrative sex had been anal? What if she were the penetrating partner? Oral only?

    Anyone who believes that sex before marriage is wrong and that they or their partner should be a virgin at marriage is investing marriage with some kind of magical properties which transform a shameful, dirty act into one that is blessed.

    I don’t know what kind of society alla you grew up in, but in the one I grew up in, that sort of belief system rests on the concept that women are spoiled or befouled or ruined by sexual contact prior to marriage. And the concept of befoulment/spoilage/ruination rests on the idea that women are property, and that if the property, when transferred from one owner (father) to another (husband) is not factory-sealed, the new owner is not getting what he paid for.

    That some more extreme patriarchal religious traditions today also demand of men that they too remain virgins prior to marriage does not change the fact that the whole tradition, like that of the virgin bride, rests on the misogynist idea of women as property whose main value is in the condition of their hymens.

    Being religious doesn’t excuse this, as the only religious traditions which still hold to this are — say it with me — patriarchal. As in, a great deal of their theology and authority rests on controlling women’s bodies.

    Was it fucked up that the LW lied to her fiance? Unquestionably. Is it even more fucked up that she felt she had to? Absolutely. Should she dump his ass with a quickness? Indubitably. She might be a liar, but he’s a rigid, patriarchal misogynist who’s invested way too much in the state of his wife’s hymen at the expense of her humanity. RUN.

  26. Esti: The fact that virginity doesn’t have a single universally applicable and agreed-upon definition does not mean that it’s misogynist to want to save, and to want a partner who has saved, certain sex acts for marriage. Some people think anything more than kissing should wait until marriage; some people think that only PIV sex should wait, or that all penetrative sex should. None of those views automatically mean that you think any women having sex before marriage are whores.

    Why do you think it doesn’t? Because people who want to save certain acts for marriage don’t do so for shits and giggles; those who do have a whole philosophy justifying their viewpoint.

    And that philosophy usually boils down to, “Women who have sex before women are dirty whores.”

    I mean, what other reason can you see for this guy’s attitude? What possible reason could he have for considering a woman who’s had sex to be unmarriageable if not that he thinks that she’s done something unclean?

  27. I don’t understand how insisting a woman remain a ‘virgin’ could be anything but a misogynistic point of view, as it implies that women who have been raped are somehow unworthy of bring married.

  28. igglanova:
    I will eat my hat if that guy wants a virgin wife out of concern for STDs.

    Your comment caused me to crack up in the middle of a dead-silent medical library.

  29. I consider myself a feminist, and support feminism, because women’s control of their own bodies, fertility and sexual choice is an intrinsic part of the movement. Between this thread and the thread on “sex during your period”, I’m struggling to understand how this noble aim has been derailed into childishly insulting anyone whose sexual choices or preferences don’t match those of the Feministe Team. He’s been honest and upfront about what he expects, and doesn’t appear to be hypocritically shagging around town whilst expecting her to remain chaste. I really think the LOLZ!1!DUMP YOUR PARTNER!!1! is being aimed at the wrong person here.

    1. I consider myself a feminist, and support feminism, because women’s control of their own bodies, fertility and sexual choice is an intrinsic part of the movement. Between this thread and the thread on “sex during your period”, I’m struggling to understand how this noble aim has been derailed into childishly insulting anyone whose sexual choices or preferences don’t match those of the Feministe Team. He’s been honest and upfront about what he expects, and doesn’t appear to be hypocritically shagging around town whilst expecting her to remain chaste. I really think the LOLZ!1!DUMP YOUR PARTNER!!1! is being aimed at the wrong person here.

      Well, for the record, the Feministe Team (TM) hasn’t weighed in on this one. These opinions are only mine, and I don’t speak for every person who writes at this site.

      That said, someone can be honest and upfront about what they want and still be an asshole. See, for example, a dude who says, “I expect my wife to submit to my authority in all areas of our lives.” Does he have the right to want that, and does he have the right to dump anyone who won’t go along with that plan? Sure. But he’s still an asshole. And yes, I do think there is something fundamentally wrong with requiring that your partner remain a virgin until marriage. I think there’s something fundamentally fucked up about the entire notion of “virginity” to begin with — that PIV sex is the only “real” sex, that it’s somehow more special or sacred or deep than other kinds of sex, that doing it outside of the confines of marriage is somehow sullying or problematic.

      That doesn’t mean I don’t think people should have 100% full rights to decide for themselves what they do and don’t do. They should! But no, I’m not down with a feminism that says we can’t question and critique the way these things play out. Just because something is a “choice” doesn’t mean that it can’t be fucked up.

      Oh and with that said, she sucks too for misleading her partner. That isn’t cool — she doesn’t get to decide what his dealbreakers are, etc. But yeah, she should have dumped him as soon as he busted out the “I must marry a virgin” thing.

  30. If there’s a justification for wanting your partner to wait to have sex specifically until marriage (rather than until you’re truly in love, explicitly committed, etc.) that doesn’t involve a synonym for purity, a characterization of sex something which is dirty and/or diminishes you, an analogy to chewed-up bubblegum, or a reference to patriarchal religious and/or cultural standards…I would be shocked. But frankly, his desire for their mutual virginity is most likely based on one of those things. If it’s not nakedly misogynistic, it’s still almost certainly based on regressive notions of sexuality that could hardly be considered feminist.

  31. I am a little suspicious of the first case. Please tell me if I am being a little uncharitable. The guy in this matter must know what he is asking for is unlikely. Without getting a direct statement one way or the other he would be stupid to assume that the woman is a virgin. So I am wondering if it is not that important that she is a virgin and he just wants something to manipulate her with at a later date.

  32. The advice given in the third case is kind of weird.

    “1. A disappointing blowjob is always less disappointing than no blowjob at all, NCWTD, particularly for teenage boys. So it’s always better to err on the side of blowjobs.”

    I would have thought it always better to err on the side of things you are comfortable about.

  33. @llama

    You might not be able to assume that a random person on the street was a virgin, but it’s not like the subject never came up with this couple. The LW herself said she “led him to believe she was” a virgin. If my fiance asked me whether I cared about my partner’s religion before we started dating, and I said that I could never marry a Catholic, and he said “cool” and then we later started dating and got engaged and he never mentioned anything about being Catholic… I don’t think I’m stupid to assume he’s not Catholic. I think he’s an asshole for purposefully hiding it. He doesn’t get to decide whether my dealbreakers are valid or not. If he thinks they’re stupid, he can not marry me.

  34. So I am wondering if it is not that important that she is a virgin and he just wants something to manipulate her with at a later date.

    I wouldn’t be shocked if that were the case; at the very least that virgin-or-whore-based manipulation (via shaming, “disappointment” etc.) seems to be a popular mechanism for controlling women in a lot of conservative cultures. Even if he’s not purposefully insisting on virginity to put her on the spot, knowing she can’t live up to that (retroactively), it still seems like a bad idea to start a marriage off with her feeling guilty or apologetic about her sexual history. It gives him some psychological leverage that he could abuse if he wanted to.

    So I don’t think you’re being too uncharitable. Maybe he’s not consciously trying to control her but the whole virginity thing is kinda about controlling female sexuality anyways and he’s clearly buying into that… so she might end up manipulated either way, either by him specifically or just by his culture’s values.

  35. Bagelsan: So I don’t think you’re being too uncharitable. Maybe he’s not consciously trying to control her but the whole virginity thing is kinda about controlling female sexuality anyways and he’s clearly buying into that… so she might end up manipulated either way, either by him specifically or just by his culture’s values.

    I had not thought it through that clearly, thanks for doing the heavy lifting for me 🙂

  36. zuzu: Why do you think it doesn’t? Because people who want to save certain acts for marriage don’t do so for shits and giggles; those who do have a whole philosophy justifying their viewpoint.And that philosophy usually boils down to, “Women who have sex before women are dirty whores.” I mean, what other reason can you see for this guy’s attitude? What possible reason could he have for considering a woman who’s had sex to be unmarriageable if not that he thinks that she’s done something unclean?

    Seriously? How about people who think, as at least one poster on this thread has said, that sex is something they consider very special and that they only want to share with the person they decide to marry? And who want a partner who shares that value, and for sex to be something they have only done with one another?

    FFS, this guy said that he wanted both his partner and himself to be virgins when they got married. Why don’t you try to think of a reason why he would have remained a virign if his only reason for not liking pre-marital sex was that women who did it became dirty whores.

  37. I’m on the fence as to whether it points to a misogynistic worldview for you to want a virgin wife when you’re also saving it for marriage. I’ll put it down as ‘likely, but maybe on an alien planet in 2085 this would be harmlessly kooky behaviour.’

    That being said, it won’t matter who does the dumping here, because these two are clearly incompatible and LW should stop kidding herself. I don’t find it overly harsh that Jill would phrase her breakup suggestion as ‘dump him,’ as that only demonstrates an admirable concern for the anaphora.

  38. Thomas MacAulay Millar: Virgin guy should be more original. Why is it always PIV they’re saving? Why does nobody ever say, “I’m saving fisting and suspension bondage for the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, because I just think that waiting to do those things with someone I love will bring us closer”?

    Because most people don’t usually do that sort of thing with random strangers, would be my answer. I mean, personally, I think bringing home some random stranger and tying him/her up would be kind of hot, but I realize that they would probably have quite a different view, and acting on this impulse would land me in a huge steaming pile of trouble.
    Personally, I’d run a mile from anyone who said ‘I value virginity.’ That tells me that they subscribe to a drastically different worldview than I do. It’d make me wonder why I even wasted the breath neccessary to talk to them. (And I’d just like to point out that a lot of women lose their hymens to non-sexual activities. Given the amount of time I spend on my bike and at my karate classes, mine’s probably long gone.)

  39. So Mr. Conservative Virgin Seeker wants to marry someone who’s never had sex. If she’s endured incest or rape as a kid, does that count? (By definition it doesn’t, at least from the survivor’s perspective, because a sexual act must be considered an expression of one’s sexuality to constitute sex — but you never know with these virgin fetishising types.) What if she was coerced into sex with someone when she was younger because she was too intimidated to say no? What if she had sex with hundreds of women but no men? Does it count if she penetrates herself with tampons or marital aids? Questions, questions!

  40. Look, the virgin guy said he didn’t want to marry a non-virgin. That’s his choice and his girlfriend should respect that…by dumping his ass.

  41. I hold many feminist positions myself, but I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage (or an equivalent commitment, where marriage is not yet possible for all couples), and, personally, I would never marry someone who didn’t uphold that same conviction. It doesn’t mean I think of sex as ‘dirty’, but rather that I think of it as sacred, and as intended only for one’s life-partner.

    So, this clearly implies that you’re considering non-hetero pairings, but that means we’re talking about things other than PIV sex, leaving open the eternal question: what is sex? How do you define it? Which acts are sacred? What about people who don’t have a life partner but desire sex? If they’re not on board with the sacred part, are they doing it wrong? If they’re not respecting the sacred, are they befouling it? Being disrespectful? Being ignorant?

    I think it’s hard to avoid the conclusion if you’ve described something as sacred and others are not treating it as such, then they’re (at best) wallowing in ignorance and (at worst) doing some kind of active damage.

  42. Virgin guy should be more original. Why is it always PIV they’re saving? Why does nobody ever say, “I’m saving fisting and suspension bondage for the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, because I just think that waiting to do those things with someone I love will bring us closer”?

    I have a hard time believing that it’s anything other than the hype: PIV sex as the pinnacle of sexual activity.

    I’ve known a lot of people who’ve set very bizarre, seemingly artificial boundaries regarding their sex lives. (Example: cis hetero couple who insisted they were saving their virginity for marriage but had regular PIV sex. It didn’t count as long as he never came inside her.) This seems like an easy line of demarcation.

  43. igglanova: I’m on the fence as to whether it points to a misogynistic worldview for you to want a virgin wife when you’re also saving it for marriage.

    Your just a big softy. Mr Virgin A. Virginseeker implicitly devalues women that are not virgins by placing a special value on virginity. Do you think this guy has never had a wank or does it have to PIV sex to count?

    BTW I assume his middle initial is A because his middle name is definitely Asshole.

  44. Thomas MacAulay Millar:
    Virgin guy should be more original.Why is it always PIV they’re saving?Why does nobody ever say, “I’m saving fisting and suspension bondage for the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, because I just think that waiting to do those things with someone I love will bring us closer”?

    This is gold!

  45. I thought it was GOOD to know yourself and what your personal standards (even if they be assholish)are, and to state them upfront…but that’s just me. I also think that any relationship, sexual or otherwise, should be based on open communication…not lies and willful deception.

  46. Fat Steve: I don’t understand how insisting a woman remain a ‘virgin’ could be anything but a misogynistic point of view, as it implies that women who have been raped are somehow unworthy of bring married.

    I agree. It just has to be about control.

  47. igglanova: I’m on the fence as to whether it points to a misogynistic worldview for you to want a virgin wife when you’re also saving it for marriage. I’ll put it down as ‘likely, but maybe on an alien planet in 2085 this would be harmlessly kooky behaviour.’

    It’s harmlessly kooky when it’s just a preference. It points to a misogynistic worldview when it becomes a requirement.

    What would this guy have said to his fiance if he found out she’d had sex before?

  48. MH: Seriously, Jill, your response to this sounds like a right-wing parody of feminist beliefs. I hold many feminist positions myself, but I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage (or an equivalent commitment, where marriage is not yet possible for all couples), and, personally, I would never marry someone who didn’t uphold that same conviction. It doesn’t mean I think of sex as ‘dirty’, but rather that I think of it as sacred, and as intended only for one’s life-partner.

    And what do you think of people who have sex outside of marriage/commitment? Do you consider them tainted? Unmarriageable?

  49. But yeah, she should have dumped him as soon as he busted out the “I must marry a virgin” thing.

    She could also just have been honest with him about her sexual history.

    And maybe, MAYBE, the dude in question would have found that his beliefs were challenged in such a way as to give him some room for doubt. “She seems wonderful, I’m attracted to her, but she’s not a virgin… But does this make her any less wonderful? And hey, at least she was honest with me.” Etc.

    A lot of people grow up in communities that literally brainwash them to believe that nonvirgin = dirty whore. I mean, I know a lot of guys from, like, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, who grew up with an extreme version of that – extreme to my eyes, at the very least, and I consider them my friends. But falling in love with someone doesn’t always involve this logical, linear progression when the two of you both trot out your individual deal-breakers and then decide if you can still stay together and have it be a lasting partnership. So someone who has been brainwashed in this manner still stands a chance of going against the grain – if the other person *let’s* them.

    To our eyes he may be a weirdo, but he’s an honest weirdo. His fiance, on the other hand, I’m seriously squicked by.

    1. She could also just have been honest with him about her sexual history.

      And maybe, MAYBE, the dude in question would have found that his beliefs were challenged in such a way as to give him some room for doubt. “She seems wonderful, I’m attracted to her, but she’s not a virgin… But does this make her any less wonderful? And hey, at least she was honest with me.” Etc.

      I agree she should have been honest with him. Totally. I just think she should have run for the door as soon as he broke out the “I want to marry a virgin” thing. She’s a fool for not doing that, and a jerk for lying.

  50. I find it interesting that a lot of commenters seem to be assuming that “virginity” is all about the PIV sex (or even all about the hymen-breaking).

    Do you think this guy has never had a wank or does it have to PIV sex to count?

    Why can’t he be someone who masturbates, is fine with his fiance masturbating, but doesn’t want them to have had sex with anyone?

    Personally, I like the definition of sex as:
    “two or more people, working together, in an attempt to make at least one of them have an orgasm”
    It doesn’t include rape (“working together”), or masturbation (“two or more”), but still includes a whole range of interesting options that could be defined as sex.

  51. This whole thread is full of brilliance. Jill, can you start doing a weekly agony aunt column?

    zuzu: …he’s a rigid, patriarchal misogynist who’s invested way too much in the state of his wife’s hymen at the expense of her humanity.

    I shall quote this next time I meet with the feminist students I advise.

    Seriously, preferring your partner to be, say, black or Korean is nowhere on the level of requiring your partner to be a virgin. Yes, people want to be with like people, and I personally hope to be with a (secular) Jewish partner someday. But I’d never demand that my partner convert, nor do I think gentiles are tainted or inferior (except Terry Randall) — such an attitude would be borne out of prejudice, which is unjustifiable. By contrast, there’s no justification for requiring your partner to be a virgin… unless you believe sexuality is something to be commodified, like property, and that there’s something defective with women who dare to use their body parts. If Mr. Virgin Seeker buys into that ideology, he doesn’t deserve this woman’s love, and frankly she’d be doing a favour for herself by telling him to grow up or get lost.

    And yes, if I required my partner to be black or Korean, this too would be wrong because I’d be arbitrarily valuing people’s race over their humanity. Fetishising someone’s virginity means you think what she (and it’s always a “she”) does between her legs somehow defines her as a person and has some bearing on her goals, dreams or achievements. Personally I think such people shouldn’t be allowed near humans or children, period, but that’s because I’m a cranky radical.

  52. MH:

    Seriously, Jill, your response to this sounds like a right-wing parody of feminist beliefs. I hold many feminist positions myself, but I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage (or an equivalent commitment, where marriage is not yet possible for all couples), and, personally, I would never marry someone who didn’t uphold that same conviction. It doesn’t mean I think of sex as ‘dirty’, but rather that I think of it as sacred, and as intended only for one’s life-partner. But this kind of demeaning of others’ core values under the guise of ‘sex-positivity’ is among the reasons many of us from outside a Western, secular framework have no interest in identifying as ‘feminists’.

    Ugh, thanks for including queers, but I’d kind of been happier if you’d just gone ahead with the whole sex-is-intended-to-be-between-people-who-aren’t-dirty-sluts thing without us. We don’t really need any more heteros whose tolerance of us is contingent on our being as much like them as possible…

    1. but I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage

      I’m sorry, but this phrasing cracks me up. You don’t “believe” in sex outside of marriage? I hate to break it to you, but sex outside of marriage exists!

      Semantics aside, let’s scratch the surface a little bit: What’s wrong with sex outside of marriage? And what if people, like me, have serious issues with marriage as an institution and aren’t sure whether we ever want to partake in it? Also, when you say “no sex outside of marriage,” what does that mean? Can you have oral sex? Anal? Can you manually stimulate someone? Can you masturbate? Can you kiss? I’m genuinely curious as to what the lines are, because most of the time when people reference “virginity” they’re referring to no PIV sex — which leaves out a lot of gays and lesbians (they’re virgins FOREVER if they’ve only been with people of the same sex!) and also places penetrative vaginal sex in a category of the only “real” sex, even though it’s a type of sexual act that doesn’t lead most women to orgasm and is hardly the the only thing on the sexual buffet.

      And it’s awfully hard to divorce all of this stuff from history and social context.

  53. And what do you think of people who have sex outside of marriage/commitment? Do you consider them tainted? Unmarriageable?

    WTF? Just because I don’t want to marry someone for a particular reason doesn’t mean that I think they are undeserving of marriage to anyone. It’s the difference between (to take a recent example) not wanting to date a Magic player and declaring that playing Magic automatically makes someone undateable by normal people. The former is just fine, the latter is being an asshat. It’s the difference between saying, “I want to marry someone religious” and saying “all non-religious people are going to hell.” No matter how often those two things may be correlated, the latter does not automatically follow from the former.

  54. So what I’m gathering, is that no one is allowed to have as a preference for their sexual partners, someone who hasn’t had sex before. Yes? So basically, for all of the this talk about setting good boundaries and being honest about what you want in a sex partner, I’m not allowed to want that?

    I just want to confirm: My right to set boundaries for who I have sex with (without being called an asshole whom no one should date) ends at that point. I cannot be a good person and ask for this boundary, no matter what.

    1. So what I’m gathering, is that no one is allowed to have as a preference for their sexual partners, someone who hasn’t had sex before. Yes?

      …no. You are “allowed” to have whatever preferences you want. Who is disallowing you? But just as much as you are allowed to have preferences, I am allowed to critique peoples’ preferences. I mean, if a guy was like, “I will only marry a woman who has never gone to college and doesn’t have opinions and won’t ever work outside the home and will have as many babies as I want and will defer to me in all matters,” he is ALLOWED to want that, but I am also definitely allowed to be like, “that is fucked up.”

      Everyone has a right to set boundaries. Whatever boundaries you want! You can break up with people for whatever reason. But no one has the right to never be called an asshole.

  55. Read this. Read this again:

    zuzu: I don’t know what kind of society alla you grew up in, but in the one I grew up in, that sort of belief system rests on the concept that women are spoiled or befouled or ruined by sexual contact prior to marriage. And the concept of befoulment/spoilage/ruination rests on the idea that women are property, and that if the property, when transferred from one owner (father) to another (husband) is not factory-sealed, the new owner is not getting what he paid for.

    That some more extreme patriarchal religious traditions today also demand of men that they too remain virgins prior to marriage does not change the fact that the whole tradition, like that of the virgin bride, rests on the misogynist idea of women as property whose main value is in the condition of their hymens.

    Being religious doesn’t excuse this, as the only religious traditions which still hold to this are — say it with me — patriarchal. As in, a great deal of their theology and authority rests on controlling women’s bodies.

    You know, feminism is a line of study that is filtered through the lens of gender, race, religion, sexual preference, etc., and is inextricably tied to all history and culture as we know it. It is not a) what you personally want it to be, b) tailored to your personal preferences, c) not not-misogynist/racist because you declare it so, d) not limited to your personal limits of study or imagination. Terms like Marriage, Virginity, and Sex have commonly understood contextual meaning among feminists — aka “loaded terms” — and that meaning only partially includes the definitions parroted to you in youth group meetings every Sunday afternoon. These terms also include great big question marks about the validity of cultural values like “no sex before marriage” and WHY these values are prevalent in our culture. The answer as far as feminism is concerned (and I challenge you to find a feminist that thinks virginity is a valid benchmark for measuring a person’s moral value) is Patriarchy, and if you’re seriously up in this thread arguing that you don’t see the patriarchy here and don’t understand what all the fuss is about and I don’t BELIEVE in sex before marriage and SHE LIED so at least he’s not a HYPOCRITE (which is totally worse than being a misogynist prick), I’m wondering what the hell you’re doing trolling a feminist blog with your personal anti-feminist baggage.

  56. Kierra: WTF? Just because I don’t want to marry someone for a particular reason doesn’t mean that I think they are undeserving of marriage to anyone. It’s the difference between (to take a recent example) not wanting to date a Magic player and declaring that playing Magic automatically makes someone undateable by normal people. The former is just fine, the latter is being an asshat. It’s the difference between saying, “I want to marry someone religious” and saying “all non-religious people are going to hell.” No matter how often those two things may be correlated, the latter does not automatically follow from the former.

    Hey, do you know what’s fun! When we look at what people were actually responding to! Which, in zuzu’s case, was a comment that said that “I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage” and describes sex as “intended only for one’s life-partner”. Which, you know, normative statements rather than an expression of a purely personal preference. Which, like, kind of reveals some of the grossness here. It’s reaaaally difficult to draw an argument for dating only virgins that doesn’t tend to make some kind of really shit implication about people who have had sex outside of marriage.

  57. zuzu:

    She might be a liar, but he’s a rigid, patriarchal misogynist who’s invested way too much in the state of his wife’s hymen at the expense of her humanity.RUN.

    I love you, ZuZu. <3

  58. Why do we always have to repeat this conversation?

    1) Boundries – no one should ever violate them
    2) Boundries – not immune to critique

    People have the right to do things for fucked up reasons. It doesn’t make the reasons any less fucked up.

    And any reason that includes a positive reference to the purity myth is by definition fucked up.

    (And FYI, if your concern is STDs make a clean screening a dealbreaker not *virginity*)

  59. “It didn’t count as long as he never came inside her”

    Oh how precious. *eyeroll*

    I suppose her orgasms, if he even bothered to give her any, didn’t count?

    I am so fucking (pun intended) sick of this attitude that PIV is the definition of sex, when the fact is the majority of women can’t have orgasms that way. Pro Tip: No man would have a sex life with a woman who refused to give him an orgasm and insisted sex was all about stimulating her clit while totally ignoring his penis. Women should not put up with the opposite.

  60. Jill, I’m 100% behind your point of view in the post and in your comments. I’m really surprised that on a blog such as Feministe there are others arguing the counterpoint.

    And to both Zuzu And Florence, I read your comments and said at work “A-fucking-men” (my co-worker looked up and smiled, though she was a little perplexed at who I was talking to). Anyway, Jill, Zuzu and Florence, well put.

  61. Anyway, saying “I want us both to be virgins before marriage” may seem equal, if prudish, but we can’t divorce that statement from the fact that we live in a society which for ages has considered unmarried women who have sex to be dirty, while sanctioning it for men.

  62. I was scared to post, but I need to. I was raised very religious, very religious. I was raised to think some crazy shit about sex and sexuality–all the horrible things conservatives tell young women about “saving themselves” and being “used gum” if you have sex, and any other thing you can think of, I was immersed in these beliefs from the age of 11 or so (they start early). I started masturbating around that age too, and sometimes it still hurts to remember how DIRTY I felt…I believed I was the only girl in the world to do that, and that I was a bad person…but I did it anyways.

    I first had sex with my now-life partner in high school. We were virgins, and I had to sneak behind my parents’ backs. If they had caught us, they would have forced us to break up (ironically keeping me from marrying the guy later…who they love).

    I got married young, went to college (after marrying) and became a feminist. I didn’t even know what that was before marrying and getting away from my childhood community. I also became agnostic and abandoned my religion. (it took years to admit I didn’t believe that shit…even to myself, although I can’t admit to anyone in my family, I’ll be scorned).

    I logically believe that virginity is just a construct, it isn’t real. I’ve read “The Purity Myth” and think it’s a great book. I think expecting virginity is a misogynistic ideal and so on. But I needed to be with a virgin. Even now I am so psychologically fucked up from my upbringing that I create illusions in my mind that my hubby was lying about being a virgin and I get jealous. I am terrified of being cheated on. I have some serious issues with trust. Some of this comes from another issue I deal with, but I also believe some of it comes from the crazy religious world I was raised in. Even when you grow up and realize how fucked up it was, you still sometimes remain fucked up by it. That’s me. I’m in therapy to get past this, as it’s pretty detrimental to relationships to be this way (my hubby is awesomely understanding, but it can’t go on forever).

    Not that this really helps clarify anything, but those of us who were raised religious, even when we escape and become the black sheep of the family because of it, some of us still deal with the psychological remnants of this past.

    So basically, I recognize that it’s wrong to feel this way about virginity, but my mind doesn’t listen when it comes to me. Even though I could write a whole article on why the constructs of virginity and purity are wrong, I still suffer from being raised to believe the opposite. Kind of like how I understand that beauty and thinness is a social construct and that acceptance is the answer…but I still have an eating disorder. I never really talk about any of this except with my hubby or my therapist…so it never really makes sense and it’s hard to fit into a post. But I needed to try.

  63. I should add that if you think my experience was limited to some really super-conservative, cultish form of Christianity, it wasn’t. I was even subjected to an exorcism as a child for being a slightly difficult kid (talking back, being stubborn, etc.)…and my parents thought it must be demons. But this was a very very average Methodist church we belonged to. It just happened to be in a small town. I have the feeling my experiences are not that alone…I seem to be the only one from my group of former friends that escaped it and am here to talk about it. Don’t just be afraid of the church groups who are outwardly nuts…it’s the small-town, seemingly harmless church communities that fuck us up as well.

  64. Jill, since you’re getting a lot of flack, I just want to say that I totally agree with you. The guy who wants his wife to be a virgin until marriage is, most definitely, making a major judgment call on non-virgin unmarried women. He might not use the words “whore,” but obviously he thinks these women are tainted in some way because of prior choices that they may or may not still agree with.

    If it is so important for him to stay clean and pure and untarnished until his all-important wedding night, kudos to him. That’s his choice with his body and that’s perfectly fine. Whatever woman he chooses to marry must respect that, and if she doesn’t mind/agrees with waiting until marriage, then it’s a good match. But if she just so happens to have engaged in sex with another partner, prior to meeting him, and therefore isn’t technically a virgin herself? THAT IS NONE OF HIS FUCKING BUSINESS. The fact that he wouldn’t want to date her is a major, major judgment call. Hell, maybe she even regrets her prior sex-having for whatever personal reasons that are similarly none of our business; maybe she agrees that waiting is now the right path for her to take. Or, maybe she doesn’t regret her prior sex-having, but she also doesn’t really think sex is that important and it’s not a big deal for her to have sex before marriage or not, so she’s cool with doing whatever he wants to do (which sounds kind of like the woman in question’s situation). Still, it is NONE OF HIS FUCKING BUSINESS. She’s agreeing with him now, she’s respecting his wishes now, so what difference does it make that she dated other guys before him with different views on pre-marital sex?

    I don’t understand how other people don’t see this. Choosing to abstain from sex within a relationship is totally fucking different from judging a person’s acts within former, entirely unrelated relationships! Shouldn’t this be obvious? It’s one thing to say “I don’t want to have sex with you until we’re married,” but it’s another thing entirely to say “if you’ve ever had sex, you are an unacceptable mate because you are too trampy for me.” The “trampy” is implied, I don’t care what angle you’re analyzing it from, it is THERE.

  65. OK, to elaborate (sorry for the SuperCommenting, but I’m really surprised by this conversation that I would never have expected in the Feministe comments) I’m going to give a little analogy here. I briefly dated a guy who was so sexist, racist and homophobic that I can’t even believe I ever went there, but that is not the point.

    He and I are both white. He asked me once (the conversation started innocently enough so I can’t remember how we got around to this topic, but we did) if I had ever had sex with someone from another racial group. I told him honestly that I’ve slept with a couple of black guys, including the one I lost my virginity to. THIS BOTHERED HIM. He flat-out told me, on another night, that it bothered him that I had had – and I quote – “a black dick inside me.”

    So, what about him? Is it “his right” to want a girlfriend who’s never fucked a black guy? And if it’s not, and if that’s totally unreasonable, and he is a judgy mcjudgerson douchenozzle, then why is it such a leap to say a guy who wants a woman who’s never had ANY dick inside her is a judgy mcjudgerson douchenozzle as well?

  66. Thomas MacAulay Millar: Why does nobody ever say, “I’m saving fisting and suspension bondage for the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, because I just think that waiting to do those things with someone I love will bring us closer”?

    *quietly raises hand*

  70. Actually, LC, I think you probably read my blog and I think you know that my spouse and I both have done our physically and mentally heaviest BDSM only with each other, and couldn’t with people we didn’t have extremely close relationships with. I was just trying to illustrate that if this was really about fostering closeness and special relationship, the particular activities reserved for that one relationship wouldn’t be predictably those that have the historical connections to patriarchal control of reproduction; they’d be the ones which felt the most intimate to the participants in the relationship.

  71. anonforthis, thanks for your post, and I really appreciate where you’re coming from. I think it’s important that we all recognize that there’s a big difference between having baggage while trying to work through it/overcome it (which is a very brave and constructive thing to do), versus someone (like this guy) who is positively invested in this attitude (this making it his real attitude, and not baggage) while he’s perpetuating it for others.

  72. I don’t understand how other people don’t see this.

    Some feminists don’t think holding men and women to the same standards is misogynistic, even when the standard is usually only applied to one (or the other).

    It’s true that people who put a lot of value on virginity usually only mean it for women, and regard women as property. This guy doesn’t only apply it to women, so the rest doesn’t follow. There’s no reason people should agree about what’s going on, since there’re blanks we’re filling in differently, where the truth isn’t known.

  73. But if she just so happens to have engaged in sex with another partner, prior to meeting him, and therefore isn’t technically a virgin herself? THAT IS NONE OF HIS FUCKING BUSINESS. ….. Or, maybe she doesn’t regret her prior sex-having, but she also doesn’t really think sex is that important and it’s not a big deal for her to have sex before marriage or not, so she’s cool with doing whatever he wants to do (which sounds kind of like the woman in question’s situation). Still, it is NONE OF HIS FUCKING BUSINESS.

    Just throwing this out there. Let me state upfront that I agree 110% with Jill, et al. Virginity doesn’t exist, marriage is a social construct that isn’t more sacred than non-marriage, and I’m happy dude’s a virgin because he’s not worthy of the Pussy. That said, I disagree with the maxim that a person’s sexual history isn’t the business of that person’s partner. It’s certainly my business, especially my fucking business, to know what kind of sex my partner has had, has enjoyed, has not enjoyed, what type of women he’s been with, what type he hasn’t, why/why not, etc. My current partner had a few one night stands; I want to know if he used condoms, if he saw them afterwards, if he knows whether they got pregnant, if he kicked them out of his house immediately after he came, etc. (He actually made them breakfast the next morning, this makes me love him more!) I view sex as pretty sacred and have had very few sex partners, and I just can’t fuck someone who’s an empty book. I talk about sex before I do it with someone, and a person who evaded telling me about their sexual history because it’s, strictly speaking, not any of my business, isn’t someone I could feel comfortable naked with.

    On the virginity meme: I still call myself a virgin. I even write that down on demographic forms that ask for sexual orientation because I’m not sure I’m really straight. I didn’t enjoy with men until my current partner, but I haven’t slept with another woman yet so I can’t really commit. For that matter, the few times I’ve hooked up with another woman, we didn’t do much more than grope and fondle because I felt about as clueless and overwhelmed as a virgin. Besides it’s much more fun and subversive to claim the label “virgin” than it is “slut”!

  74. Why do we always have to repeat this conversation?

    Because being a self-obessessed crybaby is waaaaay more fun than actually reading words people write and considering them, apparenlty.

    The Wants a Virgin Wife dude might have this requirement because, if he is actually a virgin himself, he’s worried about being an incompetent lay. So, if she has no reference point, he can do absolutely nothing to pleasure her, and just tell her that’s how it is.

  75. @LeftSidePositive

    I guess I also recognize that I “was” that guy (except I’m a girl)…in that I also at one point positively was immersed in the same beliefs. I literally did not know anything about feminism, and if it weren’t for being privileged to have the internet and the ability to get out of the community and go to college (in my case)…I’d still be there. The rest of my family is still there. I see that they are wrong, but I also realize I could just as easily still be brainwashed and the same way.

    I also went through a mid-phase. I thought I could continue to believe certain things were “wrong” (aka sins) and still be religious while also being feminist. That part of my life was only a few years and was mostly me being in denial that I really didn’t believe any of the shit I was raised to. But it’s really hard to get out of.

    I do often wonder what my life would be like if I were still there. In that community, still so religious, etc. I’m not, but I guess I have some compassion (if that’s even the right word) for those who have been brainwashed like I was. They don’t know they are wrong. When I protested abortion as a young teen, I thought I was doing the work of God. Now I protest FOR women’s right to an abortion, but I am the only one I know from my community who changed this much. And it did require an amount of privilege to get here…college, money to move, therapy to get past it…etc. Cliche as it is, I discovered feminism in college, in Women’s Studies classes. 🙂

  76. “So, what about him? Is it “his right” to want a girlfriend who’s never fucked a black guy? And if it’s not, and if that’s totally unreasonable, and he is a judgy mcjudgerson douchenozzle, then why is it such a leap to say a guy who wants a woman who’s never had ANY dick inside her is a judgy mcjudgerson douchenozzle as well?”

    Because the gentleman in question is not displaying blatant racism?

  77. Since the guy in question in the first case is a virgin himself, and values that, he must think that all men who aren’t virgins are dirty and unpure also, so not only is he misogynistic but also a misandrist, right?

  78. It’s certainly my business, especially my fucking business, to know what kind of sex my partner has had, has enjoyed, has not enjoyed, what type of women he’s been with, what type he hasn’t, why/why not, etc.

    The only thing you are entitled to know is if your partner has STIs or not. The rest are your partner’s private, personal experiences to share or not at hir will, not yours.

    P.T. Smith and Brian:
    Your argument that the guy in question cannot be misogynist because he’s claims to be a virgin too has already been brought up and countered in prior comments.

  79. PT, we’re not is a world where things that are facially the same are always actually the same — that’s the false equivalence of “the rich and the poor alike are forbidden to sleep under bridges,” and of the “grandfather clause,” wich was facially neutral but in effect was anything but.

    The pressure to be a virgin and the whole social construct of virginity comes from thousands of years of patriarchy and attempts to restrict sexual access to women to preserve paternity for inheritance purposes. We can’t just stop history in the 1990s and pretend that none of that happened and that modern religious chastity movements are disconnected from that, and we can’t pretend that it’s taken as seriously even among those folks for men as it is for women.

  80. Spot:
    “So, what about him? Is it “his right” to want a girlfriend who’s never fucked a black guy? And if it’s not, and if that’s totally unreasonable, and he is a judgy mcjudgerson douchenozzle, then why is it such a leap to say a guy who wants a woman who’s never had ANY dick inside her is a judgy mcjudgerson douchenozzle as well?”

    Because the gentleman in question is not displaying blatant racism?

    But the dude in question may very well be displaying some very judgemental tendencies, if he considers someone who has already had sex as ‘impure’.

    Long story short.. if someone can’t handle their partner’s past sex life, whether bountiful or non-existent, then they should probably not be having sex with that person, or anyone until they decide to join the grown-up table and not be so judgemental.

  81. Niki: So, what about him? Is it “his right” to want a girlfriend who’s never fucked a black guy? And if it’s not, and if that’s totally unreasonable, and he is a judgy mcjudgerson douchenozzle, then why is it such a leap to say a guy who wants a woman who’s never had ANY dick inside her is a judgy mcjudgerson douchenozzle as well?

    Yes, it is his right to set boundaries in his relationships. Even stupid racist boundaries. All the better for you that he put his racism out there for you to consider, actually, so you can honor his boundaries and dump the motherfucker.

    Does that make you a Judgey McJudgerson? Sure! It also makes you a decent human being. Some values are stupid. Upholding racism is one of them. I’d argue that upholding patriarchy as a moral value is stupid, too.

    And since we are all versed in feminism well enough to understand that this issue isn’t really one about hypocrisy or personal belief systems or just-so equivalents between het men and women, since we feminists recognize that constructs like virginity and purity are arbitrary and changing [and only available as moral benchmarks to those born white, hetero, and of the Big-Three religions (and even then…)], we’re all in agreement that upholding patriarchal norms as a relationship dealbreaker ought to be fraught with a lot of soul-searching and acknowledgment of privilege, internal compromise, and a recognition of the historical and social context in which you are participating, right? Otherwise you sorta-kinda misunderstand the point of feminist theory and scholarship, right? Because feminism isn’t required to validate your throwback Christian belief systems because criticism makes you feel funny.

  82. Shelby:

    Nobody has made a single convincing argument, also, notice how you had to throw in the “he claims.” That’s really what’s gotten my goat here, the need to make absolutist jumps towards the most negative interpretations. I mean, look at how Jill started the whole thing, she presents to the readers of the blog a situation in which the man is openly and cruelly misogynistic, and I’d bet that a lot of readers nodded along without even clicking through the link, and many that did did so with their opinion pre-shaded.

    Thomas:
    You’re making the argument that a person’s opinion and reason for any belief cannot be separated from the worst of sociological beliefs.

    It’s this type of rhetorical bluster, logical incoherency, throwing up of straw men, and plain ideology that drives me insane coming from conservatives, so seeing it from people who are progressive, who are supposedly my cohorts, is infuriating and depressing.

  83. P.T.Smith, what is your beef here? The assertion that virginity as a moral value is the kind of patriarchy at which feminists should cast the side-eye, or that we’re being mean for not considering a virginity-enforcer’s feelings enough?

  84. The beef is this:

    Cinema, as we know, gives preference to the male gaze. A man likes film. He is misogynistic, because there cannot be any reason to enjoy film besides it use of the male gaze.

    That’s the logic at play here.

  85. PT Smith, I assumed you were commenting in good faith but that you maybe had just had not read all the comments.
    I stand corrected.

  87. @ShelbyWoo

    Yes, but since neither the argument nor the counter are particularly compelling, it’s unsurprising that some people fall on each side of it. It would be mindboggling if they didn’t, I think.

  88. P.T.Smith: M’kay then. You want to define the rules of logic, your go. Under what circumstances is virginity, commonly defined as heterosexual PIV sex, an acceptable, non-patriarchal moral value?

    1. Under what circumstances is virginity, commonly defined as heterosexual PIV sex, an acceptable, non-patriarchal moral value?

      When I want vacuum-sealed pussy, duh.

  90. Kristin J.
    “Why do we always have to repeat this conversation?

    1) Boundries – no one should ever violate them
    2) Boundries – not immune to critique”

    I fully agree with both of these points Kristen, and they probably should be cast in bronze and placed reverently at the top of this website, and quite a few other websites as well. But the original post wasn’t a critique. It was “DDUUMMPPP HHIIMMM!!!!!”. I was assuming 21st century feminism should be able to come up with something more nuanced than this…..

    1. I fully agree with both of these points Kristen, and they probably should be cast in bronze and placed reverently at the top of this website, and quite a few other websites as well. But the original post wasn’t a critique. It was “DDUUMMPPP HHIIMMM!!!!!”. I was assuming 21st century feminism should be able to come up with something more nuanced than this…..

      And if I had my entire life to dedicate to 21st century feminism, I would be more nuanced. But sometimes, a one-off blog post is just a one-off blog post, and it’s fair to expect readers to be intelligent enough to recognize that not everything has to be an in-depth look at every possible issue.

  91. Florence:

    Do you see how you locked in the possible answers to get what you want? You defined framed virginity as solely hetero, thereby planting it right into patriarchy, and then you ask for circumstances outside of patriarchy, even though you already centered it within patriarchy.

    You are also continuing the insistence that anything that remotely falls within patriarchy is the worst of it, and misogynistic, but since patriarchy is a dominating force on all of us, you’ve eliminated any belief systems that exist within it, regardless of other reasons, emotions, beliefs behind it.

    Defining “losing” virginity as having sex at all, and sex as an idealistic, unique sharing between two people allows for people to value it and want to share it with only one other person, sure, leaves remaining links with patriarchal beliefs, but that goes for any number of beliefs that the majority of people hold, but it does not a misogynist make, unless you are denying individual beliefs.

    1. Do you see how you locked in the possible answers to get what you want? You defined framed virginity as solely hetero, thereby planting it right into patriarchy, and then you ask for circumstances outside of patriarchy, even though you already centered it within patriarchy.

      Um, Florence isn’t the one who defined virginity as hetero, or centered it in patriarchal traditions. That is the definition of virginity, not something Florence is just pulling out of her ass.

  92. Jill,

    Okay, so by insisting on the definition of virginity that is misogynistic, not allowing for any of the other possible definitions, because god knows language doesn’t ever change and there aren’t personal nuances to language, different meanings of things within different groups, you have a priori “won” any discussion wherein someone values their own virginity, because they are misogynistic.

    Good job.

  93. I am sorry, I know it’s a complete red-herring to the discussion going on here, but this line, OH THIS LINE:

    “When I want vacuum-sealed pussy, duh.”

    Has just made my week 🙂

    Can I get one of those with a re-sealable option? Maybe a yellow & blue make green strip down the middle to ensure air-tightness 🙂

  94. PT, “virginity” isn’t real, and as such, I don’t think it has an accepted definition outside of patriarchal constructs. It’s no more possible to demand virginity without being misogynist than it is to insist on the “one penis rule” and not be homophobic, or the “one drop rule” and not be racist.

  95. Oh, we can knock off the concern trolling about how our working definition of virginity is hetero. The word comes from a history of heterosexual reference and that history is still alive and well in the minds of anyone who isn’t consciously trying to expand the definition to encompass LGBT* people. The notion of PIV as the only virginity-breaking sex act is so widespread that we have ridiculous phenomena like saddlebacking and blowjob-only codes of conduct amongst ignorant teens.

  96. anna: Anyway, saying “I want us both to be virgins before marriage” may seem equal, if prudish, but we can’t divorce that statement from the fact that we live in a society which for ages has considered unmarried women who have sex to be dirty, while sanctioning it for men.

    It also ignores that there is no equivalent to a broken hymen for men as an indicator of “virginity.”

    Natalia — if you read the OP, you’ll see that the LW attempted to raise the issue with her fiance by asking him what he would do if he found out that a woman he wanted to marry had had sex, and he told her it was a dealbreaker. I’m inclined to excuse her lying more than his misogyny, frankly, because he’s using shaming tactics rather than just stating a preference.

  97. Brian: It’s true that people who put a lot of value on virginity usually only mean it for women, and regard women as property. This guy doesn’t only apply it to women, so the rest doesn’t follow.

    So, tell me, how is his fiance going to know on the wedding night if he’s really a virgin? Will his dick bleed?

  98. violet:
    Kristin J.
    “Why do we always have to repeat this conversation?

    1) Boundries – no one should ever violate them
    2) Boundries – not immune to critique”

    I fully agree with both of these points Kristen, and they probably should be cast in bronze and placed reverently at the top of this website, and quite a few other websites as well.But the original post wasn’t a critique. It was “DDUUMMPPP HHIIMMM!!!!!”.I was assuming 21st century feminism should be able to come up with something more nuanced than this…..

    Why, though? The guy wants a virgin, she finds herself lying about her sexual history to keep him, she even asks him whether he’d consider a woman who’d had sex and he says it’s a dealbreaker.

    This is not a compatible couple. Even aside from his retrograde misogynist attitude about women, she feels she has to lie to him in order to keep him, which is usually a big flashing red neon sign that THIS IS NOT THE RELATIONSHIP YOU’RE LOOKING FOR. And on top of that, he’s already said that her sexual status is a dealbreaker for him.

    So, she should just fucking dump him. What nuance is necessary here?

  99. P.T.Smith:
    Florence:

    Do you see how you locked in the possible answers to get what you want? You defined framed virginity as solely hetero, thereby planting it right into patriarchy, and then you ask for circumstances outside of patriarchy, even though you already centered it within patriarchy.

    Florence, have you been framing virginity again? I thought I told you to stop that.

    The concept of ‘virginity’ is a religious concept, (one who’s definition has, even in the Bible, stretched to the point of including a pregnant woman.) Since this is a purely religious distinction, it is significant that the 3 major Abrahamic religions ‘frame’ virginity in a solely hetero and a solely female context.

  100. Thomas MacAulay Millar: The pressure to be a virgin and the whole social construct of virginity comes from thousands of years of patriarchy and attempts to restrict sexual access to women to preserve paternity for inheritance purposes.

    They could always use DNA tests if it is about inheritance.

  101. P.T.Smith:

    Defining “losing” virginity as having sex at all, and sex as an idealistic, unique sharing between two people allows for people to value it and want to share it with only one other person, sure, leaves remaining links with patriarchal beliefs, but that goes for any number of beliefs that the majority of people hold, but it does not a misogynist make, unless you are denying individual beliefs.

    Except, as we have already covered, “having sex at all” is not some kind of objective measure. Also, your argument here is skating very close to magical intention.

  103. violet: I fully agree with both of these points Kristen, and they probably should be cast in bronze and placed reverently at the top of this website, and quite a few other websites as well. But the original post wasn’t a critique. It was “DDUUMMPPP HHIIMMM!!!!!”. I was assuming 21st century feminism should be able to come up with something more nuanced than this…..

    In a post about dating, why? What else should she do? As Kirsten said-nobody should cross boundaries, even if they are misogynist, racist, etc. Dump him is what she can do. And the right response to dating boundaries that are problematic.

  104. The only thing you are entitled to know is if your partner has STIs or not. The rest are your partner’s private, personal experiences to share or not at hir will, not yours.

    Do you have an argument to back up your assertion, or do you just like to drop your opinion everywhere you go?

  105. Jill: And if I had my entire life to dedicate to 21st century feminism, I would be more nuanced. But sometimes, a one-off blog post is just a one-off blog post, and it’s fair to expect readers to be intelligent enough to recognize that not everything has to be an in-depth look at every possible issue.

    I am SHOCKED. Shocked and appalled. How can you possibly consider yourself a good feminist if you do not address all issues in a humorless and thorough fashion. I mean its not as if you have a job or need sleep. Surely, every good feminist spends every moment consciously fighting all injustice at once.

    And also, good feminists poop fluffy unicorns.

    An addendum to the above listed boiler plate:

    3) Expectations – you can have them
    4) Expectations – no one is required to meet them

    Or we can keep having that conversation again too…whatever.

  106. How isn’t “virginity” strictly hetero? Anything I do as a lesbian, with my lesbian lovers, is without the key “deflowerer” of a woman’s virginity. Virginity = the absence of “full” heterosexual sex. IOW, what I tend to do in bed is all the crazy stuff the kids are doing these days so that they can get off, get each other off, and still claim to be virgins. You simply can’t frame virginity as a homosexual artifact because then it would mean a hella lot of heterosexuals done lost their virginity a loooong time ago. Unless, of course, you want double, double standards for queers, which just gets weird and tedious, and very patriarchal.

    And also? You can’t have patriarchy without misogyny. Misogyny is kinda the spring board for male supremacy. But, I think you know that.

  107. Li: but it does not a misogynist make, unless you are denying individual beliefs.

    I think you can be a misogynist unintentionally. For instance if following your individual beliefs logically leads however unintentionally to behavior which is controlling of women.

    The fact that in this case he is willing to place himself under the same constraints is irrelevant, in the end however unintentionally he is making a judgement about the value of women.

  108. Because I believe matrimony to be potentially far more effectively punitive than imprisonment, I rather hope that Mr V and Ms Not-Really-V manage to go through all eternity bound together. He’ll obsess endlessly over whether she was really a virgin when they married, and she’ll obsess endlessly over whether he’ll find out her deep, dark secret. They’re perfect for each other.

    That’s my one point of difference with Ms Jill, whom I infer to be opining that Ms NRV deserves better. Ms NRV didn’t strike me as overwhelmingly sex-positive, having only had two partners, both in serious relationships, and not having found his attitude to be anything like a dealbreaker for her. It wasn’t explicitly stated, but I got a distinct vibration that she was kinda-sorta in sympathy with him but just would have drawn the line more or less at her own conduct, and been almost equally condemnatory of women who had sex outside of serious relationships or with a naughtily high number of partners. That’s more or less why she led him to believe she was a virgin – she was a Good Girl, and in her book, it meant more or less the same thing, in much the way that Mrs Elton’s fortune was “so near ten thousand pounds as made no difference”.

  109. Li:

    Right, sex, not a discrete objective category, so virginity not a discrete objective category, so it can have differing values for differing people, so the ability to value it without being misogynistic.

  110. Aaaaaand quoted comments are doing that occasional thing they do we’re they are being misattributed. Suffice to say, I am not actually the person llama is quoting above.

  111. no, it says something about the value of people. if he is making a judgment it applies implicitly to both genders because he is applying the standard to himself, a male.
    his requirements are hierarchical and not patriarchal.

    llama: I think you can be a misogynist unintentionally. For instance if following your individual beliefs logically leads however unintentionally to behavior which is controlling of women.

    The fact that in this case he is willing to place himself under the same constraints is irrelevant, in the end however unintentionally he is making a judgement about the value of women.

  112. P.T.Smith: Right, sex, not a discrete objective category, so virginity not a discrete objective category, so it can have differing values for differing people, so the ability to value it without being misogynistic.

    Nice try, but no. Valuing “virginity” tends to reify some kind of judgement about what is and is not sex, since the term is inherently binaristic. That sex is a cluster concept does not mean that virginity is the same, it means virginity as a concept doesn’t actually work very well. Look, if people were all like; hey! I’d like a partner with a similar amount of sexual experience to myself! I’d be down with that. But “I want a virgin” erases difference and complexity in the name of what has already been outlined to be a bunch of patriarchal bullshit.

  113. Rodeo: Do you have an argument to back up your assertion, or do you just like to drop your opinion everywhere you go?

    And you briefed the issue thoroughly, counsel?

  114. P.T.Smith: Right, sex, not a discrete objective category, so virginity not a discrete objective category, so it can have differing values for differing people, so the ability to value it without being misogynistic.

    I wonder if you’re aware that adultery, at English common law, was something that required a married woman. So that a married man who had an affair with an unmarried woman (or a married man, for that matter) was not committing adultery, but a married woman who slept with an unmarried man (but, AFAICT, not another woman), was an adulteress.

    “Adulterate” means sully the purity of, btw. Which is why it was considered for centuries to be only a crime if a married woman was involved, because she was a man’s property.

    You may want to ignore all that history and context, but the rest of us don’t.

  116. Li:

    Sex is a cluster concept. For individuals, maybe not so much, many individuals have a definition in their mind of sex, and so from there they reach a concept of virginity. This makes virginity a cluster concept within a larger social group. Wanting to, within that, share your sex life with someone who shares the same, or at least close, definition of sex, and in some cases, definition of virginity? Not misogyny.

    In general, this whole attacking of someone who has an idealistic view of sex and wants it to be something shared with one other person, and so wants the same in return, is plain disgusting.

  117. Matt: no, it says something about the value of people. if he is making a judgment it applies implicitly to both genders because he is applying the standard to himself, a male.
    his requirements are hierarchical and not patriarchal.

    *sigh*. I don’t know why we have to do this again, but actions that purport to treat everyone equally but which are more likely to/more heavily negatively impact women are still sexist.

  118. Zuzu:

    I don’t see what relevancy concepts of adultery have to this, at all.

    “Ignoring history and context” is not the same as not being trapped by. Also, people insisting that the man in the scenario must be misogynistic are actually removing all context except the ways that suit their own goal. There is no individualized context allowed, is there?

  119. Right, sex, not a discrete objective category, so virginity not a discrete objective category, so it can have differing values for differing people, so the ability to value it without being misogynistic.

    Riiight. Because defining a woman by whether she has had a penis inside her or not is totally benign and tends to embrace her full personhood. Not.buying.it.

  120. What I’m getting from this is a simple, naive, very unsophisticated man and a much more worldly, sophisticated woman who up until now has had no qualms about lying to him in order to manipulate him. Why does she want to marry him, Zuzu? Because he’s an easy con. He’ll believe whatever she tells him and do whatever she wants. (Notice that although he’s “wonderful” she never comes close to saying that she cares for him.) She’s a creepy lying sack of shit and when she dumps him it will be the best thing that has ever happened to him. Of course, once she tells him that she’s not a virgin his ridiculous belief that non-virginal women are bad people will be only more strongly confirmed, but it’s too late for her to do anything about that. The only way for her to help him now is to get the fuck away from him.

  121. Q Grrl

    Riiight.

    How is that even a response to what you quoted me saying? What you quoted me saying brings up the idea of varied definitions of sex, and so personal definitions within that, which leads to varied definitions of virginity, with personal definitions within that…and yet…

  122. OK, define virginity for us then. At this point I have no idea what yard-stick you’re using to define the term. Specifically, can you define the term from the POV of a man using the term to describe someone else’s sexual activity other than his own without it being misogynistic? IOW, can you define “virginity” without it being about whether a woman has had a penis inside her or not. If you can’t, it is by default misogynistic. Any time you define a woman by the absence or presence of a male body part, you are being misogynistic. I thought that at least that part would be self-evident.

  123. he is explicitly valuing people, gender irrelevant, as more valuable if they have not had sex prior to marriage as marriage partners.

    zuzu: Who’s at the top of the hierarchy?I’d be damned surprised if it were women.

  124. Seriously, Q Grrl?

    To restate:
    Sex is a cluster concept. For individuals, maybe not so much, many individuals have a definition in their mind of sex, and so from there they reach a concept of virginity. This makes virginity a cluster concept within a larger social group. Wanting to, within that, share your sex life with someone who shares the same, or at least close, definition of sex, and in some cases, definition of virginity? Not misogyny.

    And you want something more clear?

    Virgin: A dude who hasn’t had a vagina around his cock.
    Virgin: A dude who hasn’t stuck his cock in another guy’s ass.
    Virgin: A dude who hasn’t had a cock in his ass.
    Virgin: A woman who hasn’t had whatever her definition of sex is with another woman.
    Virgin: Someone who hasn’t had another person’s tongue and lips all over their genitals.
    Virgin: Someone who hasn’t had their tongue and lips all over someone else’s genitals.
    Virgin: Someone who was sexually assaulted and wants their definition of sex to be something positive and shared, so it’s something they haven’t had yet.

    Should I come up with more?

    1. Virgin: Someone who has had PIV sex but then decides they want a do-over.
      Virgin: A woman who has only had sex with other women.
      Virgin: A woman who has never had sex with other women.
      Virgin: Someone who wants to say they’re a virgin for the purpose of a blog argument.
      Virgin: Me, because I said so!

      I mean, look, you can define “virgin” however you want. That doesn’t change the fact that there are some general (although inconsistent) culturally-agreed-upon definitions that definitely do not include rape survivors and that are definitely misogynist.

  125. firstly we are talking about misogyny and not sexism. secondly it is possible to have an idea that harms women more that is not misogynistic. misogyny means hating women. if i value a person as more important to society based on the amount of meat they can procure, it may be harmful to women but is not inherently misogynistic, although it could have been defined that way to devalue women, but you don’t really know.

    Li: *sigh*. I don’t know why we have to do this again, but actions that purport to treat everyone equally but which are more likely to/more heavily negatively impact women are still sexist.

  126. Meh, this is all bullshit. Last time I recall PT Smith on this site, zie was using hir Xtreme Logic Olympics to troll Chally on some other self-proclaimed esoteric bullshit. Methinks we shouldn’t feed the troll.

  127. Matt: he is explicitly valuing people, gender irrelevant, as more valuable if they have not had sex prior to marriage as marriage partners.

    That’s creepy for a lot of reasons, man.

  128. Matt:
    he is explicitly valuing people, gender irrelevant, as more valuable if they have not had sex prior to marriage as marriage partners.

    Virgin seeking same guy is bisexual now?

  129. Yes, Jill, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean that you can decide everybody who value virginity is subscribing to that general definition.

    Florence,

    Yeah, really, wanting rigor in an argument or belief system, particularly when it is related to things that matter to me, and when someone is being unnecessarily condemned is super-trolly.

  130. well since in most cases marriage is restricted to heteronormative couples, its implied that same sex partners are not appropriate as marriage partners regardless of the status of their virginity. i mean, this guy is christian.

    Li: Virgin seeking same guy is bisexual now?

  131. Well, I consider marriage as an archaic institution which is gradually being removed by the socio-evolutionary process, kinda like religion, so whether standards of marriage for religious people are creepy doesn’t much matter to me.
    Whether is creepy or not isn’t relevant to its status as misogynistic either way.

    Florence: That’s creepy for a lot of reasons, man.

  132. Does it even matter what the newest definition of ‘virgin’ is? The whole concept is stupid and imaginary, anyway. Anyone who would heap such judgement on a sullied partner is operating under a framework where sex = contamination, so filthy that a person who has had sex is now impure and tainted forever. You can’t elevate virgins without devaluing people who have had dirty dirty pre-marital sex.

    The ‘gender-egalitarian’ version is the kind of mindset that might not seem misogynistic on paper, but the consequences for non-virgin women are, and have always been, much harsher than those for non-virgin men. We have already seen the results of virgin-fetishism writ large: the women become filth and the men are treated indifferently. Nobody has ever tried to come up with bullshit ‘tests’ to prove male virginity.

  133. Hm. I don’t think I would fuck a virgin. I don’t really have time to break someone in, with all the other stuff I have going on.

    I guess I would, but I would have to really, REALLY like them. I’m okay with non-asexual virgins having awkward sex together. Esp. when it means I get to hear stupid shit about how much better virgins are than me for some completely and ridiculously arbitrary reason. Bring it on, morally superior v-card holders!

  134. Men who are virgins, especially if they say they are saving it for marriage, are heaped with derision. One kid on an internet forum I used to be on killed himself because of that. Some kids spent like 4 months trying to “prove he didn’t really kill himself” because there had been a previous post by some guys “mom” and “girlfriend” on his account claiming he had died in a car accident. Eventually the resident Ohian/dark lord of clowns found an article in an online version of a newspaper. People stopped trolling even the most annoying of devout christians for a whole 2 months because of that. Eventually one of them said something about evolution being a lie by the atheists to tempt people into pacts with satan and then it was all back on again.

    Saying that you want to marry a smart person, or an attractive one devalues the opposite end of the spectrum just as much as elevating virgins. Hey look, they even have a sort of test to evaluate intelligence and if you do poorly you get tracked into stupid classes and told you have no future and sometimes a teacher runs screaming from the room cursing out all the students and telling them the real world is going to fuck them.
    She wasn’t my favorite teacher but still, it was so bad she stopped teaching and did clerical work or something.
    Just because all the people you met who did the whole virgin schtick were assholes, doesn’t mean everyone who wants to be and wants their spouse to be a virgin on their marriage night is also an asshole.

    igglanova:
    Does it even matter what the newest definition of ‘virgin’ is?The whole concept is stupid and imaginary, anyway.Anyone who would heap such judgement on a sullied partner is operating under a framework where sex = contamination, so filthy that a person who has had sex is now impure and tainted forever.You can’t elevate virgins without devaluing people who have had dirty dirty pre-marital sex.

    The ‘gender-egalitarian’ version is the kind of mindset that might not seem misogynistic on paper, but the consequences for non-virgin women are, and have always been, much harsher than those for non-virgin men.We have already seen the results of virgin-fetishism writ large: the women become filth and the men are treated indifferently.Nobody has ever tried to come up with bullshit ‘tests’ to prove male virginity.

  136. P.T. – For all your word games regarding the definition of virginity, you still haven’t forwarded a single example of a reason someone might want their partner to be a virgin until marriage which is both non-patriarchal and not sex-negative, much less contextualized such a hypothetical reason to the context of a man making such a demand of his female partner in the modern Western world.

    Since other people in this thread have given a variety of possible rationales, both historical and contemporary, in which a man’s desire for his partner to be a virgin is misogynistic and sex-negative, it seems you ought to provide a counter-example before you go about criticizing other peoples’ logic. Making the concept of “virginity” malleable is not such a feat, given that its current definition has fallen into incoherence as people try to expunge the traditional hetero-patriarchal context from the meaning of the term. The fact that it loses its descriptive usefulness as a term outside of that context is a hint that…well, maybe it’s just an anachronistic, heterosexist, patriarchal idea!

  137. Matt – Right, men are demonized for being virgins while women are demonized for being non-virgins. That is why virginity is a gendered concept.

  138. the question is whether considering virginity of a partner a deal breaker is inherently misogynistic. obviously its a gendered concept.

    rae:
    Matt – Right, men are demonized for being virgins while women are demonized for being non-virgins. That is why virginity is a gendered concept.

  139. P.T.Smith: Also, people insisting that the man in the scenario must be misogynistic are actually removing all context except the ways that suit their own goal. There is no individualized context allowed, is there?

    The LW said he was from a conservative culture. There are very few conservative cultures which insist on virginity at marriage which *aren’t* misognyistic.

    Also, how does a man prove he’s a virgin? We know the test for women. What’s the test for men?

  140. Bloix:
    What I’m getting from this is a simple, naive, very unsophisticated man and a much more worldly, sophisticated woman who up until now has had no qualms about lying to him in order to manipulate him.Why does she want to marry him, Zuzu?Because he’s an easy con.He’ll believe whatever she tells him and do whatever she wants.(Notice that although he’s “wonderful” she never comes close to saying that she cares for him.)She’s a creepy lying sack of shit and when she dumps him it will be the best thing that has ever happened to him.Of course, once she tells him that she’s not a virgin his ridiculous belief that non-virginal women are bad people will be only more strongly confirmed, but it’s too late for her to do anything about that.The only way for her to help him now is to get the fuck away from him.

    Or, a rigid man from a conservative culture and a woman who was not raised in the same culture who feels she has to hide her sexual history because he won’t marry her otherwise, and she’s been raised to believe that having a husband is the be-all and end-all. No one comes off smelling like a rose, but you can’t tell me you’ve never lied by omission.

  141. Matt:
    he is explicitly valuing people, gender irrelevant, as more valuable if they have not had sex prior to marriage as marriage partners.

    Two questions:

    1) How is he going to prove that he’s a virgin?

    2) What is the basis for this valuation? What is it about “sex” that devalues a potential marriage partner?

  142. Matt:
    firstly we are talking about misogyny and not sexism. secondly it is possible to have an idea that harms women more that is not misogynistic. misogyny means hating women. if i value a person as more important to society based on the amount of meat they can procure, it may be harmful to women but is not inherently misogynistic, although it could have been defined that way to devalue women, but you don’t really know.

    Two words for you, Matt: Disparate impact. Look it up.

  143. Oh look, Rae just won:)

    rae:
    Matt – Right, men are demonized for being virgins while women are demonized for being non-virgins. That is why virginity is a gendered concept.

  144. Matt: i mean, this guy is christian.

    Assumes facts not in evidence. The religion was not named.

    In any event, he cares a lot more about the virginity of his partners than he does the virginity of other men.

  145. how the hell should I know? i am not christian, don’t believe in marriage, and am not particularly concerned with virginity.

    zuzu: Two questions:

    1) How is he going to prove that he’s a virgin?

    2) What is the basis for this valuation?What is it about “sex” that devalues a potential marriage partner?

  146. i explicitly acknowledged disparate impact in the post you quoted. again disparate impact/=misogyny.

    zuzu: Two words for you, Matt:Disparate impact.Look it up.

  147. I don’t see what relevancy concepts of adultery have to this, at all.

    Really? The criminalization of a specific sex act which is rooted in the ownership of women is irrelevant? What definition of irrelevant are you using now?

    “Ignoring history and context” is not the same as not being trapped by. Also, people insisting that the man in the scenario must be misogynistic are actually removing all context except the ways that suit their own goal. There is no individualized context allowed, is there?

    You don’t get to choose your context. You don’t get to announce that because you choose your choice that said choice has no cultural resonance at all. Even if you decide (dubiously, IMHO) that you get to generate a non-misogynistic concept of virginity, what makes you think that (a) anyone else is using that definition or (b) your definition is immune to criticism for playing into misogynistic traditions?

  148. i mean, this guy is christian.

    I was actually sort of surprised that was the guess rather than Muslim, but we have no information either way.

  149. I disagree. That he is christian isn’t explicitly stated, but if he were muslim it would have invariably been brought up. the words she uses scream christian to me. just as the actions of the husband scream misogynist to every other poster excepting p. and me. you assume plenty of facts not in evidence based on your understanding of people who want their spouse to be a virgin at marriage. if you like i can go through and pick out the specific words that scream christian in the context of the question sent to prudence.

    evil fizz:
    i mean, this guy is christian.

    I was actually sort of surprised that was the guess rather than Muslim, but we have no information either way.

  150. Matt:
    how the hell should I know? i am not christian, don’t believe in marriage, and am not particularly concerned with virginity.

    If you’re not concerned with virginity, why are you defending it as a basis for valuing/devaluing people?

  151. i’m defending it as a value for making partner decisions, like big noses, being a skinny white scruffy hipster, having a big dick, not liking red heads because they don’t have souls(mostly a christian problem), and so forth.
    i don’t value people objectively at all, because assigning intrinsic personal value implies that people are at all responsible for their traits, values, actions. i only assign values to people for specific purposes.
    my beliefs align with apathetic relativity. its not a popular philosophy though, endorsed mainly by radical ideologists, so i don’t expect anyone to know precisely what it means, excepting the individual definitions of the words being somewhat of a clue.

    zuzu: If you’re not concerned with virginity, why are you defending it as a basis for valuing/devaluing people?

  152. ‘Individualized context’ doesn’t mean shit when the end result of your beliefs supports the patriarchy exactly as much as beliefs culled straight from the context of the dominant culture. If it looks like a duck, quacks like one, etc. etc. Besides which, I can’t even think of a reason someone would require their spouse to be a virgin that isn’t steeped in the same old dumbass patriarchy we’ve been discussing the whole time. If you ever find one that is at all convincing, by all means share it in the comments.

  154. igglanova: I’m on the fence as to whether it points to a misogynistic worldview for you to want a virgin wife when you’re also saving it for marriage.

    igglanova: I can’t even think of a reason someone would require their spouse to be a virgin that isn’t steeped in the same old dumbass patriarchy we’ve been discussing the whole time.

    Now I am confused!

  155. So, I’m assuming that once they’re married, they will have sex, right? We’re all assuming that, and the article pretty much says as much.

    I’m really forgetful, so maybe someone can remind me. Does anyone remember what word we usually use around here to describe someone who gets someone else to consent to sex under false pretenses, when that person DEFINITELY wouldn’t agree to sex if they weren’t being deceived?

  156. It’s not unheard of for people to shift their opinions from ‘undecided’ to ‘yes’ as a conversation develops.

  158. People can’t figure out why a virgin would want their partner t be a virgin? Reading comprehension?

    “sex as an idealistic, unique sharing between two people allows for people to value it and want to share it with only one other person”

    And, from the original article:
    “he said it was very difficult growing up in America and staying a virgin, but he has, because he sees sex as a special thing he wants to reserve only for his wife”

    What, really, this is coming down to is bluster to cover virgin-shaming. It’s a version of sex-positiveness that denies definitions of sex-positive that aren’t your own — a version that does nothing to deny or contradict your own, but the desire to crush it is there anyways.

  159. How can it be virgin shaming if the majority of us don’t believe that virginity is a real thing in the real world? You for one, posited a list of what virginity might mean that was so broad as to be meaningless (and you still didn’t offer a definition that was free of misogyny).

    You yourself re-posted this quote:

    “he said it was very difficult growing up in America and staying a virgin, but he has, because he sees sex as a special thing he wants to reserve only for his wife”

    That opinion can’t exist in a vacuum. It has context. That part where he says “it was very difficult… staying a virgin”? That doesn’t happen in an individualized, benign environment. That is a statement coming from a human who has been sexually active up to a certain point and *surprisingly* found it difficult to not complete the action. That is not a comment from someone who is “pure” or valuing virginity differently than others. That is someone who, for his own selfish reasons, has engaged in sex, drawn himself up short of PIV, and then created a myth around his own strength not to go on. And then he expects someone else to cherish the same twisted story line as his. That, my friend, is the standard social narrative for men who wish to label themselves as “virgin”. There is nothing novel about this man’s stance. He has, from his own admission, put himself in situations where there has been some form of sex play (hence the “difficult staying a virgin” part). It’s also passive as fuck, but I don’t know if you want to get into that aspect of his own personal slut-shaming. I mean, yeah, he has not indicted any particular woman – just all women in American, natch. And they made it soooo difficult for him.

    It’s that part, that little dangling bit of blame, that makes this man’s opinion misogynistic. There is not a woman on the face of the earth that is responsible for his sexual ethics. Not one. So, no, the only difficulty he’s had is not in staying a virgin, but in being sexual up to a certain point, and then backtracking like a motherfucker into his purity system.

  160. Q Grrl:

    If you make assumptions that prove the conclusion you want, then of course you’re going to get the conclusions you want.

    This man finding being difficult to remain a virgin in America in no way directly implies that it’s because he thinks all of these damned sluts trying to get up on prick. American culture at large is “sex-positive” in a way that devalues what he says he values about sex; yes, it’s very much possible to be sex-positive in a way that holds in common the belief of sex as something special and shared between two loving partners, but that isn’t the way sex is portrayed in the mainstream.

    And, really, by his own admission he’s put himself in situations with sex play? You know nothing at all about whatever relationships he’s had, which could have been damned chaste, with a partner, who because that’s what the majority expect and desire in a relationship, who wanted to have sex. And, if he has engaged in sex play that he doesn’t define as sex in the way that ends virginity, your next, unstated, assumption is that he in no way would expect the same level of sex play in his partner.

  161. Oh, and it is virgin-shaming if you take how someone is self-defining themselves in relation to sex and insist they are a misogynist because your definition of the thing you don’t believe in is misogynistic.

  162. No, dude, the virginity is not misogynistic. Duh. The belief that you can demand that someone else be a virgin is misogynistic. Because the definition, not the physical reality, the definition alone, just the definition, the definition… ok, you with me? The definition of virginity is misogynistic.

  163. The value is not misogynistic, but the desire to be partnered with someone who values the same way is?

    As has been insisted on in other posts here, having a ‘deal-breaker’ is not demanding your partner believe anything other than they believe, or be anything other than they are.

    Again, seriously? The definition of virginity you insist on is misogynistic, so sure, you get to predefine terms for other people to ensure that they are a misogynist.

  164. I often wonder what these types really think they are providing that is so much better.

    I certainly wouldn’t want a first time driver in control of the bus.

  165. Matt – Right, men are demonized for being virgins while women are demonized for being non-virgins. That is why virginity is a gendered concept.

    This is the usual construction, which is sexist. Mr. V. is not participating in this structure, because he’s requiring that he be a virgin as well. That’s the difference. If he’s really engaging the the misogynist practice, why the fuck is he still a virgin?

  166. I don’t know….I read the entire column, and this could apply equally to a conservative Christian, conservative Muslim, conservative/Orthodox Jew, and I believe even a conservative Hindu believer.

    Matt:
    I disagree. That he is christian isn’t explicitly stated, but if he were muslim it would have invariably been brought up. the words she uses scream christian to me. just as the actions of the husband scream misogynist to every other poster excepting p. and me. you assume plenty of facts not in evidence based on your understanding of people who want their spouse to be a virgin at marriage. if you like i can go through and pick out the specific words that scream christian in the context of the question sent to prudence.

  167. Jesus F’ing Christ, I did again. I come over to this blog, read something that pisses me off, and leave a comment that’s a lot angrier and nastier than I intended, and then I feel crappy about it. Sorry, everyone. Do me a favor, Jill, and just ban me, would you please? That way I’ll stop wasting everyone’s time and we’ll all feel better.

  168. Matt: I disagree. That he is christian isn’t explicitly stated, but if he were muslim it would have invariably been brought up.

    Why would it have been brought up, inevitably? There was a one-paragraph question and a one-paragraph response, and then they all moved on.

    Yes, yes, when all you have is a hammer, etc., but you’re riding your own little hobby horse into this discussion, sweetling.

  169. P.T.Smith: People can’t figure out why a virgin would want their partner t be a virgin?

    No, people can figure out why a virgin would *want* his partner to be a virgin. They have not yet seen a non-misogynistic, non-steeped-in-patriarchy reason why he would *require* it.

    You certainly haven’t provided a reason. Those quotes? Bluster and bullshit. Yes, he says sex is special, but why? What’s so special about it that he considers it a dealbreaker if his fiance is more experienced than he is? Calling something special, or sacred, does not end the inquiry, it begins it.

  170. So many quotes above have made the last few hours of consciousness until I drift into a wonderful sleep that should last for many more hours very very enjoyable. I commend Florence and Jill and Zuzu and … dudes with names I forget and can’t be bothered to scroll up for. Thank you, indeed.

    One thing I’ve noticed hasn’t been mentioned is the vulnerability felt when participating in sexual activity – to a certain extent, ANY sexual activity. I’ve found myself disliking overt sexual activity for the simple reason that if I give myself to a man or woman, it’s much more than just physical fusion and if that intensity is only really onesided, it’s like expecting hands to catch you suddenly “falling through” (heh, puns…). So it’s possible that this Mr. Virgin Dude is under the perspective that he didn’t trust anyone enough to give himself to.

    But then again, from that line of reasoning, saying “I am so glad I trust you lovery lass; but if you trusted another human being besides me, this is over!” is a bit…. much.

    I think I’ve been rambling.
    Definitions and feminism and stuff: woo!

  171. P.T.Smith: People can’t figure out why a virgin would want their partner t be a virgin? Reading comprehension?

    Scott Adams, is that you? Look, we understand your argument. We just don’t buy it. And it’s dull, just, dull, that you keep insisting that we take into account this entirely hypothetical non-misogynistic virgin valuer (as if being misogynistic was something separate from holding and maintaining values rooted in misogyny). I mean, can, for a moment, feminists talk about real things in the world? Thanks.

  172. Plus -quoting people is beyond me right now- it’s great that sex is so sacred to this guy. Maybe it’s sacred to this girl. Maybe she found someone else to be sacred with but somehow things fell through. How does it make it any less sacred between these two just because she’s had more… sacredity…. than this guy?

  173. P.T.Smith: The value is not misogynistic, but the desire to be partnered with someone who values the same way is?

    The state of being a virgin is not misogynistic. Get on with your bad virgin self.

    The fact that there is even a definition of virginity is misogynistic, and despite all your attempts to render the whole thing meaningless, it doesn’t focus on the hymen for nothing.

    Mocking someone for being a virgin (vs. holding retrograde beliefs about virginity) would be a bad thing. Good thing nobody’s doing that here, though.

    In addition, while having a *desire* for a virgin partner is one thing, *demanding* that one’s partner be a virgin is quite another.

    You know, despite all your attempts to obfuscate, what we all know about virginity is this: a broken hymen can get a woman killed in some parts of the world, and hymen-repair surgery is popular among certain cultures for that very reason. Johns pay extra for “virgin” prostitutes. The sheets are examined after wedding nights in some places for blood.

    So tell me again how virginity isn’t a gendered concept, and tell me again how valuing virginity isn’t misognyistic.

  174. Brian: This is the usual construction, which is sexist. Mr. V. is not participating in this structure, because he’s requiring that he be a virgin as well. That’s the difference.

    Right, because the usual construction just becomes magically stripped of all its sociohistorical context as soon as there’s a guy involved!

  175. zuzu:

    Right, because the usual construction just becomes magically stripped of all its sociohistorical context as soon as there’s a guy involved!

    Remember when metrosexuals brought down the beauty-industrial complex? Wait, no? You mean the manscaping wasn’t a revolutionary attempt to free women from the overwhelming burden of body policing? Gosh, I’ve been doing this all wrong.

  176. Sure Li, and I don’t buy your argument either and I find it dull, just dull that you keep on insisting that I see someone, all someones, as misogynistic because that’s a possible, but not the only possible, interpretation of a belief system or set of values.

    And if you don’t see how that isn’t a real world thing? You can’t see how it is harmful for feminists to refuse to allow for variations in meaning, interpretation, in personal values or beliefs? That’s really too bad and there’s no point in going on with this.

    Yes, I’m taking my balls and going home, so be proud, be happy that you’ve rounded up the wagons and made some more misogynists (yes, I’ve seen the piss-taking childish pleasure that comes up when someone who is in disagreement with the majority on a thread gives up).

    I’m off to the real world, where the feminists I know and love actually have open minds and aren’t defined by rhetorical bluster, ideological thinking, and winning arguments by setting up a priori rules.

  177. Oh, and for the hell of it, to pre-empt accusations likely to come, “hav[ing] [an] open mind” isn’t defined as agreeing with me, because I sure as hell disagree with these women about some things, we’re just all honest about the discussion.

  178. Right, because the usual construction just becomes magically stripped of all its sociohistorical context as soon as there’s a guy involved!

    No, but we aren’t uniform people, and we don’t live in a uniform culture. By applying the concept of virginity equally to men and women, he’s pushing away from the misogynist model as much as we are by saying virginity is rubbish. Maybe he’s being sex negative and we’re being sex positive (or vice versa – that’s a very subjective judgment.) Attempting to force their situation into the patriarchal box doesn’t work because it doesn’t fit, unless one ignores the facts.

  180. Wow, have you ever considered the possibility that you’re just wrong? Hell when I get a shitload of pushback from people, I consider the possibility that either I’m wrong or I’m explaining myself poorly. I may not change my view but I at least consider it and try to understand where the pushback is coming from.

    Let me sum it up for you. People have called me a slut and a whore because I was living with my SO without being married. People have told me that my SO wold never marry me because I was “soiled.” That thin membrane, defined me in USian culture as a “good girl” for most of my youth and as a “slut” for most of my adult life.

    Mr. Kristen said something similar on the period sex thread and I think it makes sense here as well: That is the reality in which many USian women live. That membrane defines us. Any dude that doesn’t get that, that uses that construct against a woman for whatever reason, is participating in the oppression of women.

  181. Brian: This is the usual construction, which is sexist.Mr. V. is not participating in this structure, because he’s requiring that he be a virgin as well.That’s the difference.If he’s really engaging the the misogynist practice, why the fuck is he still a virgin?

    This is literally the most moronic comment I’ve seen (not just amongst pedantic feminist haters on this site, possibly on the web full stop.) He’s not ‘requiring’ that he be a virgin. He is one. That’s like saying a white guy who insists on only dating white women is not racist because ‘he’s requiring himself to be white.’

  182. Let’s say a heterosexual person is pro-choice government-policy wise but personally pro-life. And further, this person doesn’t personally want to reproduce until they are married. Can we at least agree that this is not a particularly uncommon set of beliefs? Are either of these positions inherently misogynistic?

    If the person is a woman, they could choose to have protected sex with the understanding that they will carry any resulting “oops” pregnancy to term (but would then negate their desire to not reproduce until marriage) or they can choose to abstain from PIV intercourse because they do not ever (however small the probability) want to be in that position.

    If the person is a man, their only non-misogynistic option is to abstain from PIV intercourse outside of marriage. There is nothing inherently misogynistic about a man not wanting to have a fetus that is half his genetic material aborted assuming that he also accept that the woman has the final say no matter what he would prefer to have happen. He can value that fetus while still acknowledging that the woman’s life takes precedence (violinist on life support argument, for reference). A man that doesn’t want to put a woman in that position outside of marriage would be better off abstaining from sex.

    Is it then misogynistic for a person (man or woman) to want to marry another person who shares the two above-stated values and has come to the same conclusion as to the best way to live those values (abstaining from PIV intercourse)?

  183. Yes, it is his right to set boundaries in his relationships. Even stupid racist boundaries. All the better for you that he put his racism out there for you to consider, actually, so you can honor his boundaries and dump the motherfucker.

    Does that make you a Judgey McJudgerson? Sure! It also makes you a decent human being. Some values are stupid. Upholding racism is one of them. I’d argue that upholding patriarchy as a moral value is stupid, too.

    This. EXACTLY this. Maybe I wasn’t clear, but look, the whole reason this conversation started is because Jill suggested the dude in question considers unmarried women who aren’t virgins to be “filthy whores.” He didn’t use those words (at least, not to our knowledge) and so people got mad that she was inferring a strong level of judgment when we don’t exactly know whether judgment is there.

    But what I was saying with my comment is that we totally know that judgment is there. To require virginity in a partner is to morally judge non-virgins; there’s no way around it. No, his partner shouldn’t have lied to him, but I don’t think anyone is actually suggesting the opposite; we’re just taking issue with his requirement, and that is entirely our prerogative. If non-virgins offend him, we are allowed to be offended in turn.

  184. P.T.Smith: I’m off to the real world, where the feminists I know and love actually have open minds and aren’t defined by rhetorical bluster, ideological thinking, and winning arguments by setting up a priori rules.

    Wow. A flounce-and-bounce AND a reminder that the really *special* girls agree with him.

  185. Brian: No, but we aren’t uniform people, and we don’t live in a uniform culture.By applying the concept of virginity equally to men and women, he’s pushing away from the misogynist model as much as we are by saying virginity is rubbish.Maybe he’s being sex negative and we’re being sex positive (or vice versa – that’s a very subjective judgment.)Attempting to force their situation into the patriarchal box doesn’t work because it doesn’t fit, unless one ignores the facts.

    No, you’d have to ignore the fact that he comes from a conservative culture and has found it difficult to remain a virgin in America, land of the whores, to think that he doesn’t fit into the patriarchal box, Brian. His culture was stated; conservative cultures by their very nature are patriarchal. The fact that he himself wants to remain a virgin until marriage doesn’t change that.

    But *do* tell us which non-patriarchal reasons there are for demanding that your partner be a virgin when you marry. This gauntlet’s been thrown at you several times, but you refuse to pick it up. Let’s have it.

  186. (This is really long, for which I apologize. I am really, really trying to engage in good faith and in a non-angry way — I’ve found this conversation really troubling and on some levels personally hurtful, which I’m sure is oversensitivity on my part, but c’est la vie — so I tried to explain my feelings on this as clearly as I could, which resulted in a ridiculous dissertation-length comment.)

    People’s arguments for why it is inherently misogynistic to want to remain a virgin until marriage and to marry someone who did the same seem to boil down to three things: (1) historically, that desire was rooted in patriarchy, and for many people continues to be today; (2) the concept of virginity is inherently misogynistic; (3) there is no reason for wanting this that is not directly tied to making negative judgments about women who engage in pre-marital sex.

    (1) is certainly true, but I don’t see how that makes this guy any more inherently misogynistic than anyone who wants to get married. Historically, marriage was deeply rooted in patriarchy. Many of the practices at weddings today–everything from the bride taking the groom’s name to the bride being walked down the aisle by her father to the bride wearing a white dress–are particularly reflective of that patriarchal legacy, but weddings and marriage in general certainly carry a hell of a lot of bad baggage. And in many conservative (and sometimes not-so-conservative) communities, marriage continues to be a deeply, deeply patriarchal institution today. But most of us recognize that the association between marriage and patriarchy does not mean that any man who wants to get married is trying to shame or oppress his partner, and that not every woman who wants to get married has been brainwashed into hating themselves and all other women.

    (2) assumes that anyone who says “virginity” automatically means PIV sex and nothing else. That is not true for many people today–I know very few devout Christians who did not want to engage in pre-marital sex but who thought anal was A-OK (yes, I know some exist–though I think media scare reporting on this as some kind of trend is ridiculous hyperbole–but there are certainly a lot who don’t think that way). And even if this dude was using virginity as a shorthand for PIV sex, I don’t think that’s inherently misogynistic.* There are obviously historical and cultural reasons why a person might consider that sex act to be the one thing that they want to reserve for their spouse, but that doesn’t mean that on an individual level the people involved are misogynists. There are seriously fucked up historical and cultural reasons that women wear wedding rings, but I don’t think every guy who buys an engagement ring is a raging misogynist.

    * It is, of course, inherently exclusionary towards many people in the GLBT community. That’s a significant problem with the traditional definition of virginity, and one I don’t mean to diminish. But as long as an individual is only applying that definition of virginity to what they want for their own relationship, I don’t have a real issue with the definition they use. In very broad terms, I consider PIV sex to be sort of the “ultimate” sex act for me (by which I simply mean the most serious, the one I’m most choosy about who I engage in it with, etc.). I recognize the same won’t be true for many other people, including gay men and lesbians, and I expect that many of those individuals have their own version of an “ultimate” sex act. Virginity is obviously not a good term to use as a shorthand for abstaining from your ultimate sex act, because it does have the historical baggage of excluding groups who don’t participate in PIV sex, but I think that’s a different issue than much of what is being said in this thread.

    (3) is the thing I find most offensive about this thread. If people want to say that anyone who wants to save sex for marriage and to marry someone who has done the same is perpetuating a belief system that harms other people, I can understand that argument. It’s the same one made about women who take their husband’s name–even though doing so is her choice, and she isn’t choosing it for misogynist reasons (his sounds better, or she hates her father, or she wants to avoid problems with the traditionalists in her family, or whatever), every woman who does so makes it a little harder for those who don’t want to. But the idea that the effect of an individual wanting themself and their partner to reserve sex (however defined) for marriage is to reinforce misogyny is very different from saying that the reason they want to do so is inherently misogynistic.

    Several of us have pointed on this thread to non-misogynist reasons people might want to reserve sex for marriage — chief among them, that some people believe that sex is very important and special and that they would like it to be something that they and their partner have only shared with one another. Holding that belief is not a judgment on anyone else. It does not mean you think those who have had sex are impure or soiled or whatever else. Most people on this thread seem to disagree with the idea that sex is something that should be reserved for only one other person. That doesn’t mean that they automatically judge anyone who has chosen to abstain from sex until marriage as being a prude or frigid.

    But wait! you say. Wanting yourself to remain a virgin is one thing, but wanting your partner to do the same requires judging someone else based on your standard. Which, yes and no. It requires judging them as to whether they are compatible with you. That’s the same kind of judgment made by the many sexually experienced people (that term is used without judgment, I’m one of them) that would not want to marry a virgin because they don’t think that would be a good match for them. But judging someone for compatibility with you is not the same as judging them as a person. A lot of people in this thread have suggested that anyone who thinks “I believe sex is special and want to reserve it for marriage” is also thinking “anyone who believes otherwise is wrong and sullied.” The latter does not automatically follow the former. You may, as I did, think that everyone else having sex is fine and dandy and not a problem (and that, in fact, you are the weird one for wanting to wait until marriage), and evaluate other people on that criteria only to the extent that it affects whether you want to date them.

    But wait! you say again. Everyone has the right to choose potential partners for whatever reason they want, but that doesn’t mean the criteria they use to judge potential partners are immune from criticism. Which, of course not. If you choose partners based on whether they hate Black people or will let you force them to stay in the kitchen all the time, people obviously can and will judge those decisions. But I think the standard for condemning someone should be higher when they aren’t judgments on people at large but just on potential partners. I think judging virgins as a class of people is wrong and bad, but I think not wanting to date a virgin (because you love sex and want it before marriage, or because you want to know you’re sexually compatible before getting too far into a relationship, or because you’re concerned that someone who chose to remain a virgin has views about sex incompatible with your own) is often totally fine and not something you should be criticized for.

    So yes, if someone is saying “I want to marry a virgin because I don’t want to go where some other guy’s dick has been” or “I want to marry a virgin because any woman who’s out spreading her legs is morally bankrupt,” by all means, judge away. And I’m sure a not-insignificant number of people who want to marry a virgin have very, very misogynist reasons for doing so. But most people on this thread seem to believe that anyone who wants both themself and their partner to be a virgin when they marry is automatically and necessarily saying those things. I can tell you that I, when I held that view, was not. I can tell you that I have friends who held/hold that view who were not.

    By why does that matter, you ask. Even if there are some people who have benign reasons for holding this belief, if most people who want to marry virgins are misogynist, aren’t you just concern trolling and trying to prevent a conversation about the huge number of virginity-worshipping people who are really misogynist? And I do HATE IT when people derail feminist conversations that way (particularly those involving race, but it happens all over the place, as anyone who reads this blog well knows), and if that’s what I’ve done here, I sincerely apologize.

    But I do think that there’s a real problem with saying that any personal sexual conservatism is the same as political sexual conservatism. It’s easy to say “you can choose your partner for whatever reason you want, but I can and will judge you for those reasons,” but it’s also way too simplistic. I don’t think that personal sexual choices are off limits for critique, but I do think that some caution should be exercised when judging people’s personal sexual choices and that threads like this have swung way too far in the opposite direction. For about the first 19 years of my life, I wanted to wait until marriage for sex, and I wanted to find a partner who felt the same way. That did not make me a bad person. That did not make me not a feminist. But had I not decided (for reasons I won’t go into here) to change my mind about my sexual preferences, a hundred or so comments on this thread would be telling me not only that I was wrong for what I wanted in my sex life, but that I was also a misogynist. That’s what’s being told to anyone reading this who does want to be and to marry a virgin, including the few people who commented earlier in the thread. I think that the sex-positive feminist community (which I subscribe to in general) has had some real issues with alienating those who are personally sexually conservative (a really bad way of describing what I mean, but basically anyone who is asexual, or ambivalent towards certain common sex acts, or a virgin, or thinks sex is special and wants to reserve it for someone they love/will marry/have married, etc.), and I think that the blanket judgment made in the OP and in many subsequent comments is likely to perpetuate that problem.

    (Again, apologies for the length.)

  188. Kierra – the thing is, if this was just about shared values, his girlfriend having had sex before shouldn’t be a *dealbreaker*. There are lots of ways in which I could share a man’s values regarding sex being saved for marriage without being a virgin:

    – I previously believed that sex before marriage was okay and engaged in it, but have since changed my mind and plan not to have sex before marriage again.
    – I believe that sex before marriage is wrong, but a previous partner pressured me until I didn’t know what to do other than give in (this is something that has unfortunately happened to more than one friend of mine =/).
    – I was saving sex for my future husband until I met a man who I truly, honestly believed would be that husband – turned out he wasn’t.
    – I was waiting for sex until marriage but once was overcome and gave into my desires, I believe it was a mistake and plan to be more careful in the future.

    None of those things should be dealbreakers as far as a man wanting someone who shares his value that sex should be saved for marriage. As far as I can see, they’re only dealbreakers if a man believes in the sexist idea that a woman who has had sex with another man is spoiled forever.

  189. zuzu:
    Esti, to reiterate:WANTING =/= DEMANDING.

    This douchelord DEMANDED virginity.

    +1 – and same goes for all those other traditions you listed. If a woman changes her name, wears a white dress, etc. of her own volition – fine, whatever. If my fiance told me I had to do these things or else he would refuse to marry me? Misogynist.

  190. Sigh. Look, I, again, not sure why we have to do this, but “a misogynist”, like “a racist” are not distinguishable from misogyny and racism as systemic descriptors. We are all, by virtue of being enculturated in a sexist society, sexist to some extent. If we can’t fucking talk about anything because naming sexism leads to people taking it personally I’m not sure what we’re doing here. Like, for instance, a few years ago, I probably wouldn’t have been interested in sleeping with trans* guys. I was still aware though that that was a result of having been raised in a culture of cissexism, and if someone had called me cissexist or transphobic for carrying that baggage, they would have been absolutely right to do so. By the same token, any straight person who gets married in a country without marriage equality is benefiting from doing so, and is being heterosexist. That doesn’t make them terrible awful people (unless they refuse to acknowledge het privilege, in which case, game on) or mean that all of the other things that went into that choice cease to exist, but thems the breaks. There are a whole bunch of actions and world views that by their very nature prop up systems of oppression, “virginity”, as a concept, is one. You can go to lengths to ameliorate that, but you can’t disidentify or choicy choice your way out of it.

    Also, yeah, going to second what Becky said about dealbreakers.

  191. zuzu: Esti, to reiterate: WANTING =/= DEMANDING.This douchelord DEMANDED virginity.

    It’s not like he waited until he was in a relationship and then started issuing ultimatums. He told a prospective partner what his views were before they got involved with each other. That’s about the least coercive way to communicate what you want in a partner.

    If the issue is not that it was wrong to want it, but that he was wrong to want it as much as he did — well, if people are willing to recognize that someone could legitimately have this view of what they want in a partner, I don’t think the fact that they really strongly hold that view changes things. It makes me think he’s a little naive and absolutist in his views towards relationships–as Becky just pointed out, there’s plenty of reasons why someone might have engaged in a sex act before but now have views that totally line up with yours–but he also never really got a chance to change his mind, because the person he wanted to be with decided to lie to him instead of just telling him the truth and seeing where things went.

  192. Brandy: +1 – and same goes for all those other traditions you listed. If a woman changes her name, wears a white dress, etc. of her own volition – fine, whatever. If my fiance told me I had to do these things or else he would refuse to marry me? Misogynist.

    I think those are a little different as dealbreakers, because they’re criteria that only apply to the woman. If a guy said “I will only marry a virgin, but I don’t think I need to be a virgin,” then sure, sexist.

    But let’s take something that applies to both people. If a guy said “I want to get married one day, and I will not date people who never want to get married,” I would not call that sexist even though marriage as an institution has a ton of misogynist baggage.

  193. Totally agreed, Becky.

    I said above that I think sex is special so I only do it when I’m in love. I’m, to put it mildly, in the extreme minority on that viewpoint within the sex-positive, proudly slutty, radical feminist groups I run in.

    Now, in practice, one of my options are to avoid sleeping/relationshipping with people who’ve had more than 4 partners because that’s how many people I’ve been sexual with. This is what Virgin Seeking Same is doing, except not even being honest because he’s obviously been sexual with people, just not gone all the way. (Why else would it be “difficult” to remain a virgin? I find it quite easy to not have sex with people that I don’t want to have sex with.) Even setting that standard doesn’t ensure the person views sex the same way I do. How many of us have met men with minimal sexual experience because they’re Nice Guys or, shit, sexually repressive Christians/Muslims? Similar quantities of people doesn’t remotely imply similar qualities of values.

    My other option is to, as I said above, ask potential partners about their sexual history and casual sex practices. You can view sex as sacred even if you’re having nightly one night stands, as my current partner who’s made breakfast for women can attest. I know another man who had the condom break during a one night stand, so he got Plan B the next morning and then got screened for STDs later that month and called to tell her that he’s clean. All of that is much more indicative of whether someone views sex as sacred than how many people a person’s been with. Prioritizing quantity over quality suggests that sex is a commodity, not special.

  194. Guys, I have to pull back from this for a minute to point out that for all our machinations defining virginity and misogyny, these kinds of written pieces do a lot to enforce or reinforce cultural norms around dating, sex, and what is acceptable in a relationship. Jill is, for WHATEVER reason, getting a ton of shit from people about our rights to enforce personal boundaries (“it’s judgmental/mean”). But these are messages that need to be heard BY WOMEN, a lot of women, especially by women who have been socialized into being afraid of confrontation and told that a woman’s job is to take up as little emotional, physical, and psychic space possible in the world, especially in her relationships, sexual and platonic relationships alike. Especially in relationships with people who are typically socialized that it’s okay to steamroll a woman’s rights/agency/preferences because patriarchy. And look, this doesn’t have to mean all men or all women are going to experience life this way. And yes, YOUR EXPERIENCE IS A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE. We are not erasing you by not adopting your personal definitions/”logical rigor” when discussing the social norms that are developed in the social, historical, and political culture that we’re all steeped in.

    But there’s also this: If you’re in a relationship with someone who requires benchmarks that you can not, will not, or don’t want to meet, this is a shitty relationship for you to continue. Quit trying to make it work. Quit trying to make it fit. Sure, your partner is SOOO NICE THOUGH and TOTALLY AWESOME IF IT WASN’T FOR THIS ONE MAJOR THING. It isn’t going to work. Get out of it. Do not be afraid to be an agent in your own life. You should not be compelled to be with someone forever because you’re afraid of interrupting the inertia of this commitment. WHATEVER THESE UNDOABLE REQUIREMENTS MAY BE.

    People need to hear this. Women need to hear these messages again and again in order to shake the patriarchal messages that have been taught and enforced on us since birth in order to be more active logical and emotional agents in our lives. And like I said upthread, you have a right to your boundaries. Enforce them! I have the right to think your boundaries are retrograde and misogynist. But since I’m not cuffin’ you, it’s all good.

  195. A flounce-and-bounce AND a reminder that the really *special* girls agree with him.

    His mom thinks he’s cool.

    I also 100% agree with the limits on what you’re entitled to demand to know about your partner. STIs, definitely. If they’re not actually single, and their S.O. hasn’t agreed to an open relations, definitely.

    But every single thing they’ve ever done with anyone in the past? Nope. Its not any of my business.

    Talking about preferences, discussing fanatsies, etc is one thing. DEMANDING to know everything about someone sexual past is another. Its their info to volunteer, not mine to demand of them.

  197. @Li

    I don’t disagree with that. As I said in my epic shitshow of a long post, I am on board with the idea that what this guy wants is contributing to propping up misogynist systems and beliefs (I compared it –for illustrative purposes, not because I think they’re equivalent — to women taking their husband’s name). But people have been saying not only that what this guy wants is propping up misogynism, but that it can only be motivated by misogyny. And I think it’s different to critique someone for being complicit in an oppressive system and to accuse someone of liking the oppression and wanting to create more of it.

    To take a very simple and hopefully slightly less charged example: I often wear heels and skirts to work. My individual choices on that front are a product of a system that expects that of women, and they also themselves perpetuate that system. But I’m not going to look kindly on anyone who calls me sexist for doing so; I think that the issue is with the system, and with people who deny that it exists or is a problem. If, however, I tried to get my employer to mandate all women wear skirts in the office, or recommended we not hire a woman who looked “manly” in an interview, that act would be fully my responsibility and it would be totally legitimate to criticize me for it.

    I took your comment to be more about the former situation than the latter–in which case, I agree that this guy’s beliefs are informed by a patriarchal system, and that his beliefs perpetuate that system even if he does not mean to do so. I don’t, however, think that necessarily makes him a misogynist. If that was the standard, virtually everyone ever would qualify, because we all act in ways that reinforce the status quo, and the term would lose all meaning.

  198. Esti: some people believe that sex is very important and special and that they would like it to be something that they and their partner have only shared with one another. Holding that belief is not a judgment on anyone else

    How can you describe it as anything other than a judgement on one’s suitability for marriage? What’s absurd is that it is based on something of which, by definition, said person has NO IDEA about. They may “believe that sex is very important and special,” but they have no idea what sex is like if they haven’t had it. For all they know they might hate it.

    And you are also making a judgement that only people who “would like it to be something that they and their partner have only shared with one another” “believe that sex is very important and special.”

  199. Esti: And I think it’s different to critique someone for being complicit in an oppressive system and to accuse someone of liking the oppression and wanting to create more of it.

    …I took your comment to be more about the former situation than the latter–in which case, I agree that this guy’s beliefs are informed by a patriarchal system, and that his beliefs perpetuate that system even if he does not mean to do so. I don’t, however, think that necessarily makes him a misogynist.

    This is another situation, I think, where it’s fair to say our motivations do not spring fully-formed from a vacuum. This guy’s beliefs are informed by a patriarchal system ad perpetuate that system. He is complicit in the system in that he agrees with and wants to uphold these patriarchal values and requires same in a partner. If the concern is that upholding, asserting, and requiring patriarchal belief systems is not enough to call someone’s beliefs misogynist, dude, po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

    What seems to be under the surface of this concern is the difference between calling something misogynist and someone misogynist. I get it, I guess, but that’s a lot of linguistic gymnastics to defend an active patriarch.

  200. Fat Steve: And you are also making a judgement that only people who “would like it to be something that they and their partner have only shared with one another” “believe that sex is very important and special.”

    This, right here, is 90% of the frustration I am feeling with this thread. I was describing what someone who wants to only have sex while married might think about sex in their own life. I think I was pretty clear that I don’t think that belief is or should be universally held. Do you believe that sex is special? Do you want to have sex with more than one person in your life? If the answer to both was yes, that means you think that the only people who think sex is special are those who want to have it with multiple people! See how that doesn’t work?

    I think all but the most socially conservative people can understand that people view sex differently and there is no one size fits all answer. I’ve discovered that, for me, sex is meaningful in a way that requires I actually know and like the person I’m doing it with. That doesn’t mean that I think sex is any less meaningful for one of my best friends, who routinely has sex with guys she doesn’t know or actively dislikes because she thinks the sex itself will be fun or because she thinks it will at least make for a good story.

  201. Florence: This is another situation, I think, where it’s fair to say our motivations do not spring fully-formed from a vacuum. This guy’s beliefs are informed by a patriarchal system ad perpetuate that system. He is complicit in the system in that he agrees with and wants to uphold these patriarchal values and requires same in a partner. If the concern is that upholding, asserting, and requiring patriarchal belief systems is not enough to call someone’s beliefs misogynist, dude, po-tay-to, po-tah-to.What seems to be under the surface of this concern is the difference between calling something misogynist and someone misogynist. I get it, I guess, but that’s a lot of linguistic gymnastics to defend an active patriarch.

    I don’t think it’s just about linguistic gymnastics, though. If just being complicit in a patriarchal system makes one a misogynist, every single one of us qualifies. In which case, what work is the word misogynist doing as a descriptor? The dude from the letter is a misogynist, you’re a misogynist, I’m a misogynist, the guy who stands on my streetcorner yelling “whore” at me every morning is a misogynist, Catherine MacKinnon is a misogynist, etc. It kind of loses all power as a descriptor and as a tool for calling people out. (Also, I have now typed the word misogynist so many times that it looks funny to me. Side effect.)

  202. Kierra:

    Is it then misogynistic for a person (man or woman) to want to marry another person who shares the two above-stated values and has come to the same conclusion as to the best way to live those values (abstaining from PIV intercourse)?

    Can you give another explanation other than misogyny which would explain a man’s assumption that a woman could not possibly share those values if five years previous, she had protected PIV intercourse with a different man?

  203. Esti: In which case, what work is the word misogynist doing as a descriptor? The dude from the letter is a misogynist, you’re a misogynist, I’m a misogynist, the guy who stands on my streetcorner yelling “whore” at me every morning is a misogynist, Catherine MacKinnon is a misogynist, etc. It kind of loses all power as a descriptor and as a tool for calling people out.

    Whether or not someone *is* a misogynist is something that can be debated indefinitely (“are so” “are not” “are so” “are not”) and as such is already a shitty tool, but determining whether/how behavior or belief systems are misogynist is one of the jobs that feminism aims to do. If we can’t name it, whatever “it” is, we struggle to do anything about it.

    As such, if the guy’s enforcing a belief system that is inherently misogynist, whether or not he *is* one is besides the point.

    To run with your analogy, I wear makeup and heels every day. I could tell you that I think it’s a woman’s place to wear makeup and heels or I could tell you that I think makeup and heels are an awesome form of theater and self-expression. Whether or not this behavior makes me sexist or not a feminist is a game of self-definition. Either way, whatever my intent is, the end result is the same. I am benefiting from and enforcing a social norm of femininity that benefits some and is harmful to others.

    So is he a misogynist? Meh. His requirements to marry a virgin, whatever that is, are based in a system of misogynist thought. Who he is as a person is not my concern when I’m wearing this particular activist lens.

  204. But if wearing makeup and heels is what you chose to do, for whatever reason, I don’t have a problem with that individual choice. I think we should educate you about why you might have chosen to do so, and or about the effects of that choice, yes. But to tell you that it was the wrong choice or that you should stop doing it? No.

    Anyway, this has gotten way off track. I think there are lots of interesting conversations about when and how we should call out things that reinforce patriarchal systems (and I think we saw some good discussions on that front during those posts about performing beauty this summer), and I’m not sure I disagree with anything you’re saying about that, but my problem with the OP here was not “dump him! He’s participating in and helping to reinforce a patriarchal system!” It was “he thinks all women who have sex are filthy whores!” Maybe he does, but we can’t tell that solely from the fact that he wants to wait until marriage to have sex and wants a partner who is doing the same.

  205. Esti: But if wearing makeup and heels is what you chose to do, for whatever reason, I don’t have a problem with that individual choice.

    “I choose my choice” is not a valid answer. It doesn’t stop inquiry, and it doesn’t magically make all your choices feminist.

  206. Esti: This, right here, is 90% of the frustration I am feeling with this thread.I was describing what someone who wants to only have sex while married might think about sex in their own life.I think I was pretty clear that I don’t think that belief is or should be universally held.Do you believe that sex is special?Do you want to have sex with more than one person in your life?If the answer to both was yes, that means you think that the only people who think sex is special are those who want to have it with multiple people!See how that doesn’t work?

    I think all but the most socially conservative people can understand that people view sex differently and there is no one size fits all answer.I’ve discovered that, for me, sex is meaningful in a way that requires I actually know and like the person I’m doing it with.That doesn’t mean that I think sex is any less meaningful for one of my best friends, who routinely has sex with guys she doesn’t know or actively dislikes because she thinks the sex itself will be fun or because she thinks it will at least make for a good story.

    Ok, let me address this and a couple of your points from your previous post, (though I can only speak for myself, not 90% of the commenters on here who are frustrating you or the other 10% in fact.)

    Firstly, I am not calling you a ‘misogynist’, ‘a bad person’ or implying that you’re not a feminist because of your feelings about sex as a young woman. I respect that you don’t want to get into your motives, but your implication is that you’ve changed those feelings, so somehow you must have felt they were ‘wrong’ or at the very least ‘wrong for you.’ So, at age 19 you came to the same conclusion you are criticizing people here for.

    Secondly, the original article referred to a woman who wasn’t a virgin, so no one would disagree with Jill’s assessment of the couple’s compatibility (I don’t actually agree with Jill’s suggestion to dump him. I think the girl in question should merely tell him she has had PIV intercourse, and either he’ll realize he had unrealistic expectations or he will dump her and do the job for her.)

    Thirdly, I can honestly say from personal experiences that having sex with my wife the week before I was married was no different than having sex with her the week after (apart from the fact we were in a cottage on Vancouver Island.) I can’t think of how the marriage license could possibly improve our sex life (not that I’m judging people who want to use their marriage certificate as part of sex-play.) 20 years of monogamy HAS, in my opinion improved our sexual compatibility, but as I say, I don’t know any other way.

    Finally, now that I’ve said all that, I think people SHOULD WAIT to have sex until they think it’s “special”, whether that be on your wedding night or in the back of a cab.

  207. zuzu: “I choose my choice” is not a valid answer. It doesn’t stop inquiry, and it doesn’t magically make all your choices feminist.

    As I explained at far too great a length in my earlier comment on this post, I don’t think that every choice someone makes is magically okay or immune from criticism. What I said about sexual choices in particular, though it certainly applies elsewhere as well, is that it is also not enough to just say “well, you are free to do what you want, but that doesn’t mean I can’t criticize you for it.” I think that when it comes to someone’s personal sexual decisions, we should exercise some caution in saying that what they want is fundamentally bad and wrong. And I think that things that would be bad and wrong if you expected the whole world to conform to them can be totally fine and reasonable preferences to have about which partners you are going to date/engage in sex acts with/marry.

  208. Fat Steve: Firstly, I am not calling you a ‘misogynist’, ‘a bad person’ or implying that you’re not a feminist because of your feelings about sex as a young woman. I respect that you don’t want to get into your motives, but your implication is that you’ve changed those feelings, so somehow you must have felt they were ‘wrong’ or at the very least ‘wrong for you.’ So, at age 19 you came to the same conclusion you are criticizing people here for.

    I’m not criticizing people for deciding, as I did, that sex before marriage is okay for them. I’m criticizing people for saying that if you have not decided that for yourself, and you want a partner who holds the same belief you do, you necessarily think all sex-having women are dirty whores and/or you are automatically a misogynist and/or that specific desire is inherently misogynistic — a conclusion that I obviously disagree with.

  209. Esti: I think that when it comes to someone’s personal sexual decisions, we should exercise some caution in saying that what they want is fundamentally bad and wrong.

    How have we not exercised caution, Esti? Commenters have bent over backward to distinguish between want and requirement, between criticizing being a virgin vs. criticizing thinking everyone else should be one, too. But what I have not yet seen is a non-patriarchal, non-misogynist, non-slut-shamey reason for a worldview which posits that sex is dirty before marriage and sacred afterwards.

    Honestly, the way of the Feministe threads lately has been that no matter how careful, respectful and cautious anyone is, somebody who’s got some kind of tangential relationship to the issue under discussion gets all butthurt and thinks they’re being personally attacked for their own choices.

  210. Esti:

    The problem with the dude is not that he wants to marry someone who shares his values, it’s that he wants to marry a virgin. See Becky’s post #202.

  211. zuzu: How have we not exercised caution, Esti? Commenters have bent over backward to distinguish between want and requirement, between criticizing being a virgin vs. criticizing thinking everyone else should be one, too. But what I have not yet seen is a non-patriarchal, non-misogynist, non-slut-shamey reason for a worldview which posits that sex is dirty before marriage and sacred afterwards. Honestly, the way of the Feministe threads lately has been that no matter how careful, respectful and cautious anyone is, somebody who’s got some kind of tangential relationship to the issue under discussion gets all butthurt and thinks they’re being personally attacked for their own choices.

    Had the dude said sex before marriage is dirty and sex after marriage is sacred, I think we could all agree that is a sexist, misogynistic thing to say. The problem that I have with this discussion is that people took “I want to abstain until marriage, and I want a partner who is doing the same” to be the same as saying that. It just isn’t.

    As for your last paragraph: look, I’ve really tried to be polite and to make reasonable, non-hyperbolic critiques of what I saw to be the problems with this thread. My issue here has very, very little to do with things I thought about my own sex life more than a decade ago and that I no longer think or act according to. I have used myself as an example because I am a woman, and a feminist, and because I am proof of the fact that you can simultaneously want a partner who has also abstained from sex and not think that everyone who is having sex is a dirty whore, and this conversation has largely proceeded from the assumption that no one who wants what the LW’s fiance wants could be any of those things.

    As I said upthread, I think that sex-positive feminist communities are not always particularly friendly spaces for people who are personally sexually conservative (which is not even a label that I would apply to myself, not that that should be relevant except that you have chosen to make dismissive remarks about my views based on your perception that I am “butthurt” about you criticizing my life). If you disagree with me, that’s fine. I didn’t really think that I was going to change anyone’s views here. But if you think this thread was a respectful critique of sexual conservatism in which people bent over backwards to make sure they weren’t jumping on people’s personal beliefs about their own sex lives, I have to disagree.

  212. @Esti,

    But he didn’t say “I want to abstain until marriage, and I want a partner who is doing the same”. He said he wanted a *virgin*.

    If I say, I like the feel of shaved legs or M says he likes the feel of my shaved legs, that’s fundamentally different from either of us saying any woman I date must conform to patriarchal notions of proper leg hairness.

    “Virginity” when applied to women is not just someone who hasn’t engaged in PIV sex, its a patriarchal notion of the state of a “proper” single woman’s hymen. And hymens do not say anything about “intimacy” or “specialness”. In fact, hymens don’t even say anything about abstaining since sometimes hymens are unaffected by PIV sex (go figure!).

  213. I would be disgusted and emotionally fucked up if I found my hubby had not been a virgin when we first had sex and had lied to me. It would seriously bother me to even think of him touching another woman. To the point of breaking us up and causing me to fall apart.

    I’m pretty fucked up. Depression eats my life and these problems with jealousy and needing to be the “only” for my hubby are ruining our relationship and myself. Sometimes I just think life would be easier if I weren’t here.

    Do you see what this religious ideology of “purity” does to people? Even escaping my religion and becoming feminist can’t change the damage it did to some of us. It’s too late to save me from the damage that comes when you teach girls that sex is evil, that it keeps you from ever having a relationship that’s meaningful if you have sex with someone else first, that it’s dirty. But please, keep fighting. If I make it long enough and can save my relationship and have daughters, I don’t want them to ever have this baggage. They will be raised feminists and not made to feel guilty for being a woman or sexual. I was. This whole thread makes me want to cry and crawl into a hole, because I’m “that person” that can’t stand the idea of anyone I’m with being a non-virgin (I’ve only been with hubby, and him with me, but my mind doesn’t always believe it). Even though I logically agree with you, my psychological self was too far into the teachings I had about sexuality. It’ll take years of therapy to get over it.

    Please. This system of oppression of women’s sexuality by conservatives creates people like me. And I’m miserable. We must stop it. No one knows this about me. I walk in Slutwalk. I Walk for Choice. I run safer sex forums. I blog about feminism. I could be anyone you meet at a feminist event. And even I cannot shake off the shame that comes with this misogynistic idea of purity.

  214. Esti: Had the dude said sex before marriage is dirty and sex after marriage is sacred, I think we could all agree that is a sexist, misogynistic thing to say. The problem that I have with this discussion is that people took “I want to abstain until marriage, and I want a partner who is doing the same” to be the same as saying that. It just isn’t.

    How is it not implying all that? He’s DEMANDING that his wife be a virgin on their wedding day. Clearly, he has an issue with women who have had sex with other men.

    He’s not got a wish list; he’s not got some idea that sex after marriage is super-duper special, and everyone will fart butterflies and poop rainbows. He thinks that women who have sex before marriage are not worth marrying.

    How is this not deciding that the woman is spoiled? This isn’t like being Jewish and looking for a Jewish partner, where there is a shared cultural and religious background and certain laws regarding membership of children in the culture. This is deciding that a woman who does the very thing that he plans on doing with her after they marry to be hopelessly tainted. What, exactly, makes that not misogynist?

  215. Can you give another explanation other than misogyny which would explain a man’s assumption that a woman could not possibly share those values if five years previous, she had protected PIV intercourse with a different man?

    Not being keen on hypocrisy. If someone says that they don’t want to have sex outside of marriage and don’t want their partner to have sex outside of marriage, but they haven’t actually abstained from sex outside of marriage, then that tells you something about their character (not that they are “dirty”, at most that they are irresponsible or that when push comes to shove they don’t really stick to their convictions). But all of that can equally apply to a woman or a man that professes those beliefs but doesn’t live up to them, so still not misogynistic.

  216. Kierra: Not being keen on hypocrisy.If someone says that they don’t want to have sex outside of marriage and don’t want their partner to have sex outside of marriage, but they haven’t actually abstained from sex outside of marriage, then that tells you something about their character (not that they are “dirty”, at most that they are irresponsible or that when push comes to shove they don’t really stick to their convictions).But all of that can equally apply to a woman or a man that professes those beliefs but doesn’t live up to them, so still not misogynistic.

    We’ve been over why his holding himself to the virgin standard does not matter because 5,000 years of history don’t change just because a guy gets involved. Patriarchy hurts men, too, after all.

    But, again: he has a view of sex as dirty and a view of women who have sex as unmarriageable. How is this not patriarchal/misogynist? What is the non-patriarchal, non-misogynist justification for this view of sex?

  217. In fact, hymens don’t even say anything about abstaining since sometimes hymens are unaffected by PIV sex (go figure!).

    No shit! I had had sex with women for 15+ years before I had PIV sex with a man. I just figured I didn’t have a hymen. Didn’t even think of it. LOL. I had one. He busted it. And then I bled e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e. Fortunately he had immediately fallen asleep, so he missed the trail of blood from the bed to the bathroom. I would have been mortified if I hadn’t been laughing so hard at myself.

  218. What is the non-patriarchal, non-misogynist justification for this view of sex?

    Comment 196.

    Please tell me where the logical flaw is. Which of those beliefs is misogynistic: being personally pro-life and personally dedicated to raising your own children in marriage. Why is it misogynistic to want to marry someone else who shares and is strong enough in those beliefs to actually practice what they profess?

    Neither one necessitates making a value judgement on other people who do not share those beliefs. It just means those other people are not compatible with the man/woman in question.

  219. Kierra:
    Not being keen on hypocrisy. If someone says that they don’t want to have sex outside of marriage and don’t want their partner to have sex outside of marriage, but they haven’t actually abstained from sex outside of marriage, then that tells you something about their character (not that they are “dirty”, at most that they are irresponsible or that when push comes to shove they don’t really stick to their convictions).

    But her values could have changed. Or even if she failed to live up to her values 100%… many people say they want a partner who values honesty. But I’ve never heard anyone say that if they found out their partner had ever told a lie, even once, that would be a dealbreaker. Because we don’t live in a society where a single lie irrevocably changes you from “an honest person” into “a liar”. But we do live in a society, where –especially for women – a single sex act irrevocably turns you from a “virgin” to a “non-virgin”. The idea that a single sex act turns a woman from marriageable into non-marriageable is based in misogyny – and that’s what this guy is saying when he says if a woman had ever had sex before, that would be a deal breaker.

  220. Kierra: Comment 196.

    Please tell me where the logical flaw is.Which of those beliefs is misogynistic: being personally pro-life and personally dedicated to raising your own children in marriage.Why is it misogynistic to want to marry someone else who shares and is strong enough in those beliefs to actually practice what they profess?

    Neither one necessitates making a value judgement on other people who do not share those beliefs.It just means those other people are not compatible with the man/woman in question.

    You’re describing abstention in that comment, not virginity.

    There comes a point when you’ve had sex and it’s clear you’re not pregnant. So someone who held those values could have had sex in the past and still decide to abstain until marriage because of the abortion thing, and remain absolutely compatible with a person who also decided that sex before marriage was too chancy because of the risk of pregnancy. And that’s fine, but it doesn’t make that person’s worldview the equivalent of someone who demands a virgin in his wedding bed.

    So, again, what non-misogynistic reason could there be for demanding a virgin?

  221. zuzu: This isn’t like being Jewish and looking for a Jewish partner, where there is a shared cultural and religious background and certain laws regarding membership of children in the culture.

    I can’t access the article, but from this discussion it sounds to me like this dude is acting/thinking like a Christian and looking for a Christian partner, whether he explicitly identifies as a Christian or not. So to me it’s no different than a Jew gettin’ with a Jew for reasons of shared religious values/worldviews, whatever that religion may be or however fucked up it is.

  222. Kierra: being personally pro-life and personally dedicated to raising your own children in marriage. Why is it misogynistic to want to marry someone else who shares and is strong enough in those beliefs to actually practice what they profess?

    Where’s the misogyny? What does it mean to be “pro-life for yourself”? Or to raise up the ideal of “raising your own children in a marriage”? Or “I want to marry a virgin.” Really, dig down into these statements and interrogate what they are actually saying about the speaker and about the populations the speaker is separating hirself from. These kinds of statements reveal as much about your values as much as they specify your intended preference.

    I’m sorry that it bothers you that it implicates people who believe this stuff, but these are conservative, exclusive social statements that divide people pretty cleanly into moral haves and moral have-nots. And because these statements say nothing about the quality of the desired relationships therein, it’s pretty clear that these are not well thought out statements about your personal preferences. What is it about marriage that confers special status on that relationship? Marriage is highly symbolic and a public statement of a family unit, sure, but the reality is that marriage doesn’t protect you, promise you stability, or ensure that you will have a satisfying family life. Marriage doesn’t keep your spouse from cheating on you, physically hurting you or your children, or preclude any number of other common family disasters like addiction or bankruptcy or early death. So when you talk about being “pro-life for yourself” and wanting to “save sex for marriage” because you want to “raise your children in a marriage”, you’re revealing that you’re okay with having rape and molestation victims fall on the other side of that moral line, and okay with having single parents and their bastard babies fall on the other side of that moral line, and okay with having women and girls who have had abortions fall on the other side of that moral line. “Fine for thee but not for me” is a poor interpretation of any social justice movement.

    It also strikes me as being really naive. Why is marriage the thing that makes otherwise “illegitimate” sex and “bastard” babies socially approved if not all the misogynist historically and culturally enforced norms that we’ve been discussing for the last 200 comments?

    I can’t access the article, but from this discussion it sounds to me like this dude is acting/thinking like a Christian and looking for a Christian partner, whether he explicitly identifies as a Christian or not.

    I can’t tell, but in the original article it’s left pretty ambiguous. The LW says he is from a conservative culture and that he’s said it’s hard to be a virgin “in America”, which leads me to believe that he’s from another area of the world. Seeing that virginity is an ideal tied to the Abrahamic religions, he’s probably one of the big three, but not necessarily Christian.

  223. Florence: It also strikes me as being really naive. Why is marriage the thing that makes otherwise “illegitimate” sex and “bastard” babies socially approved if not all the misogynist historically and culturally enforced norms that we’ve been discussing for the last 200 comments?

    This. Times infinity.

  224. Kierra: Not being keen on hypocrisy.If someone says that they don’t want to have sex outside of marriage and don’t want their partner to have sex outside of marriage, but they haven’t actually abstained from sex outside of marriage, then that tells you something about their character (not that they are “dirty”, at most that they are irresponsible or that when push comes to shove they don’t really stick to their convictions).But all of that can equally apply to a woman or a man that professes those beliefs but doesn’t live up to them, so still not misogynistic.

    So… I guess someone can’t have sex, then at some point decide they’d rather, from that point, abstain from sex until marriage without being a ‘hypocrite’ or lacking conviction? That is pretty fucking harsh.

  225. Sorry for late comment!

    I don’t get what the fuss about the first time is all about. Virginal sex sucks anyway. Everyone I know closely enough to talk about these things share my experience that the first time is one of the worst due to lack of experience, nerves and other reasons. If there is a compelling argument about monogamy, it must be that someone you have had a lot of time having sex with knows all your little secrets and soft spots, which would make the sex great.

    I find funny the argument that people who have had sex already are like used gum. I’d love that argument applied to job interviews. So you’ve had 10 years of real life experience in the field? Sorry, we are only interested in inexperienced know-nothings. lolwut? Having experience in whatever the thing makes you better at that, not worse.

    For the gum example to work we would have to see women as things to be used. I certainly prefer a brand new pair of shoes than some used shoes picked off the trash. I guess that’s just one of the differences between things and people.

  226. Kierra: Not being keen on hypocrisy.If someone says that they don’t want to have sex outside of marriage and don’t want their partner to have sex outside of marriage, but they haven’t actually abstained from sex outside of marriage, then that tells you something about their character (not that they are “dirty”, at most that they are irresponsible or that when push comes to shove they don’t really stick to their convictions).But all of that can equally apply to a woman or a man that professes those beliefs but doesn’t live up to them, so still not misogynistic.

    I said 5 years previously. If someone says they don’t want their partner to take the Lord’s name in vain, would you call them a hypocrite if they said ‘god damn it’ five years ago?

  227. I am surprised nobody has suggested we examine such cosmetic surgery from the point of equity and utility.

    For instance is it right to invest money in such technologies when there are huge inequities in access to basic health needs?

    Does the money we spend on these technologies give as much benefit to society as would addressing such things as universal access to contraception?

  229. zuzu,

    I don’t know if this guy was “shaming” anyone purposefully – most likely, he was merely replicated the sort of behaviour he grew up with. How many people stop and think about the possible implications of their dearly held beliefs and the dearly held beliefs of their relatives and neighbours?

    I am oddly enough friends with a guy, a Christian, who’s “pure” as he puts its, and demands that his future wife be “pure” as well. He has all sorts of supernatural beliefs surrounding “virginity” – when I tell him he’s being, at best, ridiculous, he gets all like, “You’re just mad jellus, because you and your husband didn’t give the gift of virginity to one another.” I’m *super* jealous, let me tell you! But I can’t imagine that a woman lying to him as leading anywhere good either.

    This chick had a choice early on. I’m frankly bewildered as to why she chose to stay with this dude in the first place. Why be in this situation where you aren’t being valued for who you are?

  230. Natalia: I don’t know if this guy was “shaming” anyone purposefully – most likely, he was merely replicated the sort of behaviour he grew up with.

    And he grew up in a culture where women are shamed for having sex before marriage, by declaring them unmarriageable! How about that.

    I couldn’t tell you why she stayed, unless she didn’t believe he really meant it. People convince themselves of all kinds of stupid shit in order not to be lonely. But now she knows he means it, and while, yes, she should have gotten the fuck out ages ago, she still has a chance to leave.

  231. Esti,

    I know a deeply conservative Christian. He doesn’t want to have sex with his future wife (he is not engaged/in an LTR right now) before marriage. Which makes it about his relationship with his future wife. Which makes it about their choice to be pure for eachother.

    The difference between him and this virgin guy (even though I still do not agree with him) is that his version allows for human frailty and makes it all about mutual responsibility between him and his future wife. One of the many problems, even from a devout Christian perspective, which requiring physical virginity before marriage is that it does not allow for people’s sins (assuming premarital sex is a sin) to be forgiven, which is really, well, unChristian.

    Now, my problem with this whole Christian/virginity model, even my devout friend’s model, is that it treats premarital sex as a sin. As a bad thing you do wrong. Where in the real world, what I see as sin is what hurts people. What hurts me, or a partner, or anonforthis. Which is sexual shame. Which is unconsented to, undesired sex. Both of which can happen in or outside of marriage.

    The problem with virginity is that it completely misunderstands humans and human sexuality. Sex will not be not harmful, not risky, not capable of harming another person because it takes place inside of or outside of a marriage. Sex loses its harm and risk when it is undertaken freely and joyously, and when the upsides outweigh the risks for both partners. I have no problem with someone who doesn’t happen to have sex before marriage, because he or she never feels that sex before marriage would be “safe” emotionally. But I have a huge problem with people who generalize from that. And I have a huge problem with religions that ignore *all other sexual ethics* with a “wait for it” ethos.

    For one, it is nearly impossible to uphold. 95% of Americans have sex before marriage. 80% of evangelicals have sex between the ages of 18-29, compared to 88% of the non-evangelical population.

    Almost everyone comes to marriage not a virgin. And so this man is putting a dangerous burden on his partner and himself. How do we even know if he is a virgin? How do we know her loss of virginity was truly free of coercion? How is she expected to value herself and her individuality if she is a “good” woman if sex is not her fault, but a “bad” woman if it is?

    Also, re: high heels–yeah, internalized sexism.

  232. Well, this thread took a really nice turn. I think its pretty much over though. I tried reasonably hard to come up with a reason that the concept of virginity is not inherently misogynistic, and it looks like some people who actually believe that did a little bit better, but still failed what i consider the benchmark of success, and apparently what 99% of the posters consider the benchmark of success. At least someone convinced pt smith to stop commenting, but i’m sure he will return. major props to esti for doing best job of trying to make virginity unproblematic.

  233. major props to esti for doing best job of trying to make virginity unproblematic.

    Virginity’s not problematic; fetishizing it is.

  234. Natalia: “You’re just mad jellus, because you and your husband didn’t give the gift of virginity to one another.”

    Ooooh. He’s going to be disappointed when they finally have awkward, awkward sex.

  235. But now she knows he means it, and while, yes, she should have gotten the fuck out ages ago, she still has a chance to leave.

    Hopefully, she’ll take it. Life is complicated enough as it is without living a lie.

    Ooooh. He’s going to be disappointed when they finally have awkward, awkward sex.

    I mean – I hope it works out for him and whoever his Pure and Holy Bride will be, you know? I wouldn’t wish bad sex on anyone… except being unrealistic about the entire thing can ultimately lead to a lifetime of disappointment. And thats what I keep telling him, but whatever, to paraphrase The 40 Year Old Virgin – that’s his journey.

  237. Florence:
    Read this.Read this again:

    You know, feminism is a line of study that is filtered through the lens of gender, race, religion, sexual preference, etc., and is inextricably tied to all history and culture as we know it. It is not a) what you personally want it to be, b) tailored to your personal preferences, c) not not-misogynist/racist because you declare it so, d) not limited to your personal limits of study or imagination. Terms like Marriage, Virginity, and Sex have commonly understood contextual meaning among feminists — aka “loaded terms” — and that meaning only partially includes the definitions parroted to you in youth group meetings every Sunday afternoon. These terms also include great big question marks about the validity of cultural values like “no sex before marriage” and WHY these values are prevalent in our culture.The answer as far as feminism is concerned (and I challenge you to find a feminist that thinks virginity is a valid benchmark for measuring a person’s moral value) is Patriarchy, and if you’re seriously up in this thread arguing that you don’t see the patriarchy here and don’t understand what all the fuss is about and I don’t BELIEVE in sex before marriage and SHE LIED so at least he’s not a HYPOCRITE (which is totally worse than being a misogynist prick), I’m wondering what the hell you’re doing trolling a feminist blog with your personal anti-feminist baggage.

    When I read this, Florence, it made me want to hump your leg. Just sayin’.

    Seriously, can anyone point me in the direction of a single societal or religious system that has anything to say about premarital sex that isn’t misogynistic? A lot of people have said ‘most’, but I really think this could be one of the rare occasions when you mean ‘all’.

    And finally, P.T., since we’re discussing fallacies of logic, the one you’ve committed is the Persuasive Definition. (“We can broaden the definition of the term ‘virgin’ so that my argument makes sense.”) You see, you’re not the only asshat on the internet that ever took freshman level philosophy in college.

  238. PeggyLuWho: Seriously, can anyone point me in the direction of a single societal or religious system that has anything to say about premarital sex that isn’t misogynistic?

    The Khasi tribe in north east India and Bangladesh.

  239. Not according to Wikipedia. There it says that while the society is matrilineal and matrilocal, participation in political institutions has been traditionally reserved for men only. It also notes that young people “are permitted considerable freedom” when it comes to premarital sexual relations. So it doesn’t meet either criterion: it doesn’t seem to have too much to say about premarital sex, and it does have traditional sexism.

  241. EG:
    Not according to Wikipedia.There it says that while the society is matrilineal and matrilocal, participation in political institutions has been traditionally reserved for men only.It also notes that young people “are permitted considerable freedom” when it comes to premarital sexual relations.So it doesn’t meet either criterion: it doesn’t seem to have too much to say about premarital sex, and it does have traditional sexism.

    I am surprised that you are arguing from the position that Wikipedia is authoritative.

    You are suggesting that since the Wiki article has little to say on views about premarital sex that this proves that the tribe doesn’t represent a system where views on premarital sex are not misogynistic.

    Have you read anything else about these tribes?

  242. llama: I am surprised that you are arguing from the position that Wikipedia is authoritative.

    As opposed to some guy on the internet named llama?

  243. Seriously. I know next to nothing about the people you mention, which is why I looked them up. By all means, refer me to a more reliable source.

  245. It’s also kind of moot. Llama, this is like in the menstruation thread when you were all “What about some guy who just respects the power and intimacy of menstruation?” There may be, say, 20 guys in the country who refuse sex during menstruation for those reasons. Similarly, perhaps you can find one culture somewhere in the world that both values virginity and is not misogynist.

    But, just as the other thread was about the vast majority of period-sex-rejecting guys who, like Well, find menstrual fluids repulsive while finding their own semen full of yummy goodness, this thread is about a dating scenario taking place in this culture, which is absolutely suffused with messages about how having sex lowers a woman’s worth. So…who cares if you can find one exception somewhere else in the world?

    And again, please do direct me to a source more reliable than Wikipedia. While I do not consult them for controversial issues, I have not found them to be particularly unreliable for general statements about non-controversial issues.

  246. EG: It’s also kind of moot. Llama, this is like in the menstruation thread when you were all “What about some guy who just respects the power and intimacy of menstruation?” There may be, say, 20 guys in the country who refuse sex during menstruation for those reasons. Similarly, perhaps you can find one culture somewhere in the world that both values virginity and is not misogynist.

    PeggyLuWho asked for an example. I provided one that I thought might meet the criteria.

    EG: But, just as the other thread was about the vast majority of period-sex-rejecting guys who, like Well, find menstrual fluids repulsive while finding their own semen full of yummy goodness, this thread is about a dating scenario taking place in this culture, which is absolutely suffused with messages about how having sex lowers a woman’s worth. So…who cares if you can find one exception somewhere else in the world?

    Again please refer to PeggyLuWho’s question. I believe the way it was phrased indicated that she did not expect an example to be found in the context of our culture (i.e, any example would be obscure), I have only demonstrated her point.

    EG: And again, please do direct me to a source more reliable than Wikipedia. While I do not consult them for controversial issues, I have not found them to be particularly unreliable for general statements about non-controversial issues.

    Below is a list of some of the material I have read on the subject. I cannot vouch for there reliability any more than I can vouch for the reliability of Wikipedia.

    Status of women among tribes
    J Sen 1971

    A profile of tribal women with special reference to north east India
    BR Barman 1988

    The marriage customs of some of the tribes of northeast India
    S Pallissery 1998

    Obviously the conclusions I have drawn from these texts are my own and your mileage may vary, regardless they make a very interesting read.

  247. EG: like Well, find menstrual fluids repulsive while finding their own semen full of yummy goodness,

    Did Well actually say his semen is full of yummy goodness? or are you projecting? I am amused either way!

  248. EG: But, just as the other thread was about the vast majority of period-sex-rejecting guys who, like Well, find menstrual fluids repulsive while finding their own semen full of yummy goodness, this thread is about a dating scenario taking place in this culture, which is absolutely suffused with messages about how having sex lowers a woman’s worth. So…who cares if you can find one exception somewhere else in the world?

    The question I answered definitely did not limit the reply to the context of this culture.

    In the context of this culture I have already given my position in post #49.

  249. Actually, it IS a “courtiers” response, inasmuch as it is witty, cutting and highly entertaining. Sorry ’bout that irony fail, there.

    llama: @zuzu thanks for the courtiers response.

  251. EG:
    Seriously.I know next to nothing about the people you mention, which is why I looked them up.By all means, refer me to a more reliable source.

    Done.

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