Your comments on Virginity

From your comments on why society regards virginity as important:

I was surprised by the range and complexity of your responses to this question. Here are some of the main reasons you gave:

sign of purity—although this leaves open the question of why purity and why sex?

Religion: sex outside of marriage is forbidden in many religions; virginity is a sign of a virtuous or moral nature, of superiority to temptation—these presuppose that sex is sinful.

Male dominance: means of control over women, way of repressing female desire and power, gives husband sense of ownership of his wife, whom he possesses;

Family or generational control; for most of history, children have been treated as property, especially in marriage; marriage is for the benefit of the family not the fulfillment of the individual; virginity is a means of controlling the child’s desire so that she (and in this case he) will be obedient to the will of the parents; Connected to this is the idea that women are repositories of the family’s honor;

“The woman’s gift”—quite a few of you mentioned this; maintaining virginity is seen as a way to solidify marriage or a relationship: holding out for that “special someone”; signal of the woman’s choosiness;

Way of guaranteeing paternity—in general a woman’s source of value in a “marriage market”

Protection from single motherhood, illegitimacy; way of ensuring that the father shares in raising the child;

Protection from STDs—both this and the threat of pregnancy serve as a reminder that sexual Puritanism thrives in an atmosphere of fear;

Guilt and shame: from your responses these still seem to be an issue, especially for high school students; problem of commitment; being used for sex; problem of the woman’s value for herself;

double standards; almost everyone stressed that virginity is considered important for women; the problem is that if men are not virgins, who are their partners? women in many if not most cultures are divided between the respectable, i.e. off-limits, and the disreputable, i.e. sexually available; Madonna/whore

“oldest profession in the world”—take a moment and ask yourself: why is there such a thing as paying to have intercourse?

Problem of male desire: need to control it, through women; sense that men cannot control their desire;

Virginity as erotic: as one person says, when something is forbidden, people become fascinated with it; way for a woman to arouse or manipulate male desire; focus of male desire;

Virginity pledges; regrets over losing virginity; “waiting”; virginity exists in a social context, full of comparisons, peer pressure, social judgments;

One student gave what I will call the “Allworthy” explanation for our own time:
“Sex is an intimate, life-creating act. This is why society finds it so important that it be done with someone worthy of bearing a child with and at a time when one is in the position or station of life to do so”

Sex and intimacy require responsibility, maturity, respect; abuse of intimacy is psychologically damaging to people; intimacy is precious to us as human beings—it should not be trivialized; the marital relationship is still a key to our society and deserves its special status—it should be respected and protected; (I should say from my own point of view, that none of this necessitates what I might call the "ideology" of virginity"--indeed, sometimes I think that focus clouds the issue so much that mutual respect and intimacy are more difficult)

sexual relations do not exist in a vacuum; however we may feel about some of the injunctions about virginity, it is difficult to fully set them aside—many people, especially women, do experience shame, loss of reputation, etc. These cannot just be dismissed; justified or not, they do real damage;


Questions from reading:

Pamela obviously makes a very strong argument for the moral equality of all classes and the right of a lower class woman to her own integrity—the novel rejects the notion that she is the sexual property of upper class men or necessarily for sale. There is something strongly progressive in Richardson’s position on class;

But, Richardson’s fixation on virginity as the essence of virtue would prompt Fielding to ask the question: is virginity so very central to all religion and morality? What does Fielding really consider to be central?

Can sex just be a natural, healthy act? Does it always have to be treated so seriously? Are those who condemn sex truly moral or just kill-joys?
When is virginity motivated by true religious principle and when is it motivated by jealousy, shame, desire for a good reputations, or censoriousness? When is it just about whether one gets caught?

Fielding treats virginity as a class prerogative, which can seem totally elitist, but there is another side; one implication of Tom Jones, is that virginity is primarily an issue of property, and as such it is just not that important for people who do not have property or at those times when property is not a concern; he certainly didn’t like Richardson’s leveling of class distinction, but he also had a pretty big problem with people who preached moral niceties to those who barely had enough to eat; people who are not given much by society are not going to have a lot of respect for “society’s” rules;

Fielding understood that in practice, a lot of “morality” was openly a form of social control—ie oppression—for which the lowest classes had a pretty understandable contempt; someone truly impoverished like Black George doesn’t respect the game laws that say he can go to jail for snaring a rabbit; and his daughter Molly doesn’t have a lot of respect for rules that are designed to help people like Sophia marry well and do nothing whatsoever for her.