Yeah But Who's Gate? Part 27,630
Photo by Flickr user John Kannenberg. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon says
Oh man, Abstinence Clearinghouse has started a blog, presumably so people can write about all the sex they’re not having. It’s brilliant, like almost like it’s a parody, except it’s not. I loved this post.
Virginity is an asset that holds its value well.
...
And if you hang onto your virginity, unlike other assets, it pretty much is guaranteed to lose its value over time. Though it’s a result of unfair prejudice, the reality is that the older the virgin, the more people tend to classify the virginity as a social awkwardness to outright weirdness. Most virgins over a certain age feel their virginity is an albatross. Even if you’re holding onto it for religious reasons, there’s a point where you choice drifts from “cute example of religious devotion” to “eccentricity bordering on antisocial levels of self-righteousness, perhaps masking deep insecurities”.
Yeah, I sort of have to agree with Marcotte's question and... I'm sort of wondering why the Abstinence Clearinghouse doesn't have a whole section celebrating 30-year-old, 50-year-old, and life-long virgins. Because sort of by (their) definition the longer you hold out the better.
John Ruskin kept his virginity from February 8, 1819 all the way to January 20, 1900 yet a search of Abstinence Clearinghouse yields nothing! Thoreau isn't found either, but maybe that's because he only made it 44 years (before dying, not before having sex.)
Image source: Wikipedia.What stuns me, though, is that they completely ignore John Harvey Kellogg (he of corn flake fame) kept his virginity for *91 years,* including more than *forty years* of marriage! Kellogg was a tireless advocate for abstinence. According to his Wikipedia entry
He warned that many types of sexual activity, including many “excesses” that couples could be guilty of within marriage, were against nature, and therefore, extremely unhealthy. He drew on the warnings of William Acton and expressed support for the work of Anthony Comstock. He appears to have gone beyond his own advice, since though he and his wife were married for over forty years, they never had sexual intercourse and had separate bedrooms all their lives.
I mean, here's a guy who's said to have worked on Plain Facts about Sexual Life, a major, best-selling pro-abstienence tract *on his honeymoon!* If *anyone's* virginity held it's value well then surely it was he!!! And yet they totally turn their backs on him!
Oh wait, all the people I've mentioned were abstinent *men!* Nobody values chastity in men because nobody's willing to *pay* for male virginity.
Seriously, I grew up in the south where there were (and are!) still "dry" counties where the sale of all beverages containing alcohol. Consequently those counties also have "moonshiners," who make money (sometimes *huge* money) smuggling and selling alcohol into those dry counties. And ya wanna know a secret? If those counties dropped their own private prohibitions then moonshiners would be off the gravy train and so... they make darn sure the most abolitionist ministers in those counties get the biggest donations, with little notes saying "keep up the good work, Reverend."
And that's what folks like the Abstinence Clearinghouse are really up to as well -- trying to keep a tradition from previous centuries alive in order to reward one set of people (men) with access to an artificial scarcity (one-time-deal sex with women.) And for people who are into that it's a *seriously* good deal -- men who buy in get something of (artificial) value, women who buy into it get "bonus" economic points, *everybody* who buys into it gets to claim virtue points. And, of course, women who don't conform and therefore undercut the "market" get to be sluts and (tellingly) *cheap* whores!
What bitter, cynical expectations of human beings -- women and men -- they have. What bitter, cynical expectations of women and men they *create!*
%#!@$%!
So when does virginity go from cute to social awkwardness? I hadn't really thought of it that way myself.
I'm 18, and I've lost a few boyfriends from my stance on premarital sex. I figure it's for the best, and they weren't worth it anyway.
I don't even do it for religious reasons, more for sentimental reasons. The old fashioned romantic female idea of wanting it to be with someone special. But I'm young yet. There's still hope.
[Nothing wrong with ideals... although to be honest you're meeting *my* ideals of holding out till you're sure without appearing to hang your whole self-worth on it either. As you say you're young, you're optimistically realistic, you know what you want, and you're flexible. That's cool. Good luck with all that, Nickey. --fl]