Exploring life as a perpetual Unschooler. A queer, feminist, atheist, animal lover, Whovian, Browncoat, Marvel geek, bibliophile and music addict.
THE SEX UNEDUCATED: On Purity Education and Its Slut-Shaming Bullshit
Reblogged from saynathespiffy
Hey guys. Let’s talk about purity. I was raised in a Baptist church in the Deep South. I had a purity ring, and most of my bookshelf was stuffed with titles about “wearing white” and being “pure” and do you know what? The choice to not have sex until marriage is 100% valid and no one should make fun of or belittle it.
However— and this is the fundamental problem with the current teaching of purity— girls don’t have a choice. It’s not a choice they make. I know that I didn’t. I thought I had chosen it by myself, but I hadn’t. I’d decided to remain pure because I was terrified of the rejection associated with “impurity.” See, we don’t make the choice for ourselves. We are led to “choose” purity via this intense, constant use of shame.
I went to one weekend retreat that said, “Do you want to be a disposable paper cup, or fine china?” as a metaphor for whether or not a girl has sex outside of marriage. I read an anecdote in a book about how every time a girl had sex, she was like a pearl being whittled away at until it had no value at all. Constantly, they would bring up the hymen, as this mystical wall between your purity and your whorishness, and imagine my surprise when I saw an actual medical diagram and realized, well, number one, your first time shouldn’t hurt that much because this “wall” doesn’t actually exist and number two, there’s no way to medically tell if a girl is a virgin or not.
Basically what they teach in purity education, whether in so many words or not, is that if you are not a virgin you have less value as an individual. THIS ISN’T TRUE.
I refuse to believe that this is true. What is this, sex trafficking, where you auction off virgins to the highest bidder? Why are we assigning value to people based on what’s been in their vaginas? We don’t have the same standard for boys, we don’t cram it down their throats that they are filthy, broken, used things that no one will want if they do the deed. I mean sure, it’s mentioned, but there isn’t this systematic reinforcement, like there is for girls.
So here’s the thing. Being a virgin until marriage is a hard decision. It’s a decision that anyone can choose, a decision that I will defend and if I hear anyone calling these girls prudes or saying that they are anti-feminist for making this decision for themselves, then I have beef with those people, because prude-shaming is just as vile and backwards as slut-shaming (this is another post entirely, stay tuned). Fin, the point is that Purity, as it is taught now, is not for girls, as it should be. I forever regret the way I was taught to speak in whispers of the “paper-cup” girls, because truly, it is their decision, and it isn’t any of your damned business.
The men that say a woman has less value if she doesn’t want children, if she curses, if she isn’t a virgin, the men who tell other men to RUN, they don’t give a shit about real women. They don’t know how to love a real woman. They want a wife, in the antiquated sense of the term. Another anecdote from a purity book: A woman and her husband come home, crossing the threshold to their bedroom on their first night of marriage. They are shocked; the room is full of garbage. It stinks, and there are strange men leering at the couple, saying “Hey baby,” to the poor, terrified wife, who then realizes that this is all her fault because these are all the men she has ever slept with, and the sexual baggage associated with them. The wife tearfully apologizes to her long-suffering husband, who mysteriously has zero emotional or sexual baggage to be mentioned.
Can we all please call bullshit on this scenario? If you’re waiting until marriage, do it for yourself. Do it for your faith. But if a man will love you less if you have had sex, if he looks at you like you’re dirty or he is disappointed in any way, he’s not worth waiting for anyways. If you feel ashamed of yourself, you shouldn’t. After all, Christianity teaches that there’s total forgiveness… so what’s the deal here? You are not a paper cup, you are not a whittled-away pearl, you are not an object to be considered “damaged.” Don’t decide to be a virgin out of fear. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that virginity is something that can be “lost,” and once you have sex you turn into a sex-crazed harlot. No, as always, as ever, the choices you make about your character, your education, what you read and what you watch and what you value and how you spend your time, all of these things will define who you are as an individual far more than whether or not you’ve had sex. Having a penis inside of you is not nearly as important or life-changing as people with penises would lead you to believe.
When I got to the part about the girls don’t get a choice, I wanted to cry.
I’ve needed someone to say that since I was ten.
That’s very sad. And it’s true. You really don’t get a choice. When one of your options involves everyone shunning you and treating you as inferior, that’s not a real choice.
I don’t care what anyone does or doesn’t do, but the whole “purity” crap just pisses me right the fuck off. If you call yourself pure you imply that everyone else is not, is somehow less-than. And that’s bullshit and you need to STFU.
Oh, and as for the mention of sex trafficking, purity does play a pretty big role. Nearly every time I’ve read an account of girls who were trafficked, there is some point where they mention that their captors raped them. Why? I didn’t understand it at first. Then I read about how most of these girls will stop fighting after they’ve been raped the first time because they’re “ruined” now and no man will want them. So they just give up.
Yeah, real nice. Good work there, purity myth.
Oh, and while I’m at it: saving your virginity so that you can get a “good” man is basically using it as a commodity and using it for wealth and social status. How is that not prostitution? How does that make you better?
