Must... Rant!

[kriadydragon]

So I made the mistake of watching this "special" (an VH1 which really should have been my biggest warning) on virginity. I don't know why I thought they would be subjective about it, I don't know why I thought they would actual show some respect toward virginity and those who choose to wait until they're married before they have sex. I don't know why I watched this show when most of the media has made up its mind that virginity = losers.

I am so sick and tired of virginity being put down, and that if you're a virgin then *sarcasm*obviously there's something wrong with you*sarcasm* or that waiting until you're married is impossible because *sarcasm*everyone fails to biology eventually*sarcasm*. Yeah, tell that to all the people I know who waited until they were married and, oh, yeah, they're married, and didn't hurry to get married just so they could lose their virginity.

Humans have this nifty thing called agency. Agency is the freedom to chose, to decide whether to give in to biological urges or to hold off. If a person doesn't want to have sex, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them, it doesn't mean they're asexual or anything else. It simply means they made a choice and are sticking with it. What the crap is wrong with that? Why has virginity become such an "ew, yucky!" thing? And how can no one see what is horribly wrong with this picture! (because, last I checked, it was usually sexually promiscuous people who had to worry about sexually transmitted diseases, not virgins. And, last I heard, hasn't teen pregnancy been on the rise?)

Nothing gets my hackles up like anti-virginity sentiments. All the more so because it's so subtle, not out-and-out anti but certainly leaning heavily in that direction - as in like trying to hide an elephant behind a baby tree :P

Comments

[parmalokwen.livejournal.com]

Word.

I think maybe it's the product of pressure from guys who want to get laid, combined with feminist backlash against the centuries of shaming of women who decide that the sexual double standard is unfair, a person's worth is not related to what's between the legs or whether it has seen action, and they want to have fun, now, without the fuss and bother of ceremony or contract or later obligation. There might also be some reaction to abstinence-only education that's been so popular (and popularly ridiculed) in recent years in the mix, too.

Now, if you're talking about male virgins, it's because having sex with a woman is proof of masculinity. And a man isn't a man unless he proves it regularly. Plus, this "agency" thing? Men don't need no stinkin' "agency." They got needs. So says popular culture, anyway. Centuries of it.

[parmalokwen.livejournal.com]

Drat. My mock-html sarcasm tags got stripped out of the last paragraph.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I blame it on society being both sex obsessed and less willing to take responsibility for their own actions. I think people like the idea of saying "biology made me do it" because if something happens (disease, pregnancy, adultery) they have something or someone else to blame it on other than themselves. Thus making the choice to wait a threat, because it drives home the fact that we and only we are the ones responsible for our own actions. So when something bad happens, it's our own fault because we made a choice and it was the wrong one.

I can't stand the whole "it's okay for men to sleep with anyone/a boy must sleep with a woman to become a man" mindset. Because, yeah, *sarcasm*it's so manly to knock a girl up then ditch her later*sarcasm* :P The guys I know - guys who I would call real men - are all either virgins or who waited until they were married.