Virginity and Vaginas

What is virginity?

It is a physical state, right? A clear line as yet uncrossed. A "before" condition that can be "lost" accidentally, "given" intentionally, or "taken" from an unwilling victim. A status applicable equally to deserving men or women, boys or girls.

Glad you asked! Science can give us no true medical definition of virginity. It's actually quite an imprecise concept, carrying many different meanings in different times and different places. (One medieval philosopher distinguished between four different kinds of virgins.) Virginity is difficult to specify and impossible to prove, not that that keeps people from attempting it!  And it is revealing that no one ever suggests that males be tested for, or offer proofs of, their virgin status. Because virginity has historically been almost exclusively a female characteristic.

Over the centuries, there was a lot of talk about hymens, (especially after they were identified by anatomist Hilkiah Crooke in the 17th century) but this tissue at the base of the vagina is not consistent enough to use as proof of anything. The tissue currently known as the hymen imperceptibly changes shape on its own as a girl develops, it doesn't always bleed when stretched, it often expands the vaginal opening on its own before a girl's first penetrative intercourse, and contrary to popular belief it neither "pops" nor "breaks". Hymens vary in shape (physicians identify five primary shapes), thickness, durability, flexibility, and resilience. To promote a more accurate view of the function of the hymen, the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education has renamed this body part the "vaginal corona".

Men evidently liked connecting the hymen to lack of sexual experience because it played into the women-as-chattel concept, and it excused rough first-time sex. According to Deuteronomy, blood-stained wedding night linens could save a woman's life in ancient Israel. If her parents could not produce these tokens of her sexual "purity" (essential for the pedigree of her offspring), she could legally be stoned to death by the men of her city. Dr. Iman Bibars, working from Cairo, Egypt to empower all voiceless women, knows how deeply these cultural patterns affect today's values, "The honor of the family and of the men are in between the legs of the woman."

Women have suffered so much physical and psychological pain on account of this part of their bodies invisible to themselves that some resort to expensive and invasive hymenorrhaphy surgeries to rebuild "breakable" hymens that will ensure "virginal" blood on the sheets. They use birth control pills to coordinate menstruation with honeymoon sexual activity, or invest in discreet fake virginity kits. Others declare themselves "born-again virgins", as good as new.

Jessica Valenti writes in her excellent book, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women:

"I've become convinced that virginity is a sham being perpetrated against women…"

"[W]hen I argue for an end to the idea of virginity, it's because I believe sexual intimacy should be honored and respected, but that it shouldn't be revered at the expense of women’s well-being, or seen as such an integral part of female identity that we end up defining ourselves by our sexuality."

As a young woman, much of my value was framed by my sexual in-experience. Sheltering—often to the point of isolation—was needed to maintain my "purity" (hymen? vaginal corona?) intact. This high value on sexual naivete motivated the bans on kissing, on dating, on wearing swimsuits or slacks, on walking unaccompanied down our straight two-lane country road to the stop sign visible from our mailbox.

When I was a young woman of twenty, my dad bought a round-trip ticket to unexpectedly accompany me on my connecting flight from O'Hare Airport so that I would not go rebelliously astray on a trip home from Oklahoma City. At the time I was more than mystified. I was being stalked by my own father to prevent me from going where, with whom? I had the uneasy feeling that the whole situation was somehow related to my sexuality, which I already sought to repress as much as possible.

The perceived state of my vagina supposedly increased my value to God, to my family, and to potential mates. I have been to weddings where the bride's father bragged publicly that (as far as he knew) she was a virgin while the guests sat uncomfortably, trying to focus their thoughts on the floral arrangements, the church pews, or anything but the girl's genitalia. The groom's parents never commented on the experience of their son's penis.

Again, Jessica Valenti:

"Present-day American society—whether through pop culture, religion, or institutions—conflates sexuality and morality constantly. Idolizing virginity as a stand-in for women’s morality means that nothing else matters—not what we accomplish, not what we think, not what we care about and work for. Just if/how/whom we have sex with. That’s all."

It is time to abolish the virginity concept. As Emily Maynard put it in her article "The Day I Turned in my V-Card", I'm done enforcing oppression in the name of purity.

Characterizing a woman (making a judgment of her moral character) as a virgin or an ex-virgin tells us nothing and too much at the same time. This sexual "status" doesn't tell us if a girl feels safe and respected or is being coerced and abused. It doesn't tell us if she understands how her body works or what makes her feel good. It doesn't tell us if she can identify healthy relationships, if she knows how to say no. It does not tell us if she is strong or weak. It tells only that someone is concerned with what has been in her vagina and when.

Once upon a time, not many decades ago, a pregnant woman could not teach school once she began to "show". Here in America's Heartland, even as a married woman there was shame in being exposed as a sexual being. Let's walk away from shaming women for their sexuality.

Let's discuss responsibility. Let's shine a light on abuse.

Let's teach young men about respect and consent. Let's teach young women about their right to choose boundaries that are healthy for them.

And let's stop determining the quality of a woman's heart and mind by the experience of her vagina. 




For more reading:

• Virgin: The Untouched History—non-fiction by Hanne Blank
• The Abstinence Teacher—a novel about Christianity and American sexuality, by Tom Perrotta
• Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex—a feminist history of the sexual revolution by Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs
• Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls—a therapist describes the pressure girls are under to be sexy but not sexual, by Mary Pipher

Obsessive Confusion

I am reading through a journal I kept when I was fourteen. Some entries make me smile; others just make me shake my head. I have posted here about how isolated I was as a homeschooled adolescent, but some memories shock me even now. I'm glad my daughter will never be able to relate to my teenage self:

"You know, I’m kinda strange. It’s been over a year since I've talked directly and individually with a teenage guy, excepting the time I found out Greg S----’s name."

The result, of course, was that I obsessed for weeks anytime a boy at church smiled a greeting in the hall or said "good night" before heading to the parking lot.

I would go home and study passages about "holiness" and make lists of things I thought God wanted me to do to remain "pure", such as:

• keep my knees covered
• wear only necklaces with short chains
• wear sleeves to my elbows
• "use lace sparingly"

Then I would weep the next week because I saw a guy from the youth group wearing an earring. 

I was so lonely.

So confused.

And so obsessed with not acknowledging my sexuality, even to myself.

Un-Natural: Family Planning

Libby Anne's post about Natural Family Planning this morning triggered some powerful flashbacks for me. Our experience with abstinence as birth control had life-changing effects, raising questions I had never before allowed myself to ask and permanently altering my worldview. A decade later, the memories knot my stomach and leave my body shaky.

We were young married newlyweds, parents of a tiny newborn. We had spent years immersed in Quiverfull theology and had been virgins all the way up to the honeymoon. Our daughter arrived before our first anniversary; we had zero knowledge of birth control. And after all those years of abstinence, we were far from bored with sex!

But... my fertility cycle resumed eight weeks postpartum. We wanted more children, but we certainly didn't want them a year apart. Still newlyweds, and now first-time home owners as well, we were overwhelmed by the sudden changes and challenges of parenthood  including a home birth, lactation difficulties, sleep deprivation, and friends with various opinions on vaccination! Financially, we were comfortable enough, but we were struggling to find a supportive social network and we had only barely begun to recognize the harmful psychological effects of the cult we had only recently separated from.

Trying to be responsible parents while not compromising our moral convictions, we considered our options. At our doctor's recommendation, we started using the Creighton model of Natural Family Planning, paying $25 a session to meet with a certified trainer and discuss our charts, with our baby in her infant carrier on the floor of the tiny office a few doors down the hall from our doctor's practice. We liked our coach. We visited her church once, borrowed books from her, read quotes from the Pope on the office walls, and even toyed briefly with becoming Catholic.

Practicing NFP involved a steep learning curve, but we are both smart and we had years of experience with following rules to the letter. We wanted each other desperately, but since I was breastfeeding, it seemed there were only about five days a month when the method gave us a "green light" to have intercourse. It was so complicated, we even got a sheet of yellow stickers to use besides the basic set of colors. And it soon became clear that sex would always be forbidden on days when my libido was high. NFP may have been "100% natural", but we were certainly fighting hard against God-designed nature!

When I found myself pregnant again before M was even seven months old, I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe it. We were at a loss to know how this could have happened when the method was promoted by doctors and on city-wide billboards as 99% effective. After all those weeks of stress, tears, and painfully conscientious hugging, how could we be the 1%? We showed up for our next appointment, and told our [to us] shocking news. The method had failed us.

Our coach looked at me compassionately. "Merciful Mother-!" she murmured under her breath. Then she reviewed our chart, to figure out what had gone wrong, I thought. "Here," she tapped on a square. "This should have been a different colored sticker. You had intercourse on a day when you were actually fertile, and you achieved desired pregnancy. The method worked the way it was supposed to." Achieved desired pregnancy! Wha-?

So that's how they get their statistics. NFP works to avoid pregnancy (on infertile days), and to achieve pregnancy (when a couple makes love while fertile). The mystery is figuring out which ones are which ahead of time. When our coach submitted our records, we were considered a "success". We used informed abstinence to successfully achieve a pregnancy. I left her office feeling embarrassed, ignorant, and ashamed. I had to read the fertility signs, after all. Only I could tell if the cervical mucus felt "slippery", "lubricative", or just "smooth". Rather than an excited and responsible couple expecting their second child, we felt like scolded teenagers who'd just been grounded for accidentally breaking a rule. We just loved each other too much.

That was a hard year for me. The next two years are really kind of a blur. I had to wean the baby girl I adored. When she injured her elbow and was taken away crying for x-rays, I had to wait in the lobby with tears in my own eyes. I didn't have the energy to be the mom I wanted to be. I was anemic, slept a lot, and gained a lot of weight. I prayed to miscarry at first, then felt guilty when I had early contractions at 30 weeks. During that pregnancy I rethought my theology, read up on all kinds of birth control methods, and learned a lot about human biology. I wasn't ready to give birth again, but I did it. I only remember the following months because of the photos we took.

After the delivery, our NFP coach called us to set up appointments again. We hadn't come far enough to be honest yet. We said we weren't sure; we were considering other methods. "Condoms aren't effective," she warned, sounding anxious. We said we'd call her. We never did.

Fertility awareness is a wonderful and important part of being a woman, but it is no substitute for contraception when a sexually active couple is unprepared for pregnancy. And it is morally wrong for religious or health professionals to suggest that it is. 

Strange Stories of the Bible: Holy Priests & Perfectionism

Rules for Priests

[Priests] must not marry women defiled by prostitution or divorced from their husbands, because priests are holy to their God. Regard them as holy, because they offer up the food of your God. Consider them holy, because I the Lord am holy—I who make you holy.

If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire.

The high priest, the one among his brothers who has had the anointing oil poured on his head and who has been ordained to wear the priestly garments, must not let his hair become unkempt or tear his clothes. He must not enter a place where there is a dead body. He must not make himself unclean, even for his father or mother, nor leave the sanctuary of his God or desecrate it, because he has been dedicated by the anointing oil of his God. I am the Lord.

The woman he marries must be a virgin. He must not marry a widow, a divorced woman, or a woman defiled by prostitution, but only a virgin from his own people, so that he will not defile his offspring among his people. I am the Lord, who makes him holy.

The Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the Lord, who makes them holy.’”

Leviticus 21:7-23

Growing up, we were taught that many of the rules for priests applied to us, too. We were now God's chosen people, after all, anointed for his service, a "royal priesthood", a holy tribe. "Be ye perfect," Jesus said, "as your father in heaven is perfect." And, oh, we tried!

No wonder we still struggle with perfectionism!

Strange Stories of the Bible: Lot's Daughters

Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

*****

Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”

That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites* of today.

Genesis 19:4-8, 30-38 (New International Version)

The same Lot character shows up as a hero in the New Testament. One wonders what led the author to regard Lot as "righteous":

...[God] rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)...

2 Peter 2:7-8

7th-century Byzantine Christians built St. Lot's church and monastery at Lot's Cave, a site in modern Jordan.

"When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of 'Thus sayeth the Lord.'"
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

*More on the Ammonites later.

Elisabeth Elliot: My Writing Muse

Elisabeth Elliot was my invisible mentor for many, many years. I found Shadow of the Almighty, The Journals of Jim Elliot, and Passion and Purity in a Baptist church library as a teenager and hung onto them like a life raft through rocky adolescence. Elliot's biography of Amy Carmichael, A Chance to Die, introduced me to Carmichael's own books and at the same time enthralled me with Elliot's style. I trusted Elisabeth to always write and speak honestly, even if the way she saw things would upset people. I collected her books for years, got her monthly newsletters, listened to her on the radio when I could.

Elisabeth offered me a pattern for courtship in Quest for Love, which I in turn recommended to many friends. A Path Through Suffering was reminiscent of Amy Carmichael's own writings. Mom read Let Me Be a Woman with my sister and me, though she put a sticker on the cover photo because she found Elisabeth's sweater to be indecently tight. (A later edition cropped the offending garment altogether.)

The Liberty of Obedience (published in 1968) helped me see light out of the tunnel of legalism. This little volume, no longer available on her website, details a few of her questions about applying the New Testament to the Auca culture.

"A sincere attempt to discover ways in which I might guide the Aucas in making moral choices led me to the realization that I had sometimes called things sinful which the Bible did not call sinful; and if I had imposed these on the Indians, I would have been guilty of the Pharisees' sin of laying burdens too heavy to be borne. It may take a new kind of courage for us to believe that God must interpret His Word to His people."

"Does the Scripture teach that sin is sin, in the sense that what is sin for one man is always sin for all? It does not. In fact, it shows that what may be sin in one man may glorify God in another."

Gold By Moonlight was my favorite of Amy Carmichael's books. I kept it close to my bed and read it over and over again. In many ways, her approach to faith and her relationship with her God resembled Hannah Hurnard's devotional stories in Hind's Feet on High Places and Mountains of Spices. Both authors were influenced strongly by the Keswick movement, which in many ways was part of my "spiritual lineage", as well. However, these books also reinforced a mindset that tolerated abusive relationships. In the words of St. Theresa of Avila: "If this is the way you treat your friends, God, no wonder you have so few."

Or, as Mother Theresa wrote:

"Sorrow, suffering, is but a kiss of Jesus - a sign that you have come so close to Jesus that He can kiss you. I think this is the most beautiful definition of suffering. So let us be happy when Jesus stoops down to kiss us." 

And,

"I love Him - not for what He gives - but for what He takes."

Again,

"I am ready to accept whatever He gives and to give whatever He takes with a big smile."

This was the submissive bride I aimed to be. Whenever I began to doubt that this God of mine was loving, I would return to Elliot, or Amy Carmichael, or Hind's Feet, and reaffirm my willingness to be "tied to the altar" and have my undying longing for love torn out of my heart by my perfect Priest. Before you have to ask, of course it was sexual--I was in my 20's and had never been kissed! I had felt my heart wrung out with suffering, though, and any attention showed that Someone was thinking about me, right?

Besides walking me through the late stages of puberty; guiding me through love, hope, disappointment; shaping my views of relationships and womanhood; infusing me with courage and determination: reassuring me that my ordinary life had meaning and teaching me to write, Elisabeth Elliot introduced me to J.B. Phillips New Testament paraphrase. The New Testament in Modern English remains my favorite English version. I remember an evangelist friend sneering at my "paraphrase" when I brought it to our IFB church, but to me it seemed more throbbingly alive than any other translation I'd found.

**************

Years and years later, after I'd traversed the courtship swamp, left legalism in the dust, figured out birth control, and found everything about marriage to be entirely different than I was taught, I was shopping at a homeschool book fair. I was feeling confused and, oh, so out of my element: surrounded by IBLP followers, Quiver-full couples, and Christian fundamentalists of every stripe. Dressed for maximum confidence in belted jeans and a sweater, wearing a knobby necklace that had once hung round the neck of a missionary linguist named Hazel, I wandered past booths promoting courtship guidebooks, "melodious" music CDs, sanitized "science" books, character curricula, and midwives. I picked up a used Usborne "encyclopedia" for kids and found the pages about human reproduction had been pasted together. A t-shirt on display had an orange diamond: "Warning: Unsocialized Homeschooled Kid". Another had an illustration with little humans cooking on an oversize BBQ. I've forgotten the caption. Maybe God's hellfire grill is open all night?

This was "my tribe", the familiar culture I'd grown up in, but it didn't seem so comfortable now. In fact, it felt slightly sinister. I sought refuge in a corner cozy with towering bookshelves. The tightly-packed volumes smelled of must and ink, their jackets were torn and brittle, their spines worn and labeled with old library codes. I found titles and authors familiar from my childhood. They made me smile. Books were always my escape, my lifeline, "the key that opens an enchanted door to worlds you never knew before". Ah, J.B. Phillips, a comforting name. A name that brought back enthusiastic feelings of fresh life overwhelming death, light driving back darkness, hope overcoming doubt.

Happy are those who are hungry and thirsty for goodness, for they will be fully satisfied!
Happy are the merciful, for they will have mercy shown to them!
Happy are the utterly sincere, for they will see God!
Happy are those who make peace, for they will be sons of God!
Happy are those who have suffered persecution for the cause of goodness, for the kingdom of Heaven is theirs!            (Matthew 5:6-10, Phillips)

The slim paperback was titled Your God Is Too Small. I paid for it, and went outside. Sitting in the sun beside my kids' education for the year, I pulled out Phillips' book and began reading while I waited for Chris to pick me up.  


Continued here...