The virginity dialogues at the Guardian
Although by all standards I should be in bed, I’m procrastrinating my trolling the blogosphere. I found a very interesting interview with Aida Seif el-Dawla and Rabab el-Mahdi in the Guardian Unlimited. Both are corageous activists and feminists in Egypt, and in the article provide just the kind of explanation of context and feminist analysis I’ve ben looking for from any non-Western countries. Some of this article is suggestive of the obsession with virginity in the States, as well.
This article is the best explanation I’ve seen for obsession with female virginity anywhere. Perhaps globally, I’m the weird one. I wish I remembered where I read this, but I recently saw a study that concluded that female virginity was prized everywhere except the Nordic countries and the Netherlands, where no one really cared one way or the other. Until I moved back to the US as an adult, I just considered it rather matter-of-fact that no one marries as a virgin. In fact, it seemed (and still seems) rather unwise, a bit like getting married when you’re 15. Sure, do what you want, but… it’s not good for you. You will probably regret it one day, because you haven’t experienced enough of life to make such a big choice yet. I still have a lot of trouble understanding why you would even want to marry a virgin. It’s a little creepy to purposefully want to marry someone who’s incredibly naive, when marriage is supposed to be a partnership. It gives the whole thing overtones of domination and deception. Not exactly my idea of a good marriage.
It is completely about domination: a man can be sexually active before marriage because his sexuality belongs to him, whereas a woman cannot because her sexuality belongs to her (future) husband. Nations that put this dogma into law are typically the same ones that have unjustly harsh punishments for adultery for exactly the same reason. If a man discovers that his wife has slept with another man, he is angry not only because his marriage is failing and his wife betrayed his trust, but most of all because the other man took something of his.
I don’t know how to react to this sort of thing except to say that it’s pretty disgusting. I also felt a twinge of pride that one of my home countries is in your list of nations that have managed to overcome this dogma.
Good post.
“I still have a lot of trouble understanding why you would even want to marry a virgin. It’s a little creepy to purposefully want to marry someone who’s incredibly naive, when marriage is supposed to be a partnership.”
)
Cannot agree more.
Hans also has a good point (and my country is also mentioned
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