Woman describes why keeping her virginity until her wedding night was the worst decision of her life.

Courtesy of XO Jane:  

For more than a decade, I wore my virginity like a badge of honor. My church encouraged me to do so, saying my testimony would inspire other young girls to follow suit. If the topic ever came up in conversation, I was happy to let people know that I had taken a pledge of purity. 

It became my entire identity by the time I hit my teen years. When I met my then boyfriend-now husband, I told him right away that I was saving myself for marriage and he was fine with that because it was my body, my choice and he loved me.

The author managed to keep the promise she made to God to remain a virgin until her wedding night. However things did not go as she anticipated.  

I lost my virginity on my wedding night, with my husband, just as I had promised that day when I was 10 years old. I stood in the hotel bathroom beforehand, wearing my white lingerie, thinking, "I made it. I'm a good Christian." There was no chorus of angels, no shining light from Heaven. It was just me and my husband in a dark room, fumbling with a condom and a bottle of lube for the first time. 

Sex hurt. I knew it would. Everyone told me it would be uncomfortable the first time. What they didn't tell me is that I would be back in the bathroom afterward, crying quietly for reasons I didn't yet comprehend. They didn't tell me that I'd be on my honeymoon, crying again, because sex felt dirty and wrong and sinful even though I was married and it was supposed to be okay now. 

When we got home, I couldn't look anyone in the eye. Everyone knew my virginity was gone. My parents, my church, my friends, my co-workers. They all knew I was soiled and tarnished. I wasn't special anymore. My virginity had become such an essential part of my personality that I didn't know who I was without it. 

That may be the best description of the shame that many of these young women who take purity vows feel after having sex that I have ever read.

The author goes on to say that if a young woman wants to save her virginity for her husband that such a decision is fine. However if the decision is driven by shame, or fear of being judged by God, or of ending up in Hell, then it takes on a kind of specialness that makes losing it an incredibly traumatic experience.

And let me add a little personal information to let you know that this shaming of women by churches can have a life long effect.

Man years ago I was in a relationship with the daughter of a minister.

She had been married before, and had engaged in sex before marriage, but always had very complicated feelings after having sex. Feelings of shame and of insecurity.

When she met me she was drawn to my openness about sex, and the fact that I was substantially more experienced than her husband had been.

The first time we had sex she had the first orgasm she had ever had that was not the result of masturbation. This made her burst into tears, which I have to say was a little off putting.

However she said that she was happy and wanted to explore her sexuality.

To be honest she was never able to become very comfortable with sex, and really did not expand her horizons that much. She often became distant after sex, and even angry with me, which oddly enough seemed directly connected to the amount of pleasure she had experienced during the act.

She came to view me as a deviant and after awhile wanted nothing to do with sex, except occasionally when her own desires became overwhelming. At those times she would start off fine but become upset as she lost control of herself, and would become actually angry if she had too many orgasms.

Of course eventually this relationship was unsustainable, and we went our separate ways. 

I have come to believe that this difficulty was the result of shame and that she simply could not deal with the fact that her body responded to sex in a way that she was told only sinful women would respond.

So yes, these purity pledges, and instruction about the sins of the flesh, have lifelong repercussions.

Believe me, I know.

Here's a shocker, recent study shows that purity pledges do not work. Or at least not for long.

Courtesy of Salon:  

Great/horrible news for proponents of comprehensive sex education: virginity pledges don’t work, according to science. That is, they don’t work unless signers are truly and deeply religious, in which case abstinence pledges are likely to delay sexual activity a few years — but usually not until marriage. A recent study published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies has found that the efficacy of virginity pledges is not only associated directly with signers’ religiosity, but also poses serious risks to young adults who go back on their word. 

To evaluate what role religious commitment played in young adults’ adherence to virginity pledges, researchers polled 1,380 college students aged 18-24 who attended a “large, public, Southeastern state university,” asking participants whether they had previously signed a virginity pledge, their virginity status and how many past or present intercourse and oral sex partners they had. Researchers also asked students to rate their religious commitment, based on how religion or spirituality influence their daily lives, how often they seek spiritual comfort and how frequently they participate in religious events. 

More than a quarter of respondents had previously made a virginity agreement, either in writing or verbally, which is consistent with national averages; according to a 2008 study of pledge signers, 23.8 percent of adolescents aged 12-17 had agreed to remain abstinent. A majority of signers, however, were — wait for it — no longer virgins at the time of the study. 65 percent of respondents who had signed a virginity pledge reported having had sexual intercourse, and a whopping 77 percent of signers had engaged in oral sex. 

For the most part, though, those who were having oral sex or full-on coitus were also the people with lower rates of religious commitment, indicating that sincere religious belief does play a role in a person’s dedication to remaining abstinent. The researchers differentiated between “religious commitment” and “religious participation” to control for those who might have been immersed in a spiritual lifestyle without being true believers themselves; sure enough, people who were solely “religious participants” exhibited more sexual behavior than committed believers.

Okay that last part might be true, or it might simply be that those who self identify as "religiously committed" are more likely to lie about their sexual activities.

Ya think?

In my experience the girls that were the most religious and goody two shoes were the ones that went the wildest in college. That is unless the college they attended was also super religious and oppressive and they continued to be browbeaten into submission until they graduated and THEN they went wild.

In my opinion losing your virginity should not have such a stigma attached to it, because then what happens is that the focus on its importance almost invariably makes the first time full of stress and more often than not incredibly disappointing.

Yes there are great love stories out in the world concerning high school sweethearts who waited to get married, were each others first and only, and who have marriages that have endured the test of time.

However those stories are few and far between these days.

Teaching young ladies that sexuality is perfectly normal, and that taking precautions to prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy, while choosing their partners wisely seems to me the best approach.

But then again I also do not believe I will burn in the eternal fires of hell for thinking impure thoughts or for coveting my neighbor's wife, so perhaps my perspective is little skewed from that of somebody who thinks that fumbling around with an inexperienced girl to take her virginity is a "gift."

Now hot sweaty, clothes rending, wild monkey sex with an experienced woman? Now THAT'S a gift.

New book about Purity Balls attempts to defend and legitimize the practice. Yeah, good luck with that.

So the book by David Magnusson, called simply "Purity" contains photographs of fathers standing with their daughters in the kind of poses that would make the hair on Chris Hansen's stand straight up, and an explanation from the author about why our perceptions are all wrong.

Here is a taste: 

“When I first heard about the Purity Balls I imagined American fathers terrified of anything that might hurt their daughters or their families honor. But as I learnt more, I understood that the fathers, like all parents, simply wanted to protect the ones that they love – in the best way they know how. It was also often the girls themselves that had taken the initiative to attend the balls. They had made their decisions out of their own conviction and faith, in many cases with fathers who didn’t know what a Purity Ball was before first being invited by their daughters. 

The more I learned, the more I was surprised that I had been so quick to judge people I knew so little about. I was struck by the idea that what set us apart wasn’t anything more than how we had been influenced by the culture we grew up in and the values it had instilled in us. In Purity I wanted to create portraits so beautiful that the girls and their fathers could be proud of the pictures in the same way they are proud of their decisions – while someone from a different background might see an entirely different story in the very same photographs. 

To me, Purity is about how we are shaped by the society in which we grow up and how we interpret the world through the values we incorporate as our own.”

Uh huh. Well I guess you can blame my background but I am not picking up anything sweet, or nurturing from the photos.

And what I am picking up is more about obsessive control and an unnatural interest in a young girl's sexuality. Must be my background.

(H/T to The Godless Place.)

Purity Balls part deux.

 Courtesy of the You Tube page:

Witness smaller and bigger girls swear allegiance to their dads. Fundamentalist Christians convince daughters to avoid all contact with boys until they're married. By going on a date to a ball and exchanging vows and a ring, the girls promise to abstain completely from any and all interaction with the opposite sex. 

"It's the right thing to do, and the Lord wants us to do it." Says the clearly brain washed young lady.

The video up above is from 2007. At that time this was a phenomena that was fairly isolated.

But as we learned in Friday's post these balls now takes place in 48 of the 50 states.

In other words this kind of creepy incestuously tinged religious control is being leveraged against young girls all over the country.

All in the name of Christianity, and ancient superstitions about the value, and bargaining power, of virginity.

Remember in ancient times a "soiled" young woman, who had allowed her virtue to be stolen away, was worth nothing to the father seeking to use her as a bargaining chip to gain access to wealth and position.

While the young man was encouraged to sow his wild oats and bed as many wenches as he could, the woman was expected to remain chaste until given, like a prized farm animal, to her future husband. Who would then treat her as his possession for the remainder of her life.

Such is the value of "virtue" in ancient times.

But what's the excuse for this continued overreach by a modern day father into his daughter's potential love life? 

P.S. By the way according to this (5:35) 82% of these young ladies will break their vow of chastity before marriage.

Just imagine the kind of emotional pain that must cause them. To feel they have failed their church, their God, and their Daddies.

Indonesia moves to enforce mandatory virginity testing for high school girls.

Courtesy of Atheist Republic:  

The move to make virginity testing of high school girl students in Indonesia mandatory has drawn flak from activists, arguing it as discrimination against women and violation of human rights. 

Muhammad Rasyid, chief of education in south Sumatra’s Prabumulih district, proposed the idea. Describing it as the best option to protect children against free sex and prostitution, he said that the city budget could be made use of and tests could be started by early next year, if approval was accorded to the proposal by the MPs. 

Rasyid was quoted as saying that the virginity test was proposed for the good of the children. He also added that virginity is a right of every woman and students are not expected to commit negative acts. 

As per the requirement of the test, female school students in the age group of 16 to 19 years would have to undergo hymen examination every year till they completed their graduation. On the other hand, boys would not be examined to know whether they had sex or not. 

Local politicians have supported the proposal as it would be helpful in cutting down the promiscuity raging in the district. However, Agung Laksono, Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare, ordered the Education Minister Mohammad to reject Rasyid’s proposal. 

Islamist Prosperous Justice Party member Hasrul Azwar told Jakarta Post that virginity is sacred and it is disgraceful if a student lost her virginity prior to marriage. 

Just in case anybody believed that it was only Fundamentalist Christians who were obsessed with the sex life of teenagers. 

Interesting that it is ONLY the girls who have to be subjected to the humiliation of being probed in their private parts every year in order to prove they are still "pure."

Of course how COULD they test a boy to see if he had been sexually active? By the shit eating grin on his face?

I would like to remind you that the entire reason for this obsession about female virginity is due to the ancient misunderstanding which believed that male sperm lived inside of a woman's vagina for months, if not years, and therefore once wed an "impure" woman could give birth to the child from their previous lover rather than the child of the husband. For that reason her virginity, her purity, was considered an object of barter to get the highest bride price possible for her father.

The fact that it is still considered such a precious commodity is a testament to the primitive nature of certain communities around the world.

In 2013 we should be well past such antiquated belief systems. But religion continues to hold too much sway over the simple minded.

Evangelical minister says he will teach his sons to be independent but teach his daughters the exact opposite.

Courtesy of the Friendly Atheist:  

My children are gonna be taught to not commit fornication [before marriage] and that it is not acceptable and that it is a very major sin and that there will be very major consequences if they commit it. 

Now, I’m gonna teach that unto my sons because I think it’s so important that they remain pure and that they keep their virginity until they get married… 

I say I’ll teach that unto my sons and you say, well, aren’t you gonna teach that to your daughters? I’m gonna tell you this: It’s not gonna be humanly possible for anyone to commit fornication with my daughters. [Laughter] And you know what? You’re laughing but I’m not kidding… You say, what about when they go get a job? Well, they’re not going to get a job. Why would my daughters go get a job? What do they need a job for? You know what, I’m gonna pay for them, I’m gonna pay their bills. And you know what? When I’m done paying for them, their husband’s gonna pay for them. And I hope that he doesn’t fail in his responsibility to provide and send them off to work or something, but you know what, at that point, it’s none of my business. At that point, it’s not my responsibility. But you know what? When I pass off my daughters unto their husband, I’m gonna be able to guarantee that they’re a virgin because I’m gonna make it to where it’s not even humanly possible. Because I’m not gonna have them out gallivanting around town. I’m not gonna have them going off to work, and going out with all these people… 

And you say, what if you don’t like the guy they’re dating? They’re not gonna be dating a guy that I don’t like. A guy that I don’t like is gonna get his face punched in. [Laughter] 
… 

And you say, well why the double standard? Um, ’cause everything in the Bible’s a double standard?! ‘Cause I’m not a feminist?! ‘Cause men and women are different? ‘Cause my sons are gonna be taught to be independent. My daughters are gonna be taught not to be independent. [Fake crying noises] My sons are gonna be taught to go out and work hard and make a living! My daughters are gonna be taught to be a homemaker, okay? You don’t like that? Well, whatever, that’s what the Bible teaches…

Man is THIS guy in for a rude awakening!

The idea that shear force of will he can keep his daughter from dropping her panties for the first guy that manages to separate her from her parents is the kind of confidence that comes from arrogance and naivete.

And let's not even mention how repulsive it is that this guy places all of his daughter's value on her continued virginal "purity." Perhaps somebody should clue this guy into the fact that he is living in the 21st century. 

Elizabeth Smart: Abstinence only education teaches rape victims they are worthless.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

Elizabeth Smart became a household name after she was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City, UT at the age of 14 and held in captivity for nine months. She was forced into a polygamous marriage, tethered to a metal cable, and raped daily until she was rescued from her captors nine months later. Smart was recovered while she and her kidnappers were walking down a suburban street, leading many Americans who followed her story on the national news to wonder: Why didn’t she just run away as soon as she was brought outside? 

Speaking to an audience at Johns Hopkins about issues of human trafficking and sexual violence, Smart recently offered an answer to that question. She explained that some human trafficking victims don’t run away because they feel worthless after being raped, particularly if they have been raised in conservative cultures that push abstinence-only education and emphasize sexual purity: 

Smart said she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn’t run “because of that alone.” 

Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum. 

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

A "chewed up piece of gum."  A "life with no value." That is simply heartbreaking!

To think that a young woman might think she had no further value if she were raped or had given into temptation and engaged in premarital sex, due this primitive form of sex education is shameful. 

Can you imagine feeling as if you were a possession that nobody would want because the seal had been broken, or because you were somehow made un-pure? That is not how a human being should feel.

What happened to Elizabeth Smart is horrible, but the fact that he shame was amplified by her strict upbringing is just as horrible.

Before you reference the Bible to support your homophobic, racist, sexist, or anti-science beliefs, you better make damn sure you have read the whole thing.

Here is the passage in its entirety:  

13 If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her 14 and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” 15 then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin. 16 Her father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. 17 Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, 18 and the elders shall take the man and punish him. 19 They shall fine him a hundred shekels[a] of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives. 

20 If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.

Okay so here's the thing. If you are willing to accept the validity of this statement, and see it through to its "logical" conclusions for any family member or friend that fails to meet its standards, then I will listen with respect to your Biblical based reasons for hating the gays, subjugating women, or claiming that Genesis explains creation.

If not than we both agree that the book written many thousands of years ago has NO bearing on the decisions that we make in these modern times concerning civil rights, education, or how to raise our children.

Bristol Palin on the View talking about her book of fables.

In this very brief segment of the interview Walters is trying to confront Bristol on why she seems to blame Levi for "stealing" her virginity. It is a little uncomfortable to watch, mostly because of how Bristol lies her ass off about what took place that night, and her feelings afterward.



I am looking for the FULL interview, as there is much on it that I feel needs to be addressed, so if any of you can find it I would be very grateful.