Social Conservatives and Social Stigma
As we all know, social conservatives have a rather enormous problem with any kind of sex that isn’t performed by two people who’ve had a couple words muttered over them at a church and that isn’t performed for the expressed purpose of procreation: pleasure is merely a by product on the baby making train, right? But oftentimes, these social conservatives go farther than merely expressing their own beliefs - they want to legislate their ideals into law. And this is where I start getting pissed.
Anti-marriage/civil union/adoption/domestic partnership legislation (really, it doesn’t need to be qualified with “gay” - it’s just anti-marriage), sodomy laws, laws like the one in Tennessee which bans the mere mention of homosexuality and prohibits the teaching of “gateway sexual activity” (which is phrased so vaguely that it could literally be interpreted as hand holding). Laws to ban abortion, contraception, shaming women in public arenas who dare to take the pill (like Rush Limbaugh, serial marriage expert, calling a woman a “slut” because she wanted birth control to be publicly funded - I don’t agree with her proposition, but she’s not a “slut”, Rushy; you know nothing about her sex life. Or do you? Who knows).
The root, I think, is not religion - religion isn’t really the causative factor of many things, if you ask me. Religion just provides a handy dandy excuse to enact prudish arrogance over the rest of society. There are many liberal Christians who read the same holy book but do not believe in all the above craziness.
I think there is a sort of compensating behavior going on there, like with so many closeted conservative figureheads who were vehemently anti-gay even as they were found engaging in rather gay acts: sleeping with male prostitutes, for instance, behind the collective backs of their wife and children, giving blowjobs in back alleys, abusing and drugging women (look up “green balloons safe word”), getting their “luggage lifted” Rekers style.
They want to enforce their standards of morality on everyone else to validate the struggle that they themselves are working through, they want to see the whole world moral and rigid alongside them, because hey, if you’re out there sleeping with multiple people and hanging from the ceiling in rigging, if you’re having three phalluses shoved into your anus at one time and you’re swinging like a monkey from really high trees… And all in all, you’re still a happy, functioning individual, then what the hell are they accomplishing with all their moralizing?
But!
There is a liberal counterpart to this idea. The frankly annoying and kind of depressing stigma attached to being a virgin.
http://jezebel.com/5912992/lolo-jones-might-be-headed-for-the-olympics-but-who-cares-when-we-can-talk-about-her-virginity-instead
So making a personal decision not to have sex before marriage is more interesting than the fact she is an Olympic athlete? I don’t really want to focus on this specific story, seeing as MrRepzion did that (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hVRvekvFHI&feature=g-u-u - this is the video that inspired this post), but use it to bring my larger point into perspective. My larger point is this.
To me, it seems like many liberals of the sexually liberated ilk stigmatize virgins vehemently, especially older ones. It shows that having sexual standards and what they consider “prudish” morals is possible and quite able to produce people who are successful and satisfied with their life. It brings into question their own promiscuity, their own worldviews. It seems as if it’s just assumed that it is impossible to remain a virgin for more than two decades, that it’s best to get the dirty deed done, that the question of who you breaks your hymen isn’t one which needs a careful answer. Sex isn’t special, it’s just an act, Hungry Hungry Hippos with your pants off. So when you have someone who thinks that sex is special, that it is something sacred, people feel the need to ridicule them - because, hey, if it really is possible to remain a virgin for longer than two decades, then their decision to lose theirs wasn’t one that comes naturally, wasn’t one that was basically foisted onto them by society; it puts more weight into that decision, and in retrospect makes it more questionable (questionable here meaning that it is, literally, subject to more questioning, not that it is necessarily more “wrong”).
It’s not as bad as the collective efforts of social conservatives to legislate their morals into the damn law, but it is still… Pretty bad, and rather annoying when sexual people examine and berate virgins as if they are something exotic or worthy of mockery. They are staking a stand for their values, a stand that is probably very difficult in today’s society.
I don’t agree with those values. I don’t think it’s a good idea to wait until marriage to have sex because you don’t know if you will be sexually compatible or not. I don’t think it’s a good idea to not pay attnetion to who you have sex with either - and personally, I would only ever have sex with someone after I established a medium emotional bond (like, if 1 foot is shallow and 50 feet is rhinoceros vagina deep, maybe 20 feet deep). But if you are willing to take a stand, willing to preserve your virginity until marriage, willing to hold onto that hymen - hey, don’t expect any criticism from me. In fact, expect a little tip of the hat, a little smile, a little nod of respect.
