“Did you know that when I married your mother, she was a
virgin?” So, I was walking past my t.v.
and I heard this and had to do a double take. What? Now I wasn’t surprised at
this because I think virgins are needles in a haystack or anything absurd like
that. I had to do a double take because I’m like how can you judge the quality
of an individual by whether or not they have a hymen. Really! I think what
really got me was the image of a woman nodding in her head in agreement of this
illusion of self-worth. Bonjour a tous, welcome to the fucked up reality in
which we exist. Now I have got a couple issues with the aforementioned
situation, firstly how backward and juvenile it is to judge an individual based
on whether or not they have a hymen, and why this concept of virginity is the
bane of the female existence. I will try not to digress too much. Anyways back
to the issue.
How can you? and what right do you have to judge a woman’s
character based on whether or not she has a hymen. Really, well for those of
you that didn’t really listen in biology class a hymen is that little piece of
skin, or whatever, that rips when a women is “disvirgined,” (I actually don’t
agree with the use of the word disvirgined because it tends to denote that
something has been lost)
I think I would be more okay with it if it was used in
the same way on both sides or carried the same weight. Anyways, yeah so you
have sex for the first time, you lose that little skin and then you are on your
way to sexual deviancy! Voila! So easy.
Now my problem with this is, how can you tell if I am a good person, or
even a serial killer who will scoop your eyes out, by whether or not I have a
hymen; I know very sexual virgins and very prude non virgins. I know girls that
only have anal, because they want to “protect their virginity,” or girls that
would do anything but have vaginal sex because “they are keeping it for their
husbands.” Really? And I am not saying
there is anything wrong with being sexually expressive, apart from the
possibility that you will burn in hell, along with those judging you #party! I
just don’t understand why being a virgin is given so much power in our society.
Because I have found that a nice amount of people, in this fun and highly
backward country of Nigeria feel the need to do this to a lot of women. They
assume that once a woman “loses” her virginity, she is somehow less clean or
pure; and for me, if that is what you want to believe that could be okay, but
it has to apply to both sexes. We exist in a world where it is okay for a guy
to be sexually expressive but it is a no-no for a woman. A guy I was dating
once said in the most chauvinistic air possible, that “if a key opens many
locks, it is a master key and if a lock gets opened by many keys it is a bad
lock.” This was the point I really started to doubt the relationship. Why is my
vagina a lock? And do you really think your penis is a key? It was absurd.
I’m digressing, anyhoo…My problem is, what gives a man the
right to tell me or any other women whether or not we are clean. Especially if
that man is one of those who probably changes girls like he changes his boxers.
And why do we as women let them perpetuate that bullshit. And this, ladies and
gentlemen brings me to the second point.
Virginity as the bane
of the female existence. Imagine if there was no such this as being a
virgin, or at least there was no way to know. That’d be weird right, how would
you be able to tell if someone was a slut or a pure untouched flower. Well I
dunno, unfortunately that is not the world we live in. The problem with
virginity is not so much that it exists; it is that we as women give it so much
power, and it is that power that the men use against us. That is why you see people
with an air of arrogance proclaim “ I am still a virgin,” at that point I
usually want to be like whoopty-do you did not have sex, do you want a medal or
a high-five? Yes, we live in an overly sexualized world, but really I don’t
think it is that big of a deal. And because we as women constantly push this
message that our virgin status somehow supersedes who are, men the dogs that
they are, feel that need to capitalize on this.
And we let them, because for some of us it is a sense of
pride, a pride that we have grown up with, a pride that is closely tied to who
we are as individuals and we don’t want to let the cursed privilege free. We
want to hold on to it for as long as we can benefit from it. So while we are
still virgins we smile when people complement our strength and self-preservation
and once we lose that skin, we scream and cry out injustice about the thing we
once held so dear. So in the end we build ourselves up to be torn down, and
then we complain.
