{"id":5915,"date":"2014-08-21T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T17:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=5915"},"modified":"2025-07-27T18:29:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T23:29:04","slug":"virginity-as-a-feminist-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/virginity-as-a-feminist-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"Virginity as a feminist statement"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1996:In which a promiscuous matador is pissy about having been brutally friend-zoned by a feminist college professor he wants to have sex with in the worst way, and she pounds him into the ground.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022 TL;DR \u2022\u2022\u20221<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

EMILIO: \u201cWhy is being a virgin when you get married so important to you?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

VICTORIA:<\/strong> \u201cBecause it\u2019s not important to anybody else,\u201d she snapped, then huffed. \u201cNo. What happened was, I saw girls in high school\u2014and one at church\u2014they\u2019d have sex, almost always pressured. Sometimes it was date rape, but they didn\u2019t have the guts to say so. Or they were confused or conflicted about it. And they\u2019d either get pregnant or the guy would treat them like crap. Regardless of what people like to think, I\u2019m not oblivious<\/em>. I see and hear, and I remember. But I don\u2019t care<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t he know that! Her non-oblivion was a tiger trap.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I ask you. If you see a bunch of girls running around crying after having had sex, what conclusion are you going to draw?\u201d<\/p>\n

He pursed his lips. That had never occurred to him. Then again, he wasn\u2019t a teenage girl.<\/p>\n

\u201cI drew the conclusion that it wasn\u2019t fun. Not only that, but they ended up with labels that weren\u2019t true at all. Slut. Whore. Easy. Whatever. I saw how the boys treated them and they were not nice. Why didn\u2019t the boys get labeled? Why was it cool and fun for them? Why was it the girls who got all the bad side and the boys who got the good side?\u201d<\/p>\n

Emilio was, at the moment, sinking into a vat of goo whose main ingredient, he suspected, was shame. He\u2019d been one of those boys.<\/p>\n

And one of those young men.<\/p>\n

And one of those almost-middle-aged men.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did the girl have to leave school if she got pregnant, but the baby\u2019s father didn\u2019t? And why,\u201d she continued, \u201cwas the girl always<\/em> blamed if she had the guts to speak up and say, \u2018He raped me\u2019? Her skirt was too short. She was wearing too much makeup. She was where she shouldn\u2019t have been. She had too much to drink. She was too flirty. She wanted it. She\u2019s been asking for it. Oh, and my personal favorite\u2014boys will be boys.\u201d<\/p>\n

Silver linings. He\u2019d never raped a woman nor, so far as he knew, had he coerced one into doing something she wasn\u2019t sure she wanted to do, which amounted to the same thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce \u2018boys will be boys\u2019 gets pulled out, the girl\u2019s hounded out of town\u2014by women!<\/em> The boy\u2019s mother will be leading the pack.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emilio had<\/em> noticed this, in fact, and he was vaguely amazed this behavior crossed an ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the eighties. How many girls are going to ask their mothers to take them to the doctor to get birth control? How many girls are going to walk into a drugstore and buy condoms? None, that\u2019s how many. Why? Because if they go on<\/em> birth control, it means they expect<\/em> to have sex in the future. And if they buy condoms, it means they\u2019re planning<\/em> to have sex right now. As far as I could see, there was nothing in it for the girl. And it wasn\u2019t fun enough to have to deal with the consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had nothing to do with church, particularly since the chastity lessons in Young Women also<\/em> put the onus on the girls to keep the boys in line. Analogies like \u2018nobody wants already-chewed gum\u2019 and \u2018nobody wants to eat a cupcake that\u2019s got the icing licked off\u2019\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Emilio grimaced.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2014and another one of my personal favorites\u2014I have so many!\u2014\u2018Boys can\u2019t control their baser lusts, so you have to cover up so they don\u2019t have to discipline themselves.\u2019 Why is it up to me<\/em> to shepherd a man\u2019s\u2014any<\/em> man\u2019s\u2014hormones? But the fact of the matter is, secular<\/em> society, no matter how much it likes to pretend it\u2019s open and tolerant, is no kinder than religious<\/em> society.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I met a man who was willing to marry me for time and all eternity, I would have to assume he loved me and he thought he could put up with me. The risk is there, but it\u2019s a shared risk, because if he changed his mind after<\/em>, I\u2019d divorce him and take everything he owned. You take me for a test drive, I\u2019ll take you to the cleaners.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d he moaned, feeling that like a knife in his gut. \u201cThat\u2019s cold<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

She granted him a haughty sniff. \u201cAnd heaven help him when my family gets through with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emilio took a deep breath and released it in a long whoosh.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow refute anything I just said. And before you try, let me remind you of Yvette Mallery. Poor girl. She\u2019s twenty-four. Lonely. Not too bright. Caged by her life. The only marginally admirable trait you have is you don\u2019t string women along.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sebastian was right. Again. Victoria was awful when she was thoughtless. She was vicious when she set out to cut a man\u2019s balls off, and Emilio felt like he\u2019d been pummeled, held under water, and stretched out in the desert sun to dry and crack.<\/p>\n

\u201cI \u2026 can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe woman<\/em> takes all the risk and all the blame, even if she\u2019s brutally raped. She could even<\/em> end up with a baby she didn\u2019t want if she doesn\u2019t get rid of it somehow. Destroys her shot at making anything out of her life. That\u2019s eighteen years<\/em> of risk, eighteen years<\/em> of poverty, eighteen years<\/em> of her life, gone in forty-five minutes. She ends up alone and on the bottom of Maslow\u2019s scale for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been mocked for being a thirty-two-year-old virgin. Why? Why would any woman over twenty be mocked for being a virgin in a society that also mocks women for choosing unwisely? Or following their bliss just like men do? Or being victims of a horrible crime? The only explanation is that the woman takes all the blame, all the risk just for existing<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you know what? I don\u2019t care if people mock me because I may be a lot of things society thinks are horrible\u2014especially<\/em> in a woman\u2014but I am not<\/em> delusional and I am not<\/em> going to screw up my life over something that seems to be about as fun as a drive-in movie, if that, and I refuse<\/em> to be a victim. You\u2019re upset about \u2018Let\u2019s be friends\u2019? Give me one<\/em> reason to believe you wouldn\u2019t do that to me, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022 TL;DR \u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

1<\/a>.<\/span>  I am fucking sick and tired of self-described feminists reviling women who choose virginity\/celibacy as some backwoods, fundamentalist Christian, hick-r00b, sheltered, na\u00efve victim of an oppressive patriarchal construct. Women who are happy in their sexuality and sex lives are no more empowered<\/em><\/strong> than a woman who chooses to remain celibate for whatever reason until whenever. Feminism is supposed to give women credit for knowing their own minds, making their own choices, and respecting those choices. All of them. Not just the ones you agree with.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which a promiscuous matador is pissy about having been brutally friend-zoned by a feminist college professor he wants to have sex with in the worst way, and she pounds him into the ground. \u2022\u2022\u2022 TL;DR \u2022\u2022\u20221 EMILIO: \u201cWhy is being a virgin when you get married so important to you?\u201d VICTORIA: \u201cBecause it\u2019s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[317,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5915"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15634,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions\/15634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}