I am in the midst of reading Hanne Blank’s excellent new book Virgin: The Untouched History. I would recommend that you get yourselves to the bookstore or library immediately and at least read the very interesting and incisive introduction. For excerpts and other fabulousness go here.
It occurs to me that the problem with virginity is that you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don’t.
In fact, Virginity is a non-value. Whether it is valued in our culture today depends on who you are standing next to at the time. Are they conservative or liberal? Promiscuous or prudish? Do they view the empowerment of women as denying men what they want (that being sex, obviously) or as taking what women want (also sex)?
Therefore, Virginity isn’t really about sex. It is about power; who has it and who does not. Does retaing my virginity free me or enslave me? Does losing my virginity make me powerless or powerful? If you wait, does that make you a fool? If you are picky, does that make you a feminist or a patriarch? Does a woman’s power come from withholding sex or giving it away? Is it possible for a woman to ever take sex or does being penetrated preclude the female from ever being truly dominant despite other factors?
Can a woman’s identity ever be made free from her sexual choices? Or is it eternally predicated on some conception of chastity?
Take Anne Coulter, for instance. Here is a woman who has made a name for herself as a bastion and pundit for a political party not known for the progressive policies on women’s rights. And yet, Coulter herself is not only a powerful figure but a virginal one as well. In a culture where most famous women are aligned in some manner with a man, I can honestly say that I know nothing about Anne Coulter’s personal life. I have know idea if she is married or not, in a relationship or not, has children or not. I think not, but I don’t know. When I see her spoken of her or talked about, the private nature or her sex life is either a non-issue or mocked as sign of her frigidity and backwards thinking.
Yet, I am fascinated by the fact that Coulter’s power is unattached to any specific male but rather is part of aligning herself with a vary male-centric poltical ideology. It is the very same sort of Virginal empowerment that intrigued me when I read about Elizabeth I. Of course, neither Coulter nor the Virgin Queen are actually virginal but it is a virginity of presence; of being powerful without any man in sight; of having a public position that ought to belong to a man; of being both single and singular.
America is a culture of extremes. We veer from one end of the spectrum to the other without finding a balance in the middle. I wonder if there is a place between Virgin and Whore and what it is like to be there.
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