The Church and Virginity 2

I thought I'd add some additional thoughts to my previous post.

This virginity belief targets women far more than it does men.  In popular culture, we see it in the way that evangelicals have been hosting "purity balls," where fathers take their daughters to a dance and the daughters promise to remain virgins until they get married.  But there are other ways as well.

It should be noted that only among women can we "confirm" whether someone is a virgin or not, thanks to women's hymens and whether or not they remain intact.  I say "confirm" with quotes around it because there are many causes why a woman's might be broken, especially as we do become more and more equal, thanks to the physical demands of women's sports.  But, in our obsession with virginity and "purity," we now offer surgery to "repair" damage to a hymen that might have occurred from sports or from sex.

Men do not have such problems.  There is no obvious difference between a man who has had sex and a man who has not.

But the differences do not stop there, and in the evangelical churches I attended, we were taught many lies that further established the virginity of the woman as of paramount importance to the virginity of the man.

One such lie is the idea that a woman's vagina expands the first time she has sex, that the muscles around it relax and reform themselves, and that this only occurs that first time.  The muscles then become rigid, the tissue of the vagina has stretched as far as it will go.  It will never shrink nor grow further than after that moment.  As a result, if a woman has had sex with a bigger man, she will be too loose for a smaller one; if a woman has had sex with a smaller man, she will be too tight for a bigger one.  This lie appears to be told as a "case for remaining a virgin until marriage," for the woman, because if it were true, it would result in perpetually unsatisfying sex with anyone other than the man with whom the woman had sex the very first time.

Of course, it also results in that horrible concept that a woman who has had sex is "used up."  A man cannot be "used up" because sex doesn't change the man's penis in any way.

For those who don't know, this concept of single-time-sizing is completely false.  Even when I believed it, I questioned how it was possible given that a woman also gives birth to children, and clearly a woman's vagina would have to resize itself to do that.  Of course, a woman's vagina resizes itself very frequently - a "loose vagina" is not the sign of a woman who is sexually active with multiple partners, and tightness does not denote virginity.  Anyone who has had sex with the same partner more than once knows this to be the case.  The lie only works for virgins.

(oh, and virgins, if you need proof, here's an article.)
 
Another lie of this variety is the idea that when a man and woman have sex, the woman's vaginal chemistry changes, so that the pH is balanced for that man.  That's not quite true.  The fact is that the vagina is typically mildly acidic, and semen is very mildly basic. So, what happens is a very slight elevation of pH during intercourse.  However, there are a myriad number of reasons why that pH might change, and while this change might be dangerous for a woman, regular doctors visits are part of the preventative maintenance on that - which is part of why they're recommended for women.  So this is not so much a lie as a re-reading of a truth in a deceitful way, and the whole point of this deceit is the same as the previous one - that it is used to help convince a woman that she should only have sex with one man ever.

Where did these lies come from?  Well, it seems likely that they are a "purple monkey dishwasher" kind of thing (referencing the Simpsons episode where Bart whispers something at the back of a crowd and by the time it reaches the front, those three words are tagged on to the end).  There is real science buried deeply under the lies, just as all lies have a tiny bit of truth in them to make them believable.  The real science is given lip service (oh, you better believe that pun is intended) but then modified to make a case that the liar wants to make - that is, that women must remain virgins until marriage, and after marriage must remain with only one partner.  That case is ostensibly based on the Bible, although it's notable that the Bible talks about the virginity and loyalty of both the man and the woman, while these lies predominantly target women.

Far more likely is it that these lies are an attempt to gain some level of control over the body of the woman.  Women alone give birth, and because of that, only maternity is certain.  Paternity is always in question (unless you get a DNA test for each of your children).  A woman can have sex with multiple partners and none of them would ever know unless she slipped up, but she could have the child of one and convince another that the child is his.  A man has no such power.  By coming up with religious restrictions on infidelity, and by further reinforcing those restrictions with woman-centric lies, the man can attempt to hold emotional power over the woman, proving his paternity or releasing himself of fault should that paternity be invalidated. 

-edit- remembered part of the argument regarding chemistry, and updated to reflect better research.

The Church and Virginity

 A friend of mine posted the following link:
http://christianpundit.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/sexual-purity-virginity-and-celibacy-as-product-and-christian-myths-that-are-keeping-marriage-minded-single-women-single-courtesy-dannah-gresh/
and she posted this specific quote from it:

'I find it so absurd that Christians appear to have a preference for fornicators acting as role models for virgin youth (hiring them as speakers for youth groups about the importance of sexual purity), rather than getting an actual, literal, adult virgin who is over age 30, to give advice, write books on the topic, or act as speaker...What if God has no plans on sending a guy to seek a woman? Maybe it's in God's will for that woman to be single her entire life. Maybe the Judeo-Christian God is a Deist when it comes to dating and marriage and chooses not to direct a man's or woman's path about marriage? In other words, why do Christians always assume EVERYONE who wants to marry WILL end up married?'  

This is my response to her:

Let me propose a hypothesis for why that happens...

We're teaching kids in school to think through things via the scientific method - that is, to look at the evidence we know, propose a hypothesis, then test that hypothesis. In evangelical Christianity, however, (and interestingly enough, in online arguments) we (I say we, having come from that in my youth) stop at the 2nd point. We propose a hypothesis, and the only testing we do is to see whether it stands up to Biblical logic, rather than testing to see if it functions in the real world. Since we implicitly trust those we've chosen as our religious leaders, when they do the same thing and feed us their own hypotheses, we accept them and redistribute them to our friends.

Thus it is that outright lies ("the female body has a way of shutting the whole thing down") and dangerous half-truths (climate change isn't real because a tiny minority of scientists say it isn't) get repeated and reinforced as truth. Confirmation bias runs rampant.

Here are some of the assumed bases regarding love and sex of evangelical Christianity:

1. Men and women are made specifically for each other, like how Eve was crafted from Adam's own rib.
2. God always works toward a believer's best interests. Sometimes those best interests involve having the person get married. Sometimes, they involve having the person stay single.
3. Therefore, if you do get married, it's because God intended for you to, and your spouse is the person who was made specifically for you.
4. And, if you do not get married, it's because God specifically intended for you not to.
5. Whichever way it goes, it's entirely your fault it you're not happy with the lot He's given you.
6. When Adam and Eve first had sex, they became "flesh of one flesh." Their bodies and souls were forever united, regardless of whatever happened next.
7. If you have sex with someone who is not a virgin, that person's body and soul are united to someone else, meaning you are only getting a small portion, and not the whole deal.
8. A person is freed from that eternal bond only in the case that their spouse cheated on them. For some of the more accepting and enlightened (but certainly not all - there are countless stories to the contrary), there are additional reasons why a person might be restored: 
1. The person was raped (they didn't give themselves willingly, ergo their body and soul is still intact; note that some people still consider this the fault of the victim, absurd though that may be - such people would not consider it a reason to consider the person a "Spiritual Virgin") 
2. The person's spouse was abusive (the belief that God would not want a person to stay in an abusive relationship, even if the abuser was not cheating - the abuse is considered the same violation of the bond as cheating is) 
3. The person goes through "revirginification" ... that is, repents for the actions, seeks God, and becomes pure until marriage again.

Unfortunately, it has these theoretically-unintended consequences (at least, it did in my own case):

1. You believe that there is someone out there for you, unless God has meant you to be single. But, since "single" is something that is slowly revealed over time, and "not single" is something that could happen at any moment, you continually hold out hope that you'll meet this person.
2. You believe that the person is a virgin. Because surely God would not make your soul-mate a person who can't keep it in his/her pants.
3. You become, as I was, a pretentious little douchebag who thinks the world owes him/her a spouse who is a virgin and you disregard everything that comes along until you find that, no matter how good it might be.