Virginity

The taboo of premarital sex and sex entirely is very old. Most religions advocate and find it ideal for people to remain virgins until marriage. In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins had powers and were committed to 30 years of celibacy usually from ages 10-40. They had rights other citizens did not and their word was taken without question. If they were found to have broken their vow, which was rare, the punishment was being buried alive with a few days of food and water. I’d say that’s good incentive to wait. Once the period of 30 years was over, they were retired and allowed to live a normal life, get married, etc. But if they broke those vows, what a grim end awaited them.

Even in today’s world, in many Muslim countries, if a girl is found to not be a virgin, even by rape against her will, she could very well be subject to an “honor killing”, where it is viewed she has brought such shame upon her family, their good name can only be restored if she is killed. In the Western societies, virginity does not have the stranglehold it once did, and it’s viewed as merely a right of passage into adulthood and the honor of ones family is not at stake if it is lost.

Yet it’s always the women’s virginity in question here, it’s the one that everyone is concerned with. Males are expected to have sex, either with older women, widows, or prostitutes and no one questions their morality or calls them sluts for doing so. The double standard reigns supreme in the world of virginity. It’s prized and desired in females, yet in males it is something to be discarded as fast as they can.

Premarital Sex

Premarital sex is still a taboo in just over a third of the world's cultures. It doesn’t seem possible in this time for such backwards thinking to have continued, yet it does. And in most of those cultures that forbid it, it’s usually just for the women. Which leaves men wanting sex and no one to get it from.

Well, every society has prostitutes, that’s always an option and they do prove especially useful in a society where having sex with ones your own age isn’t a possibility. Prostitutes remain unmarriageable women, yet a needed part of society. The men could also seek out a window, someone they wouldn’t need to worry about getting pregnant and that may well be starved for affection themselves, this is an option for them as well.

In some cultures, ironically strict ones like Muslim, young men will go through an unspoken of but almost expected homosexual phase during the high school and college years. That culture is so unnatural in it’s separation of males and females, some men even turn to animals they are so desperate for the physical contact of another living thing.

It’s difficult for an agnostic, like me, not to go off on a tangent about the religions of the world making things unnatural that are natural and forcing people into weird situations out of desperation and lack of normal opportunities that they would have in otherwise normal societies. I’m so grateful I was born into a not very religious society and even less religious family. I can’t imagine being made to feel dirty for having normal wants because of what some old book of fairy tales has laid out.  What madness!