In god we trust?

Your stories

Once again, the message rings home. Virginity is a hot topic, and it always will be. I’m no agony aunt, but it gets harder not to chuck my ten pence worth in when you get emails like this. If I could also post the response from the contributor’s brother, an email that exhorts the lady in question to stay chaste for the remainder of her days, (she is 34), you would really get the point.

Sadie writes, that, ‘figuring out what to do with my virginity has been harder than coming out in many ways’. And this, from the daughter of an evangelical pastor. For better or worse, for many Brits, the loss of virginity has become the barometer of social acceptance, a way in which to blend in with the crowd. Stateside, the story is quite different. Virginity and its loss is couched in a new language. Politicians talk about ‘abstinence’ and pastors speak of ‘purity’. But in the end, it all boils down to one simple question. Is it right to ask a person not to lose their virginity?

Sadie. Born 1973.

‘So I just found your blog because I wished that I could read about other people’s virginity loss stories. Finding it was really helpful.

What do you think of this?

All my close friends were actually virgins when they got married. My friend Tami didn't even kiss her boyfriend until he became her fiancé. My brother didn't kiss his wife until their wedding day. He was a virgin. This is the environment I grew up in.

And me? Well, I kissed someone for the first time this year at age thirty-four and I am still a virgin. Why? Because I never cared much if I kissed a boy and all my friends were good Christians. And being gay doesn't really go down well in the evangelical community. It took me until this year to, ‘come out’ and go on a date. And I still haven't lost my virginity because my head is so messed up about it. And also because my family and community thinks that since I'm gay, I have to stay celibate.

But I've noticed that the women I know around here, the ‘good’ Christian women who stayed single and virgins all seem dead inside. I think one or two of them may be gay and so they did the celibacy thing and they died inside. Can you be fully alive and celibate? I do not know, but it sure seems like killing that part of yourself kills another part of oneself as well.

I grew up mostly in Minnesota, USA, in the home of an evangelical pastor and a stay-at-home mom. I remember having one conversation about sex in late elementary school while getting my hair cut. Both my parents sat me down and explained what sex was. Love, and the man entering the woman. I thought it was the most disgusting thing I had ever heard and I felt really uncomfortable. After that, all I heard for the most part was how we are so tempted to sin and how important virginity was until you are married and how very careful I had to be around boys, (which was never any issue for me because I never liked them). For protestant evangelical Christians, sex is the ultimate sin.

I still hold to my Christian ideals and all but... I don't know which happened first, but somewhere in the last couple years, I saw ‘The Vagina Monologues’. And afterwards I thought, I don't even know where mine is, (metaphorically speaking). And I don't want to die without ever kissing someone. I don't want this to be my life. I want to be embodied. I need to at least figure out how to be OK enough to feel ‘turned on’, without guilt. Somewhere in there, I stopped hating myself if I masturbated and I decided to let my body just be. This was OK for me, because I still wasn't having sex so it was a safe first step. One that was just a tiny bit more spacious. I just figured that God made my body and now I just want to know it a bit too.

I just wanted to tell some anonymous person out in cyber space how messed up all this virginity and losing it stuff is in the Christian community. Figuring out what to do with my virginity has been harder than coming out in some ways. And coming out is hard because I am a pastor’s kid. The girl that I kissed said her friends always tell her not to date virgins because we are too sensitive. Ug. So Christians in my community are freaked out by me because I am gay and people outside of my community won't date me because I am a virgin.

Two things help right now. For the first time ever, I am meeting other solid good Christian people who are gay and who respect the bible, but read it differently. And that has helped a TON. I also started just trusting myself and knowing myself enough to say that this is me and this is what I want.

Virginity sucks!’

Comments

[Andrew]

Proof that religion sucks right here.