The Virginity Project

Let Love Rule?

Donkey’s years ago, in my early twenties, I got my first proper job. Don’t get me wrong, I’d had hundreds of jobs by this point but this was the first where I got paid monthly i.e. I was going to stay put for longer than ten minutes.

I didn’t mind because it was my hearts desire. My first job in the music business. A whirlwind of gigs, guest lists and glamour, at least in my imagination. In reality, I got to answer the phone to Ian McCulloch. This was no great hardship at the time because I was a huge Echo and the Bunnymen fan. I also got to observe my boss at close quarters, a flame haired Viking of a man with a penchant for the re-arrangement of everyday audio equipment.

‘What do you mean the spare phone doesn’t work?’

‘Well, I phoned BT and they said it wasn’t broken enough to fix’.

He picks up the phone and dashes it to the floor.

‘It’s broken now’.

Okey dokey, I’ll just give them another call then.

In amongst this tomfoolery was the very real opportunity to see as many free gigs as I liked. Me and my friends made full use of this facility. Glastonbury with The Cure, backstage camping and access all areas? I was there. The Cramps at The Crypt in Brixton? Count me in. The Happy Mondays at Wembley Arena? Truly one of the magical musical hi-lights of my life. But it wasn’t just the big boys I was interested in. I went to see the little fish too.

In the winter of ‘89, I went to some dump off Oxford Street to see the first British show of a new artist that the agency had just signed. His name was Lenny Kravitz and he tore the place to shreds. A man, a guitar and a stage. That’s it. Even to my untrained eye, it was quite obvious that something was up. The rest of the crowd thought so too. Both Roachford and Terence Trent D’arby left the room shortly afterwards – literally and metaphorically.

Fast forward to the present day and it is no surprise that Mr Kravitz is a multi million selling babe magnet of a talented man who has……..decided to give up sex until he gets married. Yes, you heard me. Lenny Kravitz will remain celibate until he meets and marries the woman he loves.

Now, I had planned to ponder upon the idea of ‘secondary virginity’. The idea that one can ‘start over’ again, even if one has had quite a lot of sex, thereby attaining secondary, or ‘born-again’ as some types prefer to call it, virginity. But I don’t quite think this is Mr Kravitz’s style. Spiritual he may be, but ‘born again’, I think not.

But once I had googled the words ‘Lenny Kravitz + sex’ and flicked my way through ten pages of the above mentioned story, and counting, I had to ask myself – again, why is it that we cannot get our heads around the fact that some people actively choose not to have sex, for a whole bunch of different reasons? Is it just too much of an anomaly in today’s society to abstain, not for religious reasons, but simply because you want to save it for someone that you really like, or even, dare I say it, love?

I have an issue with ‘The Silver Ring Thing/True Love Waits/Creepy teenage-controlling-right-wing Christian groups. I don’t think it is right to ask what are essentially children to make very adult decisions about their lives and their bodies. It is natural to grow, to change and develop. People must be free to make individual choices as these changes occur. This is what living in a democratic society is all about.

Having said that, I do think it is a sensible question to ask yourself if you are having sex with someone: why am I doing this? I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer to this question but there is something to be gained by asking it.

Much as I don't like to link to her tedium, (although I do wish her a speedy recovery from her recent illness), Dawn Eden posted this on her blog the other day:

"There is no such thing as giving the body without giving the soul. Those who think they can be faithful in soul to one another, but unfaithful in body, forget that the two are inseparable. Sex in isolation from personality does not exist! An arm living and gesticulating apart from the living organism is an impossibility. The separation of soul and body is death. Those who separate sex and spirit are rehearsing for death'.
—Fulton J. Sheen, Three to Get Married

OK, it’s a tad dramatic but it’s an interesting point. Are we hurting ourselves by having sex with people that we are not commited to? Perhaps this is what Lenny is driving at. Sharing bodily fluids with another human being is pretty serious stuff. Is it not better to do it with someone we love?

Lets face it; we’re not likely to find out unless one of us marries him. Which brings me to my next point. As I pondered these questions in the shower the other morning whilst simultaneously meeting Lenny Kravitz, falling helplessly in love and moving lock, stock and cat to Miami, I arrived at the part where we were just about to get hitched….and panicked! Could I really marry a man that I had never ever had sex with? What if it was awful? A let down, a damp squib. Perhaps he doesn’t even have a penis? My mind flailed around trying to find answers to imaginary questions. This is serious stuff.

I came to my conclusion. No, I don’t think I can marry Lenny. Much as he impressed me with his axe skills all those years ago on a dingy London stage. Marriage is too big a commitment without first road testing the rest of the equipment. Quite apart from the fact that I might go bonkers in the process. I admire Lennie’s commitment to his cause. I would high five him if he were sitting on my bed right now but it would take a lot more than a wedding dress and a ring to win my heart. Sex is way too big a part of a relationship to take a chance on.

Unless we’ve got an ‘everything but’ situation on our hands? Ok, now this I might be able to work with, maybe for Lenny. But then what’s the point in waiting until you get married when you’ve done all the important stuff anyway. Penetration is merely a formality when it comes to sex. There are a hundred ways to enjoy each other without ever having penetrative sex. Or, 'what goes around comes around', as Lenny might say...

The chill of embrace?

I had been intending to write about the concept of ‘secondary virginity’ for an age. I had also been intending to ask Dawn Eden, author of groundbreaking book, ‘The Thrill of the Chaste’, (was there ever a better book title?), if she might consider writing something for ‘The Virginity Project’, on the subject. Thankfully, she has done so with very little effort on my part.

First things first. What the monkey nuts am I talking about? Secondary virginity? It sounds a bit, well, second-hand. It is. But it’s not. Confused? Let me help you:

‘Secondary virginity, or being a "born-again" or "renewed" virgin, is when an individual who has had premarital sex chooses to "start again" and wait until marriage. This can be based on a number of things - some people may have only had sex once and realized that they weren't ready, others may be more advanced in their sexual encounters but have decided that they want to place more value on the act itself.

This decision is not meant to be fuelled by false ideals of what is being chosen, but rather as an acceptance of the past and an attempt to move forward in a new light. In other words, when one chooses to "reinvent" their virginity, they aren't doing so on the pretence of regaining their virginity simply to be able to say they are virgins, but rather to have a clean slate and a fresh start, and to recognize past mistakes and not repeat them in the future.’

I’m down with that. Time and again as I have listened to people’s stories of virginity loss, it has occurred to me that a straightforward definition cannot be carved into stone. For many of us, the occasion is marked by the first instance of penetrative sex, but for others it is something more ephemeral and hard to quantify. A loss of innocence, or ‘the moment that I became a woman’, in the case of the lady who discovered what her clitoris was at the tender age of ten. The point is, that for some people, virginity is all in the mind. This is not a new idea.

I have been entertaining myself of late with the adventures of St Augustine of Hippo, one of the earliest proponents of the Christian faith. ‘Lord, give me chastity’, he cried…’but not yet!’ That was before his profound conversion to Catholicism at the age of thirty-two. Look him up. He’s an interesting bloke. Augustine displayed foresight in an era when the rights of women were hardly at the top of anyone’s agenda. On the act of rape he wrote, ‘No woman can be deprived of her virginity, no matter what is done to her body, unless her heart consents. If you defile my body against my will, my virginity is all the purer and my reward all the greater’.

Hanne Blank writes in her book, ‘Virgin - An Untouched History,’ ‘after Augustine, both libido and virginity were matters of the conscious self at least as much as they were matters of the body. It was ultimately the integrity of the soul that mattered’.

Augustine blazed the trail for secondary virginity and somewhere along the line, modern day religious types picked up the scent. Which led me to the suitably named Dawn Eden, author of aforementioned best seller, ‘The Thrill of the Chaste’. Dawn is an interesting proposition. A former rock journalist, she is candid about her ‘free-loving’ past which involved a penchent for Keith (at least in my imagination), Moon-esque drummers. 'I took full advantage of the fact that I was in a very libertine world,' she says. But that was before her own conversion to Catholicism and like Augustine, a renouncement of her former sex life. ‘I regret all the sex that I ever had in my life’, she says. She now flies the flag for the abstinence movement that has swept America. She is honest about her new life and I respect her for that. 'I miss having sex a lot,' she says. 'I enjoyed sex very much. That was one reason why I did it a lot.'

Which brings me back to the beginning of the story. Needless to say, I am fascinated by the concept of secondary virginity and I am itching to interview someone who possesses such an item. Connected, as I am sure she is, I mailed Dawn to see if she could point me in the direction of one of these stories. Did she have any British contacts that might be prepared to talk to me? Judging by her reply, which she posted on her blog, I’m thinking probably not. The July 27th comments section, however, more than makes up for her lack of enthusiasm. Happy reading!