The Virginity Project

The Virginity Fallacy

What a bind. A chimera, a smokescreen, a ridiculous concept, in fact virginity is. In times gone by, when women didn’t work and men were landowners, it served a purpose. Property got passed from generation to generation and one way of ensuring it went to a legitimate heir and not the offspring of a non-marital liaison was to regulate the sexual activity of one’s offspring. Specifically, the sexual activity of daughters, being as they are the ones that bear children.

The virginity of women served a tangible purpose. In some cultures it may remain so. The argument is more complicated than that. I’m simplifying the facts to the barest bones but you could also say lets be honest. Placing value on female virginity has morphed into a very convenient and highly effective way of controlling women. Mostly to protect the insecurity of men.

Some cultures have navigated the education and advancement of women with relative elegance. There is an understanding that as well as allowing women to become citizens of equality that it also benefits society at large. More working women = a healthier economy. A healthier economy equals better education for more people and so the cycle goes. Some cultures refuse to attempt the change. And some sectors of society that should know better, cough, the American ‘right’, still appear at times to find the empowerment of women discombobulating. 

Some might say its not my business to cast aspersions on the cultural practices of other countries but sitting outside a beach bar on a Greek island, feet wriggling in the sand, catching autumnal rays before returning to my life in London. A life where I get to do what I want to do and not what someone else deems in my ‘best interests’, the so called importance of female virginity seems tedious and selfish at best, despicable and dangerous at worst. It’s enough to make a girl want to change the name of her blog. The Virginity Project may yet become The Virginity Fallacy.

As if to illustrate the point, here is Kat who generously decided to share her story and in doing so, she showcases the hypocrisy of female virginity with heart breaking precision. She is Indonesian.

‘I have read The Virginity Project since a year ago and had been contemplating a lot of finally losing my virginity. I think this Project is very useful for us to share what we feel for this moment. Okay, here is my story:

I lost my virginity just six days ago at 31 years old.  I don't know if I should be proud or embarrassed about it. I was born and raised as a Moslem (sic). However, I am really grateful that my parents is very supportive. One of the greatest things that they have given to me is freedom to create my own path and gave me opportunity to learn from my mistakes and be responsible with its consequences. This allows me to respect my personal values and make me to be a strong and independent woman.

However, sex is something that has never been openly discussed in the family. Therefore, in my lack of knowledge, I self-educated about sex. My first time encounter the word sex and porn and knew what are they really mean is when I am 9 years old. It was one of my classmates, a boy, that always talk about it non stop in front of us. 

It was my senior time in high school I became aware of virginity. At that time I was busy dating boys, the good ones and the bad ones. But sex is excluded from my dating game as I found most of the boys I dated is pretty conservative about virginity and most of them really plan to take me seriously and therefore wait for the time to finally marry me, to marry a virgin. 

This also opens my eyes that Indonesian people are mostly conservative and hypocrite. As known the biggest Moslem country, we adopt this "virgin until married" culture. People will always interfere your personal life. There is no tolerance of living together without marriage license and you are considered as slut if you have sex before marriage. 

However, the practice of prostitution, infidelity, affairs and sexual harassment are there. I can say that it is very uncomfortable to be a woman. Added to that, most Indonesian man are pretty hypocrite when it comes to virginity. Many of them already have sex with other woman yet insist they want virgin woman, exclusively. While he himself is not exclusively for her.  

I grew up committed to stay virgin until marriage. There's a time where I am proud of my virginity. And there's a time that I found myself embarrassed to admit it. Especially during my college years in Australia. There were too many times, I was in the situation where I consider to have sex with my dates. But I always have to find a way to get over that thought.

There came a time where I started to think about my virginity. It was when my ex-boyfriend, who want to keep me virgin until he marry me has his way to cheat and impregnate another woman. Life goes on and I manage to move on. 

I finally met my now boyfriend that I deeply in love with. He is very warm, has a kind heart and we share the same weird humor. We've been in relationship for almost 2 years. We do intercourse but not penetration. I don't mind doing my first time with him, but we decided to wait. 

Somehow, later I found out my boyfriend cheat on me to satisfy his sexual need with other woman. The distance (I live in other town) and also the virginity make me unable to satisfy his sexual needs.  I am so devastated, deeply hurt and feel dead inside. Never will I let my commitment with my virginity ruin my relationship again. 

Moving on, I tried to understand and forgive him. I tried hard to pick up pieces of my broken heart and stay in the relationship as I love him so much. Then I realize that my virginity may cost me my relationship and that it means nothing to me anymore. Therefore, I am 31 years old and lost my virginity six days ago to my boyfriend. Yes, my boyfriend but not my husband. 

My experience of losing my virginity is unpleasant. I lost my virginity in the same day my boyfriend confessed that he slept with other woman. We decided to do it when I was in grieving of his infidelity. There was no romantic setting. There was no glow of cherry popping. All I feel is hurt both in my heart and my vagina when he enter me.

Then things getting worst when I don't bleed in my first time even though it hurts like hell, which left us both confused. And then he starts to look at me with that look of ‘are you lying to me about your virginity’. It hits me so hard.

I just get off from the bed as soon as he finished. I wash my face and grab my clothes and then I decided to walk outside to catch the fresh air before I got suffocate by the bitterness of everything that happened that day. I came back an hour later and run to his arms for shelter.

Still confused, I asked my friends and they said that it is normal not to bleed at the first time considering I'm active in sports and that I'm very clumsy and there were many times I have injured myself. 

After all this, I feel happy now. I don’t regret losing my virginity before marriage. And I don’t regret just doing it now and not long ago. I think there's no such right time when you should lose your virginity. There's no right time to say when you are really ready or not. Sometimes it is very spontaneous and out of plan. 

 

I am happy now that sex also makes my relationship better, we are now more emotionally attached to each other.’

One step closer...

Fareeda* requested that this post be taken down.

*All names changed before publication.

Culture Club...

When I began this project way back when, my original mission was to cover off as many different ‘types’ of stories as I possibly could. I wanted to interview old people, young people, gay people, straight people, black people, white people, people from as many different cultural or religious backgrounds as I could and as many different ‘situations’ as I could. I wanted to interview people with disabilities for instance and in this regard I got lucky. One of my favourite interviews of all time was from the disabled man who told me pretty much the best virginity loss story I had ever heard. But culture, being what it is, has made it trickier to get the more diverse interviews that I want and to this end readers, I am posting a plea!

Lots of cultures consider the idea of talking about sex and virginity a repellent idea and I dig that.  Sexuality is alive and kicking in Islamic culture – the Koran talks widely about sexuality but that doesn’t mean that people are encouraged to talk openly to each other, let alone a stranger about their sexual lives. As it happens, I do have a story from a young Muslim woman about virginity loss but because this woman lost her virginity before marriage, I have never felt able to include this account without its more traditional counterpart – a story from a young person who waited for marriage – sitting by its side.

Quite apart from anything else, this is a story that I personally, would find far more interesting. There was nothing standing between me and the loss of my virginity. Whilst I would hardly say I was encouraged to lose it, I wasn’t exactly held back from it either. For me, finding out what is going on inside the mind of a young woman – or a man – who is living alongside the endemic temptations of modern society but knows that they will not have sexual intercourse until the day that they get married is a fascinating counterpoint to my own life and that of many of the people who write into me at this blog…..so my question to you is this: do you know anyone who would be prepared to be interviewed by me, not for my blog but for my book?

Anonymity would be a given. They can choose to tell me as much or as little as they feel comfortable with. I am more interested in what was going on in their heads than the gory details – although gory details are fine too! In the end, I am looking to interview people from interesting religious or cultural backgrounds who waited until they got married to lose their virginity. The younger and more contemporary the better but it’s not a deal breaker. You’d be contributing towards a unique snapshot of British society in the 21^st Century and I would love to have you on board, whoever you are. I can be contacted at [email protected]

Ok, so travels to foreign climes might be over but that doesn’t mean its all doom and gloom. August is a lovely month to be in London.  Nearly everyone goes away and those that are left are free to enjoy a city that on any average day of the week is busting a blood vessel to get every thing done on time. Traffic, deadlines, workflow, it all normally happens at breakneck speed - usually so that we can get to the weekend and ‘enjoy’ ourselves with an equal amount of fervour. Not so in August.

A languid air settles over the city. People walk slower, the roads are emptier. A journey by car that usually takes me an hour takes me twenty minutes. On a Saturday. This is unheard of. Queues are shorter; people are nicer to each other. And all of a sudden, all of the things that seem so important…..just don’t. I don’t mean that I stop paying attention to my personal hygiene or anything as drastic as that. Just that one realise’s that there is time to stop and smell the roses and that pleasure can be found in small things. Relaxing at the pool with the locals, sitting in the garden on a warm evening…..perhaps this is what people have been banging on about when they talk about ‘stay-cations’. That’s certainly what I tell myself as I realise that I have enough commitments to tie me to this city for another good while yet.

But I do have a response to my Muslim plea that I posted the other day. It’s not quite the story I was after but it’s a good start. I talked about my long and fruitless quest for the Muslim virginity loss story on this blog the other day. I have searched high and low for this story, considered asking complete strangers in the street, attended conferences and generally followed up every lead that I have ever been given with the enthusiasm of Sherlock Holmes, the Pink Panther and Magnum P.I combined. (although not wearing a monocle, a raincoat and tight shorts). But to no avail. It’s a tough call. These are not conversations that Muslims deem appropriate for public consumption.

Our story teller today, from Syria, makes some interesting points. I concur with these types of stories far more than people think. I do think that people don’t value their virginity half as much as they could. For most people that I know, it would never have occurred to them to wait longer than ten minutes to lose their virginity. Wait for someone who might have actually taken the time to make it a pleasant experience for them? Forget it. Our urge to ‘belong’ far outweighs our desire to wait for a potentially worthy experience. No one wants to be the odd one out so we doggedly follow the pack and avail ourselves of virginity at the earliest opportunity. But the alternative, as suggested below, also seems a bit drastic to me.

Waiting for marriage is a risky strategy. Sex and intimacy are too much of an integral part of any relationship to take a chance on. This is the glue that could hold you together through the rocky moments. One needs to know that it ‘works’ so to speak. And in the end, this story isn’t really about that anyway, it’s about the second-class citizen role that women continue to play in society. Our author tries to make sense of this: ‘By the way, im just mentioning girls but its not allowed to have sex in our religion for both sexes. But society pays more attention to what a girl should not do….’ Yes it does, and it has terrible consequences for some people.

Believe it or not, I genuinely did not mean to stray into this territory today. What I really want to know is this: why does society place more value on a woman’s virginity than a man’s? Our author puts the dilemma beautifully when she says this: ‘if they see a girl that is not a virgin then she’s not worthy enough for a guy to marry her.’

Why do you think it is that a woman’s virginity has always been regarded as something more precious, more sought after and therefore, more important than a man’s?

Gut reaction. Be as blatant and as honest as you like. I know what I think but I want to know what you think. I won't be publishing these, they are purely for my own use. Its part of the research for my book!

Please send your point of view/rant/ten cents worth to me here:

[email protected]

In advance of any replies, thank you, it is a HUGE help. And in the meanwhile, here is nineteen year old Zaima from Syria with her very interesting ten cents worth…

‘HELLO kate I just read ur article about the VIRGINITY PROJECT, i was reading random stuff on the net and i came across ur article so as a muslim girl i wanted you to hear my opinion and my side of the story.

Im not strict about religious issues but i believe in certain issues God has asked us to do and i know that there’s a genuine reason behind every one of those issues. One of them is staying a virgin, clean, pure, and untouched. Here in the Syrian society there is a very large amount of people who are very strict concerning religious issues and if they see a girl that is not a virgin then she’s not worthy enough for a guy to marry her.

It’s like a gift a girl has to keep till her wedding day. By the way, im just mentioning girls but its not allowed to have sex in our religion for both sexes. But society pays more attention to what a girl should not do and if she is following what religion and society accepts. As for me, i have been around the world and i know that it’s very normal for a girl to loose her virginity at a very early age.

Im gonna express the way i really feel about this issue. i think bonding with the person who you have feelings for is really important – kissing, hugging and all these physical things, u cant really be close to some one without them. But sex is something forbidden for us. Some muslims may have had sex but not as u said at the beginning of ur article. Its not true that they all do but the only difference is that they don’t talk about it ....(the author mistook my meaning at this point. I was referencing the point that Muslims have sex lives, but that they don’t discuss them openly in the way that we do) because if a guy marries a young lady and on their wedding night he finds out that she is not a virgin then many actions will be taken if he is able to forgive her then that’s fine but if his parents or family hear about that then her picture and reputation will be long damaged and destroyed.

I know u may think that this is unfair and that she should decide her own destiny and what she wants to do with her body….if this is what ur thinking then i agree with u cuz i think every human being has the right to decide what to do with their own body but i wanna tell u something - don’t u think that there’s a reason in some religions they don’t allow people to have sex before marriage because it keeps u both excited about exploring each others bodies, it keeps a certain passion for each other like really strong passion u just wana be close to this person in a physical way but after u are sure that he is emotionally right for you.

i think having sex in an early age is really wrong not only for these religious reasons because everyone has their own beliefs but also for the risk of these diseases that we keep hearing about that are caused due to sexual intercourse. Another reason is that if a girl is immature and doesn’t have protected sex it may lead her to be pregnant, maybe dropping out of school that is really bad in my opinion and in the US its all u hear.... shes missing school because she’s sick or pregnant... by the way im 19 years old and i have had relationships but i am a virgin and i plan on keeping it this way... i was just trying to show u another side of the story here’.

*All names are changed. (even if I don’t always say so!).

Faith, hope and chastity?

I don’t know if I said this before but I have searched high and low for the Muslim story. Not just any old story but the Muslim virginity loss story. It’s a tall order and I’ll tell you why. Muslims probably have just as much sex as anyone else but there’s a big difference: they don’t talk about it. (Asides from this lady – very interesting article from last weekend’s Observer).

I’m down with that. Not everybody wants to talk about their private lives and when it is ingrained into the very fibre of your being not to do so, who am I to insist that you do?

However, for two reasons, I continue to search for this story. One. I am nosy and two. It has always been my intention to represent everybody. This was always supposed to be a book/blog about everyone…not just a bunch of people who are the same as me. We all have different backgrounds, cultural, religious or otherwise. I want to see this reflected in the stories.

At the beginning, I used to stand at the counter in my local post office and fight the urge to blurt out to the helpful head-scarved ladies ‘Would you consider telling me your virginity loss story. Assuming you have done it. And I promise that I will preserve your anonymity and not tell anyone who you are’. Whichever way you look at it, this was obviously a really bad idea. You will be glad to know that I managed to fight the feeling.

I also joined the City Circle, a group for young, professional Muslims in London and spent several happy years attending a number of fascinating talks and events. I had many interesting conversations and made some lovely friends including the very fabulous Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, author of groundbreaking tome ‘Love in a Headscarf’. But I still didn’t get the story I wanted. Generally speaking, when I broached the subject of virginity loss at the City Circle, I found that people would start to back away from me. Albeit in a very friendly manner.

And then I did get the interview that I wanted. Or at least the interview that I thought I wanted. After much covert emailing, texting, snow covered mornings waiting for my contact in the Elephant and Castle only to be blown out, re-scheduled and then finally, finally the moment came as me and the young woman I’d waited so long to meet sat down in a friend’s flat and she told me the story that I’d wanted to hear. But my bubble was soon burst. I realised that I couldn’t publish it.

Afsana (not her real name), was twenty-one years old. She was due to get married but her virginity was long gone. I don’t stand in judgement. I simply don’t want to misrepresent a healthy slice of this country’s population. We often assume in our secular society that holding onto virginity must be a real fag for Muslims. And maybe it is but if one has faith, in the literal sense, then perhaps there is a purpose, a rock solid reason to hold onto virginity.

It is all too easy for us to judge a woman – or a man’s - life lacking somewhat if he or she cannot have sex before marriage. I personally would not like to marry someone I have never had sex with but I cannot make the assumption that is the right decision for everyone. In the same manner that I cannot assume that arranged marriage is a travesty for anyone who has found a life partner in this manner. There is no doubt that this cultural practice, as any other, is open to malpractice and abuse but I also cannot condemn it just because it is outside of my own personal experience. And so it is that I will never publish the Muslim story that I have until I have the other side of the story to balance it out. The woman – or man – who decided to wait for marriage.

Besides anything else, it wouldn’t be that interesting to publish Afsana’s story. Western culture knows more than enough about pre marital virginity loss because we are not encouraged to keep it. Once again, no judgement, its just the way things are. It would be far more interesting to hear about young men and women who are similar to us in so many ways except in one exceptional one– they will have no idea what its like to have sexual intercourse until their wedding day.

In today’s society, this is an anomaly. Taking into account the amount of sex that surrounds us, on the television, in magazines, on the internet, whichever way you care to look, it is an astonishing feat of control, faith and optimism that two people who love each other could manage to hold onto themselves so to speak, until ‘the right time’ comes. Now that is a story.

I live in hope. If anyone would like to share this story with me, either by writing it or telling it to me yourself, I am all ears. Anonymity, as with everyone else on this site, is guaranteed. I shan’t hold my breath but if anyone wants to take a leap of faith of quite a different kind, if anyone one wants to help me balance out this rather uneven version of events, please be my guest. Write, call, send a carrier pigeon or alternatively email me on [email protected]. Salaams to you all.