What do you think of Virginity?

[StonyArabia]

I do believe that Virginity is rather a moral code and positive one that does society good. This why it's almost a universal theme in society as well in most religions. Virginity ensures a healthy and stable relationship that is meant for procreation. The opposite has proved to be destructive to one's healthy,does not lead to procreation and if it does often to deadbeat fathers, single mom's and so forth. It seems that a large reason why marriages don't work out, because since the special and scared element of Virginity was taken out. Now it seems that if a person tells he/she is a virgin they often become a mockery and seen that there is something wrong. I do think that Virginity should be encouraged and seen as scared and it meant that you are not a person who follows trend but someone who actually respects him or herself.

So what is your opinion on Virginity?

[Joe McCarthy]

I don't think anyone can seriously claim that sexual permissiveness is good for society.

[Hurrem sultana]

no sex before marriage

[Lábaru]

Nonsense, sex should be free.

[Queen B]

So what is your opinion on Virginity?

Overrated.

[Jerry]

I do believe that Virginity is rather a moral code and positive one that does society good. This why it's almost a universal theme in society as well in most religions. Virginity ensures a healthy and stable relationship that is meant for procreation. The opposite has proved to be destructive to one's healthy,does not lead to procreation and if it does often to deadbeat fathers, single mom's and so forth. It seems that a large reason why marriages don't work out, because since the special and scared element of Virginity was taken out. Now it seems that if a person tells he/she is a virgin they often become a mockery and seen that there is something wrong. I do think that Virginity should be encouraged and seen as scared and it meant that you are not a person who follows trend but someone who actually respects him or herself.

So what is your opinion on Virginity?

I can surely appreciate people's right to choose what they do with their body and how they want to live their life. But this divine notion and one truth of virginity as you put it (i assume adult virginity until maraaige), is also used all over the world to oppress young people - make sexuality appear somehow bad when it's perfectly natural - and it leads to ridiculous phenomena like muslim women doing surgery to put the hymen back when getting married and not virgin.

So I would be careful in your shoes to demonize people for having (protected) sex and not taking the same life choice as you. i believe in a free world and in that world you can freely and happily make your choice where as you believe in a world of black and white. You preaching in the other thread ridiculously about all the people having casual sex dying young in HIV and some kind of natural selection favoring your choice which is the only right one is disgusting; also fyi HIV is a nation-specific socio-economic problem related to poverty and third world development a lot more than promiscuity.

[Bardamu]

Compared to slutishness, virginity is a fine thing. Compared to motherhood, virginity is not so fine.. Motherhood is to virginity what virginity is to slutishness. Not that there are not grades of behavior between virginity and slutishness, as there obviously are. Virginity in a young unmarried heterosexual adult female demonstrates an admirable ability to exercise restraint.

[Occident]

Virginity isnt comming back. It was such a big thing historically because it was the only way to gurentee sexual health and that a woman will be producing your children and your children alone.

Three things have eroded this aspect of our culture. Contraception and sexual health care are the two big ones. Virginity is no longer percieved as neccesary to avoid the long term consequences of sex. What is really sad about this is the general ambivelance to sexual behaviour as a result, as people now believe they can easily avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The rates of abortion and infertility resulting from infection with STDs show how wrong and overly relaxed in attitudes many people have become over the course of the last 40 years.

The second two things tend to recieve less attention in the understanding of this issue. Property, and the successive control of such through generations, is no longer a major factor of consideration for most people. Passing on property in a society without genetic identification requires that you can gurentee a child is your own, and thus a high value is placed on female virginity.

Thirdly, before before modern contraception the nearest thing to a contraception available to a man was a prostitute. This practice was considered socially acceptable as it exploited a limited class of women, reducing the chance that men would feel the need to chase after women of virtue (who needed to be kept virginal for reasons stated above). Its not with any sorrow that I note this practice has lost its social acceptability, though it pains me to ackowledge that we have replaced with the attitude that is perfectly fine for young men to treat women like filth, as long as they dont pay for it in a direct way.

So what should we do? You cant always turn back the clock, nor do we neccesarily need to do so here. Afterall, we do have contraception and sexual health care, its just not as sure a protection as people assume. We need to reemphasise the two most important aspects of sex; bonding between two individuals who form 'one flesh', and present themselves to the world as a unit, a coupling that is mututally supportive; sex in a relationship. Second, sex is how we create children, and children are valuable things worth having (a controversial point I admit), and that sexual permissiveness puts your fertility on the line; only a society that values children will value sex.

[Sally]

My opinion? I think celibacy and virginity are vocations to the priesthood and the religious life. The other vocation that exists is the vocation to marriage. When marriage is not esteemed, I think celibacy and virginity are devalued, too.

I say this respectfully, but I think IdealUral is fetishsizing virginity to some degree. Being a virgin isn't necessarily virtuous in and of itself. However, chastity, which is not always synonymous with virginity, has been long regarded as a virtue, and it excludes or moderates the indulgence of the sexual appetite.

IdealUral wrote:

Virginity ensures a healthy and stable relationship that is meant for procreation.

Simply being a virgin on your wedding day is no guarantee of a healthy, stable relationship. Procreation does not always occur, either, though I believe marriage and the conjugal act are ordered toward procreation and the unity of the spouses.

It seems that a large reason why marriages don't work out, because since the special and scared element of Virginity was taken out.

Marriages can "fail" for a variety of reasons, and I don't think the sacred element of virginity has much to to with it. However, on one hand, sex is trivialized in society and yet on the other is upheld as the end-all of human existence. I don't think either extreme is very healthy, and I can see that both attitudes could potentially have a detrimental effect on marriage.

Jerry wrote:

But this divine notion and one truth of virginity as you put it (i assume adult virginity until maraaige), is also used all over the world to oppress young people - make sexuality appear somehow bad when it's perfectly natural -

I don't see how the concept of reserving sexual activity for marriage is oppressive in all cases, but some cultures and sects take the enforcement of it way too far. Sexuality, at least in the Catholic tradition, is not seen as bad or dirty simply because marriage is seen as the only acceptable forum for expressing it. Sex has a very deep significance, and it is regarded as a gift from God.

i believe in a free world and in that world you can freely and happily make your choice where as you believe in a world of black and white.

I agree. A person's free will must always be respected, but what the secular world considers freedom is sometimes just self-centred slavery, in my opinion.

[Phil75231]

To me, whether you have sex outside marriage or not is your own business (and your partners, if in a relationship). You have the right to enjoy your own decision in peace without lots of judgmentalism. Seems like over the past several decades we went from free choice to pressure to have all the sex you can lest you be judged a prude, loser, etc. I don't think this in the proper spirit of Sexual Revolution, and therefore find society very much judgmental in that regard - only in the opposite direction from 50 years ago.