The Christian, Liberal, and Feminist Tendency to Intellectualize Away the Meaningfulness of Female Virginity; Also: Are Engagement Rings Sexist? Liberal Vs Conservatives Sound Off
✮ From the liberal corner:
(Link): Engagement rings are barbaric
✮ The conservative reaction:
(Link): Engagement rings are barbaric because men are awful or something
✮ My reaction:
This is another time the secular, left wing feminists are off their rockers (I sometimes agree with them, usually do not and this is one of those times, no, I don’t agree). I see no harm or inherent sexism in a freaking engagement ring.
Here are excerpts from the Salon page, with commentary about it, by me, below it:
(Link): Engagement rings are barbaric
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- Sparkly rocks remind us of an age when women were considered a form of chattel
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- by SHANNON RUPP, THE TYEE
Unsavoury custom
… The engagement ring is not, as diamond advertisers of the last 80 years or so have insisted, a symbol of love: it’s a sort of down payment on a virgin vagina.
I’ve always thought giving engagement rings was a slightly unsavoury custom, given that it began in an era when women were chattel, more or less. It’s hardly romantic. The rings remind me of a time when women couldn’t own property because they were property. Well, except for widows. There’s a reason that Merry Widow of opera fame was so merry.
As Scott Fitzgerald noticed in the 1920s, the rich are different from you and me, and the custom of laying down an engagement ring was something rich people did in an era when marriage was recognized for what it really is: a business contract. It was done to secure property (and political alliances among royalty and the aristocracy) and to ensure there would be an heir and a spare to inherit it all.
That’s why female virginity was such a big deal. It had financial value because it was connected to property. Pre-DNA testing, no one could be sure who the father was unless the bride was irreproachably chaste. And no one wants to see property going to bastards. Post-delivery of the requisite sons, everyone was free to go about discreet amusements, and the country weekend at the manor house came into vogue.
… Then, engagement rings functioned as a sort of retainer — a lease-a-womb scheme, if you will. The unspoken part of the deal was that an engagement often allowed for a sampling of the goods.
… Frances Gerety (who incidentally was a spinster) cleverly connected romantic love to diamond engagement rings, forever. She obscured their creepy origins as down payments on chattel, and diamond purveyors are still profiting from her sharp thinking.
…That’s not a coincidence, and it’s not just the wedding industry ramping up. Apparently about half of couples were having premarital sex in the 1940s, and researchers believe that women were looking for some sign of commitment from a man before doing the wild thing. In an era of unreliable birth control, a ring was still seen as a down payment and a sort of insurance policy in the event the man bolted and left her holding the baby.
— end excerpts —
Since when is a woman having a “virgin vagina” or entering into marriage with one, an “unsavory custom?”
Is this another sign that secularists, left wingers, and others, are biased against adult virgins, or biased against the idea of a woman choosing to remain a virgin until marriage? Because it kind of sounds like it.
As to this:
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- That’s why female virginity was such a big deal. It had financial value because it was connected to property. (etc)
- — end excerpts —
This is another dismissal of virginity, another tactic I have seen used not just by secularists and left wingers, but one I’ve seen used a time or two on Christian, or ex-Christian sites, especially by women who are red hot infuriated over “modesty” and “purity” teachings.
Women who are opposed to virginity try to argue that the only reason any woman at any time in history has remained a virgin until marriage is due to patriarchal concerns about tracing the family tree, and at that, with monetary inheritance concerns.
That is, in many cultures, who gets handed down property, money, and what have you, was traced down through the family tree, and in the days before DNA testing, the only way a man could be sure his children were his own biological off spring was if his wife was faithful to him and a virgin upon marriage.
I read on a blog by an ex-Christian woman who was ranting against anyone staying a virgin until marriage (and I critiqued her blog page here on my blog months ago) that she was convinced that the only reason the Old Testament patriarchs were staunch advocates of virginity until marriage was over property passages concerns.
I mean, really, lady? You think the patriarchs and people, especially Christians, through-out history have had no other compelling reasons for holding off on sex until marriage, it was only about money and property? What a short-sighted perspective.
This woman blogger says she learned this information, if I remember correctly, in a women’s studies course in college. These sorts of classes are nothing more than secular liberal, feminist, agenda-pushing extravaganzas.
Why any woman would blindly accept everything in such college courses is beyond me.
Colleges, even when I was a student, were, and remain, indoctrination centers favoring liberal views, not centers for higher learning and proponents of critical thinking.
Whether or not the passing down of wealth in centuries past was a factor in why some placed importance on female virginity is still beside the point for people who choose of their own free will to remain virgins until marriage, due to moral reasons.
Feminists often bray about how they respect other people’s choices in the sexual arena, but they most certainly do not respect the choice of women like me who wanted to remain virgins until marriage.
I made a choice to remain a virgin until marriage of my own free will.
Yes, I was influenced by some Christian preaching on the subject I heard growing up, but I also arrived at the conclusion from various reasons all on my own.
Those reasons were, including, but not limited to: reading the Bible first hand and seeing what it said contains God’s views of sexual behavior; reading numerous reports about sexually transmitted diseases as I was growing up; that I considered one’s sexuality as a very private thing that should not be shared with just anyone.
As I said, that is only a partial list behind my choices, not an exhaustive list. The majority of secular feminists, left wingers, and various types of Christians (the leftist ones) have no respect for such reasons.
Feminists worship sex, cannot imagine life without having sex, and are therefore often times no better than the sexist “MRA” (men’s rights groups) or “PUA” (pick up artist) pukes who they rail against on their feminist blogs.
Both groups – the sexist male pigs of MRA/PUA groups, garden variety sexist male creeps who only care about getting laid, and secular feminists and liberal, ex-Christians – think every one should be having sex.
These groups only differ with each other on the details, such as who (ie, homosexuality should be deemed permissible by all, teens should be able to have sex, etc), how, and where people should have sex, and who should pay for any related expenses (e.g., birth control).
Even, sad to say, a lot of right wingers and conservative Christians think every one should be having sex, and there again, they only differ with the sexist males, MRAs, and liberal feminists on the details, such as when, how, and where people should have sex.
Voluntarily abstaining from sex, and at that, due to personal conviction*, is not considered an option by any of these groups (with perhaps the small exception of some religious groups who still advocate that singles should stay virgins until they are at least 25 years old – after that age, though, even these guys assume all singles start having pre-marital sex).
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*A brief word about convictions:
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- Personal conviction, in regards to sex, without self control, self discipline, and will power means nothing, no matter how strongly held your conviction is.
You can be personally and deeply convicted all day long that pre-marital sex is immoral, but if you lack self control, will power, and self discipline to not engage in said behavior, you will cave in and commit fornication. Personal conviction alone does didley squat when it comes to sexual sin.)
Do these secular feminists ever ask themselves why women such as me, living in a society with much less sexism than cultures of the past, are choosing to stay virgins until marriage?
There are DNA tests and kits now to prove paternity, yet some men and women are still choosing to remain virgins until marriage. How do these anti-virginity feminists explain that?
I’m over 40 and still sexually abstaining.
What I mean to drive at, is that even most all articles and editorials I read by secular feminists ASSUME that all un-married women are having sex. They just assume.
Liberals and secular feminists rarely acknowledge, or seem to realize, that there are men and women over the age of 30 who are still virgins because they choose to be virgins.
When the existence of mature virgins is discussed by secular feminists or liberals on those rare occasions, we’re often mocked for our choice. There is no respect for the choice.
Not having sex at all is another sexual choice of many. It’s one that’s never considered.
It’s assumed (by liberals and secular feminists) that everyone is having sex, and that because, supposedly, everyone is having sex, including single women, that such women should not be “slut shamed” for it; and that single women should have access to legal abortion; and that the U.S. tax payer should pay for their birth control; and that companies such as Hobby Lobby (despite funding sixteen forms of birth control) should be lambasted for not wanting to fund abortifacients for employees.
If women are not having sexual intercourse, they have no need for abortion, abortifacients, and most often, little need for birth control (which is not to say there are no non-sexual reasons for birth control, because there are).
If women refrain from having sex prior to marriage, they need not fear “slut shaming” and many other things feminists complain about.
Notice all their advocacy – for cheap birth control, or abortion on demand, etc – all assume all women are having sex.
Most feminist editorials I see, or blogs, have many entries and editorials about how and why the government should subsidize birth control, why they feel abortion should be legal, and why women should not be slut shamed.
Other than one pro-virginity editorial by a young woman that was published, and I believe that was on secular site “Jezebel” with the title, “Why I should not have to defend being a virgin,” I have never seen these sites mention, argue for, or educate anyone about adults who willingly stay virgins. It’s not even on their maps.
All destinations, from getting birth control, to should women perform blow jobs on a man on a first date, should transgender women (biological men who wear skirts) be permitted into a woman’s public bathroom, and all sexual behavior, sexual sin, deviance, and perversion in-between, will get all sorts of attention from secularists, feminists, and ex-Christians… but nothing on virginity or celibacy (unless it’s ridicule).
Secular feminists are limiting women by telling them that being a virgin until marriage is a sexist, patriarchy-created lifestyle or invention, and at that, only to protect property inheritance.
No, it’s not. It’s another perfectly acceptable sexual choice a woman can make for herself, and it’s another choice for her in how she wants to use her body.
Feminists, though, do not want celibacy or virginity being presented as equally acceptable sexual choices.
Related posts:
(Link): Atheist Video About Being a Virgin of Sexually Abstinent – My Critique of the Atheist’s Critique
(Link): Hypocrisy From The ‘No Slut Shaming’ Crowd by C. Nance
(Link): An Open Letter to Male Virgins by Anna Broadway
(Link): The Christian and Non Christian Phenomenon of Virgin Shaming and Celibate Shaming
(Link): Virgin Shaming: Hollywood’s Attack on Purity (by B. Bowen)
(Link): The Rise of the Man-gagement Ring
(Link): Why Politicians Only Care About Your Wedding Ring
(Link): New TV Show from MTV – “Virgin Territory” – about people who are not having sex
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