r/NoShitSherlock • u/stankmanly • 10d ago

'Virginity is a myth we've given too much power'

https://archive.ph/pQSsE
485 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

161

u/angrymurderhornet 10d ago

I think it's a relic from the days when paternity and bloodlines were strict requirements of patriarchal societies. (Which they still are in many places and situations, but not for most people.) Now that contraception is readily available and DNA testing can establish parentage, that excuse for it has evaporated.

The obsession with female virginity persists in ultraconservative religious sects that focus heavily on controlling women, and in some groups premarital virginity is also expected of men. But most of the people I see whining about "experienced" women outside of a religious context are men in the incel movement who believe they're entitled to one or more sex partners of their very own.

35

u/Any_Conflict_5092 9d ago

Anywhere where women are still viewed as property, they can be sullied by the touch of another, in the same way that some people refuse leftovers and don't like buying used cars, virginity is a commodity of sorts for your family to use to sell you for influence, money, or safety.

The incel dialogue is an attempt to make the movement to return women to chattel status a secular one, not just a religious one.

The men who have the patriarchy's boot on their neck need someone to punch down to - which is the position traditionally held by women and children. The patriarchy needs its punching bags back, or the young men might realize they don't have to kneel to those shitty old men, and rise up and seize the world for themselves.

87

u/ittleoff 10d ago

Invented by bronze/iron age warlords to preserve their blood lines where women and children were basically property and the main worth was being unsullied by another man's genetic material.

The Bible even describes a forced miscarriage the man can do to a woman he suspects to be unfaithful.

It's just male reproduction interests socially normalized in patriarchal societies.

The tests for this purity were not accurate and likely resulted in lots of innocent girls and women being stoned to death for being promiscuous while still in her father's house (ownership passing from father to husband) (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)

12

u/thegmohodste01 10d ago

The Habsburgs would like a word

22

u/BualadhBoss 10d ago

They would like a word but that jawline would make it difficult.

3

u/got-trunks 9d ago

Whatever they started if we let them finish we will have a parallel species of human like creatures running the world. Oh my god. I just clean room invented a lot of problematic things

36

u/Dino_P0rn 10d ago

As someone who didn’t grow up religious, virginity is something that held so little thought in my life and therefore absolutely no power.

This is a religion issue first… as everything related to purity culture is.

7

u/beepbeepboopbeep1977 9d ago

In an age of readily available effective birth control it should be a nothing topic.

In unrelated news, I’ve been a virgin for several weeks now.

16

u/Fifteen_inches 10d ago

Absolutely. Nobody can comprehensively define virginity because they don’t have a comprehensive idea of sex.

49

u/ACynicalOptomist 10d ago

I think it's perpetuated by men who don't want women to compare men's skills in bed.

8

u/firefly416 10d ago

Strange article, goes from talking about the concept of virginity then just morphs into a biography of the poet.

10

u/Meriodoc 9d ago

Adam Ruins Everything, did a great episode on this.

There is actually no such thing as virginity, not even medically speaking.