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Mar. 5th, 2008 08:24 pmhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23254178/
Here's the headline:
Born-again virgins claim to rewrite the past
Through spiritual or surgical routes, women give their first time a do-over
Victoria Watts, a 23-year-old single mother of two small children who lives in Canton, Ohio, lost her virginity at 16 with her high school boyfriend.
She was the granddaughter of a Pentecostalist pastor and the daughter of an assistant pastor, and she believed sex outside marriage was wrong. “I felt really bad from a religious standpoint,” she recalls of the experience. “My thoughts were really clouded because I was so emotionally bonded with my boyfriend. That overshadowed my religious world.”
Though the relationship lasted for seven years and produced two beautiful children, a part of Watts always felt guilty. She wished she could step back in time and recapture her lost virginity. Thinking of how “I could have ruined one of greatest fulfillments of my life,” the first time having sex with a husband, she wanted to “have that opportunity again. I know my [future] husband deserves a whole person.”
So Watts engaged in a lot of prayer and thought, and now declares herself a virgin once again. “The most important thing was to realize what my values were and what I want in the future and the bigger goals in my life," she says. "That’s why I can call myself a renewed virgin.”
I have nothing wrong with a woman (and I am going to talk about women because this is what this article focuses on) who has been sexually active deciding, for whatever reason, that she no longer wants to be sexually active. I just don't get why one has to invoke the v-word. I mean, obviously men are going to know she has had sex - she has children. Shouldn't what she wants include a man who believes she is worth caring about, sexual status aside? I mean, she's not losing all her sexual knowledge, so it won't really be like a first time. You know, with the usual awkwardness? What kind of gift is that?
Across the country, "revirginization" appears to be gaining steam. Spiritual efforts to reclaim virginity emerged back in the early 1990s and now, prompted by abstinence-only school courses taught to thousands of girls nationwide, and by religious teachers, there are reports of more and more young women like Watts attempting a sexual do-over.
Again, nothing wrong with becoming sexually active, and then deciding not to be. I'm not going to buy that you're a virgin. You have had sex. Your virginity is over. (I DO NOT apply this idea to women who did not choose to become sexually active, such as rape victims.)
"Have you already unwrapped the priceless gift of virginity and given it away?" asks the Web site for the Pregnancy Resource Center of Northeast Ohio, where Watts began working part-time after she reclaimed her virginity. "Do you now feel like 'second-hand goods' and no longer worthy to be cherished? Do you ever wish you could re-wrap it and give it only to your future husband or wife? Guess what...? You can decide today to commit to abstinence, wrapping a brand-new gift of virginity to present to your husband or wife on your wedding night."
I have a problem with this idea. A woman should not be made to feel like "second-hand goods" because she has had sex. And yes, this is a concept applied to women far more than to men. Women who have a lot of sex are sluts, men who have a lot of sex score.
“The first time we are aware of that muddling, the first explicit mention or discussion of what people called ‘technical virginity’ that I have found is in 1920s,” she says. “It referred to people who were doing ‘everything but sex,’ and what was defined as losing your virginity for most people was having vaginal intercourse.”
Technical virginity is another thing that annoys me. Sex is more than vaginal penetration with an erect penis. If you're performing/recieving oral sex, you are having sex. If you're having anal sex, you are having sex. Fooling around, to me, is exactly that - fooling around.
Many of Dr. Red Alinsod’s patients are not looking for a new state of mind, they want a new hymen. They come to his clinic in Laguna Beach, Calif., and pay $5,000 because their honor, and sometimes their lives, depend on it.
This idea, while the necessity of it disgusts me, is one that I can understand.
Alinsod’s typical patient may have been born and raised in the United States, but with significant family in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, the Middle East. Without evidence a new bride is a virgin, she risks being rejected, or, worse, the victim of an “honor killing.”
one patient gave her virginity to her husband in the Asian country in which they lived and then came to the United States to study medicine, staying for several years. Though she remained faithful to her husband, when it came time for her to return to her country, she felt as if their lives were about to begin again. She wished she could be revirginized, too.
This is just nuts to me.
Once in awhile, Baker says, she’ll get a patient who just wants to give a present to her husband. “One patient of mine gave it to her husband as an anniversary gift," says Baker. "She was not a virgin when they got married so we re-attached her hymen to reproduce that experience.”
I think this is actually more nuts. A hymen for an anniversary gift? What the hell?
When Carpenter did a study about what she called “secondary virginity,” she found wide disagreement not only about the plausibility of secondary virginity, but also about whether “virginity loss should be understood as a physiological or an emotional-experiential phenomenon.” Interestingly, of the 61 women and men interviewed, “three-fourths of men adamantly declared secondary virginity to be impossible, compared to about one-fourth of women,” though men sometimes declare that they are born-again virgins, too.
While we may not agree on what virginity means, or even how we lost it and if we can get it back, it does have meaning, Carpenter insists. “If virginity did not mean anything, we would not have movies like 'American Pie.' It does matter. The content or the definitions may change, but the need or desire to mark the transition to being a sexual adult persists.”
I agree that it is both physical and mental. It means something to lose it, but it does not and should not mean everything. It should not mean a diminishment of a person because they are "missing" something.
And we do have at least some baseline definition of sex. “We are not so flexible that we say masturbation or sex toys count,” Carpenter says. Her research has found that almost everybody agrees that sex involves genitals and another person.
Someone making sense here.
There is actually one thing I would count as a secondary virginity - and that would be if a person who has previously had relations with the opposite sex starts having sex with a person of the same sex.
DV
Here's the headline:
Born-again virgins claim to rewrite the past
Through spiritual or surgical routes, women give their first time a do-over
Victoria Watts, a 23-year-old single mother of two small children who lives in Canton, Ohio, lost her virginity at 16 with her high school boyfriend.
She was the granddaughter of a Pentecostalist pastor and the daughter of an assistant pastor, and she believed sex outside marriage was wrong. “I felt really bad from a religious standpoint,” she recalls of the experience. “My thoughts were really clouded because I was so emotionally bonded with my boyfriend. That overshadowed my religious world.”
Though the relationship lasted for seven years and produced two beautiful children, a part of Watts always felt guilty. She wished she could step back in time and recapture her lost virginity. Thinking of how “I could have ruined one of greatest fulfillments of my life,” the first time having sex with a husband, she wanted to “have that opportunity again. I know my [future] husband deserves a whole person.”
So Watts engaged in a lot of prayer and thought, and now declares herself a virgin once again. “The most important thing was to realize what my values were and what I want in the future and the bigger goals in my life," she says. "That’s why I can call myself a renewed virgin.”
I have nothing wrong with a woman (and I am going to talk about women because this is what this article focuses on) who has been sexually active deciding, for whatever reason, that she no longer wants to be sexually active. I just don't get why one has to invoke the v-word. I mean, obviously men are going to know she has had sex - she has children. Shouldn't what she wants include a man who believes she is worth caring about, sexual status aside? I mean, she's not losing all her sexual knowledge, so it won't really be like a first time. You know, with the usual awkwardness? What kind of gift is that?
Across the country, "revirginization" appears to be gaining steam. Spiritual efforts to reclaim virginity emerged back in the early 1990s and now, prompted by abstinence-only school courses taught to thousands of girls nationwide, and by religious teachers, there are reports of more and more young women like Watts attempting a sexual do-over.
Again, nothing wrong with becoming sexually active, and then deciding not to be. I'm not going to buy that you're a virgin. You have had sex. Your virginity is over. (I DO NOT apply this idea to women who did not choose to become sexually active, such as rape victims.)
"Have you already unwrapped the priceless gift of virginity and given it away?" asks the Web site for the Pregnancy Resource Center of Northeast Ohio, where Watts began working part-time after she reclaimed her virginity. "Do you now feel like 'second-hand goods' and no longer worthy to be cherished? Do you ever wish you could re-wrap it and give it only to your future husband or wife? Guess what...? You can decide today to commit to abstinence, wrapping a brand-new gift of virginity to present to your husband or wife on your wedding night."
I have a problem with this idea. A woman should not be made to feel like "second-hand goods" because she has had sex. And yes, this is a concept applied to women far more than to men. Women who have a lot of sex are sluts, men who have a lot of sex score.
“The first time we are aware of that muddling, the first explicit mention or discussion of what people called ‘technical virginity’ that I have found is in 1920s,” she says. “It referred to people who were doing ‘everything but sex,’ and what was defined as losing your virginity for most people was having vaginal intercourse.”
Technical virginity is another thing that annoys me. Sex is more than vaginal penetration with an erect penis. If you're performing/recieving oral sex, you are having sex. If you're having anal sex, you are having sex. Fooling around, to me, is exactly that - fooling around.
Many of Dr. Red Alinsod’s patients are not looking for a new state of mind, they want a new hymen. They come to his clinic in Laguna Beach, Calif., and pay $5,000 because their honor, and sometimes their lives, depend on it.
This idea, while the necessity of it disgusts me, is one that I can understand.
Alinsod’s typical patient may have been born and raised in the United States, but with significant family in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, the Middle East. Without evidence a new bride is a virgin, she risks being rejected, or, worse, the victim of an “honor killing.”
one patient gave her virginity to her husband in the Asian country in which they lived and then came to the United States to study medicine, staying for several years. Though she remained faithful to her husband, when it came time for her to return to her country, she felt as if their lives were about to begin again. She wished she could be revirginized, too.
This is just nuts to me.
Once in awhile, Baker says, she’ll get a patient who just wants to give a present to her husband. “One patient of mine gave it to her husband as an anniversary gift," says Baker. "She was not a virgin when they got married so we re-attached her hymen to reproduce that experience.”
I think this is actually more nuts. A hymen for an anniversary gift? What the hell?
When Carpenter did a study about what she called “secondary virginity,” she found wide disagreement not only about the plausibility of secondary virginity, but also about whether “virginity loss should be understood as a physiological or an emotional-experiential phenomenon.” Interestingly, of the 61 women and men interviewed, “three-fourths of men adamantly declared secondary virginity to be impossible, compared to about one-fourth of women,” though men sometimes declare that they are born-again virgins, too.
While we may not agree on what virginity means, or even how we lost it and if we can get it back, it does have meaning, Carpenter insists. “If virginity did not mean anything, we would not have movies like 'American Pie.' It does matter. The content or the definitions may change, but the need or desire to mark the transition to being a sexual adult persists.”
I agree that it is both physical and mental. It means something to lose it, but it does not and should not mean everything. It should not mean a diminishment of a person because they are "missing" something.
And we do have at least some baseline definition of sex. “We are not so flexible that we say masturbation or sex toys count,” Carpenter says. Her research has found that almost everybody agrees that sex involves genitals and another person.
Someone making sense here.
There is actually one thing I would count as a secondary virginity - and that would be if a person who has previously had relations with the opposite sex starts having sex with a person of the same sex.
DV
