Lets talk about sex: Jesus has bigger worries...

Over the past several decades, the prevailing sentiment expressed by mothers trying to convince their daughters to abstain from sex has typically been:

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

Because I’m not livestock. You’re not “buying” me. Beyond the obvious, this statement gives the indication that I am to be “bought” exclusively for my milk, not because of any other redeeming attributes – my healthy coat, my uplifting moo, the adorable way I chew my cud.

[Awww]

The concept that a woman should wait and give the gift of her virginity to her husband is not romantic. It devalues women. It places everything that we are in our sexuality, and it leads stupid women to hijack skanky men into relationships they don’t really want by withholding sex. Personally, I never fully understood what woman would want to be with someone who is only with her so that he can ultimately get into her panties.

[I haz the buyer's remorse]

This concept is based in religious tradition. Bad religious tradition. I recently separated with the Catholic church over the issue of baby rape, but I still maintain belief in a higher power. I believe in God, but I cannot, as an informed woman, rectify my feminism, faith in science, love of gays, and, again, hatred of baby rape, with the teachings of my church. This is, naturally, also the case when it comes to my own sexuality.

The Church is all over the place when it comes to sex and my arguments against female sexual oppression are much the same as those against the oppression of homosexuals. When people come out against gays by saying that the Bible says that a man shouldn’t lay with another man, I always feel compelled to point out some of the other things it says. Let's look at Deuteronomy for example:

That we should break the neck of a cow at the scene of an unsolved murder (assuming, of course, it happens across city lines). [21:1- 21:6].

That raping a woman is okay if she is your captive and you think you may want to marry her. Of course, you don’t have to. If after the rape you change your mind, simply put the woman back in her cage or sell her (though she's worth less cause you banged her). [21:10-14].

That if a woman is raped in the city and doesn’t scream loudly enough for her neighbors to hear, she should be killed because clearly, she wanted it. [22:23-24].

If your parents weren’t married when you were born, then you are a bastard and you AND your children AND your children’s children (and so on through TEN generations) are not welcome in the church. [23:2].


See? Crazy. And that's just one book.

Interestingly enough, I have been hard pressed to find explicit statements in the Bible against pre-marital sex (Samson was bonin’ tons of bitches in the woods at one point). The only references I found were made in regards to a woman’s value. If you find out your new wife isn’t a virgin you can kill her or give her back to her father to kill (either way you keep the dowry). That’s not really the same thing. It’s more of a Lemon Law for misogynists.

[Don't damage it, dude, you'll only get store credit]

But don’t worry, religious right, I’ll keep reading. Even if I do find something, however, it is highly unlikely that it will change my feelings on the subject. You see, the Bible was written a very long time ago. And, while I will concede that some of the basic tenants are transcendent (those that are shared by all religious faiths, for example), a great deal of the text is abso-fucking-lutely crazy by modern standards.

Yet, for all of my anti-organized-religion proselytizing, I still cower in fear of an unknown deity and second-guess my life decisions as a result. Because, as with prevailing social mores, deeply ingrained religious teachings don't disappear overnight. The two people who mean most to me in the world - the ones who have never lied to me, who always sought to protect me, who brought me into this world and taught me how to navigate it - are the ones who took me to the church that instilled these beliefs in me. That is an incredibly powerful thing. Despite growing intellectualism and acknowledgement that so much of what I was taught is obviously wrong, there will always be an underlying sense of fear in me, a part of me that worries that I haven't ostracized enough single moms to get into a heaven that may or may not exist. It may not be enough to have kept me a virgin personally, but it does further that "golf score" mentality.

[Purgatory's not all bad. Apparently you get to play naked 7-Up ]

Thus, it's easy to see that someone who doesn't share my doubts and intellectual curiosities will easily take a hands-off approach to their bodies. The fact is that the vast majority of Americans identify strongly with a religious faith, with most following a judeo-christian or muslim model. Even if someone is is not personally religious, the fact cannot be ignored that these religious principles have, for better or worse, guided how our and many other societies developed (many would argue that's why they were created in the first place). So even if the girl you're after is not personally religious, the influence of western religion is the basis of nearly all of the social mores earlier discussed. Until we can all collectively separate the good aspects of spiritualism from the crazy stuff, the official word of God is going to be "c-block".