Thursday, May 7, 2009

WHO DECIDED VIRGINITY WAS IMPORTANT?

Virginity Fetish: How Our Obsession With "Sexual Purity" Hurts Women. The term sounds like a name for a young woman in a Victorian novel. It is, in fact, an article:
By Jessica Valenti, Seal Press. Posted May 4, 2009. Her main thesis is Boys are taught that the things that make them good are universally accepted ethical ideals; women are told our worth lies between our legs.

As a marital therapist, some of the greatest tragedies, years ago I saw all too often, were those marriages in which there had been no pre-marital sex and after the ceremony the couple discovered there was absolutely no sexual compatibility. Apparently the pheromones repelled rather than attracted. Those who chose to tough it out in long marriages felt something missing but also felt trapped. Some guiltily had affairs and found out what was missing, others did not ever learn what might have been. Others, like a hit of the lottery, lucked out and had a long and passionate union.

Before all the hormones were introduced into our food supply causing girls to become fertile much earlier, as well as marrying in their mid-teens, young people didn't have the opportunities they have today for the privacy and opportunity to succumb to their instinctive drive to engage in sexual relationships and procreate. Those who assume abstinence will be practiced by all young men and women are ignoring Nature and history's statistics.

As the standard that has been double for so long is slowly superimposing closer to a single standard in so much of America and the world, both men and women are becoming more adjusted to the fact that good sex is a mutual happening. Consideration for the enjoyment in your partner became a new concept when Masters and Johnson made the biology of sexual pleasure and climaxing more vivid for all to understand. The importance of foreplay to ready the male erection and the females secretions for lubrication and receptiveness was not previously really understood.

One author claims that Sex was More Fun in the 1970s. Katherine Forsythe, National Sexuality Resource Center. Posted April 27, 2009.

"The original "Joy of Sex" emphasized pleasure. The new version of the book seems like one more manual on how to perform and impress." The article illuminates what the liberation of being able to be in control of whether they got pregnant or not made all the difference to young women. Ignorance of STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases)beyond syphilis and gonorrhea were not really understood or feared. HIV began to terrify, however, when it showed up on the sexual doorstep.

China is close to finding an injected form of male contraceptive from testosterone. It is currently being tested to see its efficacy for humans. "The contraceptive is a combination of testosterone in tea seed oil. Chinese researchers conducted a study of 1,045 Chinese men between the ages of 20 and 45, in which each man had fathered at least one child. Each of the men had sexual partners between the ages of 18 and 38 years old.
The men were injected monthly with the formula for 30 months. At the end of the study, only one out of 100 men impregnated their partners. There were no serious side effects reported and reproductive function returned to normal levels in all but two participants, according to an Endocrine Society press release."

It was contraception that allowed the sexual revolution to take place in the 70s. It was religion, fear of STDs and HIV and AIDS that slowed it down in the 90s. Naturally that is an oversimplification and does not touch the myriad elements that actually are at play, but a few paragraphs would hardly do justice or pretend to cover the subject. Especially, to pretend the real issue is that a woman's virginity and purity is the most important factor is really ludicrous for most in today's society.

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