This thread pops up now and again here on AllPhilosophy, and part of me has often considered starting another thread called "Promiscuity: It's Overrated" or "Pre/Nonmarital Sex: It's Overrated."
This whole business of virginity being a way for "religious society" to "control us" is, in my opinion, sort of silly. I shall grant that in the past, this concept of virginity was (rather idiotically, I might add) held aloft by the religious elite of a given community as the be-all and end-all of virtue. It was as if all other vices could be endured, but to lose one's virginity was the unforgivable sin, particularly for women. This view was used to stifle both women and men, and overall discouraged people from thinking virginity a virtue at all. Secular society revolted, particularly in the advent of the sixties, and I do not blame them in the slightest. They defied the religious atmosphere that dominated the culture of the day and proclaimed sexuality as a good and natural thing that shouldn't be suppressed or repressed by the likes of Christianity.
But having said this, look around. Religion, in Western/Anglophone culture anyway, is in decline. The whole institution is disintegrating around our ears; it no longer has power in society. Religion is "all that God business" that no one in secular society really cares about. It is the clown in the background; those silly remnants of a former age. Why, then, does the debate continue? Religion has become an unimportant detail in first-world society; how then can it be that religion's-- particularly Christendom's-- continued insistence upon the preference of virginity until marriage still exists? If it really had been simply for controlling people, wouldn't the whole thing have simply stopped once religion LOST "control" of the people? And yet it is still around, this religiously-generated idea of virginity.
And why? I would agree that in a society without God, virginity is hardly a have-to thing. Why bother with such silly trivial observances of ancient tradition? The whole thing seems rather "overrated", eh? But the reverse, nowadays, could be considered. In response, as I say, to this religious absurdity on the subject of virginity, society reacted in a knee-jerk way in precisely the opposite direction. Where the Church went excessively insane on the subject, so did society. The whole topic of sex exploded through the rafters and has been showering down on us ever since: it permeates mainstream music and cinema. People gallavant about all of film (American film, anyway) having sex left and right, and the whole thing's all in good fun, right? People just have sex, sex, sex, and it's all a big party; no one cares about all that virginity crap, right? One need only look at the mainstream music industry and see that sexuality is hardly a rare topic discussed in lyrics. Everyone from adults to young teenagers sings the stuff. Consider the Internet, the largest repository of easy-access pornography on the planet: immature men and boys can oogle to their hearts' delight at millions of women shamelessly baring (selling) themselves for the sexual amusement of others. One of the biggest, however, is advertising: Buy our product, says the sexually-appealing woman in the bikini. Viagra and Cialis don't give a damn when they advertise; hey, little kids, try some Levitra!
The stuff is EVERYWHERE, and why? Because it SELLS. People just can't get enough of sex; where the Church rabidly pursued virginity and abstinence, society blew open in the exact opposite direction. Go into any American mall, and I'm telling you, look 360 degrees in any direction and you will find sexually-oriented advertisements. Nearly every movie has to have some kind of sex scene in it. There is virtually not a single American actress who has not gotten naked on camera at some point (if she didn't, she'd have probably lost her career). We are swimming-- nay, drowning in an ocean of sexuality. We are being swallowed up by a wave of carnal lust for one another, everyone, regardless of age, is being made to join into the ever-rising volume of voices calling out for more, more, more sex!
And you know the interesting thing? That's how THEY control us now. Where Religion supposedly controlled society by KEEPING them from sex, the new Oppressors control us by keeping us from thinking about anything ELSE. How do you keep a man quiet? What is the measure to which a man will express his ire? Only as far as he is not mollified by the pretty lady on the television screen. Keep the people enraptured by their own sexual instinct and you can lead them anywhere, make them do anything, make them buy anything, say anything, think anything.
I say the whole thing is overrated. Why do we NEED to have sex all the time? Why is it that if you aren't a virgin then you'd better have sex with everything that moves? Why is it that in order to have a healthy marriage you have to be "sexually compatible"? Did there not exist plenty of healthy, loving marriages of couples who tied the knot before having sex? Did they not get on just fine? My point is simply that sexuality went from being the Ultimate Sin to being the Ultimate Pastime. Shouldn't there be something, somewhere, in the middle? Christianity can rejoice in the human body we were given and in sexuality, which was according to them created by God, and is inherently a good thing, while society can appreciate it without going absolutely and animalistically insane. Are there not other things more interesting? I just believe this whole sex business to be overrated. When religion stopped taking sex away from us, man started shoving it onto us.
I, personally, wish to wait to have sex. Even if I weren't Christian, I just find something poetically beautiful about the idea of sharing the sexual experience with one person and one person only, the one thing I do with only that one person and no one else. To me, that makes sex all the more special. I like the idea of enjoying only my wife in that regard, and nobody else. Isn't it amazing that human beings can have sex at all? Can't a person appreciate a flower without plucking the entire garden? That might just be my own, teenage "romanticism", but to me this non-stop, wholesale indulgence is simply a sign of a cynical society that, contrary to its claims, has less appreciation for healthy sexuality than even religion once did.
If they're one and the same, that's true love.
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Weydon
November 24, 2009
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"The real significance is finding the person you want to put it in the rest of your life... "
HAHAHAHA! How sweet....
"or a hell kinky chick that is bang up for fulfilling all the weird fetishes you've developed from internet porn."
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!
"If they're one and the same, that's true love."
LOL Perhaps missing a couple of other factors, but more or less, yeah.
Molzahn
November 26, 2009
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lmao weydon
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