12/18/2022 0 Comments Purity ball![]() Keeping tight control over women helped ensure one’s bloodline was unmixed with that of competitors, and worthy of protection by the head of the household and the tribe. When I look at the belief systems that sacralize virginity, it seems the common denominator is the inheritance of values from tribal, patriarchal cultures, in which life was wrested out of the land with great difficulty, where infant mortality was high and competition for territory was fierce. It’s sex that’s been so widely singled out and associated with the concept of transmissible purity and impurity in so many of the world’s ideologies, cultures, and religions, for reasons that are no longer useful, and no longer morally defensible. And we don’t ever imply that we can be made impure if others lie to, steal from, or cause harm to us. There’s no Cult of the Honest Woman, no god or prophet honored by virtue of their mother’s never haven stolen anything. Yet we don’t have purity balls in which we pledge not to sully ourselves by lying, stealing, cheating, or murdering. We may be said to make ourselves ‘impure’ through our disrespect, dishonesty, cruelty, or violence we may metaphorically be said to sully our own moral characters by wronging another. ![]() ![]() And even when it’s not, when we use our sexuality selfishly, or to harm or deceive others, our bad behavior has no impact at all on their integrity or worth. Most of the time, it’s a good and valuable thing, not only for its own sake, but for what it can teach us about being good partners not only for the evening, but for life. We expect each other to practice sexual self-control, and we are right to condemn ‘using’ anyone as a mere tool for our exclusive pleasure.īut sex outside of marriage is more often friendly, affectionate, respectful, mutually exciting, and consensual than not. And we can easily hurt each other through sex, when we lie to our partners, when we make promises we don’t keep, when we profess love to get what we want only to show indifference afterwards, and worst of all, when we inflict pain and violate their right to self-determination through rape. In short, it’s one of the most richly sociable activities we engage in. For us, it’s intertwined with the need for closeness, for intimacy, for feeling more alive, for just plain feeling good. Sexuality, for human beings, is generally a deeply emotional thing, unlike most other animals (so far as we know). ‘How about the idea that we should practice self-control, that we should respect each other’s bodies, and not ‘use’ each other for our own selfish pleasure?’ I answer: this is both an important issue, and an entirely separate one. ![]() Gods and saints have been more revered, and brides’ dowries have been higher, so long as they or their mothers are virgins. (The virgin birth of the Buddha seems to be a later addition: early Buddhist texts honor the Buddha’s father, as his natural father, as well.) These gods and heroes are made out to be more special, better than mere ordinary human beings, at least partly because their mothers didn’t create them with the help of another human being. The stories of the birth of Horus, of the Buddha, of many of the Greek gods, of Jesus, all illustrate this obsession many of the world’s cultures, and especially religions, have had with virginity. For ages, human belief systems have equated virginity, especially of women, with sacredness. ![]() This idea, that engaging in one of the most social, most cooperative, most intimately friendly actions that human beings enjoy with one another can ever make you ‘impure’, has been a bee in my bonnet ever since I began to question what the idea of sexual purity, like the Cult of the Virgin, really stands for. ![]()
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