The Cult Of Virginity And Virginity

2. Jump Cut - A Review Of Contemporary Media, Sexual innocence & film: a look at scholarship on virginity, by Susan Ericsson – Internet http://www.ejumpcut.org/trialsite/EricssonTeen/index.html

The issues women faced, demonstrates the influence of family structures. The relation of socioeconomic status in race and ethnicity is looked upon as a strong association to sexual behavior. The length of time parents communicating sexual issues, have shown a significant role in adolescences. The repetition of sexuality virtues impacts gendered sexual expectations. Mothers teach their daughters, the importance of being a virgin until marriage. Lopez states, “Women construct premarital virginity as a commodity that can be rated in a patriarchal society for financial stability and happiness via marriage” (pg. 222). Maintaining premarital virginity represents stability and happiness. With virginity specifies, mothers are over protected towards their daughters. Mothers strive to protect their daughters from gendered inequalities. Gender expectations represents the inequality

“Virgins,” a short story by Danielle Evans is a coming of age tale that details the arduous journey of upcoming womanhood taken by a young girl and her friend. This young girl is named Erica and her friend is named Jasmine they are both black teenaged girls living in a lower income neighborhood. As one reads, the question emerges of how Evans presents a commentary on the issues that girls on the verge of womanhood must overcome, appears. What aspects must be portrayed to fully paint a picture into this world? Danielle Evans uses teenage ideals of self worth, themes of maturity, and a common disregard of morals to present a commentary on the issues girls on the verge of womanhood must overcome to fully prosper.

The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women is a book by Jessica Valenti which contains research that shows that there is a prevalent false notion promoted within the United States that a woman's worth is dictated by whether or not she is sexually active. She argues that the country’s intense focus on chastity is damaging to young women and claims that girls remain virgins until they are married. She accomplishes this by putting into context the historical question of purity, modern abstinence-only education, pornography, and public punishments for those who dare to have sex. The Purity Myth presents a revolutionary argument that girls and women are overly valued for their sexuality, as well as solutions

One of the norms Kincaid questions is virginity, whether sex is actually meaningful, that it could be enjoyable without the feeling of love. As a nineteen-year-old girl, Lucy is new to what a sexual relationship could have

For centuries, society has placed a remarkably large emphasis on protecting the young from the many perceived errors of growing up. Effective sex education is resisted in many locations across the country in favor of somewhat comical biblical suggestions for abstinence until marriage even while the majority of those targeted teens are viewing the world as a more and more sexual place. So many views are weaving in and out of teenagers' newly formed adolescent minds that any effective argument for responsible attitudes or analysis of sexual behavior in teens should be expressed with a certain minimal degree of clarity. Unfortunately, this essential lucidity of advice is missing in the short story “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been,”

The paper confronted subjects not discussed in most mainstream publications of the time including sex education, rape, domestic violence, divorce, prostitution and reproductive

The idea of virginity dates back to the 1200s; the term virgin has derived from the Latin word “virgo” meaning maiden or sexually inexperienced young women. In the 1300s virgin was used to describe Mary who gave birth to Jesus. Although in present day english people of all genders can be referred to as a virgin, it is a term that is more commonly used to describe women. With strong associations to saints, virgin has become synonymous to words such as “pure” and “innocent.” The concept of virginity has been around for centuries, how does the social construct of virginity affect women in Canada and USA from 2000- 2015? Is virginity a necessary idea or an outdated one that just uselessly controls the actions and desires of women?

Purity balls and chastity pledges tend to, whether it is explicitly acknowledged or not, normalize oppression of women’s bodies and endorse rigid gender roles. Breanne Fahs’ explains this phenomenon in her article, Daddy’s Little Girls: On the Perils of Chastity Clubs, Purity Balls, and Ritualized Abstinence. Fahs states that “The culture of chastity makes for highly gendered social spaces that normalize the control of women’s bodies and sexuality through family, school, religion, and media messages” (Fahs, 2010). These social spaces focus heavily on women’s sexuality and give young women “tools” for how to guard their virginity for their husband. Since chastity clubs and purity balls mainly focus on young women’s virginities rather than young men’s virginities a double standard is created. “Cultures try to impose order and meaning on a chaotic, meaningless world through classifying some things as ‘dirty,’ ‘polluted,’ ‘dangerous,’ or ‘taboo’ while other things are labeled as ‘clean,’ ‘pure,’ and ‘safe’” (Fischer). They do this to scare people from deviating to what they see as the wrong

The Samoan culture and how socialization turns into sexuality for young girls is very different compared to our culture. In the Samoan culture sexuality in Samoan girls is seen differently than we see it in our culture today. Margaret Mead elaborates on this idea because of how she views the sexuality of a Samoan girl when she mentions “Virginity is a legal requirement for her” (Mead 69). When Mead discusses this, it is interesting how in that culture virginity is a requirement and that is something we don’t see as a requirement in our society today. This demonstrates how the sexuality of a Samoan girl is not the same as we see it. The way girls are seen because of their sexuality is incomparable to girls in our society today and that’s important to observe since Samoan culture is by far very different to what we view as part of culture today.

To begin, in ‘Purely Rape: The Myth of Sexual Purity and How it Reinforces Rape Culture’ Valenti explains what she calls the “modernized virgin/whore complex”. Abstinence –only education is taught during the day and then we get exposed to things like ‘Girls Gone Wild’ at night, it’s confusing and problematic and makes women realize that they do not get to define their sexuality, everyone else does (Valenti, p. 300). The “modernized virgin/whore complex” happens because women realize that in some situations they need to act pure and in others they need to act promiscuous, according to our popular culture, and it’s not up for women to decide when it’s appropriate and when it is not. I never heard the term used before, but when I read it in this article it made sense. It is the perfect way to define what society wants from women. It is

As virginity among young women has been perceived as being more valued than virginity among young men, the importance given to it is something that has been constructed

This construction reinforces control over young women’s sexual expression. Faus highlights how it forces women to partake in this patriarchal culture where women’s bodies are under control

The subject of virginity in the United States has changed immensely throughout the years. With the emerge of new social aspects such as feminism and gay rights movements, the value of the term has altered meanings. (Carpenter, 2002) Numerous studies were conducted in the 1970s and 1980s on sexuality. The results indicated that “young women, while more permissive than in previous decades, continued to value virginity,

Corporate rational is the way in which a corporate parent envisages the way that it can add value to its strategic business units. The Virgin Group sees itself as a restructurer; this means that it has low central costs due to relatively small corporate center, with fairly minimal involvement at business level. However they vary from the portfolio managers because they also set about trying to identify restructuring opportunities within their businesses and have the skills and expertise in order to intervene and introduce these changes where necessary. The Virgin Group have a huge range of about two hundred strategic business units ranging from airways to cola,