Thank god they remind you of your spouse’s name during the vows.
The majority of kids who make “purity” pledges to maintain their virginity until marriage break their vows, but a handful manage to cross the finish line, usually with a combination of marrying very young and having very short engagements. Amanda Robb interviewed one such young woman who managed to keep her virginity until her wedding in such a contrived fashion; it’s pretty interesting, if not something you want to read if you’ve just eaten.
As in all stories of this nature, we must first learn about the patriarch, Randy Wilson. Randy decided to become a highly patriarchal fundamentalist nut during a low point in his life.
When Randy got a job offer in construction in Colorado, the family moved there, but soon after, the job evaporated.
“He pounded the pavement eight hours a day and couldn’t get a job flipping burgers,” says Lisa, who remained at home, caring for their children. After months of looking, Randy landed a position as a salesman for a printmedia company—not exactly a financial coup.
In such difficult times, other men— and let’s face it, women, too—might have taken to drinking, crime, or promiscuity. Some would have just taken off. Randy, however, took to the Lord.
Shoring up the sense that a lot of what is driving this throwback to archaic patriarchal traditions is anxious masculinity. Randy felt emasculated by his lack of success at work, and decided that the best way to restore his ego was to have a bevy of submissive women at home. I understand his thinking here. When I feel down, I dress the cats up in little tuxedos and pretend they’re waiting on me in a fancy restaurant so I feel important. But you know, they’re cats, not people. Also, the game doesn’t last long, because being cats, they give up catering to my whims pretty quickly. Also, we all know it’s pretend. Well, and I just made that up. I don’t really do that.
What’s really great is that the whole “make girls wait until marriage” thing is passed off as some sort of nouveau respect for women movement, but if you read this story, you realize how it’s pretty much about grinding women down to interchangeable cogs. The virginity pledgee, Lauren, has two sisters and when they met a man named Brett, he decided that he would marry one of them.
She returned home that evening and asked God if Brett was the one for her. “I set aside 40 days to really pray hard and ask for direction,” she remembers. Meanwhile, Brett also decided that Lauren and her two teenage sisters were “gorgeous.” The idea of a permanent commitment entered his mind.
“I thought, Am I crazy? I’m graduating in three months and possibly moving away,” he says. “But I could see myself marrying one of those girls!” Brett, too, began to pray. The future pilot soon found himself being “guided toward Lauren.” Two months later, he arranged to meet Randy at a coffee shop. There Brett said, “I’d like to start a relationship with one of your daughters.”
Who knows how they narrowed it down to Lauren. If Lauren’s the oldest, maybe it was a Rachel-and-Leah thing. Too bad they banned polygamy! But you know how it goes, the dad has to get rid of them in birth order, because daughters start stinking up the house if you keep them past their sell-by date of 21.
Lauren spends the rest of the article gushing about her marriage, but this detail pretty much stuck with me. Call me a hopeless romantic, but there’s something off-putting about getting married because you were the first item on the Daughters For Sale shelf, and your husband didn’t want to dig around to make sure there wasn’t a slightly fresher option in the back. I’d like to think that I’m wanted for my actual self and I want someone back not because my dad approved but because I like him, too.
But wanting someone for his or herself is not really much of an option when you have to get married in an expedient fashion to make sure lust doesn’t overcome getting to that wedding date with your hymen intact.
Seven weeks into their relationship, Brett asked Randy if he could propose to Lauren. Randy said yes. Lauren and Brett become official partners on December 29, 2006, smack in the middle of a whiteout blizzard.
The father approved the “courtship” in the spring of 2006, so basically they got married as strangers. But that’s pretty much how it has to be, it would seem, because really getting to know someone before making a commitment runs the high risk of actually wanting to get to know them sexually.
If you’re wondering if crazy fundies do it different, the answer is, “Different isn’t the even the start of it.” Their wedding night is supposed to set the tone for the marriage, of course, so before they do anything like get it on, the woman has to make a big show out of giving up her stake in being a full human being.
“Wow” is also how she describes her first night with Brett after their wedding reception, when they checked in to the Broadmoor Hotel. An explicit promise of the virginity until- marriage movement is that if you wait for the big day to have intercourse, the sex will be mind-blowing. (A popular public-school sex-ed curriculum in Colorado is called “Wait Training: Learn How to Have the Best Sex—By Waiting Until Marriage!”) In their hotel room, the first thing Lauren did was get a basin and water pitcher and wash Brett’s feet.
Come again?
“My spiritual gift is serving,” she explains. “And I wanted to show Brett, ‘I’m here to love you, follow you, and serve you.’”
Oh.
After drying her new husband’s feet, the night only got better. “It was incredible,” Lauren says of losing her virginity.
See, at least people into BDSM know it’s a game and the whips and collars get put away afterwards. And they don’t involve their parents in their little sexual rituals.
But Lauren is happy with her marriage, because she figures that her husband won’t cheat on her. The formula for finding a man who won’t cheat is getting one who was open to fucking your sisters and told your dad this. Right after that is finding someone who’s never had his natural curiosity about other women satisfied, so he’s bound to have a constant longing to find out what it’s like to color outside the lines.
Hat tip Melissa for the story.
Of all the logical leaps by fundies and right-wingers, this one puzzles me the most. Not to mention that if Lauren thinks that saving herself was the surest way to avoid post-marital temptation, she
hasn’t met me yetis in for a big surprise.Damn it! My first attempt at blockquote was a complete fuck up.
The above referred to Amanda’s statement: “See, at least people into BDSM know it’s a game and the whips and collars get put away afterwards. And they don’t involve their parents in their little sexual rituals.”
Not always. Some want to be master or slave full time. Yet somehow the collar set doesn’t seem as creepy to me as this couple does.
The “Dear Son in-law” letter from her father is pretty freakish:
I just don’t know what to say here.
“Do you ever…wash your client’s feet?”
“It’s my specialty.”
How do you know the sex is fantastic if you don’t have anything to compare it to. Masybe compared to footwashing?
Oh good, I’m not the only one who thought of Firefly.
Lost for words…
First… hahah, Petey, nice Firefly reference.
Second… I think the saddest thing about the whole virginity pledge culture is the way it is totally obsessed with sex, without knowing anything about it… it’s like a permanent state of being 12-years old and gossiping with your friends. I once read a message board for “purity girls,” and it struck me how much they were all building up sex in their minds - as if any sex (especially first-time sex) is perfect, and easy, and always totally romantic.
The washing-the-feet thing is plenty creepy… but I think that even crepier is the idea that this girl has been pressured into thinking that her first time (which was probably very awkward, considering neither of them have any experience) was “Wow.” I mean, I hope for her sake that it was… but what are the odds?
Somehow, I have a feeling the “their” in that sentence refers to Brett and Randy, not Brett and Lauren.
I’ve already decided that if anyone I’m dating asks my father for permission to marry me, I’m saying no.
Anybody taking odds that Brett really was a virgin on their wedding night?
One of those stories where you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop…
Well, here in SE Tennessee / north georgia, we just had a 19-yr old girl at the local Independant Baptist fundie academy go into hiding (the cops are looking for her) after somebody found the dead baby in her dorm room. Acording to the medical examiner, it suffocated in amniotic fluid a few min. after birth.
The school charter will have you kicked out for pre-marital intercourse or sexual contact of any form, and especially for obtaining an abortion or assisting anyone in obtaining such.
The school spokesman stated that although she is no longer a member of the comunity, the school continues to “pray for her and her family”.
//Gee, thanks, guys.//
Naturally, no mention is made of the father, who is most likely well on the way to a successful career as a baptist minister or family councelor.
Tennessee Temple University: cesspit of moral turpitude for placing sex before honesty and kindness as a guide to morality.
Also, I have to say the concept that your first time will be anything short of horribly awkward and dissapointing. ESPECIALLY if it’s 100% your first time doing anything sexual together, which it often is for people in these weird “courtship” cults — ideally, the couple will never have been alone in a room together. The foot washing was probably their first physical contact short a chaste wedding ceremony kiss (if they were even allowed that) and maybe shaking hands once or twice.
I can’t imagine going from my first kiss to having intercourse in a matter of hours. I would have been scarred for life.
“In their hotel room, the first thing Lauren did was get a basin and water pitcher and wash Brett’s feet.”
Well, at least she didn’t have to kiss his feet as part of the ceremony like you do in a Hindu wedding.** But, then, a Hindu wedding celebration is two days long, so at least you get a really rockin’ party out of the deal.
(** No, I’m not bashing Hindus or trying to claim that their traditions are any more silly than the ones we have. I mean, please, like having your new spouse crawl up your dress in front of all your guests to remove the garter is completely normal but kissing your new spouse’s feet is horrible and archaic?)
There were a few of these fundie - marry straight of high school - types at the high school I attended in the late 90s. The attitudes presented in this tale pretty much square with what I knew of them back then.
I was creeped out by it at 16, and I’m still creeped out at 26.
agh, didn’t finish a sentence there. that should’ve been:
Also, I have to say the concept that your first time will be anything short of horribly awkward and dissapointing is probably an even bigger lie than all that “Condoms spread STD’s, the pill causes breast cancer” bullshit.
I love the fact that there are offers for russian and chinese mail order brides in the google ads bar…
My parents were, as far as I can tell, virgins at marriage- my mom told me one day that she didn’t really care (she’s one of those people who thinks green tea is a strong beveridge) but worried because she knew my dad had grown to hate it.
Um, yeah…
A guy I knew proposed to his girlfriend in their church by first washing her feet while explaining husbandly and wifely duties, then giving her the ring. He believed that the Biblical husband serves the wife as Jesus served the church.
The only circumstance I can think of when I’d wash a man’s feet before sex is if both his arms were broken. And his feet stank. And I was really, really hurting for sex. My guess is that two out of these three applied on Lauren’s wedding night.
But Lauren is happy with her marriage, because she figures that her husband won’t cheat on her.
That’s it? That’s the ONLY REASON she’s happy with her marriage? Nothing else?
Geez. I’ve heard of green-card marriages and mail-order marriages that had more going for them than “I guess he probably won’t cheat”.
Oh my. A few friends of mine has expressed an interest in remaining a virgin before marriage, but I’m pretty sure they won’t actually make it all the way. And thank god for my mother, who’s actually encouraged me to have plenty of sex before marriage.
I just can’t imagine a wedding being some sort of early date. They just don’t know each other, and that’s a terrifying idea. I think most people know their prom dates better than these people know their spouses. The whole virginity thing wouldn’t be so bad, if it wasn’t circumvented by having such scary-short dating/engagements.
First boyfriends are hard enough… but first boyfriend = spouse????
Well, at least she didn’t have to kiss his feet as part of the ceremony like you do in a Hindu wedding.
This reminds me of a really awesome (and incredibly moving) Jewish wedding I went to a few years ago where the bride and groom decided that for each kinda-sexist-yet-grandmother-pleasing tradition in the wedding, they would both do each thing. So rather than the bride having to walk seven circles around the groom (which is supposed to symbolize her making him the center of her life), they each took a turn walking seven circles around each other; they stomped the glass together, etc.
I can’t believe this article was written in Marie Claire. Man, I remember back in the Clinton Administration, when they were all about the evils of the Taliban and FGM, covered Take Back The Night rallies, etc. I’ll never stand up for them again.
I need to learn to take advice. I ate just before reading that article and I really was nearly sick.
I can think of circumstances in which two virgins’ first act of intercourse could be pretty damned good. But those circumstances all depend on the couple having already done some thorough fooling around first, therefore knowing each bodies and what they like; and taking the time to do the deflowering part after she’s already had an orgasm by other means. And that depends on them both being fairly uninhibited, candid, and as generous to themselves as they are to each other.
None of which describes Lauren and Randy.
I can’t believe this article was written in Marie Claire.
Don’t get too freaked out, Opo — the article includes editorializing from the writer like this:
It’s more of a, “Yes, these people seem freaky, but they’re still human even if we don’t agree with them” article than a, “Yes, yes, all girls should stay virgins until marriage!” article.
My sister works with a bunch of fundies in rural Oklahoma. One day, one of her coworkers was scandalized by someone’s daughter having premarital sex and she wanted my sister to join in the pearl clutching. Of course, my sister being all contrary and practical, wouldn’t do it. She matter of factly compared premarital sex to buying a car. If you’re in the market to buy a car, you’ll test drive at least a couple before you settle on one you like and can live with, and you probably will only keep the car for 10 years or so at most. With a husband, ideally you’ll keep him for life, so it just makes sense to test drive a few of them as well, just to make sure you’re compatible.
Sounds like a sensible approach to me, but then I’m not a fundie. Apparently the woman in question was shocked the my sister would say such a thing and now keeps her distance lest she gets corrupted. Which is exactly how my sister likes it.
Right after that is finding someone who’s never had his natural curiosity about other women satisfied
Was Brett also a virgin? I find that a little hard to believe. It would certainly explain the “Wow”.
Nothing wrong with people choosing not to have sex, or to wait for marriage, if that’s what they want. Making it all about a shrink-wrap pussy seal is well into Creepyland, though. Especially if it’s supposed to be some kind of guarantee (of good sex or fidelity).
Pablo:
The text that you want to block quote should be between the beginning and end blockquote tags, not as an argument to a blockquote element, like you did.
Like (HTML entities follow, hopefully I did this right):
<blockquote>Some text</blockquote>
not
<blockquote cite=”Some text”>
like you did. I don’t think blockquote takes any arguments except CSS ones.
I can think of circumstances in which two virgins’ first act of intercourse could be pretty damned good. But those circumstances all depend on the couple having already done some thorough fooling around first, therefore knowing each bodies and what they like; and taking the time to do the deflowering part after she’s already had an orgasm by other means.
Having been in that very situation before, I speak from experience when I say, no, really, the intercourse part was still pretty bad. I mean, luckily we had other stuff to fall back on, but my first thought after our pathetic attempt at penile penetration was “Wow. That’s it? Did we do something wrong?” And I was lucky enough to have divested myself of my hymen years before. Adding physical pain to all that awkwardness would have made me never want to have intercourse ever again.
Also @ Mnemosyne — Thanks. I couldn’t face reading through the whole article after the first few paragraphs when Robb tried to paint her as this thoroughly sensible girl in a completely appropriate, even ideal, situation. I might try again after I’ve digested dinner some more.
“cite” is a correct attribute for the blockquote element, but it should only be used for the URL of the quoted text.
Technically, paragraph tags should go inside the blockquote, as you’re quoting the semantic structure of the original text as well as the content.
Erm, not to derail the thread or anything…
On the other hand, I know a couple of people in arranged marriages - as in they only met for maybe a total of ten hours, most of the chaperoned, before marrying - and they’ve turned out to be happy, stable couples. It’s a matter of having parents who really give a damn about their kids happiness and having a completely different set of expectations. In both cases the wife has expressed great satisfaction with her sex life. Both couples are Hindu, so their heathen copulation is no doubt more raunchy than the fundegelical kind.
Also, one of my ex-girlfriends is in an arranged marriage (Muslim) - I strongly suspect that she engaged in some kind of fakery on the wedding night to assure her husband (or more likely, his mother) of her virginity. It’s waaaay fucked up and weird - she’s in purdah, wearing a veil, not allowed to be in the company of a man unless she’s related to him or is accompanied by a male relative. I suspect that the reason she was so wild when I knew her was because she was all too aware of what was coming once the family decided it was time for marriage. I’d love to get in touch with her to catch up, but I fear that the consequences of being caught talking to me might be quite severe. Patriarchy sucks.
Both couples are Hindu, so their heathen copulation is no doubt more raunchy than the fundegelical kind.
I’m debating whether a simple STFU is in order, or maybe the more drawn out Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
Oh, I might. It’d be totally kinky.
I’ll also add that arranged marriage can work, when the parents and children are very well-attuned, and when it’s done with the happiness of the children (the REAL happiness of the children, not the surface “he’s a good provider” type stuff) is the priority. And even then, if for some reason there’s some aspect of the situation that wasn’t forseen, or the two people turn out not to be very compatible, it can still be hell.
That is awesome. My poor cousin couldn’t get out of the garter thing at her wedding (she finally gave into to an insane amount of pressure). She totally would have gone for something like this, though. And would have had the sense to not tell the mother-in-law about it beforehand.
Just like the stool her bridesmaid handed to her before the couple began to say their vows and a bunch of other funny stuff she thought of.
Wasn’t there a Gilmore Girls episode where Lane had the same experience, but made the stupid (and I thought un-Lane-like) assumption that she was just one of those people didn’t like sex?
I’m going to bounce out the door the first guy that comes to me for permission to date, court, or even marry my daughter. Better yet, I’ll be brandishing my rifle. Because I can’t think of more disrespectful thing a suitor could do than to circumvent Nea and come to me for directions and permissions on what she should have.
*thinks about some good (but highly improbable) Harry/Ginny fannish he’s read*
“But you know, they’re cats, not people. Also, the game doesn’t last long, because being cats, they give up catering to my whims pretty quickly. Also, we all know it’s pretend.”
Wow, I can never get them to *start* catering, nevermind how quickly they give it up. In fact, in my experience with cats, most of ouy interaction involved me catering to *their* whims.
Good points all around, but I have to say the part that creeped me out the most was:
“I was just like, Why hang out with a guy, break your heart, hang out with the next guy, break your heart again?” Lauren says, when I ask her what she was thinking the day she told her dad she wanted to be a virgin until marriage.
Something about this makes me sad, the idea that she feels so… fragile, I guess, to use her father’s word, that she can’t deal with heartbreak. I dunno. I don’t want to get all “suffering builds character!” but I do think that we grow from our mistakes, and from deep relationships even if they end. Also the fact that she avoided boys completely–how sad, to cut yourself off from half the population that in rare cases might have been a source of friendship, comfort, and joy.
So Lauren thinks her new husband won’t cheat on her?
Hmmm, when I was in Iraq, 75% of the men who hit on me were married. I knew this one man whose wife is a full time homemaker who wouldn’t get a job to save her life. He was one of those “family values” types. Thought abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Married for 20+ years. Guess what he was doing? Trying to get laid while deployed. Jerk.
Not to mention that I think your heart would be about ten times as broken if you replaced “Hang out with” in that pasages with “Marry”. All the people I’ve been with who turned out to be assholes? Sure, that really sucked. And I hate knowing every time I get into a new relationship that chances are I’m just signing myself up for the same crap all over again.
But at least I didn’t marry any of them.
Seriously, yo. Put some blinkers on that warning or something.
I got to
and I nearly lost the ice cream cone I just ate.
Opop- I think Tog was being snarky, but I can kind of see what his point may have been. Once we switched from the patriarchy based economic model of marriage (i.e. He’s a good provider/she raised the kids well, so who’s complaining) to a patriarchy-based true wuv model combined with post war suburban isolation nuclear family model, we lost the tradition of women/men training other women/men for every last part of their clearly defined roles. Sex became secret and shameful at the exact moment it was supposed to become one of the defining characteristics of the relationship. Then the sexual revolution disrupted the roles, and the people trying to get them back are now missing a piece of the puzzle.
It is entirely possible that the average Hindu couple that just met and married as virgins is having raunchier, better sex than their Christian fundie counterparts (not that they’d have to be too raunchy to exceed that bar, mind you), if only because they didn’t have their traditional support networks eroded by a random interval of isolation+prudery. And even if they don’t, they at least don’t have to try and reconcile their clearly traditional Eastern relationship with the Western goal of transcendent, life-altering, forever and ever luv.
I may be grasping at straws here, but I know a couple of seemingly satisfied arranged-marriage couples, and I can’t picture them, even in private, feeling it necessary to justify their choice by describing the sex as “Wow.”
another day, another example of why I’m happy to be free of some freaky-ass heterosexual life scripts. I just do not get the fucking desires to control people like property. This shit is fucked up.
What happens if you ask a father for permission and he says no? Then what? “Tough shit old man!” ?
What’s screwed up about this is that in the patriarchal marriage that these two no doubt plan on having, the meaning of foot-washing for Christians has been turned entirely on its head in this act. What’s screwed up about this scene is that in Christianity, whenever there is a “ceremonial washing of feet,” it is always done by the person with the most power as an act of humility. E.g. — in the Bible, Jesus washes the feet of the apostles. Around easter, the Pope washes the feet of the cardinals. I’ve seen a liturgy in which a Bishop washed the feet of his priests. This act is much like during a Roman victory parade when a victorious general would be followed closely by a slave whispering in his ear “you are but a man, you are but a man.”To have the younger, more dependent partner in the marriage (which Lauren clearly is) to be washing the feet of her husband as an act of servitude just makes the power dynamic more warped than it already is. The analogous situation would be for the father, Randy, to wash the feet of his daughter and new son-in-law or for Brett to wash Lauren’s feet.
This isn’t making anyone more humble. Instead, it’s feeding Brett’s ego and humiliating Lauren. Once again, another clear situation in which fundies have read a passage in the Bible and then proceeded to miss the entire point.
Good point, Constantine.
Kyso, just to be clear, I was so appalled because I thought tog was making the stereotypical and racist Hindus = Kama Sutra association.
Though I think dragons also lie down the path of assuming “Eastern” people don’t have hangups X, Y, and/or Z and thus have sexier sex than we do. I don’t think any one culture, especially any culture where natural sexuality is stifled (which it certainly is in modern India), is any more sensual than any other.
“When I feel down, I dress the cats up in little tuxedos and pretend they’re waiting on me in a fancy restaurant so I feel important.”
ZOMFG!! Your cats are laffing at you! I know they are!
I feel rather sorry for Lauren, but it was notable for me to see that she displays the same kind of quiet smugness I’ve seen in a few female fundamentalist friends. Towards the end of the article, Lauren meets her new next door neighbour, a 17 year old girl who is weeping because she is pregnant to her fiance, who may be cheating on her. Lauren’s first reaction? Sympathy, condolences, shared anger at the (maybe) cheating man? Nope.
“And I thought, Oh, that’s really interesting,” says Lauren. “She’s had sex with him, and now she’s opened the door to fear and rejection. What’s she going to do if he leaves? She’s got his child, she’s only 17, she didn’t graduate high school. Now what?”
Then she goes to wax smugly about how great it is that she’s the ‘only one’ to know Brett intimately, to ‘give him everything’ and how she can now be secure in the knowledge that he won’t cheat on her or dump her. Because they have more ‘trust’ and how she’s ‘whole’ by being a virgin on her wedding night.
My sympathy is much lessened - but I still feel sorry for someone who is so naively confident about a man she barely knows. I don’t wish any misery on her but I do hope life opens her eyes a bit.
opoponax: Were you by any chance atmy Jewish-ish wedding, in Eugene, OR, a few years back? Because that would be nuts, but your description sure matches. At least, I found it sweet.
The thing that gets me in these articles, though, is that– you know, I married young. Terrifingly young, really. But the marriage has been wonderful so far, and I was a precocious kid– had sex for the first time at 14, and had ’serious boyfriends’ aplenty before leaving high school…
Its not that I can hold us up as some sort of paragon of feminist egalitarianism. I might do it differently were I do to it now (though, I think I’d end up with the same fellow, he’s awesome). What this article draws out for me is that it isn’t so much the age that is terrifying, it’s the lack of life experience– just moving from one man’s confining box to another.
I hope they all rebel when they hit 30 and deafen the world with their screams as they wake. Hell. Let’s hope they do it at 25. Imagine what that would do to the political climate.
“My sympathy is much lessened - but I still feel sorry for someone who is so naively confident about a man she barely knows. I don’t wish any misery on her but I do hope life opens her eyes a bit.”
Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Some people realize that doing everything according to some arbitrary set of rules in the belief that they’ll protect you from other people’s bad acts is bullshit, others react to the revelation by freaking out at the thought of not being able to keep themselves safe from things that are beyond their control and clinging to those arbitrary rules even more fiercely.
Adding even more to the sense that they’re emotionally 12 is the fact that Lauren decided that young to take a virginity pledge, and then stuck to it. Sure, when I was 12 I thought I’d wait for marriage too, but you know what happened? I grew up!
Of course, a good bit of that growing up was meeting people my own age who had already chosen differently, an opportunity one knows was not available to our poor protagonist.
And you left out the bit of quote where Brett says he thinks he mentioned Lauren specifically. Dude, if you can’t even remember and it’s been less than a year…
I completely agree with this. However, I’d say that assuming that anyone, “Eastern” or otherwise, might have sexier sex than a bunch of repressed, hung-up, sex-obsessed-and-simultaenously-ashamed, body-self-conscious, no-touching, steeped-in-a-sense-of-wrongness fundies is a pretty safe bet.
However, I’d say that assuming that anyone, “Eastern” or otherwise, might have sexier sex than a bunch of repressed, hung-up, sex-obsessed-and-simultaenously-ashamed, body-self-conscious, no-touching, steeped-in-a-sense-of-wrongness fundies is a pretty safe bet.
Haven’t you ever heard about Catholic girls being wild in bed because of all the repression?
Sadly, it doesn’t work that way for all of us — sometimes the repression takes — but some people are essentially able to use it as a kink. I could see a fundie being able to let go because, after all, this is her real-and-true-ordained-by-God husband.
It doesn’t surprise me that she’s so afraid of being hurt; if your family is a patriarchy, and you’re a girl, you already have absorbed the message that you don’t matter. A situation not likely to make you trust males.
As for her dad, well, he’s the devil she knows. All his talk about keeping her safe is just code for “locked up,” and the church and sacrifice talk is a way of manipulating her so that she doesn’t even question it. He may be very sincere, in that he sees her as a fragile object instead of a full person, but that doesn’t make him any better of a parent.
This is why I get pissed when men of my age/acquaintance say, “but if I had a daughter, I’d shoot any boy that comes near her, because I know what they’re thinking!” Because all teen boys are secretly rapists and teen girls are incapable of making choices.
“It was incredible,” Lauren says of losing her virginity.
Hear that, virgins? SEX. IS. INCREDIBLE.
Don’t do it.
Here’s what I found odd and creepy a bout the whole damn thing:
Another man’s wife? Wait, I thought she wasn’t a wife until she got married, who the fuck was she married to before? Oh wait, daddy, I’d forgotten. I’ll be in the shower…
*delurks*
Hugo posted my story regarding purity pledges over at his place — I have been with my boyfriend for over five years. After years of being stauch Focus on the Family supporters True Love Waits ring wearers, we decided to loose our virginity after four years of dating. I sometimes wish I hadn’t posted about our choice to become sexually active, because in the blogsphere, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. A year and a half ago, I commented on how I wanted to wait until marriage and was deemed prude and “holier than thou.” Less than a year later, I posted about being sexually active and was deemed “not old enough to make adult decisions.” I don’t know what I should say to get people to understand my position(s), because nothing seems to work.
I guess my point is this: I agree with your assertions — I actually emailed FotF and they were. not. nice. I don’t regret my loosing my virginity when I did. But I don’t pity the girls who wait until marriage. I do not doubt many of them are happily married, but of course, waiting until marriage is no indicator that you will be gleefully married. The simple fact the one you made: unless you get married early on in your courtship (and life — say, at 21), then you CAN do it. But the longer you wait, the harder it is. It’s simple logic. I agree with you there.
Great post.
*delurks*
Hugo posted my story regarding purity pledges over at his place — I have been with my boyfriend for over five years. After years of being stauch Focus on the Family supporters True Love Waits ring wearers, we decided to loose our virginity after four years of dating. I sometimes wish I hadn’t posted about our choice to become sexually active, because in the blogsphere, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. A year and a half ago, I commented on how I wanted to wait until marriage and was deemed prude and “holier than thou.” Less than a year later, I posted about being sexually active and was deemed “not old enough to make adult decisions.” I don’t know what I should say to get people to understand my position(s), because nothing seems to work.
I guess my point is this: I agree with your assertions — I actually emailed FotF and they were. not. nice. I don’t regret my loosing my virginity when I did. But I don’t pity the girls who wait until marriage. I do not doubt many of them are happily married, but of course, waiting until marriage is no indicator that you will be gleefully married. The simple fact the one you made: unless you get married early on in your courtship (and life — say, at 21), then you CAN do it. But the longer you wait, the harder it is. It’s simple logic. I agree with you there.
Great post.
What gets me about all this is that Lauren didn’t go to college. No education beyond whatever homeschooling her mother provided. So if things don’t work out with Brett… well, they’d better, because she hasn’t a clue.
Of course, I suppose, she could always go back to Daddy?
One would hope.
A former planned parenthood nurse I worked with was Lauren in her earlier life, almost to a tee. After her 3rd kid, her husband up and vanished, refused to send money, and her entire family blamed her for not being a good enough wife. Her mother basically told her that she stopped caring for herself (i.e. gained too much weight) and wasn’t accomplishing her wifely duties, so her husband was right to up and leave her. They ignored the fact that she had twins that had a lot of health problems, so she was caring for them around the clock. She went to live with her sister, who was done with all the fundamentalist BS, and they helped each other get through nursing school, although it took almost 10 years. Nothing enrages her more than these types of scenarios. Her cousin also believed her husband would never cheat on her just like Laura- but he did. He came back, infected her and daughter was born HIV positive, then accused her of cheating on him and up and left her. Unfortunately, her cousin, her cousin’s ex and the girl all passed away from AIDS (this was back in the early 90’s), leaving a son all alone.
I’ve heard so many horror stories from ppl that’s left quivers and fundie movements like this. It’s terrifying.
It would be interesting if Marie Claire could go back in ten years and interview this woman again, but chances are she’d absolutely refuse to admit to any problems whatsoever (”No! My marriage is fantastic! Really!”).
I have more respect for couples practicing BSDM. At least they have safe words and don’t pretend they’re carrying out their activities because some god told them to. And they certainly don’t go around trying to claim that their lifestyle is something everyone should do on pain of everlasting sin.
“But I could see myself marrying one of those girls!”
Okay. First: Ew.
Second: You who this reminds me of? Mr. Collins in “Pride and Prejudice.”
“Having now a good house and a very sufficient income, he intended to marry; and in seeking a reconciliation with the Longbourn family he had a wife in view, as he meant to choose one of the daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report. (snip) Mr. Collins has only to change from Jane to Elizabeth — and it was soon done — done while Mrs. Bennet was stirring the fire.”
Mr. Collins. One of the great romantic heroes in literature? Not so much.
And you know what else this reminds me of? “The Rules.” Lauren has that same sense of “if I follow this set of rules 100% perfectly, I’ll have a 100% guarantee of marital happiness.” Kind of sad, really.
As to the “Wow”: I mean, what else is she going to say? “After all that, it was kind of a letdown”? She has to convince herself that it was the most amazing thing ever. Otherwise, the whole house of cards comes crashing down.
Sheesh.
Constantine. The Roman ritual was actually more intense than that. It was a slave, whispering in the ear of the guy being given the Triumph, “sic transit gloria mundi”, All glory turns to dust. Which has the connotation, of, “Enjoy it while you can, because heroes fall, and even if you stay on top, you’re going to die”
The church I sometimes go to has the rector wash the feet of the congregation on Maundy Thursday.
He’d be scandalised if they tried to do it for him.
Then you haggle for a bit, and if you can’t come to an agreement on one of the daughters, find another supplier.
Seriously, if I were the father, I’d be warning all my daughters to steer well clear of a would-be suitor who thought they were almost interchangeable.
Male virgins do exist — I wouldn’t say that he was definitely a virgin at his wedding but I also wouldn’t discount him from actually holding off. Now, five years from now, once his madonna/whore complex has kicked in, I’m sure he’ll be all over town because he’s taken a liking to stuff his wife shouldn’t do. But that’s another story. Afterall, he’s already shown a predeliction to a little kink: looks like he’s at least a foot fetishist (they’re very sly, by the way… but you can score some killer foot massages from them).
“In such difficult times, other men— and let’s face it, women, too—might have taken to drinking, crime, or promiscuity. Some would have just taken off. Randy, however, took to the Lord.”
In other words, once again religion scored by getting to this guy when he was in a state of weakness. What is the difference between this and the cults that pick off confused kids at the airport?
Now I’ve had mind-blowing sex any number of times and with any number of women. (Well, not any number. Hey, I’m not Wilt Chamberlain, ya know? But at least three or four of them blew my mind. And we’re talking about first times. The first time I hit a home run in a softball game I was ecstatic. Not to be rude or anything, but if Brett is as inexperienced as Lisa, I’ll bet I can top him in the mind-blowing sex department. You learn a lot of technique in 30+ years of practicing any hobby. Do these people really think the first time someone makes a cabinet they make it as well as a woodworker who’s made hundreds of cabinets? The first time I did sheetrocking I did an okay job, but I was much better after I had done more sheetrock.
I know I shouldn’t say stuff like that. We’re talking about religious crazies here. Common sense doesn’t enter into it. They’ve deluded themselves into believing that a magic being walked on water and raised the dead and so on thousands of years ago and that the magic being is going to come back and do magic tricks again if you just wait long enough, so common sense stuff like “practice makes perfect” and “experience makes you better at something” don’t apply.
From the article: “…Brett also decided that Lauren and her two teenage sisters were “gorgeous.” …he arranged to meet Randy at a coffee shop. There Brett said, “I’d like to start a relationship with one of your daughters.” He thinks he specified Lauren.”
Yeah, he wouldn’t possibly cheat. Wouldn’t even think of if. Military men are different, especially if they are strong Christians. And as long as the footbaths lead to some serious shrimping, she’s got it good.
From the article: “…Brett also decided that Lauren and her two teenage sisters were “gorgeous.” …he arranged to meet Randy at a coffee shop. There Brett said, “I’d like to start a relationship with one of your daughters.” He thinks he specified Lauren.”
Yeah, he wouldn’t possibly cheat. Wouldn’t even think of if. Military men are different, especially if they are strong Christians. And as long as the footbaths lead to some serious shrimping, she’s got it good.
As long as we’re doing literary references, did anyone else think of Kreature when Lauren starting washing her master’s feet?
No education beyond whatever homeschooling her mother provided.
I think the absolute scariest part of all of this is that this girl quite possibly doesn’t even have a GED. She’s not just fucked because she hasn’t gone to college (plenty of people don’t go to college and survive it), but that on top of that she was homeschooled. Which means she has an equivalency, at best. I have a degree of respect for homeschooling, but without college to put a veneer of institutional legitimacy on your education, you’re basically looking at a life of flipping burgers, if you’re lucky.
At least the ditched and pregnant 17 year old can move back in with her parents and go back to high school, probably graduate somewhat on time depending on what kind of high school and when she left. And she won’t have to go through any kind of messy divorce. When you’re 23, married, and in the same situation, you’re way more screwed.
Kyso, just to be clear, I was so appalled because I thought tog was making the stereotypical and racist Hindus = Kama Sutra association.
That crossed my mind, but I put the Kama Sutra in the “evidence that actual sex has a proper place somewhere in the Hindu belief system” pile. I’m not attributing them with magic eastern sexual qualities, because at some point in our past we had what I suspect the traditionalists in India still have - a system of women who had an idea of how to properly prepare an ignorant girl for what her role really was, as opposed to what we have now, where someone, somewhere, clearly lied to Laura. What she expects and what she’s gonna get are not even in the same solar system.
It’s very clear that Laura expects a lot of emotional fulfillment out of this rather distorted relationship, whereas you’ll rarely see someone in an arranged marriage, even when they’re happy, blithering on about some false idea of love and security in that naive fashion. They seem to have a more realistic view of what’s going down.
I put the Kama Sutra in the “evidence that actual sex has a proper place somewhere in the Hindu belief system” pile. I’m not attributing them with magic eastern sexual qualities, because at some point in our past we had what I suspect the traditionalists in India still have - a system of women who had an idea of how to properly prepare an ignorant girl for what her role really was
Your ideas about what sexuality is like in Indian culture are incredibly misinformed. Modern Indian ideas about sex have a lot more to do with Queen Victoria than the Kama Sutra. As far as I can tell (from Desi friends and lovers, I’m not South Asian), it’s pretty much exactly the same as the prudish Christian fundamentalist landscape. The only difference might be that there’s less overt sex in the Indian media, which sends fewer mixed signals.
Since everyone else has already made all the serious comments, I just want to add that, Amanda, I really wish you dressed your cats in tuxedos and pretended they were in a fancy restaurant and such. It’s pretty much the best image ever. How cruel of you to tease us with this peek into your life and then disabuse us of it just a few short sentences later!
Actually I think her foot washing and submission comes from Luke 36-50
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%207:36-50
36Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. 37When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, 38and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
39When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
40Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me, teacher,” he said.
41″Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,[a] and the other fifty. 42Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
43Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled.”
“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.
44Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
48Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
49The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”
50Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
So it appears in her mind her husband was a stand in Jesus and this was a submissive act of love and forgiveness. Yuck. That the woman’s sins in the passage are I beleive generally thought to be sexual somehow makes it, hmm not sure if ironic is the right word, perhaps just wrong.
Now a good foot massage is a wonderfully sensual experience, and I imagine hot water and soap could add to that. Doing it as an act that brings pleasure to your partner, great. Doing it as an act of submission and possibly forgiveness at the outset of marriage, really unhealthy.
Who else is wondering about Brett’s age?
Also, I get why she’s washing his feet… it’s a total throw back to jesus days.. it was common practise.. *shudder* Remember Marry Magdalen always washing jesus’s feet?
The act doesn’t bother me so much… it’s what she thinks it means that bothers me… or what is symbolizes to him. *second shudder*
There are just so many creepy moments in this article, that it is hard to pick just one. That and I had a very difficult time reading the whole thing and would find myself skimming. But the thing that both creeps me out and saddens me at the same time, is the fact that her first kiss was at 22, at her wedding, in front of a room full of people.
It’s sad bc I think of all the great, sloppy, kissing-fumbling stuff that I had experienced before that age. And creepy bc it was like she was on display - a ritual deflowing in front of the entire village -ugh!
I just picture her sitting in full make-up/dress - fingernail polish matching her lipstick, at her kitchen table, in a sterile-clean house (with no books of course), staring vacantly into space waiting for her husband to come home from work so she can serve him.
@ The Frog Queen — I think he’s mentioned in the article as being 23. So only a year or so older than Lauren.
However, let’s all remember that Lauren has the social/emotional age of a preteen, and that Brett is a college grad.
A year and a half ago, I commented on how I wanted to wait until marriage and was deemed prude and “holier than thou.” Less than a year later, I posted about being sexually active and was deemed “not old enough to make adult decisions.” I don’t know what I should say to get people to understand my position(s), because nothing seems to work.
mermade, as one of the people who commented on your posts, either you are deliberately misrepresenting what people said to you, or you were so hurt by any criticism that you completely misunderstood it.
Reading this reminds me of Ann, Michael Cera’s girlfriend in Arrested Development. I don’t want to belittle these folk’s real-world experience, but it’s just bizarre to me that the show encapsulated it so well: “That first time after waiting and waiting, it’s going to be so awesome! Because it’s not just going to be my love and George Michael’s, but God’s love as well. God, it’s going to be incredible!”
I also recognize the ’smug superiority’ attitude. I used to hang around with highly orthodox Catholics in my younger, religious days. Despite the teaching of the Church, there’s never a lot of compassion in a fundamentalist or orthodox group. They have tons of compassion for people who haven’t been ‘exposed to Christ,’ but practically none for people who ’should know better.’
@ ink: nah, this was a wedding in upstate new york. though there were a lot of pdxers in the crowd, if i remember correctly.
But the thing that both creeps me out and saddens me at the same time, is the fact that her first kiss was at 22…
This saddens me a little, too. My first kiss, which was when I was 14, was so much a symbol of autonomy for me, secrecy, rebellion, the ability to have my own private life. The idea of it happening as part of a wedding ceremony, one of our culture’s most pervasive symbols of tradition, social conformity, and acquiescence (especially for a woman) is really awful. And I think it helps to cement the idea that she’s not her own person, and she’ll never be considered worthy of autonomy or a private life. If your first kiss is Teh Wedding Kiss (which as a tradition is a vestige of community fascination with the consummation of the marriage), that sends a lot of really coercive signals.
Also, this typifies my experience of fundamentalist/orthodox views on women’s spirituality:
I have one friend who waited until marriage (at 29) to have sex. But she certainly fooled around with guys, just no actual penetrative sex. Somehow, it just worked for her.
I have another lady that I work with who is waiting and she is about 30. I think I would have lost my mind by that point, but what the hell.
My best friend managed to wait until she was about 22 and she finally cracked - with the guy she ended up marrying. They lived together for a number of years before getting married and both her parents and mine were scandalized. Of course, I’d been having sex since I was 15 or 16 so the whole thing was completely foreign to me…
I’d never marry a guy who asked my father permission. I know so many girls who think “ooooh, romantical!!” (I used to be one of them), but it’s an archaic practice that completely diregards the agency of the woman. Two men making a deal about my future? I’m not my daddy’s property. And I’ll never be my husband’s property. Neither is Lauren. Too bad she’s too brainwashed to have realized that.
I do not doubt many of them are happily married, but of course, waiting until marriage is no indicator that you will be gleefully married.
Unfortunately, government-funded abstinence-only education is telling them just that in a lot of curricula. I hope not everyone’s buying it, but still.
Off-topic, but I’m getting married soon, and anyone who even suggests that I go through with that lame-ass fumbling-up-the-dress garter removal thing is going to get a poke in the eye for their troubles.
Opoponax - it was indeed snark - I thought the use of the word ‘copulation’ was enough of a hint.
Regarding the Erotic Easterner myth, my experience suggests that the hangups are very much in the Victorian vein, though perhaps slightly less firmly embedded. There does seem to be a bit less hostility to the idea that women derive pleasure from sex and might actually want it and initiate it, but that might just be a biased sample. Generalizing about South Asian cultures is dumb, since they vary from animist tribal cultures to westernized christians of various stripes. My limited sample is mostly drawn from westernized, educated Hindus, with a couple of Goan Catholics thrown in for good measure.
I justgot back from the bathroom I vomitted after reading this story.
Boy a meat market in your own home with Daddy acting as pimp or seller at a slave market. Did Brett get to get the girls teeth before he chose one of them?
Lauren has been trained well. She should just stop calling Brett husband and call him “Master.”
Wonder what will happen if Brett cheats. . . he may blame the Jezebel who enticed him and the Lauren and Randy hour will be fine. . . . .yeah right.
I beg to differ with you though Amanda those who really make BDSM a lifestyle. It is no longer a game for them. The master, slave dynamic is what they live every hour of their life.
This was pretty much my fist experience with my girlfriend. We spent an entire summer practicing, fooling around, exploring, experimenting, learning what worked best for her, and even then, when we finally “did it”, it was mostly us just looking at each other in awe that we were really “doing it”. It was “wow”, but mainly in the sense that it was amazing to be connected and communing with someone you love in such a way. I think we were both too surprised with the whole experience to even think about having an orgasm at that point, and just rolled around looking into each other’s eyes and, well, feeling what it felt like, on some sort of meta-level, to be that close to another person. It was “mind blowing”, but in a “consciousness raising” way, not in a “I think I nearly lost consciousness after that fourth orgasm” kind of way. That comes later (so to speak), and I’m willing to bet this girl had never even fooled around with herself, so how in the world could she know what to expect, or ask for, or tell someone else what to do for her? So, yeah, I doubt her “wow”.
Hindu’s may have secual hang-ups but for years the tradition was to give the kama sutra as a wedding present to the bride and groom …. think the fundies do that?
Hell masterbating even before marriage in the christian fundie life is considered infidelity.
Muslims are allowed to masterbate before and during marriage, “least their urges drive them into sin.”
However the Hindu tradition of giving the Kama Sutra has been diminishing in recent years. If the couple get “the book” at all it may just be blank.
I plan on giving my kids a bunch of books when they get married, a couple will be all the positions they should try
Brett and Randy get after it on the sly and we all realized this already but I only just now realized I realized it.
I state it for a fact.
I got married really young too. I met him at 20 and we were married just before I turned 22. We’re still together and still happy (9 years next week), and I think it helped that we didn’t have kids right away, but if I had to do it over, I probably would do it differently. I would still be with him, but I would have lived on my own and done some stuff before settling down.
My fundie sister in law waited and she was 30 when she got married. I don’t know how much fooling around she did before, but I’m willing to bet that it wasn’t much. The reason I suspect she didn’t do much was that about a month before her wedding, she had a gyn. appointment (her first–she’d never been before–at 30!!) and she was asking me all kinds of questions about the exam, birth control, condoms, and the general mechanics of what goes on. She knew what went where, but that was about it. I was 21 at the time and I was amazed that (1) she was a 30 year old virgin, because that was just completely out of my realm of experience, and (2) that she felt comfortable enough with me to ask that sort of stuff (aside from my being so much younger and sleeping with her brother, we’d only met 2-3 times at that point).
They are still together (will be 10 years in March) and seem really happy, but I don’t get that mindset at all. The really sad thing is that they are raising their kids like that as well. And their poor daughter won’t know what hit her when she gets out into the world (I don’t worry about their son, because he’s a boy and gets more freedom).
Hindu’s may have secual hang-ups but for years the tradition was to give the kama sutra as a wedding present to the bride and groom …. think the fundies do that?
If this was “the tradition” for “years”, it hasn’t been in a very, very long time. And probably wouldn’t have been “the tradition” for “years” among much of the population, as until recently only the very highest castes had access to literacy. It’s also doubtful that the Kama Sutra was ever a gift to the woman, or that it was seriously thought to be shared by the couple. It would be a gift for the man — and since India is a patriarchal society just like the West, I doubt this would have made much difference in the sex lives of married women.
Not to mention that “sometimes we have sex outside the missionary position” does not necessarily mean that the couple has a particularly healthy or liberal sexual relationship. I guess you’re right that it’s a tad more than the Xtianists have, but not by a whole lot.
Hell masterbating even before marriage in the christian fundie life is considered infidelity.
I seriously doubt Hindu women, married or single, are ever encouraged to masturbate. My Hindu girlfriends back in high school were scandalized by the notion that I’d looked at my own vulva with a mirror.
Muslims are allowed to masterbate before and during marriage, “least their urges drive them into sin.”
This has what to do with Hindus? They are EXTREMELY different religions with basically nothing in common. Also, even within Islam, I seriously doubt this would be directed towards women, ever.
Oh my god, this is disgusting.
Hey opp you cited the reason … da queen . . . I had just forgotten the reason for it disappearing
The article I was reporting from was talking about how many cultures gave these sexual books as wedding gifts. I’ll have to find the article.
I was just citing some sexual facts about three relgions, that’s all.
And yes the masterbation thing does apply to women too, since the Quran does state that husbands have a responsibilty to sexually satisfy their wives.
Though my Muslim friend of mine did state that her mother-in-law was scandlized when she “accidentally” walked into her bedroom and found my friend on top of her husband.
I guess there was a whole night of arguing how in the mil’s opinion the husband had let his wife emasculate him simply by her being on top.
This wraps it up for me. Thank you Mythago, this made my day.
I have one friend who waited until marriage (at 29) to have sex. But she certainly fooled around with guys, just no actual penetrative sex. Somehow, it just worked for her.
Our health teacher showed us once an article in Self or Marie Claire or something like that about four women who were doing just that, including one who gave the best rationale I have ever heard for waiting, which was something like “I have more orgasms than my friends who do have [PIV] sex, so why put myself in a position of worrying about pregnancy before I’m ready when I’m already being satisfied?”
But of course, this made sense to me because she was, in fact, concerned with her own satisfaction.
(our health class by the way wasn’t abstinence only–for sex OR drugs & alcohol–one of our teacher’s favorite points was that, should we feel the need to experimen with alcohol, which we probably would, we should always have a designated driver. in fact i would say in our pariticular climate there was probably more pressure to have sex than not to have sex)
And yes the masterbation thing does apply to women too, since the Quran does state that husbands have a responsibilty to sexually satisfy their wives.
How does this follow?
Just because the Quran states that men have a responsibility to please their wives doesn’t mean that women have a responsibility to please themselves.
This is only peripheral, but every time I mention that Christians seem to place a lot of stock in magical voices in their heads, I’m told that I’m being rude and mean and that No True Christian listens to voices in their heads. I’m just going to savor that quote there for a few minutes.
Wonder if Jesus’ll tell him he needs to go get himself a few spare wives for later, too.
I may be out of line, but who cares what these silly texts do or don’t say about sexuality. These “sacred texts” are themselves large parts of the problem in the first place. Why grant them even more importance than they deserve?
I’m not granting them any importance at all. I’m just trying to do my part as someone who has actually met, befriended, had relationships, etc. with South Asians to explain that there’s really no such thing as the idea that they have healthier attitudes about sex than westerners. You can’t make such generalizations. And that’s not even an apt generalization to make, if one were going to do such a thing.
“This is only peripheral, but every time I mention that Christians seem to place a lot of stock in magical voices in their heads, I’m told that I’m being rude and mean and that No True Christian listens to voices in their heads.”
Well, you are. Everybody knows that Christians listen to the magical dowsing rod in their pants.
I’m certain there is a lot of fooling around and exploration of sexuality that gets done in the name of “technical virginity.” I’ve had a few partners who were kinky as hell while insisting on maintaining their virginal status. Somehow oral sex and topping a guy with a strap-on wasn’t “real sex.”
Of course that means I wasn’t having “real sex” with my male partner’s either.
I don’t know. I’ll go ahaed and say it’s wrong. Why is that what they want? I can’t think of any reasons, other than religious ones, to wait until you are married to have sex. Waiting until you’ve found someone who you’re comfortable with, are attracted to, and trust, I can see, but it doesn’t follow that you have to marry that person (or be married to them).
If anything, we should expect teenagers to have sex, or at least have the urge to, and be encouraged to do so with the requisite knowledge, and on their own terms. I may be mistaken, but I’ve heard that’s kind of how it goes over in the Netherlands, and their rates of teen pregnancy and STDs are incredibly low.
Articles like this just make me wish we could start some sort of heathen rescue squad and safe home to get people like this out of these situations.
am i the only one who judges lauren as much as i judge her father and husband? anyone who willfully stays the exact same person at age 23 as they were at 13 is not someone i feel pity for.
i *loved* the author’s story of how she lost her virginity. also? i had an orgasm when i lost mine. in fact, my first time was awesome and wonderfu and earthquakes moved. probably because i had extremely low expectations. also -
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_8480/
the author of this article is the niece of bernard slepian.
back to work.
Yeah when I was at college we always joked about the christian union people getting married very young. But they DID. Funny how since God hates sex so very much he would have made it so much fun.
But then why did God tell Adam and Eve not to eat the sacred apple - if he had said leave the sacred brussel sprouts alone we might all be in the garden now…
And religious people will tell you their religion GIVES them morality…!
I don’t know. I’ll go ahaed and say it’s wrong. Why is that what they want? I can’t think of any reasons, other than religious ones, to wait until you are married to have sex. Waiting until you’ve found someone who you’re comfortable with, are attracted to, and trust, I can see, but it doesn’t follow that you have to marry that person (or be married to them).
If anything, we should expect teenagers to have sex, or at least have the urge to, and be encouraged to do so with the requisite knowledge, and on their own terms. I may be mistaken, but I’ve heard that’s kind of how it goes over in the Netherlands, and their rates of teen pregnancy and STDs are incredibly low.
Articles like this just make me wish we could start some sort of heathen rescue squad and safe home to get people like this out of these situations.
Also, this post gives me a chance to link to may favorite t-shirt ever: Abstinence Is For Virgins
From the website:
Amanda, shoulda stayed with the tuxedo story, we wouldn’t have thought less of you. Au contraire.
I already read the story once and don’t want to jump back into that sewer, but: was there anyplace where it specifically states that Pilot-boy was also a virgin? Good lookin’ guy, with “admirable muscles”…. what are the odds?
And a PILOT? Mythologically at least, not known for their celibate ways.
About six months ago, I left my parents’ family cellphone plan to get on a plan with my boyfriend. He got a discount through work, so it made it a lot cheaper for both of us to have a plan together. And since I no longer live at home, I wanted to stop having my parents pay my cellphone bill.
The family plan was in my father’s name; the new plan was in my boyfriend’s name. That meant that my father and my boyfriend had to negotiate with the cell phone company on my behalf, to transfer my number from one plan to another.
It was the most creepily patriarchal thing ever. I don’t blame either of them, because it was a trick of how the cellphone plans were set up, but it seriously skeeved me out to have my boyfriend call my father to set up any aspect of my life. I almost wanted to just call and set up my own plan, but the lure of saving money was too strong.
It was at that point when I realized that it would skeeve me out ten times more if my boyfriend were ever to ask my father for permission to propose marriage to me. Just, no. Luckily neither boyfriend nor father would want that. I can imagine my father now: “Did you ask her? It’s what she thinks that matters. I like you fine, but I’m not the one marrying you.” And boyfriend thinks the idea is creepy too.
Even one of my very religious friends agreed with her boyfriend to get married first, then they went and asked the blessings of both sets of parents. That’s so much less creepy.
Greta Christina, I had exactly the same thought about Mr. Collins.
I don’t get the whole tradition of a guy asking your dad first before asking you for marriage thing, either. How is it “romantic”? I think most people don’t think about the why, they just think it is because you know, everyone says it’s romantic. Like flowers are romantic and no one asks why. (Fertility symbols + pretty is my guess.) The best I can figure that modern women get out of it is the assurance that they’re husband-to-be is a grown-up enough to be nice to their parents. Which is a scandalously low expectation, I suppose.
I think it’s supposed to be “romantic” because it’s “old-fashioned”.
Some old-fashioned things really are romantic. tuxedos. kid gloves. sonnets. arcane Victorian floral symbolism. pirates. jazz. The romantic movements in art, literature, etc.
Other old-fashioned things are not romantic at all. slavery. pogroms. Viking raids. trading women like property from father to son.
Just because something is “old-fashioned” doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.
mothworm: New England puritans didn’t wait. Seriously, either they didn’t wait, or there was an epidemic of premature firstborn infants in colonial New England.
Okay, leaving aside the insanely creepy “woman as possession between two men” theme here, which others have so wonderfully covered here (though, have to say, fits in with the fundie anti-choice wackjobs’ approach to abortion, because you’ll notice that the woman gets no say in her own romantic/sexual existance here. Can’t have women making their own choices or anything), I just have to point out something:
SEVEN WEEKS????!!! WTF???!!!
That’s just over a month and a half! 49 fucking days!!! And that’s right from the start of actually knowing something too, that’s not like from the period you liked the person enough to be dating them; that’s from the moment of actually MEETING THEM!!
Seven weeks from whoa to go? And they say us queers are destroying the institution of marriage.
Honestly, I can’t help but think that the two of them (although, probably Brett, as Lauren doesn’t get a say in the whole sex thing apparently