Virginity - is it a big deal?
While riding the MRT going to my appointment, I happened to gazed a tabloid column read by a guy seating beside me. My attention was focused on the theme of the article, which expounds on the concept of virginity. I wasn’t able to capture the idea of the entire article. However, fresh on my mind, it simply tells the cultural perception of Filipino people to virginity.
I don’t usually find it shocking when people talked about a losing virginity of someone or gossiping about a bold star actress stressing with pride that she is still a virgin regardless of how many movies she had made making love with a man or a girl (in the movie). What actually shocked me is the behavior of these people, their intellectual immaturity in coping with the issue of virginity.
Is it a big deal if when a girl or boy losses his/her virginity out of matrimony? Is there any ethical issue about this? Or such perception is simply a cause of cultural conditioning? What matters more to me is to understand why people especially Filipinos were so resolute with regards to virginity – although I find this as a trivial matter. I wanted to expostulate the behavior of Filipinos who predispose to become ultra moralist and fanatically judgmental to someone who losses his/her virginity.
The concept of sex took an evolutionary path during the early years down to our present time. Even the expression of romantic feelings also resembled the same pathway. If I will look down the history of the Filipino people, the concept of sex and virginity has never been taken so casually and lightly in comparison with the western world. The old people will never talked sex as an object of discussion. It is not decent to do so. It becomes a taboo to discuss about sex thus even parents are inhibited to tell this to their children. As they said, we are a society that is not open let being conservative plays the role.
The sanctity of sex intensified to the mindset of the Filipino people when Christianity as a religion took the role to play as their conscience, their moral driver and judge to what is right and evil. According to God, based on Bible of the Church, sex prior to marriage (fornication or pre-marital sex) is a grave sin, not even sober confessions will save the sinners from going to hell. This teaching becomes so ingrained to the heart and mind of the people. It becomes a communal moral guideline, thus all become God that judges his/her own neighbor. When someone committed the sin, everybody will condemn the sinner – as in all in that community who knew the news. How would they treat the sinner? They mock, curse, and inflict physical pain even by his/her own family. Religion had taught chastity but never modesty and compassion to someone who committed the sin of fornication.
The concept of virginity is the same with the doctrine of chastity and to soon-to-be priest – its celibacy. It also becomes a norm to remain virgin before getting a lifetime partner. Even the expression of romantic feelings has been restrained to unmarried couple. Old movies normally projects actions that manifest love without much intense show of physical affection. We have observed that actors commonly hold the hands of their lovers and the extreme act is just an embrace. In our town, people even mock lovers that hold each others hand that just a holding hands will lead to pregnancy. Although it’s a joke but it magnifies the culture of the people, how they deal or treat couples that show affection in public without even have any sexual contact. This kind of treatment will caused lovers to suppress their feeling of expressing romance when in public. They usually coined the actions of expressive lovers as a public indecency. A kind of cultural conditioning that inhibits deeper understanding on the nature of human emotion and his basic instinct.
If people have been mocked just having so romantically showy, how much more if they learned that the girl is pregnant out of wedlock? Or if they learned that she lost her virginity? Well, this caused a social outburst and condemnation. In order to pacify and please the people, the parents will immediately set a date of wedding. Respect of public is heavier than self-respect, as they say it to reclaim the lost “family dignity”. Thus, whether the girl is pregnant or not, she and her lover must tie the knot.
When the Americans has made wide influenced on the culture of the Filipino people, the strict and ultra conservativeness of the society has loosened a little but not much because of the strong influence of the Church to the government as well as to the media. As we can see, they are the staunch advocate of censorship on media products like films and magazines that displays sexual icons. But this doesn’t stop the increasing number of youths getting into pre-marital sex. However, majority of the matured population is still dominated by the old, conservative, hell fearing people who have still the guts to dictate what is moral and ethical to the young. They are the blinded guardians of morality, that it seems moral values is a public possession rather than individual choices, whether it doesn’t matter if the individual is religious or not.
As secularism and commercialism becomes dominant in the society, the moral judgment of the people is less driven by religious dogma. With the spread of activism on women egalitarianism, religious influence and male domination has also gradually declined. Openness and rationality is the major product of such cultural movement (feminism) but not to mention some invalidity of their claims, which come to a point of extreme denial to some facets of reality. However, as more young people has been exposed to liberal thinking and lifestyle of the west, some has been trapped to hedonism, motivated just to seek physical pleasure and forget the true meaning of sex and intimacy. But majority had has still the sanity to refuse or immerse themselves to that kind of lifestyle and these people has been motivated by true good reason to abstain pre-marital sex or most likely jolted with fear.
Many young people have been engaged in pre-marital sex for reason of love, pleasure or because of some psychological problem. Power of their emotion is overridden by their capacity to think to the consequences of their action. And even their conviction of retaining their virginity prior to marriage is weak to overcome their emotions that engulfed their senses. The power of love is so strong that religious conviction cannot reach the tip of their rationality, that making choices is no longer possible. This human quality of love is difficult to quantify in moral sense, to the extension of sexual intercourse. Thus, religious people who staunchly persuading people not to engaged in pre-marital sex did not understand or have myopic view of human psychology.
How about the case of sex for the sake of pleasure or out curiosity that people engaged in sex? In western world, this casual treatment of sex is becomes a norm that even parents encourages their kids to get sex at young age. This is a classical example of a society that doesn’t give much a damn to virginity. Virginity is not a big deal to them and not even important when a girl is engaged to marriage. Not like in the Philippines, Filipino women were very much ardent in terms of retaining their virginity until they tie the knot. I guessed they are two reasons to this, one is religious and the other is expectation. Filipinos are religious people and their religious beliefs are much embedded in their consciousness. But the heavier cause is the expectation of the society to a Filipina girl, their parents, relatives, elders and the man she will going to marry. This is the hypocrisy and mediocrity of Filipino society especially to Filipino men. They expect that the girl they will marry should be “physically” virgin, but they themselves are not virgin. Another, Filipino men are also living in expectation to their fellow men that they will get mock if they marry a girl that is no longer virgin. And Filipino men will leave their women if they found out that she is not virgin. Thus, this is the greatest fear of a not a virgin Filipina who is engaged to a mediocre Filipino man.
When a Filipina girl lost her virginity, she found guilty to herself. If she is religious, God might forsake her. If she didn’t marry the man whom she lost her virginity, she gets anxious to her future husband. She is guilty to give her life to man she will marry because she is no longer pure. This kind of thinking has a negative psychological impact. Thus a Filipina girl will lose her self-respect, self-esteem and self-worth. Until they will come to deny that they don’t deserve a decent and single man to marry them as they see themselves undignified and filthy. Some would prefer to be a mistress to a married man.
In a society where the consciousness is dominated by thinking that virginity is imperative, it is expected that individuals are living with so much expectations and fear. And in a society that is dominated by man, it is apparent how the treatment to virginity of women is so suppressive. And in the Philippines, it is obvious that there is an inequality of men and women by just the dealt of virginity, where Filipino men “demands” to have a future wife to be virgin while Filipino women never demands that to be their future husband. Majority of Filipino women are still living to the whimsical appetite and mediocrity of Filipino men. Filipino women in particular are living with fear.
I might admire a Filipino girl that even she lost her virginity she became responsible to her action, and never inflicted herself with so much guilt that eventually caused her to lose self-esteem and self-respect. And more importantly, a Filipino girl who is not living with expectations and fear, that whatever her action is, it must be built with respect, willingness, honesty and love to herself.
Back to the question: is virginity a big deal? To an educated, cultured, rational, intelligent and sensible person, virginity is important but when it was lost out of matrimony, it must be caused by willingness, honesty and love and not by forced or fear. And this must not be a caused of losing self-respect and self-worth because of guilt. To mediocre and narrow minded individual, virginity is such a big deal as they are living with so much expectations and fear. These people who haven’t established their own minds are the one who were victims to somebody else’s mediocrity. To hedonistic, pleasure seeker, virginity is nothing. I guessed these individuals have nothing in differ from animals.
Whether a society value much or less about virginity, this must not be a caused of indifference to others in terms of treatment that cause people to somehow lost their self-respect and dignity. And not be a caused of inequality among the sexes. And not be a caused of mockery from religious fanatics.
posted by Michelle Viloria at 9:03 PM
