Another Post About Lady Parts

With the release of the latest Twilight movie and TLC’s new show, Laugh at These Awkward People! or Nervous Adults Who Can’t Kiss or whatever, which is  all about people who are still virgins even though they are oldish, virginity has been on my mind a lot lately. In that light, I’d like to make an announcement:

Virginity isn’t a thing.

For real, you guys, it’s 2011. Can we all please stop pretending that the general vicinity that your genitalia have been relative to another person’s genitalia is a state of being? It’s just this word we made up to shame or reward ladies before we had paternity tests. Doctors can’t look at your vagina and be like, “yep, this one’s always been penis free!” because hymens break all the time for no reason (or for the obvious reason that tampons are giant wads of dry cotton in  hardish cardboard tubes) and sometimes never break, or don’t exist in the first place. And let’s pretend for a minute that there were any kind of expectation on men to stay sex-free (OK, OK, I’m sure in the history of oppressive sex ideas, some men have been expected to abstain, but let’s get real, even in most fundamentalist sects, guys’ sexuality is given a pass or at least ignored) there is obviously no physical difference before or after.

Emotionally… sure. For some people having sex is a life changing thing. And for some people (who are just as valid and great) it’s not anything. Likewise, going to Graceland could be a momentous occasion (for someone, I mean, who may or may not be me [OK, it’s me… Graceland was like the 4th biggest event in my life]), but there’s no special word for people who have never been to that hallowed icon of Americana in Memphis. Experiences are what you make them, and consensual sex can be a big deal or not. Yes, it is possible to regularly have safe sex with no unintended consequences of any kind (I’ve got years of baby- and infection-free sex under my belt!).

The whole idea is so vague and stupid it’s laughable. We seem to universally accept that it involves P-in-V intercourse, even though there are way more (arguably) intimate and/or scandalous and kinky things to do on the spectrum of sexing. There’s also a whole group of people who have sex without penises or vaginas. Are all gay people virgins? Or just all lesbians, since, for something that’s totally aimed at ladies, the whole thing is completely penis-centric . PIV penetration (alone) doesn’t do it for 75% percent of women. SEVENTY FIVE. But, somehow, it’s the gold-standard in sex? Super lame. Unfortunately, for a lot of straight couples, PIV is sex with those things that actually get women off considered extras. And I will part from my radical feminist sisters in saying that I know there are a lot of women who enjoy PIV with or without an orgasm, but the fact that the male orgasm is required for our definition of sex, while the female orgasm is looked at as a bonus at best, and an annoyance at worst, is a crazy level of fucked-up-ness.

Which brings us to the part of this post where I try to tone down my asshole-ish nature and not offend everyone I know. Because there are a ton of women in my life who are waiting until they are married to have sex. They are smart, intelligent, strong, beautiful women whose convictions and commitment I whole-heartedly admire. But the idea that virginity is sacred or needs to be “saved” is, in my opinion, a fundamental misunderstanding of what sex is, but also and more importantly, what marriage is.

The idea that intercourse is more important or intimate than sleeping in late on Sundays or inside jokes or going through the crisis of losing a job or a loved one together is preposterous. Yes, it is part of an intimate relationship, but it’s just one part. And it can’t be used up or ruined just because you’ve done it before (Side note because some adults still believe this bizarre myth: sex does not make vaginas “loose” [barfbarfbarf]. Vaginas are made out of muscles [what did you think they were made of?] and muscles don’t’ work that way. It’s science.).   It will also never live up to years of anticipation and fantasy. You may or may not like your first time. If it’s on your wedding night, I assure you that you won’t have the energy to do it properly.

It’s funny to me that it gets so wrapped up in the “family values” package, since I think the abstinence campaign really denigrates what marriage is. Like the only thing different between being married and dating is boning. As if marriage were so fragile that simply knowing your partner had been with someone else could break it. Marriage isn’t a jack-in-the-box where if you pop it early there’s nothing left to look forward to. It’s this (ideally) life-long journey—an experiment in sacrifice and devotion and voluntary obligations and unconditional commitment and personal transformation. You don’t have to manufacture some kind of surprise or novel thing for it; marriage will give you discoveries and adventures all by itself.

Which is not to say that it is in any way my place to tell anyone who to have sex with or when to do it. If waiting until marriage is the right time, then that’s what you should do. However, like food and sleep, a healthy sex life is a need for most humans and denying it when you are ready, when you do have someone you want it with, can make a person crazy. It can also make a person do crazy things like have unprotected sex or get married to someone they just want to have sex with.

Virginity is just another way of saying that sex is what we value in women. It’s the other side of the teenage-girls-in-stilettos-and-micro-skirts coin. On the one side you’re objectified as a thing to have sex with, and on the other side you’re objectified as an “untouched” thing that only one lucky person gets to have sex with, but in either case, it’s all about being a thing to have sex with. Who has or has not been in your vagina has nothing to do with who you are. It’s not a reflection on your “purity” and it’s not a badge of honor or shame. It’s not a thing. Really. I promise.

You may want to know…

Someone pointed out to me that I haven’t written anything in “a season,” so I thought I should explain why and then make myself be better at writing again. So, here is the first reason: I got a new job. Yeah! Remember when I was all mopey rain cloud all the time because I was poor and unproductive? Well now I’m just poor! Take that upcoming thirties! I’m a Field Representative (don’t worry, I don’t know what it means either) for an elected person and while I get paid like an intern, I have state health insurance. STATE HEALTH INSURANCE. Sometimes I go to the doctor just for fun— you know, to see how he’s doing. To ask him about moles and shit. Oh that’s just a smushed chocolate chip smudge? Put it on my tab!

Reason number two: I’m a super bad-ass runner now. That’s actually a lie, since I’m still the same shitty, slow runner I’ve always been, but now I can run shittily and slow for miles and miles consistently. I’m sort of training to do a half marathon so sometimes I run up to 8 miles at a time like some kind of a super-human mutant. (And yes, I realize a half marathon is much more than 8 miles, but I’m working up to it, lay off me.)

Reason number three: There’s this brand new show I’ve discovered that you’ve probably never even heard of because I’m way more hip and cool than you. It’s called Cheers. It’s about these people in a bar and they say funny things to eachother and get into situations and it’s like watching a bunch of friends whose names I know because we’re so close! Basically after all the working and running this is the only thing I have the energy to enjoy.

But not anymore, dear readers! Or, rather, probably still, but maybe I’ll try to be less lazy more often. Things? I’ve got opinions on them! And sure, I usually start posts, get super mad, write myself into exhaustion, reread it and realize it’s stupid and incoherent and then abandon it all together but! What was I saying? Anyway, this non-post about not posting is my promise to you to attempt to try to be better about making an effort to post. And if for some reason you have something you wish I’d write about you can send me a topic and I will probably write about it because guilt is the biggest motivating factor in my whole life. Really, it is.

Thanks for bearing with me, internet! I love you forever!

PSA: Google Does Not Make You a Scientist

During one of those uncomfortable getting-to-know-you conversations with a new acquaintance, I was recently told that, though she is a biology major, said acquaintance doesn’t believe in evolution.  She’s done a lot of research on google and it just doesn’t add up.

As someone who once had to take a full anti-evolution course and occasionally listens to Intelligent Design sermons for fun, I immediately wanted to school her on how flimsy all of the arguments I already know she believes are.  Of course, I then reminded myself that this person was not convinced by an entire semester of college biology and refrained.  Truthfully, I’m less bothered by the fact that she doesn’t understand the theory (science is hard!) and more annoyed that an otherwise reasonable person is basically ascribing to the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard.

99.9% of the Scientific community thinks evolution does, actually, add up.   Now when I say “scientist,” resist the urge to imagine a hunchback in a laboratory maniacally rubbing his human-fat soaked hands and think instead of a person who has devoted their entire life to studying and learning about science.  That is their whole job.  And it’s not a few guys in a basement scouring blogs, it’s somewhere around 500,000 professional science people.   Unlike the googler, their livelihood depends on this stuff.  When they come up with theories they publish them and then other scientists review them. Those other scientists either agree or publish their own theories about why scientist #1 is such an idiot he can’t tell his protons from his neutrons.  It’s self-correcting in that way; it’s competitive. The more they publish studies that the scientific community can replicate, the more grants and awards and job offers and press they get.  When you can definitively disprove a long-standing, well accepted theory, you get even more money and fame!  That’s why you know who Galileo, and Newton, and Einstein are!  It’s capitalism!  You people love that!

So let’s review, Scientist: years  and years of study, doctorates and experiments, peer reviewing community, figure out how things like this work for a living, rewarded with money and fame for proving/disproving stuff; you: google.  Got it?

If a scientist could disprove the most widely accepted modern scientific theory around (evolution) he/she would win the Nobel Prize, money, and his or her name would be burned into every history book ever.  This scientist wouldn’t even have to disprove Evolution!  If they could disprove the ancient age of the earth to say, something crazy like 6,000 years, they would demolish the majority of current science.  There is every reason in the world for scientists to do this, and yet, they don’t.  Is it because they hate fame and money?  Is it because every scientist ever has a vendetta against God?  Is it because they DON’T HAVE GOOGLE?  No, it is because like gravity, the theory of evolution is a fact.

If you believe that the earth is 6,000 years old or that the first woman came from a rib or that there is some kind of difference between “micro” and “macro” evolution (hint: there isn’t), you aren’t just wrong.  You believe in a massive, worldwide conspiracy.  You believe that nearly every scientist in every branch of science; every scientific foundation and research organization; every journal; and every accredited college or University in the WHOLE WORLD is participating in some kind of coordinated, malicious cover-up to hide the truth.  It makes 9/11 Truthers and Moon-Landing conspiracy types look downright brilliant.  Scully-esque.  Pillars of reason and logic.

So whatever, keep on believing you can out-google science, just do me a solid: start wearing tinfoil hats or carry around your dead pet bird so at least I know before we start making dinner plans that I should be prepared for a dinosaur-train to crazy town.