Virginity
There are cultural and religious traditions that place special value and significance on this state, predominantly towards unmarried females, associated with notions of personal purity, honor, and worth.
[16]Further expansion of the word to include virtuous (or naïve) young women, irrespective of religious connection, occurred over about another century, until by about 1400 we find: Voide & vacand of vices as virgyns it ware.
By extension from its primary sense, the idea that a virgin has a sexual "blank slate",[19] unchanged by any past intimate connection or experience,[19] can imply that the person is of unadulterated purity.
[26][29] For example, oral sex is common among adolescent girls who fellate their boyfriends not only to preserve their virginity, but also to create and maintain intimacy or to avoid pregnancy.
These medical consequences consist of an increase in STDs, cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease, fertility and unwanted pregnancies.
[41] In some cultures, an unmarried female who is found not to be a virgin, whether by choice or as a result of a rape, can be subject to shame, ostracism or even an honor killing.
[39] Conversely, Western societies see premarital abstinence as prude or outdated, while encouraging and sometimes even pressuring virgin individuals into sexual encounters.
Such virginity-testing bans have been controversial; while there is a consensus that virginity cannot be scientifically and medically certified, some physicians argue that certificates, while intrinsically dishonest, protect vulnerable women from potentially life-threatening danger.
[3] In Iran, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Sadeq Rohani has issued a fatwa which states that a women, after undergoing hymenorrhaphy, is a virgin, and a man cannot divorce her on grounds that she was not.
(2003), Michael Bozon of the French Institut national d'études démographiques found that contemporary cultures fall into three broad categories.
In non-Latin, Catholic countries (Poland and Lithuania are mentioned), age at sexual initiation was higher, suggesting later marriage and reciprocal valuing of male and female virginity.
33,943 students aged 15, from 24 countries, completed a self-administered, anonymous, classroom survey, consisting of a standard questionnaire, developed by the HBSC (Health Behaviour in School-aged Children) international research network.
[67][77] The teenage pregnancy rates between countries must take into account the level of general sex education available and access to contraceptive options.
[80] Social values related to virginity reflect both sexual jealousy and ideals of romantic love, and appear to be deeply embedded in human nature.
There are a number of groups within societies promoting their views of sexual morality in a variety of ways, including through sex education, religious teachings, seeking commitments or virginity pledges, and other means.
Historically, and still in many countries and jurisdictions today, a female's sexual experience is sometimes considered a relevant factor in the prosecution of a perpetrator of rape.
[86] However, it has been argued a maiden's state of parthenia (Greek: παρθένος), as invoked by these deities, carries a slightly different meaning from what is normally understood as virginity in modern western religions.
[15] Rather, parthenia focused more on marriageability and abstract concepts without strict physical requirements which would be adversely affected, but not entirely relinquished, by pre-marital sexual intercourse.
For these reasons, other goddesses not eternally committed to parthenia within the Homeric Hymns are able to renew theirs through ritual (such as Hera) or choose an appearance which implies the possession of it (such as Aphrodite).
Allowing the sacred fire of Vesta to die out, suggesting that the goddess had withdrawn her protection from the city, was a serious offence and was punishable by scourging.
He does not get sexually involved with those who are protected by their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their sisters, their relatives, or their Dhamma; those with husbands, those who entail punishments, or even those crowned with flowers by another man.
On the other hand, Buddhist monks and nuns of most traditions are expected to refrain from all sexual activity and the Buddha is said to have admonished his followers to avoid unchastity "as if it were a pit of burning cinders.
Prince Gotama and founded the beginnings of Buddhism, which included the denial of earthly pleasures in order to follow the Middle Way.
In the first reference, in Genesis 19:8, Lot offers his virgin daughters to the people of Sodom for sexual purposes in an attempt to protect his guests (cf.
He meets Rebecca, and the narrative tells us, "the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her" (in biblical terms, "to know" is a euphemism for sexual relations).
Children born to a single woman are not regarded as illegitimate (a mamzer) or subject to social or religious disabilities—Perez and Zerach, for example (and although their mother was a widow who was willingly impregnated by her father-in-law), were not counted as mamzerim (cf.
In Torah, a damsel who has not the sign of virginity in the early marriage shall be punished by death penalty, since the unvirgin woman among Israel is equal with a defiled whore in her father's house.
[111][112][113][114] However, other Christians reject the dogma, citing sources such as Mark 6:3: "Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon?
The Catholic Church holds[115] that in Semitic usage the terms "brother", "sister" are applied not only to children of the same parents, but to nephews, nieces, cousins, half-brothers, and half-sisters.
[11] In some modern-day largely Muslim societies such as Turkey, vaginal examinations for verifying a woman's virginity are a clinical practice which are at times state-enforced.
