While falling in love is fun, it’s not everything, and it’s not the antidote to an unfulfilled life, despite what Reese Witherspoon movies may tell you.
For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you’ve never had sex, you’re a “good” (i.e. “moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise.
Because even subversive sarcasm adds a cool-girl nonchalance, an updated, sharper version of the expectation that women be forever pleasant, even as we’re eating shit.
Because while my daughter lives in a world that knows what happens to women is wrong, it has also accepted this wrongness as inevitable.
Still, somehow, inexplicably, “man-hater” is a word tossed around with insouciance as if this was a real thing that did harm. Meanwhile we have no real word for men who kill women. Is the word just “men”?
We say “misogynist”; I’ve written that “misogyny kills,” but the world falls flat on your tongue – it’s too academic sounding, not raw or horrifying enough to relay the truth of what it means.
No matter the content, the message is clear: we are here for their enjoyment and little else. We have to walk through the rest of our day knowing that our discomfort gave someone a hard-on.
Idolizing virginity as a stand-in for women’s morality means that nothing else matters- not what we accomplish, not what we think, not what we care about and work for. Just if/how/whom we have sex with. That’s all.
By fetishizing youth and virginity, we’re supporting a disturbing message: that really sexy women aren’t women at all- they’re girls.
Antifeminists are the only ones who benefit from their version of working on women’s behalf; in reality, they put other women at risk and fail to solve any larger problems.
Antifeminists are the only ones who benefit from their version of working on women’s behalf; in reality, they put other women at risk and fail to solce any larger problems.
While boys are taught that the things that make them men–good men–are universally accepted ethical ideals, women are led to believe that our moral compass lies somewhere between our legs. Literally.
When are we going to realize that hating other women – no matter how much money they have or how far they’ve fallen – is just as bad for ourselves as it is for anyone else?
According to the virginity movement, men have no self-control when it comes to anything sexual.
When abstinence curricula contain information about sexual abuse or assault (though they often don’t), the message is similar: The onus of preventing sexual assault is on girls, not on men.
And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I’m betting some of those women would like to do great things of their own.
There’s a reason why the assumed goal for women in virginity-movement screeds is marriage and motherhood only: The movement only believes that’s the only thing women are meant for.
This is why I prefer Queens to any other place. The borough of my parents and small business owners is populated by people who know how to work around the system when it tries to fuck you.
So remember, this is definitely a screwed-if-you-do, screwed-if-you-don’t situation. You just remember to say, “Screw them.
Another abstinence book claims, “A woman is far more attracted by a man’s personality, while a man is stimulated by sight. A man is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is physically attracted.
The truth about parenting is that the reality of our lives needs to be enough.
I think that the ideal of parenting can make people unhappy. It’s that this lie that they’re being told by society that parenting is one thing – and when parenting is something completely different – that’s what makes them unhappy.
Wedding fever is one of the scariest diseases I have ever seen.