Virgin: The Untouched History

by Hanne Blank

  Blood and Pain

  No book on virginity could possibly omit a discussion of blood and pain. Considered proof positive of a woman's virginity since the very earliest documents we have on the subject, pain and bleeding have been so strongly associated with virginity loss that we scarcely speak about first-time sex without talking about them. Generally pain and bleeding associated with first-time sexual penetration—if they happen at all—are both short-lived and minor, but this is a very personal and variable thing. While it is true that some women do report intense pain and/or extensive bleeding, it is extremely rare for a physically adult woman's first experience of sexual penetration to result in injuries severe enough to require medical attention. That the physical consequences of virginity loss occupy a sizable continuum has been a known factor for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Even the rabbis of the Talmud recognized that not all women's bodies react to virginity loss the same way.

  We look for blood and pain in virgins because we attach enormous symbolic meaning to these things. Depending on one's viewpoint, blood and pain can be understood as symbolic of virtue, morality, sacrifice, and even of sacramental covenants and the grace of God. Sociologist Sharon Thompson's research has shown that in telling their virginity-loss stories, some women seem to positively revel in gory (and in some cases clearly exaggerated) details of how much it hurt and how much they bled and suffered. While some cast losing their virginity in the light of romantic sacrifice or "proving their love," others frame it as evidence that sex inevitably makes victims of women or as proof that sexually active women deserve to suffer. Still others cite it as the physical embodiment of all the betrayal and disappointment they felt when they realized that sex wasn't necessarily going to be the be-all and end-all they'd been led to expect. "They almost seem to be scaring each other off," Thompson writes, then adds, in a perceptive alternate take, "or playing dare double-dare."

  In a very different interpretation, some evangelical Christian youth educators like Dannah Gresh, the author of the pppular And the Bride Wore White: Seven Secrets to Sexual Purity, draw an explicit connection between the idea of a blood sacrifice, blood covenants, and the blood of defloration to emphasize the ideals of premarital chastity and a sanctified marriage bond. "You see, God created you and me with a protective membrane, the hymen, which in most cases is broken the first time that we have intercourse," Gresh writes. "When it breaks, a woman's blood spills over her husband. Your sexual union is a blood covenant between you, your husband, and God." Gresh wins points for acknowledging that this blood loss doesn't happen every time ("in most cases"), but one can only wonder how a reader might react who'd internalized Gresh's characterization of this spilling of blood, only to discover when the time came that she hadn't bled a drop. Such are the risks of attaching heavy symbolic meaning to a physical phenomenon that may or may not happen.

  Whether in the painful bloody first times showcased in romance novels and pornography, the ancestral custom of proving virginity through the evidence of post-wedding-night blood on the sheets, the way young women use their virginity-loss horror stories as an arena for female bonding, or in religiously based interpretations like Gresh's, the message is clear: blood and pain equal virginity loss, virginity loss equals blood and pain. On some level, it seems as if our culture believes that women should bleed and suffer when they have sex for the first time. Whether it is framed as a consecration or as a punishment is but a matter of perspective.

  From antiquity forward, numerous medical writers likewise noted that it was eminently possible for a virgin not to bleed. It is discussed extensively in Tractate Ketubot of the Talmud, and a range of Greek, Egyptian, Carthaginian, biblical, and other sources on the subject are cited in Robert Burton's 1621 Anatomy of Melancholy. But if some women bleed and others don't, it rather raises the question why. One fairly common explanation, advanced by writers including seventeenth-century midwife Jane Sharp, was that women who lost their virginity after they had been menstruating for some while were less likely to bleed because the passages were already accustomed to having substances pass through them on a regular basis. Other writers simply admitted ignorance. The late-seventeenth-century sexual self-help best-seller Aristotle s Master Piece, which remained hugely popular throughout England and America for over a century, was firm in its insistence that an absence of blood was not conclusive evidence of a misplaced maidenhead, and happy to equivocate as to the reasons the blood might not appear:

  When a man is married and finds the tokens of his wife's virginity, upon the first act of copulation, he has all the reason in the world to believe her such, but if he finds them not, he has not reason to think her devirginated, if he finds her otherwise sober and modest: Seeing the Hymen may be broken so many other ways, and yet the woman both chaste, and virtuous.

  The answer to the question of why the experience of first intercourse is so variable is no clearer today than it was in the seventeenth century. We still don't know exactly why some women experience pain and bleeding along with their first experience of penetrative sex and others don't. We don't, in fact, even necessarily know what aspect of penetration or what part of the anatomy is being affected when pain and bleeding do occur. There are, after all, quite a few possibilities.

  Many people simply assume that first intercourse tears the tissues of the hymen, and this tearing is what causes both pain and bleeding. This may be true in some cases, but we also know that not all hymens are equally traumatized by penetration and some are not traumatized by it at all. What kind of hymen is most likely to prove a source of pain? We don't know, and the research doesn't provide an answer. It would seem prudent, though, to surmise that the hymen itself must not be the sole factor in the equation that determines what a woman experiences the first time she is sexually penetrated.

  After all, intercourse does not take place between a penis and a hymen. Hymens do not exist in isolation. The hymen is a landmark within the larger landscape of the entrance of the vagina, much in the manner that the frame of a door is a landmark in the larger landscape of an entryway to a house or room. You can't go through the doorway without going through the door's frame, but you also can't go through the door's frame without going through the doorway. The same is true of the hymen and the entrance of the vagina. If the hymen is present at all, it's present as part of the vaginal entrance. It is made of the same types of tissues as the rest of the vagina, and is subject to the same conditions and forces as the rest of it.

  And the vagina, hymen very much included, is a complex thing. Vaginas vary from one to the next in numerous aspects, including their at-rest size, the degree to which they can potentially be dilated or opened, and the relative elasticity of their muscles and tissues. There are also characteristics that change not only from woman to woman, but also over the lifetime of any individual woman, including general health, arousal, naturally occurring mucous lubrication, and susceptibility to dyspareunia (a generic term meaning painful intercourse), a condition which has a number of possible causes. All of these things, plus the subjective wild cards of attitude, emotional and intellectual comfort, feelings toward one's partner, sexual guilt or shame, and many other such intangibles, play a role in what a woman experiences and how her body reacts during any given sexual episode, including a first time.

  Research suggests that experience, knowledge, and patience go a long way in helping women have less painful, more pleasurable experiences of first-time penis-in-vagina sex. We know that women who have nonintercourse sexual experience prior to their first intercourse usually report less painful and more pleasurable experiences when they do have penetrative sex. Relaxation counts for a great deal as well: a recent German study of 669 young women and their experiences with first gynecological exams revealed a significant relationship between anxiety and painful penetration of the vagina. In this light, we might read some of the advice often found in old sex manuals and medical texts very differently. When old sex manuals encourage a woman (and/or her husband) t
o gently stretch the opening of the vagina with the fingers a little bit at a time before attempting intercourse, we can see this not merely as instructions for gradual dilation of the hymen but as a prescription for a gradual introduction to sex in the form of digital stimulation.

  It's not glamorous, it's not titillating, and in fact it's downright mundane: studies show that women who have a comprehensive, nonjudgmental sexual education and who develop affirming, self-empowered attitudes about their own sexuality are more likely to report positive experiences when they lose their virginity. A woman is also more likely to have a painless experience, as well as a more positive impression of losing her virginity overall, research tells us, if she is not coerced or pressured, feels safe and secure with her partner, and is not worried about being interrupted or discovered during sex. Women who are somewhat older than the average for their demographic when they have sex for the first time are more likely to have more positive experiences when they lose their virginity, possibly because they have simply had more time to learn and experience things and gained more autonomy over their lives than those who first had sex at earlier ages.

  The research repeatedly indicates that a nontraumatic and perhaps even pleasant introduction to sex for women may be as simple as educating them and letting them do it on their own terms and in their own time. Could it be that the early progressive sex educators, like Stella Browne, Marie Stopes, and Margaret Sanger, all of whom strongly advocated sexual education and autonomy as being central to good sex lives for women, are finally finding vindication in quantitative analysis? Indeed, it seems to be so. Plus ca change, plusc'est la même chose.

  PART II

  Virgin Culture

  But whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire,

  that is it which he for his part calleth good;

  and the object of his hate and aversion, evil;

  and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable.

  —Thomas Hobbes

  Leviathan, 1651

  CHAPTER 8

  In a Certain Way Unbodily

  Virginal integrity, and the freedom from all sexual intimacy that comes with the devout practice of celibacy, belongs with the angels, and in corruptible flesh it is a foretaste of eternal incorruptibility . . . those whose bodies are already in a certain way unbodily have something special over and above what others have.

  —St. Augustine

  VIRGINITY OFTEN FEELS MONOLITHIC, so huge, pervasive, and old that it must have been with us since the dawn of time. In a certain sense this is even true. We do not know how the idea of virginity first arose, what sorts of ideas and ideals—if any at all—were associated with virginity in its earliest days, or anything else about how it might have been relevant to the lives of those who first established the notion. But as long as people have been writing about themselves, they've also been writing about virginity. We can't trace virginity back to the origin of the concept, but we can follow it back as far as we have written references: to the world of antiquity and its Judaeans, Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians. The fact that a concept of virginity existed for the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans and was discussed in the Torah (or Old Testament) and Talmud doesn't mean, however, that their ideas about virgins and virginity were anything like ours. Our understanding of the physical nature of virginity has not been historically uniform, and neither has our understanding of any of its other aspects.

  It is often claimed, and accurately so, that "the past is another country." When it comes to discussing virginity, the distance between the culture into which Jesus of Nazareth was born and the culture that grew up around the religion founded by his followers is huger than we can easily comprehend. When we look back to the ancient world—a necessary first step if we are to gain any perspective on the roots of our own Western Judeo-Christian ideologies of virginity—we are truly looking at a different place that functioned according to different paradigms of religion, philosophy, medicine, and human relationships. Indeed, we are looking at the other side of a paradigm shift in terms of the ways in which the body and sexuality were understood. This shift, which was a direct result of the emergence of Christianity, began along the shores of the Mediterranean about a hundred years before the time of Christ and solidified during the fifth century C.E., around the time of the death of the inimitable St. Augustine. To understand the nature of this shift, its incredible momentum, and the inestimable degree to which it changed Western civilization, we must know what preceded it, what virginity was and meant to the ancient world.

  Unearthing Ancient Chastities

  We think of chastity as a kissing cousin to virginity, a state of sexual abstinence, celibacy, and purity. We frequently think of it as being an aspect of religious belief, and also tend to consider it an expression or embodiment of a particular sort of morality. When we read the fifth-century-B.C.E. Greek lyric poet Bacchylides' statement "as a skillful painter gives a face beauty, just so chastity gives charm to a life of high aims," it makes immediate sense to us. It fits our notions of what the word "chastity" means, the type of people we assume would seek it out and practice it, and the kind of lifestyle we think such people would lead.

  So it comes as something of a surprise when we discover that for Bacchylides, as for the rest of the pre-Christian world, chastity did not mean celibacy at all. Nor did it necessarily mean sexual abstinence except for certain brief periods. Ancient-world chastity was just as likely to be a matter of physical health as it was of spiritual fitness.

  For Roman citizens, marriage and procreation were often legally required in the name of the state, neither optional nor truly voluntary. The same pertained in much of Greece. This was a world in which virtually everyone married and virtually everyone begot or bore children. It was also a world in which men of the elite (and the elite are the only ancients who had the means and the material wealth to leave behind historical documents, and are, therefore, the people whose history we know the most about) commonly had not only wives but concubines, and slept not only with them but with heterae, or courtesans. They were, as landowners and slaveowners, also entitled to have sexual access to the bodies of the people they owned. For a man, confining sexual activity to the marital bed was scarcely mandatory. Simply keeping it within the household would do admirably. In Greece, though less commonly in Rome, a man's sexual activity might also include liaisons with adolescents of his own sex. As they grew up, boys learned to become part of the "old boys' club" of the elite ancient Greek world through intense, loving, and often sexual relationships with older men who were their mentors, champions, and friends.

  What, then, did a person of this era consider "chastity" to be? The Greeks had a word for it, sophrosyne, a quality of temperance characterized by self-knowledge, maturity, and control. Discussed at length by Plato and praised in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics as the primary characteristic of the sought-after middle road of personal conduct, sophrosyne was the ethical and spiritual force that would cause a man not to eliminate his various passions—hardly a moderate's move—but to discipline them, consciously limiting himself to those actions and activities that most contributed to the general good.

  This general good was both social and physical. Sex was an integral aspect of the life of the body, and everything that affected the body could also affect health. It was common for men to consult physicians to discover what kinds of imbalances might exist in the humors of their bodies. On doctors' advice they would tailor their sexual activities as well as their diets, exercise, massage regimens, and work and bathing habits. Pythagoras, for example, counseled celibacy during the summers, for he believed that the humoral heat of sex combined with summer weather might overwhelm the system and cause illness.

  Ancient authorities sometimes counseled periods of temporary celibacy, but this did not mean that more celibacy would be better. Quite the contrary: Hippocrates, Rufus of Ephesus, Galen, and other medical men were adamant that insufficient sexual activity in both men and women could lead to illness due
to plethora, an overabundance of moist humors that would clog the body and weigh it down. Finding the right balance between sexual heat, loss of semen (women as well as men were believed to produce and ejaculate semen), and the tendencies of one's individual body could be tricky.

  Neither sex nor ejaculation was seen as problematic, in and of itself. Indeed, a Roman boy's first ejaculation was something to celebrate, both within the household and at the annual March 17 festival known as the Liberalia. Frequency and timing of sex and ejaculation, on the other hand, were issues with which a man who wished to be healthy and wise had to grapple. Not enough and one might succumb to plethora-, too often and one might become enervated and withered. Getting the balance right was the key to exceptional health. Such health was even reputed to affect the body in visible ways: Aline Rousselle relates that chaste men were believed to be taller and stronger than men who were too profligate.

  Women, too, were expected to be chaste. Their chastity was a bit closer to what we today think of as chastity, namely premarital celibacy followed by married monogamy. An adulteress could be killed, potentially even by her own father, for disgracing herself and the houses to which she belonged. But at the same time, women's sexual desire was a recognized aspect of life in the ancient world. The women of Aristophanes' Lysistrata complain just as loudly and long about their heavy loins and unmet desires as do the men from whom they're withholding their sexual favors. Women's sexual needs were such an uncontested reality to Jewish thought that the rabbis of the Talmud protected women's sexual interests by delineating the frequency with which wives had the legal right to demand sexual satisfaction from their husbands.