During the commemoration of the Day for the Girl Child recently in Kyenjojo district, First Lady Janet Museveni said that she kept her daughters virgins until marriage. Janet said that she used the traditional African way of bringing up a girl child.
This sounds unbelievable to a generation that is so much engrossed into sex. You don’t hear much talk about virgins anymore since sex is so ubiquitous in our hyper-sexualized society. If everyone is doing it, no one would care about virgins. I read somewhere that to find a virgin today is like stumbling across a historic artifact or a unicorn simply because they are that elusive.
There is a growing trend among singles to have sex before marriage and we are bombarded with movies, novels with sex before marriage is okay. This has led to deeper implications and a shift in our culture today when it comes to virginity and our perspective on it.
The problem with sex before marriage is the thinking that I need to first check out if she is good in bed and then make a decision. The statement made above is a prevailing mindset among men who think they are God’s gift to women. It is a selfish stance to make. It makes sex one sided. If you don’t have sex with me then this won’t work. This is the height of selfishness.
There was a time in the African culture when chastity, purity and virginity was celebrated. During this time, the shame of losing one’s virginity and purity before marriage was borne not just by the lady, but by her parents as well. In this way parents had a responsibility of ensuring that their daughters remained safe.
Premarital sex was almost unheard of. Parents were very strict and the social unwritten code guiding pre-marriage relationships was the ‘no sex’ code. Chastity was taken so seriously that it wasn’t too common to come across two adolescents holding hands or playing any immoral act in a corner.
Today, finding a virgin is like making a river flow in the reverse. It is no surprise therefore, that a person’s virginity is considered so valuable. In 2008, pseudonymous Natalie Dylen offered her virginity for sale to the highest bidder.
She received offers of up to $3.8 million dollars. In conservative Nations like Egypt, where premarital sex is forbidden due to religious beliefs and traditions, “selling virginity” to women, who practice sex before marriage, in the form of blood-squirting hymen, has become a lucrative business. And more recently, an Australian filmmaker is documenting auctioning off virgins and paying each virgin a hefty $20, 000.
In our society where sex sells, virgins are very much like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They are as valuable as the coins in the pot and just as mythical. But is this the case in the world of dating and relationships?
Does it matter if a woman is a virgin or not? While some people still treasure virginity others don’t care while some don’t even want to date virgins. I have a male friend who said if he wants to date a lady and noticed that the girl is a virgin, he would not date her again. Most young men even make jest of a lady that is a virgin because they believe she is not experienced and therfore must be a bore in bed.
