Thank you, Nate, for an excellent post. Yes, chastity and virginity are not the same thing. I think it would also be helpful if in the Church we stopped thinking of chastity as something that only concerns youth and singles. Our teacher was not only new to the Church she was also new to the country and therefore probably unfamiliar with Church stereotypes. A lot of the discussion concerned what to do if your partner strays.
A very thoughtful and meaningful exchange and entirely fitting for group of LDS women. Unfortunately that was the first and last time I heard chastity discussed in that comprehensive way.
No more problems after that of any kind whatsoever. I think broadening our concept of chastity as something that is also important within marriage would go a long way to help separate the concept of chastity from the concept of virginity. What would a frank, honest discussion about sex have to say about what men and women experience in sex?
I almost never hear frank, honest discussions of sex among LDS adults in a group setting, how could one be produced for the youth? Its an emotionally charged and personal issue.
Imagine trying to have a frank, honest discussion of what attracts men to women and women to men. Its contested from the ground up. Am I being trolled or am I just ignorant. Surely there are sex education classes in schools in US. Most of the time spent on sex ed in Australia is spent on self esteem, the right to say no, social pressure, alcohol, power imbalances, and a small amount on sexual intercourse, and birth control.
These classes are normally conducted with both boys and girls together. Obviously there would be a moral element to a church discussion, but these other issues seem to be missed in favour of the moral, in church. Interestingly the rates of teenage pregnancy, teenage abortion etc. Last time I covered this was in mutual late last year when we covered all of that including what chastity and virtue actually mean with both YM and YW as a one off class.
It well done. Just noting that in the church that I know we are past those damaging analogies. Nate, a well thought out posting and a very respectful tone. I think your post contributes nicely to the litany of recent related posting on various blogs. I believe that chastity as a way of life leads to a lifestyle of purity. Associating it strictly with virginity is immensely problematic — as you point out.
I remember while pursuing my undergraduate degree learning of hymenoplasty in one of my sociology courses in the context of a trend in the U. To this day, it has remained in my mind a vivid example that chastity is a way of life, a belief, a state of being, etc. A chaste and virtuous lifestyle, as you noted, will lead to chaste and virtuous decisions.
When sexual abuse takes place, it is a tragedy. When sexual promiscuity occurs, it is also sad — though for different reasons. What remains a constant, however, is that the atonement of the Savior can provide healing to both victims whose agency and bodies have been violated and to those who engage in the process of repentance, seeking to grow line upon line in acquiring the virtue of chastity. To me, it seems as if teachings tools such as the chewing gum or licked cupcake analogies seek largely to motivate individuals through guilt.
Conversely, teaching tools that move both men and women and boys and girls to seek testimonies of the Savior and His atonement seem to motivate individuals through love. I think the potential for misunderstanding chastity grows immensely when it is associated so closely with virginity.
I concur with your conclusion. Teaching, understanding, and growing in chastity is a process that occurs line upon line like other principles of the gospel. To link chastity with a single act opens up the floodgates for misunderstanding, and as you indicated, can also support a mindset of how close one can approach the line of virginity before being considered unchaste.
I started copying and pasting quotes and found my notes to only be distinguishable from yor OP by the quotation marks at the beginning and end of each paragraph. But the ones I am committing to memory are:.
I appreciate the distinction made about chastity vs. If I had it to do over, I would tell my kids that if any man, whether bishop or stake president, asks them questions that make them uncomfortable they should tell him politely that they want to consult with their parents before answering. We only loose our virginity and deviate from the law of chastity if we give it up voluntarily.
If a person is forcefully raped they have no choice about what happened. All these illustrations which have been mentioned, most of which are inappropriate to begin with, are given with the intent of keeping youth from voluntarily surrounding their chastity.
As has been taught, a person who has been sexually abused or raped has not voluntarily surrendered their purity. That also needs to be made clear when we teach virtue lessons.
We also need to remember that being attracted to the opposite sex is a natural, God-given urge. Young men and women are naturally going to have sexual urges. Teaching them how to control those urges is the important thing. I grew up outside of the Church. My Dad, however, taught me to respect all women and not to treat them inappropriately. That guided me well, not perfectly through my single life and into a happy marriage.
In the old days in the temple, the temple play was performed. The actors were generally old men and an old woman. At first I was a little put off by these white haired old people playing young Adam and Eve. I came to see, however, that in these people, at the end of their lives, was an innocence and sweetness that the lusty couple in the current movies cannot capture. As a young man I married my dear friend who was divorced.
However, she was as pure and virginal as is possible to be. Virginity is a state of mind, not of body, both to the person and to the beholder. God had made the match, I did not complain. Excellent column! These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. Does anyone think that all these folks are or will be unmarried?
Why not something more practical like never having willingly engaged in illicit sexual relations? I just wanted to echo the thoughts that anon shared with his experience of the cyclical possibilities of virginity. Another example of this taught in communities where the moon cycles of women are highlighted as revelatory and divine rather than medical needing some pharmaceutical ameliorative and annoying. These communities and there are many and varied forms of them whether we study indigenous groups, modern upshoots of paganism or earth connectivity, or even sects of Judaism speak of the virgin or maiden stage.
For the moon it falls right after the new moon and for the woman it falls as soon as bleeding has ceased. In orthodox Judaism this is the time period for 7 days post bleeding that a women does not touch nor is touched by her husband, making her free from the act of sexuality and able to develop her relationship with her husband in other ways.
In earth worship communities this is the time of greatest clarity and lack of distraction where the women experiences all of the strength of youth.
Biologically speaking it is a time where the lowest rates of hormones are bouncing around the body. Thus, while it is true that love is always a necessary condition for expression of genital sexuality, love is not always a sufficient condition for these expressions; rather a special form of love, namely, pledged or committed love, must provide the setting for genital sexuality.
Moreover, while genital expression should reflect the level of personal commitment between two people, love itself may very well decide sometimes that such expression would be inappropriate, precisely because it would be unloving, and must therefore, be curtailed or sacrificed. Thus, for example, husbands and wives may refrain from sexual intercourse with their spouses out of consideration for their physical or emotional well being. Such sensitivity reflects one of the key insights of the Christian tradition, namely, that true love is distinct from physical sex.
Genital sex is not the primary language or ultimate proof of love; rather, the greatest proof of love is caring for others even to the point of self-sacrifice Jn In one way or another, the lover must die to self so as to live for the beloved. I will like to say that there should be a normative moral code for the society, each of us having our moral code surely holds especially in our relationships.
Like you said, the goal is to find someone who shares your values. I am really concerned with the depreciation of value A 19 year old virgin has more value than a 39 year old virgin in the eyes of most people.
Should this be the case? Strict parents emphasize virginity and keep their daughters indoors while their sons are free to roam the street. These girls are then put under pressure when they attain the age of marriage and suitors are not forthcoming In their naivety and pressure they fall into the wrong hands.
The myth around virginity is too much There is no "right" or "wrong" only "agree" and "disagree". Throughout history man has always sought to control women's sexual behavior. Chastity belts were worn by women. Can you imagine a woman with husbands and "boy toys"? Who was allowed to attend the Queen in these important and dangerous moments? Who would most safely deliver the future head of the nation and Church?
It had been attended by Chamberlen, Physician to the King, a figure viewed with suspicion by the Queen, her French cohort and her family at home in France. Chamberlen was not only Protestant but a man something the French, with their excellent reputation for female scholar-midwives, thought particularly unchaste. But Chamberlen was also a maverick whose secret instruments eventually revealed to be an early form of forceps were increasingly thought to do as much damage as good to mothers and babies.
In her grief over her first child, Henrietta Maria took charge of her subsequent births, employing a French midwife and surrounding herself with nuns, Catholic nurses, pictures of the Virgin Mary and all the comforts of Catholic devotion: incense, music and gestural prayer. The second birth was a success, producing an heir both healthy and male: the future Charles II.
The Queen marked each of her births with elaborate court masques that celebrated her chastity, fertility and spirituality. In response, the pro-Parliamentary plain-religionists who eventually deposed the King worked harder than ever to claim the virtue of chastity for their cause and to accuse the Queen of infecting the King and the Throne with her unchaste religious practices. In a new world of public debate, dissenters made full use of mass print technology to rapidly disseminate their fiery sermons and commonwealth political theory.
But the young John Milton was preparing to enter the debate with his own masque of chastity. Lander Johnson has written her first book in order to look in depth at chastity as a theme running through the life of the royal court, and the circles of power around it, in the first half of the 17th century — as seen through the literature of William Shakespeare, John Milton and a number of lesser known poets and playwrights, including John Ford. It is a scholarly book, aimed at an academic readership, but it touches on universal human preoccupations — how we see ourselves, how we want to be seen, how we curate our own image through private and public performance.
Today we are interested in tolerance and equality. Just as a person who has led a pure life can fall into immorality, a person who has sinned can return to purity. To be pure it is necessary that your heart be directed to God. In his eyes, the repentant prostitute is purer than the lustful virgin. We need to remember that our worth lies in how God sees us, not in how others see us or even in how we sometimes see ourselves.
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