Where have all the virgins gone?
I was having a dinner party a few weeks ago, when my friend Sarah threw her fork on to her plate in a clattery, quieten-the-room kind of way.
"I am going to say this once and once only," she said. "My name is Sarah and I am a twenty-five-year-old virgin. There. I have said it. Now... do feel free to continue to talk about the weirdest places you have ever had sex. Don't mind me."
We all looked at Sarah in surprise.
"How come you have never said anything before?" I asked.
"For a number of reasons," snapped Sarah. "One: It is none of your business. Two: you talk about sex all the time and it makes me feel funny, because you always simply assume that I have sex even though you have known me for years, and know that I haven't had a serious boyfriend before. So, short of me having to make the kind of announcement I have just made – what options did you leave me?"
Sarah is right.
Our generation is so busy applauding the fact that we can now have sex freely, experimentally and without the need for marriage or commitment, we have completely missed the fact that we didn't shatter the traditional sex taboos – we merely moved them.
So, while previously any woman who had sex before marriage was a slag and any woman who wasn't married by 25 was a sad spinster, we have now simply shifted the misogyny goalposts: now, if you haven't had sex by 25, you are either a religious freak or ridiculously picky or repressed. A really great social stereotype in an HIV/Aids-ridden society, where casual sex is more dangerous than ever before.
How sad is that? I am appalled..., both by the way I personally fall foul of these subconscious judgements, and the way, once again, women are revealed as being our own worst enemies.
Surely, the goal is for us to be able to have sex whenever each of us, individually, feel comfortable doing so? What do you think? Send us an email to chatback@women24.comand let us know.
Sam Wilson is the Editor-in-Chief of women24, and, despite talking and writing about sex constantly, has a very low partner rate herself.
News source: www.news24.co.za
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