Virginity. Socially it is defined as the status of a person who has never had sex. A sinless, pure, chaste girl. According to the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, the word virginity refers to “the quality of a person who has not had sex, also, preserving their chastity, who has consecrated it to a divinity.” The cult of virginity has been adopted by different cultures, religions and beliefs since ancient Greece.
For the Hellenic civilization, the cult of virginity belonged to the legend of Artemis, also known as the Virgin Goddess. While this deity had children of Okeanos and Endymion, giving them 60 and 50 children correspondingly, it is reported that those priestesses who wanted to serve her had to swear vows of chastity until marriage under the Holy Order.
According to different beliefs, the cult of virginity is postulated to Catholicism as an act, in which a person remains pure of body and heart to follow the Son of God, Jesus Christ, since they consider He is above any human, family or social ties.
On the other hand, virginity is interlaced with another fundamental axis, besides their faith, as it is the marriage. According to St. John Chrysostom “denigrating marriage is to reduce the glory of virginity; praising it is to enhance the admiration that corresponds to virginity.”
In other religious ideas, such as Taoism, it is offered a more open view of sexuality and to change the predecessor meaning of virginity. Promoted by the Tse area, Taoist believers consider sexuality as “the key to happiness. The one that makes part of the same vital energy”, giving even a therapeutic power to different practices, all framed in the enjoyment of intimacy.
However, there are different assumptions that socially speaking punish the cult of virginity as a detractor of contemporary ideas. Though sexuality must be lived with responsibility, different thinkers believe that virginity prevails as a sexist model, who despises women who behave with certain freedom regarding their intimacy.
On this, the writer Vanessa Cardenas said: “This worship of virginity permeates our culture until the present moment, establishing itself as a moral maxim, which is required especially to women, which makes our society to fall in a feeling of guilt on an intimate level and in the greatest hypocrisy on a social level.”
I don’t think virginity should be a great deal, virginity in men is seen as shameful, sexism must be ended!
Very interesting article. I did not know virginity was portrayed in so many ways through different cultures, although I noticed it is considered important in all of them.