Black Girl Sleeping with a Gift Image: RawPixel |
A few days ago, the story of a woman who presented a certificate
of her purity to her father on her wedding day went viral and drew both
positive and negative reactions from people; though it was more negative than
positive.
If you hadn't seen the story on the internet, here is a summary.
Brelyn Bowman is a black Christian boutique owner and a preacher
of purity. She got married to her heartthrob - Tim Bowman – who is a gospel
artist. They never had sex throughout the time they were dating and she
presented proof of her virginity to her father on her wedding day. How sweet,
right? She even went further to urge women to keep themselves pure for their
husbands too.
Now looking at it wholly, it is admirable that she did
that, especially when there is so much pressure to have sex.
It takes self-control for a couple to restrain themselves and what they
did is laudable.
Having said that, there is a need to clarify why I have a bone
to pick with the proponents of virginity.
There is great emphasis placed on a
woman's virginity. Some men say it is ‘the most important gift a woman can
give her husband’. This has been passed down for generations and generations
until it has become the norm. Our mothers have taught us to remain virgins
until we are properly married. If your mother was a virgin when she got
married, then you got that talk that
was always laced with 'How your father met me as a virgin and I have
known no other man'. You know that talk right?
Anyway, back to the issue. While Brelyn was urging women to use
her life as their launching pad, she forgot that not every woman has the
choice to keep themselves 'pure for their husbands'.
Though Brelyn described her husband Tim as a gentleman, 35
percent of women in domestic relationships are dating, courting, engaged
to, or married to beasts that perpetuate violence against them. This violence
includes but is not limited to, rape, physical and sexual abuse, and murder for
refusing unwanted advances. Of course, these women may or may not be virgins at
the time of their abuse but who cares about all that when virginity crowns a woman
with purity…right?
Another statistic shows that one in 10 girls worldwide under the
age of 18 was forced to have sex, according to a recent UN report. One in 10 girls
has her virginity forcefully taken from her, effectively canceling her desire
to present herself ‘pure to her husbands’.
To make matters worse, children – toddlers, adolescents,
teenagers – are sexually abused by relatives (fathers, brothers, cousins,
uncles, and aunts), teachers, religious leaders, babysitters, neighbors, or
even strangers. Globally, a whopping 19.7 percent of females go through child
sexual abuse. These are not my statistics; they are facts reported by the
United Nations in collaboration with the World Health Organization. These
numbers are women who are forced to lose their 'most important gift to their
husbands', thus becoming 'impure' according to the general belief.
And why is virginity only expected of a woman? Why must women be virgins until they are
married but men must not? And if men are not virgins and have active sex lives,
who are they doing it with? The answer to that question should be interesting.
Another question that begs to be answered is why something that is lost in one
simple thrust would be defined as the 'most important thing a woman can
give to her husband'?
We also seem to forget that an intact hymen does not necessarily
mean a lack of sexual knowledge. There are tons of women who are 'virgins' but
yet give – and accept – blow jobs (Fellatio and Cunninglingus) on the regular. Some women give hand jobs. Some women permit their
thighs and breasts to be, for lack of a better word, fucked. Did I forget women
who masturbate with or without sex toys? Then there are lesbians. And also women
who have anal sex. If all these women have their hymen intact, can they still
be classified as 'virgins' and thus, ‘pure’?
My bone of contention is not with Brelyn keeping herself. My
angst is how she conferred 'purity' on a woman who keeps her virginity. I know
women who are virgins but are burning with lust, keeping strife, cheating
people, lying for Africa, gossiping, sowing seeds of discord, tearing families
apart, and stealing from friends, colleagues, and their work organizations. I also
know that there are virgins with nudes on their phones and their boyfriends'
phones. Is the hymen then the determinant of purity? And is purity
one-dimensional or all-encompassing?
My mum, like most mums, told me that if my husband marries me as
a virgin, my husband would respect me. I love my mum but I do not agree with
her on that point. I have seen men who beat the crap out of their 'virgin'
wives for the most trivial of reasons. I have seen men who were the first
boyfriends of their wives, the first and only to sleep with their wives, but
also the first to cheat with any woman who is willing to welcome them in. I
know of a woman who kept telling me that virginity was the best gift a woman
could give. One day I saw her crying. She told me her husband had infected her
because of his randy ways and the infections had affected her ovaries. She was
constantly in immense pain until the infections got better. But she has had to
face the same destruction to her body almost quarterly. Her husband went to her
office one day and saw her in a meeting with her colleague: a man. They were
sitting close together and bent over papers discussing. The husband stood for a
while and then coughed. She looked up, packed her things, and waved her
colleague goodnight. When they got home, her husband beat her black and blue
for sitting close to her colleague. Even though she was bent over papers and
working, the husband said she was so engrossed in her colleague that she didn’t
notice him. That was one of the nails that finally sealed their divorce coffin.
This then is my view: men are so fiercely territorial that they
cannot imagine another man putting his penis in their woman. So they cooked up
a theory about a woman's virginity being her best gift. They used it to confer
purity, innocence, truth, beauty, and wholeness. They fed this theory down from
generation to generations until people maligned women who were not virgins on
their wedding night. This idea is also because I believe that men cannot fathom
the fact that women are sexual creatures as men are and that sex is required to
be both enjoyable and satisfactory to BOTH partners. Most men cannot imagine a
‘pure’ woman actually enjoying sex, so they mark ladies who have lost their
virginity as whores, cheap, impure, guilty, shameful, and a disgrace.
This has led many women to go for vaginal rejuvenation surgery to present themselves as virgins to their intending spouses. And men,
if you didn’t know that women do that, I am unapologetic about exposing the ‘secret’. Some creams tighten the vagina, thus giving the illusion of
virginity. Even the woman in the village uses potash washes to deceive their
husbands and families. The desire to be perceived as pure by many women,
especially before family members and intending husbands, is so great that women
would willingly put their health at risk. And God blesses a woman who openly
embraces her sexuality! She would be maligned, insulted, labeled, critiqued, and
sometimes physically abused for daring to do that.
Maintaining virginity should be taught to girls as well as boys: or not at all. Even as we do that, we should remember that many women have lost their virginity not by choice. This means that many women cannot be classified as 'pure' by society today. Putting that kind of
pressure on women creates a fertile ground for pretenses and false illusions of
individual and societal purity. Worse of all, it exposes women to abuse.
And can we quit with the ‘virginity is a woman’s best gift’ nonsense
already?! Virginity is not the best thing we can give a man. The best thing
we can give a man, be they our husbands, brother, friends, colleagues, and
bosses is the quality of our minds and thoughts. A woman’s virginity is lost in
a few seconds, but the quality of her mind is what the man has to deal with as
long as they stay married. It is the quality of her mind that will help mold
the children that may result from that marriage. The effectiveness of her mind
will determine whether their family creatively impacts society or destroys what
is left of our national fabric and international family.
A woman who has lost her virginity before marriage is just that –
a woman without a hymen. She is not evil, unclean, impure, shameless, dirty, or
bad.
If your virginity was forcefully taken from you, know this: there
is nothing impure about you. If you were drugged, you are still not impure. And
if you willingly lost your virginity, you are also not impure. If you feel bad
about it, live differently, make a change, and stay celibate. And if you could
care less, that is your business.
Virginity is definitely not a woman's best gift. The
greater loss is if you let your minds go to waste. Work on your minds...and share
your greatest gift with the world!
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