Arramel Syn

Virginity (Musing)

Its more than just sexual.

Although it seems nowadays, that’s where we draw the line. To lose your virginity is to have sex for the first time. To finally be able to look into someone’s eyes, and be willing to fall, to open yourself up to your passion, your lust, and go somewhere, unreachable otherwise, with another person.

But that’s not what it really means. Sure, sex was always a part of it, but it wasn’t the whole story. Someone can be a virgin even if they’ve had sex, for it encompasses everything. It is the purity of mind, body and spirit.

It is the innocence, the faith in the goodness of the world. It is the ability to take other people’s problems and try to fix them, because you believe that save those problems, they would do the same. It is the desire to do so.

Virginity is the childlike wonder, awe towards the world. It is the willingness to accept that everything is beautiful.

The reason that it is now connected so strongly with sex, is because traditionally, sex came at a point in one’s life where they became disillusioned with the world. When they saw the horrid, gritty truth that underlies the beauty. They got one glimpse of pain and horror and they take it to heart. And that coincides, roughly, with the first time they have sex. Their bodies now reflect the impurity of their minds. Their selfishness becomes acts of lust continually indulged in because they desire it.

However, this is not a horror story.

True virginity, lies not in the carnal knowledge of one’s body, but the purity of one’s mind. How can we dare to look at rape victims and tell them they are no longer virgins? How can we, when we see them every day fight to keep friendships, to find good in others when they have been so fundamentally betrayed? They are virgins, and they will lose that virginity sexually only when they look into the eyes of someone else and allow that person to heal them, allow them to reach that place that is brutalized in their memories. Then, and only then, can they have lost the virginity we hold so high in our regard.

Its funny, losing one’s virginity is seen as such a big deal. You’re ostracized for it if you retain it in Western culture. Its really just fear. Fear that you’re better than them, for you have the self control not to cross that line. Fear that what you see in that land that has yet to be defiled is more than they can experience. They want you to be on their level.

Similarly, how can we call someone who uses people, who lies to them, and has the honor and morals of a psychotic individual, how can we call them virgins? There is nothing pure about their actions. Just because they have not had sex, does not mean they have the innocence, the purity that is the quality of a virgin.

Virginity, truly, has little to do with sex. It is a mindset, a condition of the soul, not the body. A person is a virgin until they allow the world to corrupt them. It is only connected to sex because that’s our main weakness, our main indulgence, and the easiest thing to pinpoint.

Rage, narcissism, money, anything that would cause a person to willingly do something for personal gain at the detriment of someone else …  all these are just as important as sex in determining our virginity. We should treat them so.