Male Virginity is Good

Another rant about the latest Psycho Single, this time targeting columnists or sub-editors who call him "the virgin killer." What is up with that? If you think it is weird or funny that the unmarried USCSB killer was a virgin, then you are part of the cultural forces that shaped him.

I call all men who kill women because they are that bitter about being Single "Psycho Single", as a reminder to readers that bitterness is the Single's worst enemy and can ultimately drive him or her to do evil things.(It is the worst enemy of the childless, too.) But to bolster the USCSB killer's idea that virginity was weird and shameful by calling him "the virgin killer" is just disgusting. Way to inspire a few more men to commit suicide or even murder there, media.

Am I going completely around the bend or is the USA not still a largely Christian country? I spent five years in theology school, and as far as I can recall, Christian men and women are BOTH called to virginity before marriage. This is to say, to chastity in continence. Some moral theologians object to men being called virgins at all. It should be the NORM for every single man who has never married to not have had sex with someone else. This is Christian doctrine, and this is how it should be. So why is there a culture, even in countries dominated by Christians, that thinks it hilarious when men have NOT had sex at increasingly younger ages? And why is it allowed such a high place at the media table?

The poorer you are, the less well brought up, the more likely you are to freely lose your virginity at a young age. I believe this is the same for boys as for girls, in part because the carefully brought up, wealthier girls around them are more likely to say "No" and in part because such boys will be discouraged from asking at all. I didn't experience any pressure to put out until I was 18, and that was only because I was dating a non-virgin from the Middle East who thought all Western girls put out. After that I was blissfully free of such crap, as I spent the rest of my youthful social life with male feminists (long story), romantics and devout Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican boys who were most probably virgins themselves. I would be very surprised if they weren't. Fornication is a very big and scary sin--at least it was to MY crowd. When young Catholics describe to me today how easy, and how ego-boosting, it would be to take some girl home from a bar, I am overwhelmed with horror. But what about your immortal souls? And what about your future wives?

There's a very sweet scene in the Mel Gibson film Gallipoli (aka Why Australians Don't Worship Winston Churchill) in which a randy gang of soldiers go off to a brothel while their devoutly Christian pal demands "What will you say to your wives on your wedding nights?" They think this is hilarious and naturally [plot spoiler] he is killed, although that's a lot better than being captured and homosexually raped by the Turks, as tended to happen. Men rape men to show total dominance--the real root of fear of homosexuality, by the way.

I bring up this ugly fact about raped POWs because it reminds me that many of men's sexual problems have little to do with women and everything to do with other men. If your boyfriend is angry because you had sex when you were 20 with a college boyfriend but now practice chastity, it's not really because of you but because of that guy. Men are in constant competition with other guys, and the idea at being bested by some other guy, in love and sex, especially concerning the women they want, drives some men up the wall. This why least said, soonest mended, but also why such men need to be told "Our relationship is between you and ME and is not about other men, capisce? You carry on your masculine battle of all against all on your own time."

This seems to have been very true of Psycho Single, who thought that beautiful women were material possessions to show off in front of other guys. He was hierarchical about it, too. He thought blondes were more valuable, and he seems to have seen only "beautiful" women, whatever beautiful meant to him. Although he was a mixed race American in a Hollywood family, he seems to have felt inferior to tall, blonde men and superior to any other man of colour. He is outraged when his "ugly" roommate beds girls (although he takes some pleasure in his valuation of said girls as "ugly") and he just about goes insane when a black acquaintance brags that he lost his virginity with a white, blonde girl.

Psycho Single was a slave to the idea that virginity is disgraceful, which is why he turned out as he did. It is really too bad that nobody (as far as we know) made the argument that male virginity is GOOD. Male virginity shows moral strength. (After all, any man could lose his by going to the local brothel with $100 in his pocket. Duh.) It could be a sign of freedom from being a slave to one's own animal nature. It could suggest that the man privileges the intellect over the passions. It could also be a sign of having chosen to socialize only with principled women unlikely to seduce him. It could be a sign of commitment to some higher principle, like commitment to God. It could be a sign of respect for women so deep that he refuses to use any of them sexually or to unite himself with one without a permanent contract. It could be solidarity with the ancient tradition of virgin warriors; even today some coaches believe that celibacy improves athletic ability. Possibly an old coaches' tale, dating back to Samson and Delilah, or even Babylonian Enkidu, but I mention it anyway. Recall the coach in Rocky: "Women weaken legs!" If given a hard time by human baboons in the locker room, virgin men could shout, "Women weaken legs!" That might appease the misogynist impulses of the human baboon's heart.

At any rate, we have got to get rid of this idea that male virginity is any kind of giggle-worthy disgrace. It goes hand in hand with the disgusting idea that women are citadels to be conquered, either to feel good or to impress other men.