The Virgin Standard
Why not advertise what we preach?
There’s been a debate on The Sunday Leader site about female sexuality, among other things. I thought this comment by Mohottige was interesting (in response to someone else) – ” ‘An educated man will not marry a prostitute from Sri Lanka… Because he has other options’ What about all these educated Sri Lankan men who also have had sex before marriage? And they are many ! (since no woman can loose her sexual virginity without there being a male”prostitute” present). So where should a Sri Lankan girl go to find a male “virgin” to marry? Not in Sri Lanka anyway, beacuse most men here have practised sex before marriage and are thereby, by the standards mentioned by several “thaliban” writers here, simple male prostitutes.” Virginity is a weird thing because it is demanded from women and discouraged in men. Yet, logically, this does not compute. Either both sides need to be virginal, or there needs to be a compromise.
I, personally, think women have to be more conservative sexually because they will get stuck with the baby. For all the talk of free love and women’s lib, it only works in an atmosphere of education, birth control, legal abortion and an array of security assurances for women. In the absence of these things, women are physically weaker and do bear the consequences of sex more heavily, hence they’d probably want to be more conservative.
That said, one cannot advocate this behavior for women’s own protection without A) giving them representation and say in the matter and B) demanding that men behave conservatively as well. In Sri Lanka for example, this is not so. Power is dominated by men and, while we advocate chastity for women, we tolerate open solicitation on the streets, marital rape and worse. There’s plenty of social opprobrium reserved for women that wear short skirts or hang out at night clubs, but almost none for men that flash their genitals or… hang out at night clubs. It’s like, boys will be boys and girls will be raped.
One can say double standard and advocate for equal standards, but that’s not exactly what I mean. I think the standards for men and women are different, based partly on our nature and partly on our culture. I just think the standard should be fair.
I also think that society needs to strike a balance between saying what is good and accommodating what is real. I do think sexual conservatism, sex within marriage, etc are good values. Just because contraception theoretically liberates one from the physical consequences of sex (given usage, it doesn’t), it doesn’t mean simply do whatever you want. ‘Traditional’ sexual mores, however, are not exactly reality, and society needs to be able to stretch its mind to accomodate this or else it will have no control over its body. Cultures have historically preached different things than they practiced, and I think this is actually a good thing. We need to remember what is good, even if we can’t do it. At the same time, however, we need to acknowledge what is real so that human beings are not left outside of the protection of society, which leads to even worse ills.
But, to return to the point, in Sri Lanka we preach very different things to men and women. To men we preach, well, nothing, except get married eventually, and even then OK if you fool around, go to karaoke bars, whatever. Have another drink? To women we preach, don’t go out, don’t have sex, don’t wear shorts, don’t go on the bus, expect to get leered at, get married as soon as possible, give sex whenever your husband wants it, if he hits stay to make the marriage work, etc. It’s not healthy, for either gender methinks. It is quite frankly impossible to remain virginal if men do not behave like gentlemen. If you’re sincere about one, you should call for the other.
Well a fairly large portion of women (at least in Colombo “society”) aren’t really doing much to help the problem, are they? Just go to any night club, White Horse, Jazz Sunday etc. and observe the number of (mostly international school- but the others are catching up fast) teeny boppers dressed pretty provocatively and behaving like…well… sluts :) I’m not necessarily complaining, but women better put their own house in order first.
Wow Dilan, thanks for the chastising. I think you missed the whole point of Indi’s post here.
I think the international school crowd is vey sad, and a result of chronic lack of parental supervision. These are teenagers, and the atmosphere must be very damaging to them. There are so many other things that they should be discovering and enjoying at that age.
I though Indi’s post was about the Sri Lankan female’s sexuality… not generalized international schoolers.
Right. But Dilan seemed to think that they were a representative sample. I think Dilan sounds like a representative sample of Sri Lankan men, exactly the type Indi was talking about.
What the fuck is ‘dressing provocatively’?
Good point. But there is a difference between tasteful and tacky, to me at least.
That’s entirely different. Fat chicks wearing short skirts isn’t really my cup of tea either.
My point is there is no such thing as dressing provocatively. Why do you (not you, let’s say our friend Dilan) get provoked. He should get his act together in the first place.
Sach, women dressed in a certain way is sexually provocative to men. That’s how it is.
I don’t think girls dressing provocatively is an issue at all, they should be able to dress what ever way they choose to. And sleep around with whoever they choose to. I don’t get this fucking nonsense about girls sleeping around with a bunch of guys being something bad. As long as they don’t get the herps or the HIV. or and unwanted kid.
No, dressing in a revealing way is sexually attractive, not provocative. Getting provoked is men’s problem, not women’s.
Ok, we’re talking about the same thing. I suppose ‘provocative’ is the wrong word.
forgetting to wear panties, like Britteny :)
That’s simply tacky, like Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction.
Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, I would say was even beyond provocative.
I find White Horse a bit shocking, but I think girls are free to dress how they want. Men use the same style of dress to sell products but we can’t tolerate it on actual human beings?
My issue is that we hold women to this standard but we hold men to no standard at all. I think it’s far more important for a man to be a gentleman than for a woman to dress a certain way. Shouldn’t we get our own house in order?
Bravo Indi! And have you noticed how men walking with a woman dressed a certain way on their arm, will invariably turn to stare at a woman dressed ‘provocatively’ every time? It happens so fast one wonders whether they dont suffer whiplash afterwards.
Hmmn Hmmn. Maybe I need to visit White Horse…….
At first the incident at UOSJ seemed just like the sort of thing we tend to hear these days. Now however, I wonder whether it was something fabricated by the JVP controlled elements in our universities, angry at being thwarted in their attempts to control the students through ragging etc.
I’m not sure whether Sri Lankan girls are emotionally equipped to handle the psychological effects and consequences of being sexually active sans commitment, however liberated they may be. For their sake, I think they should wait. Our society, especially the middle class, have strong views on this issue and our men will take a long time to change their hypocritical attitudes.
This seems to be a non issue among the rural poor, though. I know that girls were sexually active from a very young age, in rural areas of Puttalam. This was like twenty yrs. ago, I’m not sure whether it’s the same now. They would go through several common law marriages by the time they reached thirty yrs. of age, and didn’t worry about contraception either. Children were not a burden as they helped in carrying water (which was really scarce), and in agriculture, which was the main livelihood.
The symptoms of frustration and sexual repression amply exhibited by men on our roads and public transport must be a result of their own attitude towards women.
Is there any evidence, data, to suggest that if a woman dresses in a particular way, the likelihood of her being raped would be higher than if she dressed in a different way? I think it’s bullshit.
It’s just nature. Sometimes male elephants rape female elephants. I don’t think their provocative dresses have anything to do with it.
@shammi
See, would this be the way a God create the world?
@Mahinda
Remember, it was God who created time. He knew men would rape women, and that women will be raped by trained beasts in acient Rome.
@Indi
Why man why? Did you really have to rape the “Gills” girl? Can’t a woman eat a sausage without pervs like you thinking it’s sexual imagery?
Both sexes are designed to have attraction towards each other. The behavior is influenced by social values. However in Sri Lanka today and the past decades, the majority are dominated by sociopath tendencies from top to bottom. Hence the erratic behavior. Mistakes are from both sides, but females are more affected, unjustifiably.
@rey
Are you slowly going crazy or is it that I’ve already gone totally crazy.
Bullshit. The way women dress has nothing to do with them being raped. Whatever it is that makes people rape women, it comes from within. If you’re a woman, wear anything you want to wear, I guarantee that Dodo won’t rape you. But I can also guarantee that no matter what you wear, Ruki would rape you if he knew he could get away with it.
Wow, this is as interesting as bird watching!
In a study* involving 312 students (149 male and 163 female) of the University of Peradeniya, answers were sought for the following.
Statement given to male students: “I expect to marry a woman who is a virgin.”
Statement given to female students: “I expect to be a virgin at marriage.”
28.6% of the male students strongly agreed with the statement.
And 70.3% of the female students strongly agreed with the statement.
So, on average, 47.8% students strongly agreed.
Furthermore, 28% of the male students [just] agreed with the statement.
And 10.2% of the female students [just] agreed with the statement.
So, on average, 22.1% students [just] agreed with the statement.
Therefore, in total, 70% of the students of both genders in the study sample have either strongly agreed or agreed on the matter.
Sex behaviours mostly reported in this study sample had been those that avoid genital contact. Penetrative sex has been reported less than 10% of the sample. Male insertion had been achieved mainly through interfemoral sex–a strategy for preserving female virginity.
I think it would be interesting to carry out such studies in an age of Internet and social media to compare results.
*Silva., K.T., Sivayoganathan, C., and Schensul, S. (1998) Peer Culture and the Social Context of Love and Sex in a Sample of University Students in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences 21 (1 & 2): 59-82.
Seems like all the sluts bloviating here seem to have missed the point about “provocatively.” If you want to dress with a skirt so short I can see your g-string that’s fine – I certainly am not complaining :) However, neither should you be complaining if someone bends you over and bangs the shit out of you (against your will) after that.
My question was whether they don’t mind this happening. Seems like the answer is “no problem.”
I don’t know what rock you crawled out from but around these parts rape is a crime & a fairly serious one.
It sure is, but so should enticing it.
I can’t believe you really mean what you say. If someone’s behaviour qualified as indecent exposure you could call the cops. If not, no one has the right to violate another’s personal space.
I really don’t care what people expose, but I do take issue with bad taste. Lack of dress sense or colour sense really annoys me. Ugh!
All it takes is a coupla Ho’s to satisfy the requirement that there be many female virgins and few male virgins.
What’s so hard to comprehend? Where’s the puzzle?
In any case – EVERYONE LIES!