Pssst! Virginity

VIRGINITY

Yes, I'm going to talk about it. But who ever does? Outside of Breakfast Club, at least. Nobody. Ew.

Virginity. Virginity. Virginity. Get used to how it sounds. Get comfortable with your own. Get comfortable with your own lack of.

In the halls of high school, among the most judgmental spaces as well as some of the most fertile breeding grounds for rumors, sexual acts oneself has "accomplished" and having the scoop on those of others are treasured. I wanted to know why.

Perhaps what I was most curious about is why students would spread baseless lies or, if the gossip was grounded primarily in truth, how did it get out in the first place? Opening an ear to any hallway conversation would yield talk about sex and related acts. It's not taboo in conversation. When the acts truly occur, though, it suddenly becomes prized information–a secret–that people seek out.

After a great deal of thought, I grappled with encounters I've had with these kind of information tidbits about people's sex lives in addition to some of my own experiences. (Don't get your hopes up...my love life is staying off the internet!) I concluded that virginity was the pinnacle of sex secrets and that its significance stems from our own historical social constructions of its importance, however circular that seems. Knowing what we know about our experience with sex secrets, who's gotten with who and everything we don't want people to know about us, it is no wonder why there is a lot of confusion about sexual acts among teens. Even though we so treasure this information about others, I am rather convinced that it stems from our own insecurities and relative lack of experience. My suppositions were confirmed when I stumbled across a series that the Huffington Post published that included teens' questions and experiences with virginity–keeping it, losing it, and the positives/drawbacks to both options. I found one post by a 16-year old particularly telling:

"When I was 15, sex was mysterious, intriguing and terrifying. It wasn’t until months later when I figured out that I didn’t want to or have to want to have sex [...] Our views of sex are so misshapen by the plethora of opposing messages we see every day. Our parents tell us to not have sex. The media shows us teens have sex all the time, from casual hookups to committed couples. We are told to wait until marriage, but to be safe. We are told that we won’t fit in if we haven’t had sex by the end of high school. We assume so many of our peers are “sexually active,” as the adults call it, but how many of us are actually having sex?"

Various audiences each have part of the experience that they don't want you ti hear about. As the author of this post astutely alludes to is that for her parents, it's that sex is a reality of teenagehood. From the media, it's that not every teenager is hooking up consistently with people. Our peers don't want us to know this either. Conversely, our peers are some of the biggest critics about just how many people others are hooking up with. If it's a small number, you're desperate. If it's a higher number, somebody is termed a "slut." It's this ambiguity and differing opinions from the multiple influences in our lives that enshrines the construct of virginity in myth that actually has the potential to lead us into deep, murky water for our physical safety and/or emotional health. 

The Crossroads of Secrets and Politics in Iran

Secrets are one thing if they exist on a personal or interpersonal basis. They can still cause plenty of harm, and sometimes revealing them can do some good, but the impact secrets have increases exponentially when those secrets come into play nationally and—even more so—internationally. There have been plenty of secrets in the United States that have been revealed, especially lately. Some, like Snowden detailing some of the inner workings of the NSA in early 2014 and the CIA releasing its controversial report on torture have shaken many people’s faith in our government. In this post, however, I would like to focus on a Middle Eastern nation–with which the United States has rather tenuous relations–that has a history of political secrets and has historically forced many of its citizens to suppress parts of their identity. To make significant parts of themselves a secret.

In the mid-20th century, between his election in 1951 and his fall from power in 1979, democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosadegh made an attempt to nationalize the nations oil industry, playing into the fears of westerners of tumult in the region and of a dwindling energy supply. Naturally, the US overthrew Mosadegh because his rule was not in our interests. What we failed to calculate was that the strongest movement in the country was not one that would be any more favorable toward our policies or culture than the previous regime. In fact, it would be just the opposite. The Islamic Revolution was a movement to de-secularize Iran and purge it of Western influences. Many of the effects of these imposed ideological principles show up in different ways in the lives of the multitude of character is Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. 

One thing that is hard for us to appreciate about the characters that popped up in Nafisi's novel, the people that really were stifled by the Revolution or anybody else who has experienced an oppressive regime is that the silence that people are forced into acts as a sort of seal/cap on their purpose in life. It keeps them helpless, and that is a tunnel where there isn't visible light at the end. After the fall of these kinds of regimes, we sometimes hear stories of the heroes of the revolution/counterrevolution. Figures like Miep Gies emerge as beacons for heroism. Rightly so. What often gets lost in the fold of the events and the centralized focus on individuals after such tumultuous times is the inherent sadness of a stuation where the governing body, in a position of overwhelming strength, exercises its power over individuals who are to blame for nothing. Entire parts of people's identities are forced under wraps...or under a chador. Unless one claimed to adopt the philosophy of the regime if they were known to previously abide or follow a different set of ideological principles, which would mean a certain kind of concession of integrity, then they would lose all the same. Thousands up on thousands of these cases existed. Thousands upon thousands of secrets were kept, even with regard to who one's family was, the god(s) to whom they prayed at night, etc.

We are reminded in our nation's own relatively recent past (and present) of the kind of pain that forcing people to keep secrets can lead to incredible division and loss. Therefore, this is not just a post about Iran, but also any country's history of persecution. It is also about the tragedy of being forced into a mold that one isn't going to fit. It is not about the chracters in a book I, a well-off student in the United States of America, am reading, but rather about the members of our global community who have to live in fear. It is a post about violation.