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Virginity in print.

As it turns out, I am not the only woman who has put her virginity in print.

Another is a woman named Elna Baker, who in 2009 wrote an essay for Glamour called “Yes, I’m a 27-Year-Old Virgin.” But her story and mine are very different. In hers, she wrote of frequent close calls in beds with men and the Mormon roots that repeatedly compelled her to stop just short of sex.

And in 2011, Baker wrote a follow-up essay for Glamour. It’s called “Guess What? I’m Not a Virgin Anymore!”

Both essays are charming. Both are well written. And I have a few things to say in response to snippets of both. Read on.

From what Baker wrote before she had sex:

1. …everything I knew about sex I learned in church. I remember a Sunday school class on chastity when I was 13. The teacher walked into the classroom and slammed a tray of cookies onto the table with a loud clank.

“Does anyone want a cookie?” she asked in an aggressive tone. We perked up in our seats. Chastity class was always easier to endure when the teacher brought food, but something was amiss. Upon further inspection, the cookies were half-eaten, broken and sprinkled with dirt. “Anyone?” When no one answered, she nodded emphatically and said, “That’s right, no one wants a dirty, half-eaten cookie.” And that, my friends, is how I learned not to have sex.

For Baker’s Sunday school teacher to call what she taught “chastity” is unfortunate. Chastity is “the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. … Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy. … The virtue of chastity comes under the cardinal virtue of temperance, which seeks to permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason.”* Dirty cookies are irrelevant to chastity. They’re frankly irrelevant to abstinence, too.

2. Although my virginity was a disadvantage, I stayed hopeful about dating.  … Right there on the floor of the yoga studio, despite everything my parents and religion taught me, I decided to change the rules. I, Elna Baker, could have premarital sex. My criteria were pretty simple: It had to be with someone I trusted (no one-night stands). Most important, I would not cave to pressure from anyone. I had to make the decision for myself.

Over the next year, instead of just kissing sitting up, I started kissing lying down (the gateway drug to sex). And my dating life actually improved. By not taking sex off the table right away, I made it past the four-week mark in relationships with several different guys.

That guys won’t date you for more than a month because you’re saving sex does not mean virginity is a disadvantage. It means you’re dating the wrong guys. (And convinced, perhaps, that no other kind of guy exists.)

From what Baker wrote after she had sex: 

1. I thought it would help to go public about my virginity in a magazine; it ended up turning me into a reluctant spokesperson for abstinence. There were perks—the supportive e-mails I got from strangers were moving—but because I was so out there about it, Google soon became my biggest cock block. Guys would look me up and just think, No way. And to be honest, I had grown used to the fascination, disgust and confusion my virginity elicited in men.

So it’s a bad thing that guys who can’t handle your virginity don’t want to date you? Because I prefer that they don’t try.

2. And then it really hit me: I wasn’t a virgin anymore. That part of my identity was gone, and I had to face the fact that, at 28, I had no idea who I was.

This – virginity as part of identity – is a sad side effect of being taught abstinence outside of the context of chastity. Chastity is a way of life livable by people who are single, married or celibate. Chastity as part of identity is safe, because chastity never ends.

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Click here to read what Baker wrote before she had sex.

Click here to read what she wrote afterward.

Click here to read what I most recently put in print about virginity.

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Should older, single adults still save sex for marriage?

There’s an old article on CNN’s Belief Blog about how young Christians aren’t saving sex for marriage anymore. In it, the writer also says the average age at marriage is much older for today’s people than it was for the people of yore.

“Today,” he writes, “it’s not unusual to meet a Christian who is single at 30 – or 40 or 50, for that matter. So what do you tell them? Keep waiting?”

Frankly? Yes.

Perhaps it strikes the average adult in our culture as unreasonable to expect older, unmarried adults not to have sex, even if they’re Christians. My hunch, however, is that this ultimately only strikes the average adult as unreasonable because it’s the norm for older, unmarried adults to have sex.

It’s the status quo, in other words. It’s business as usual. Which is like saying “the reason you can’t expect older, unmarried adults not to have sex is because older, unmarried adults have sex.”

Which is kind of like saying “it’s a good idea to do the stuff that most people do.” That the reason it’s ok to uncritically do the things that are normal is because they are normal.

But are the normal things normal because they’re good, or are they normal because we’re keeping them that way?

It’s parallel to and an example of this:

“We see that people don’t save sex for marriage.

We see that many men and women lack integrity, or are selfish, immature or dishonest.

We can continue not to date them, or we can lower the bar.

Most people lower the bar.”

It’s normal, in other words, to encounter people who don’t save sex for marriage, or who lack integrity, or are selfish, immature or dishonest. It’s so normal that some people believe that’s as good as people get. And when other people believe that’s as good as people get, they are uncritically content to date them (and when we are content to date them, they date are content being selfish, for instance, or immature or dishonest, lacking integrity or living like it’s impossible to save sex for marriage.).

So it’s normal, in other words, to date people who don’t exactly meet reasonable standards.

But it isn’t normal because it’s good. It’s normal because we’re keeping it that way. And I’m of the opinion that we don’t have to.

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Click here to read the CNN Belief Blog article.

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The morning-after pill: the solution, or part of the problem?

I listened to the news tonight while I ate dinner.

Popular today is the story about a set of New York City schools that are part of a pilot program in which girls 14 and older can receive Plan B, or “the morning-after pill,” without parental consent (and without parental notification, according to some sources).

One guy included in the news coverage spoke from behind a podium. He said the pilot program provides a solution to a problem that has lifelong consequences: teen pregnancy.
Indeed any pregnancy, let alone one in a teen, makes a lifelong impact on all involved.
But I can’t agree with what the guy said from behind the podium. The pregnancy isn’t the problem. What the world says about sex is the problem (and unwanted pregnancy is a consequence). The morning-after pill can’t solve that.

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Comment of the day, 9/18/12 (re: saving sex!)

“I believe it is important to reserve sex for marriage, but I also believe it is deeply flawed to put it in terms of ‘Saving it for my future spouse’.

I’m single. I hope there’s a future spouse in the picture–but I don’t know that. I’m not guaranteed that. ‘My future husband’ is a poor motivator, because he may not actually exist. I don’t want to struggle through self-control for decades in pursuit of a fantasy, only to end up burned out and bitter that it was all for nothing.

But if I ‘save sex’, as you put it, because I honor God (and not an imaginary man) with my body, and because I respect what He created sex to be–that’s a different story entirely. That’s a motivation that is sustainable through every season of life. That’s something that can actually lead me into gratitude and awe at the plan of God, rather than resentment for blessings seemingly withheld.

Thanks very much for bringing this perspective to the table.” -Amanda B., as commented today on I am not saving myself for marriage. (I’m saving sex.)

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“Arleen Spenceley Writes About Sex.”

It was an honor this week to receive an email from fabulous fellow blogger Edmund Mitchell with an invitation to be interviewed for his blog. I answered questions for him last night. The finished product – a post called “Arleen Spenceley Writes About Sex” – appeared online today. Click here to read it (and to learn the role fried chicken played in my career).

Grateful for the opportunity. Thanks, Edmund!