Perhaps in response to the sense of social formlessness that accompanies rapid, uncharted social change such as took place in the second half of the twentieth century, many youth and adults are taking it upon themselves to attempt to live, as closely as they can manage, by the teachings, laws and guidance of their various religions: Shi'ite or Sunni Islam, Judaism, Catholic, Coptic or Protestant Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Janism, Hinduism, and Baha'i, among others. Many religions prescribe sexual abstinence outside the bonds of marriage.
However, in this age of the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS and the discovery that some genital and reproductive disturbances--even serious ones such as cervical cancer--may be caused or spread by non-monogamous sexual activity that carries the contagion or the conditions that favor infection from one sexual partner to another, some people are choosing abstinence to protect not only their own immediate health but that of a potential future partner, with whom they hope to eventually share a lifetime of exclusive sexual activity.
Some sexually active people who begin such activity because of intense feelings of devotion for one person may find that relationships whose boundaries are not defined and protected by a socially recognized institution such as marriage end abruptly or are more quickly permeated and compromised than they might have foreseen. The person who thought s/he was going to be sexually active with only one special person may become disillusioned and feel emotionally numbed or even jaded as s/he finds that s/he is moving on through a progression of uncommitted relationships. Therefore, some abstainers are removing themselves from the US's sexually active social community.
If you are reading this post, you've already been warned that you may encounter explicit material. But I'm warning you again: now it begins.
I remember when, reading for my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, a well-known scholar of Ancient Greek literature assigned The Satyricon, a work of extraordinarily witty and elaborate pornography. Since most of the conglomerate of ancient cultures collectively known as Greek practiced and extolled homoeroticism--gay sex--of course, there was much discussion of the issues that arose in the text. As our professor was gay and a fluent reader of the language, he was often called upon to explain jokes, plays on words and situations that arose. One day, he said with great candor, "This man has told his lover he has only had intercrural (a man's penis placed between a partner's thighs) sex with other men. But his lover discovers, in penetrating him, that he has a wide a**; one doesn't get a wide a** by having intercrural sex." I am sure that you can imagine the class's silence as we contemplated our literary lesson for the day.
My own thoughts were about a friend of mine in high school, an extraordinarily beautiful, willowy European American girl from a very wealthy Los Angeles family who only hung out with a handful of somewhat individualistic African American loners. I was amomg them. One day, her closest friend approached me to talk about doing an intervention. Our mutual friend had requested not one or two but four tampons--internally applied menstrual absorbents. Four tampons? I was a virgin who had wept for hours in the bathroom over my attempts to insert one tampon. I couldn't wrap my mind around inserting four and walking, though I had just seen her do it (walk away from the bathroom, that is, not insert her tampons). Four live births later, truthfully, I still pause to grasp the condition of a sixteen-year-old girl who would insert such a bulk of foreign matter into her body. In the face of my stupefaction, the friend explained, "She's all stretched out of shape."
We had never approved of her boyfriend, and so we took her aside and imposed some restrictions. Today, I don't quite know what to think of our well-intentioned efforts to police a fellow teenager's sex life. However, we did not know at that time and therefore could not tell her that vaginal exercise might help restore lost tone. (One practices squeezing off the flow of urine, like turning off a faucet. One needn't wait for this exercise to be assigned by a doctor after vaginal delivery of a child; young women should be taught to practice it as part of a regimen of personal health and pre-pregnancy preparation for childbirth.)
That phrase, "all stretched out of shape," came back to rescue me during the university lecture on The Satyricon, with my internal addendum of astonishment that this could happen to men, too, I confess. (I assume the remedial treatment would be similar abstinence and sphincter-tightening exercises.)
It works now, I think, to describe the physical, psychological and emotional sense or dread of being over-extended by too much openness, too much vulnerability, too un-self-protective a
willingness to give all, as many of my students have confided, "just to be held."
Since health is mental and emotional--and, many would add, spiritual--there are those who practice abstinence for reasons that might be summarized as the desire for peace of mind. Whether these who are concerned with health go further and strive for actual chastity is a highly individualized choice.
The personal choice to practice abstinence often includes the further practice of chastity, which is sometimes intended to protect or strengthen one's social boundaries and, thereby, one's autonomy and privacy. I have had young women and female teens confide that, after becoming sexually active in the hope that it would free them from the social stigma of immaturity or frigidity, they discover, instead, that being known to be sexually active has cost them the respect of some of their trusted friends. People who choose abstinence to practice self-reclaiming and rebuild self-esteem are often actually practicing chastity.
Abstaining from non-marital sexual relations and practicing chastity for moral reasons can indicate that one is unwilling to experience or risk inflicting upon another the emotional insecurities, turmoils and betrayals that can result from the vulnerabilities of uncommitted intimacy. For all these reasons and, I imagine, a multiplicity of others with which I am not familiar, the United States' community of the young and the mature dedicated to the practice of chastity seems to be increasing.
But as I wrote at the beginning of this blog, chaste singles often seem to be misunderstood when they associate with others while maintaining their own chastity. In the next blog, we'll discuss why and what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment