Virginity & Honor
“Why did you wait all this time to tell me this?†asked Abbas with tears in his eyes. “I was so scared you would leave me and I was afraid to lose you†replied Fatimah with a trembling voice. “Please! You have to believe me. It was a stupid mistake and I have completely repented. I love you and you are the only person I have left in the whole world.â€
“If you did love me you would have told me from the beginning Fatimah†shouted Abbas as he tried hard to recover from the shock. “You’re not a virgin! How could this be?†murmured Abbas to himself. She’s not a virgin! He stood in the middle of the room like a man with past deeds darker than his own shadow. Something lurked deep within his chest. He kept thinking to himself if this was karma.
“I thought you were the one for me†suddenly blurted out Abbas. “I am still the one and this doesn’t change anything.†insisted Fatimah. “Why does it have to be so horrific? Is it because I’m a girl? What about you haven’t you ever done any evil deeds you wish you could take back?â€
“People will talk if the man you sinned with appears and spreads the truth about you. They will all point at me and say there goes the man who married a whore! If we have children, people will eventually point at them and call them the children of a whore too†said Abbas angrily. “But I’m not a whore and you know that! Even if I was a virgin, anyone who is anybody that has hostility towards me or you could spread rumours. People will always talk, so who cares if they do? We love each other and that is all that matters.†insisted Fatimah again desperately. It was pointless. Abbas wasn’t in the room anymore. All that remained there were shadows — dark, creepy and confused shadows.
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The above is a short piece I wrote 2 years ago during a “bumpy†time in which I was refining my ideologies regarding certain aspects of morality. I’ve got many similar pieces scattered around written on different forms of media. One day I shall compile them all and come up with a decent novel. The day it gets published, I’ll cancel it from my “to do before I die†list.
In Sudan and much of the Muslim world it’s a huge deal marrying a girl who’s not a virgin. There’s something I don’t like about this picture. Society subconsciously paints itself using a selective choice of paints. Men don’t get the same “dirty looks†that girls do and I don’t think that’s fair. After all it’s the men who go around “banging†the women don’t they not? In the context of the society where I come from, such attitudes are so very hypocritical in my opinion to the extent that they heavily disgust me sometimes. Truth be told, almost all the horny “bangers†banging other men’s daughters and sisters with their “weaponsâ€, would literally bang anyone who simply dares to get sexual thoughts over their daughters or sisters. This literal banging would be carried out with a diverse variety of weapons. This literal banging would be done with the sole purpose of punishing other men for misusing their “weaponsâ€. Moreover this literal banging would be carried out in the name of honor. “Honorâ€, a lovely word that means different things to different people. It’s a word easily interchangeable with the word “virginityâ€. I find it rather very funny and slightly depressing too or vice versa depending on my mood when I think about it. Where’s the honor in punishing someone for a crime the punisher himself is guilty of? Where?
Drima, as someone else who hopes to sell a story before I die, I welcome you with tears in my eyes. Well, that is a slight exaggeration, but I think your topic needs to be discussed periodically. And putting it in story form makes it much safer and easier for some folks to talk about.
In US society this was brought out into the open in my generation, and a little before, 1960-70’s.
We called it “free love”. Factors which encouraged this were: “the pill”, the absence of AIDS, a stupid ignorance of other sexually transmitted diseases ( relatively low level of those diseases at first among white middle class Americans’ sons and daughters), the hypocrisy of our parents, the traditional belief that sexual energy is like a bankaccount that always produces dividends no matter how much you spend, drugs esp. Marijuana and alcohol, and women’s rights, civil rights for minorities.
You probably can’t imagine what it was like
Now, first I have a confession. By my religion I am not supposed to confess my sins, so I’ll continue the policy of telling (shorter) stories about myself and edit out the bad parts.
I came from a family and small town that Iwould rate on the USA religous/social strictness scale as a “7″ on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being small religous communities almost isolated from the rest of society (Amish, Mennonites) 9 being Mormons, 8 as small towns like mine but more strict; 1 being downtown New York, Los Angeles, etc.
I did’t curse, I didn’t laugh about dirty jokes, I went to church at least 2 times a week. I sang in the church choir, I played with other white middle class children, before bed I said extra prayers before bed, I studied the Bible, and this continued along until I went off to college. Well, the US was going through internal hell on the TV news, protests against the Vietnam war, civil rights, its just that it didn’t touch our little town. We never talked about these issues at the dinner table, because we never had the black and white TV on until after dinner. We ate at 5:30PM, and after that I went and did my homework, came out and watched a couple of family shows or a cowboy western or WWII drama.
Do any of you remember those kinds of days?
My parents drew up a list of colleges they would find acceptable for me. I took 1 that was the furtherest away. It had a tradition of preparing young men for the Protestant ministry. My parents thought it was safe enough. After my parents helped me move into the dorm. I found out things were changing and changing fast.
By the time I graduated, and was living off campus, we had co-ed dorms, The process leading up to that meant there was an explosion of pent up desires, it took 5-6 years for it to happen. Sex was an all consuming topic of conversation, the media and the outside conservative, racist, nationalistic culture of that time was crumbling under the force of the factors I mentioned at the top.
Oh, to connect my story to what Drima was saying. During those days, one wondered “Who wasn’t a virgin?” Because there must be something wrong with her…However as we all know, there was alot more talk than actual action going on. Still the environment was sexually charged by all the subtle cues in art and society everywhere we looked.
I don’t know if this is so in your culture Drima but in the west it is actually a huge badge of shame for a male to reach adulthood and be a virgin.
A woman still has to be decent in my culture though, and although it is acceptable to not be a virgin those well know as “sluts” are often not considered suitable for marraige, especially if they have or are suspected to have an STD.
A society in which men are expected to have premarital sex but women are not allowed to do that or commit adultery would be an enourmous contradiction,
This is because encouraging the former encourages the latter (unless there were a bunch of middle aged widows to whom teenage boys could lose their virginity or an accepted class of prostitutes) for who else could they have as partners?
EdoRiver,
good to know I ain’t the only one hoping to be a novelist here. It sounds like you had a very interesting life. I’m not going to lie to you. I was brought up in a religious family. I moved to Malaysia and entered an international school. Boom, everything flips upside down. My “religiousity” faded away. Girls, parties, rave parties, clubbing at the age of 14 (ya dats rite 14! Convincing the bouncers was rather easy thanx to my smooth negotiation skills), girls, parties, intoxications, strip poker etc. You get the picture. Everything kind of became like an “American Pie” movie. I got exposed to the other side ie. “metropolitan Western culture”. It was fun but there was never a single moment where I had peace of heart or mind. That was the “bumpy” time I was refering to. Feelings of pleasure were overshadowed by those of guilt. I had a religious awakening and “wala” so many things in religion started making sense. I’m a much happier person now. There’s nothing better than peace of heart and mind.
Joel,
“A society in which men are expected to have premarital sex but women are not allowed to do that or commit adultery would be an enourmous contradiction,
This is because encouraging the former encourages the latter”
You hit the head of the nail right on spot!
I remember writing an article about this waaay back.
Yes, there are alot of good comments there Esra’a.
One thing in the US is that the boomer generation feels hypocritical to tell their kids one thing, while they did the opposite. This may be because the parents still don’t have a religious center in their life. So nothing has changed in their minds since they were young and single.
Secondly our parents never, at least not the ones I knew, spoke openly about sex. I don’t know my father’s sex life. I know my mother grew up in a tiny town with very strict parents and 2 brothers watching over her. But my father was a member of the football team, other sports; he drove around in his parents’ car late at night. Opposites attracted one another in my parents case
Getting back to the hypocrisy issue. I felt very religious from an early age but was swept up when I went off to college. I was very rebellous, etc. Later I returned to a religous orientation. I have talked very carefully with our daughters about the meaning and purpose of sex. I think in some cases girls feel it is one of the few things they have of value to offer in exchange for things, words, actions they are very willing to interpret as “loving attention” from their boyfriends. While the guys, are sitting in their clubs/frat houses/dorms and telling their friends they are not so serious about “her”. Yeah, they like her, but not enough to take the relationship seriously,
An interesting study in the US maybe 10 years ago said that high school girls who had sex had poor relations with their fathers. And those who refrained from sex had good relations. I know, I know these studies can be easily criticized for not controling enough variables, etc. BUT still I think it does say something important. The girls don’t know enough about the male mind? Or there is some dynamic that the father can show towards his daughters that helps them feel more secure??? I don’t really know, and the study didn’t have good answers either.
In reviewing my comments, “very carefully” means I spoke only to issues they may have raised, and I spoke only what I thought they would listen and understand. My wife and I as cross cultural marriage partners are not in complete harmony on this parenting issue. So this is another factor. Secondly, I don’t know what goes through a girl’s mind, or even our daughters. Here in Japan is a fairly less severe situation than in Los Angeles CA, USA.
to this theme –it’s of course partly a clash of civilizations between East & West - these same double standards of hypocracy between man & woman behaviour existed here in old Christian Europe as well - an unmarried pregnant woman was an utmost outcast & totally excluded out of honorable society - but these standards here existed about 100 or 50 (or 10 or till now) years ago - depends in which European country you live – // - I remember a talkshow here in Germany where a young Turkish man braged about how he could & would easily get a lot of German girls in discos for an easy lay etc. - but on the other hand he called them sluts & said he would never marry one of these - if ever he marries a Turkish woman, she has of course to be a virgin – How could someone brag so openly in TV in country where he is guest, how he mistreats, fornicates on each occasion, while on the other hand he believes in virginity? – I hoped each Turkish girl who is still virgin here saw him bragging about his bang-dom & later on refuses him, because he’s no male virgin anymore..
By chance I’m about reading a book of an English novelist ‘Henry Fieldings’ (England) – I cite here to show the merciless & strict judgement in that time about a ‘fallen girl’:
“For by it you are rendered infamous, and driven, like lepers of old, out of society; at least, from the society of all but wicked and reprobate persons; for no others will associate with your.
If you have fortunes, you are hereby rendered incapable of enjoiying them; if you have none, you are disabled from acquiring any, nay almost of procuring your sustenance; for no persons of character will receive you into their houses. Thus you are often driven by necessity itself into a state of shame and misery, which unavoidably ends in the destruction of both body and soul.â€
– I had thought this book was written about 1900, but just now I detected it was 1749 – Christian morality distriction were still very strong then & now it has about no meaning anymore hereabout –
Referring to Heimo’s quote. This was exactly what made the female university students angry in the US in the 1970’s. BUT they couldn’t do anything because if they got pregnant, they were easily seen and “called out”, until the Pill.
Japan has only in the past 6 months allowed the Pill to be available through a doctors prescription in the country!! Japan has such a low birth rate, the government is doing anything and everything to encourage pregnancies. They “don’t care” if high school girls get pregnant as much any more. She simply stays home and her parents help her raise the child if the boy doesn’t want to be involved. In the afternoons before the usual ending of the school day, I can see girls pushing baby carriages. I said to my wife, “I think these are unwed mothers.” She said, “No they are just younger sisters of the mother taking care of the child while the mother works.” The sex, perhaps oral, is still happening, and usually pregnancies are not taking place. There has been a usual exchange of spending money for high school students who want Gucci bags, and designer goods, for sex with business men. If you walk to the train station in about 8PM, after dinner but before bed time for high school students, you can see a few standing waiting….there are love hotels for a couple of hours, then back home with 10, 20 thousand yen in their pocket. The parents of middle class girls never know.
The Japanese guys, appearing in TV interviews, are not so concerned about virginity.
For a long time I have wanted to draw a chart of Iranian sexual relations. The basic tenet is this: almost all young men have sexual relations, but none of their sisters do…
(BTW, It’s a joke. I am not implying that therefore all young Iranian men have sex w/other men)
That said, there is a lot of discussion here about the hypocrisy of sexual expectations between men and women. And, guess what, there is even surgery to replace a broken hymen.
Basically I believe the situation is generally getting worse as more countries adopt free market ecconomies. So you see I have some symyathy for the US Religous Right (but they’re wrong
and the Iranian mullas–they are concerned about the same thing I am. BUT their missing the boat, and they are trying to use political power, material power to enforce a code of moral behavior upon the heart. Won’t work. Never has. That is what any good Fascist or Communist has tried to do.
Of course I have a “certain amount of fear” for our daughters. If one is superstitious, you don’t even talk about it because talking may summon bad luck, etc. As parents we have to try to walk our talk, and if we have stumbled and fallen short, we have to be honest–we were thirsty for forgiveness—we can’t deny it. and we have to be ready for our children, and again for ourselves because when our children are struck down, we believe we failed too. We cannot prevent the natural laws from the cause and effect of disease, and we are as powerless against social brutality from either random or misguided striking down the ones most precious to us. That may be the hand that is dealt to us by God.
There is a book called Job in the Holy Bible,
What is the equivalent in the Holy Qur’an?
There is an exceptionally well-researched book out about “honour” killings called “Reclaiming Honor in Jordan.” It provides some of the first scientifically-gathered data on this subject. You can find it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Honor-Jordan-National-Killings/dp/9957860704/ref=sr_1_1/105-8609976-5335610?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183146246&sr=1-1