She Should Have Known Better
The Ancient Roots of Women’s Sexual Shame
It was recently brought to my attention that a young man I know took it upon himself to berate a young, unwed mother for the disgrace of being an unwed mother. Apparently she is worthless and not worth loving because she had a child out of wedlock.
I had a lot of thoughts when I heard this story. Most of them were angry. Aside from the arrogance and self-righteousness that drove the belief that he somehow had the right to actively berate her, I decided to consider the foundation that established his role as judge, jury, and executioner.
I write a lot about religion and culture and how it drives society. While I cannot speak to the specific beliefs of either of the individuals mentioned above, I can speak to the overarching cultural and religious beliefs that likely shaped this moment in time; we all have a shared history, as it were.
One of the core foundational elements of my religious framework was the belief that sex outside of marriage was a major sin. This was the kind of action that would have God toss you aside. But the funny thing is, while both men and women were taught to wait for marriage, damnation didn’t seem to wait for both parties.
Without overtly speaking the words, it is often made clear to women that the responsibility for not having sex is theirs; if a woman and a man choose to have sex, she will carry the scarlet letter. He is just a boy operating on his urges; he can’t help himself. But she? She should have known better than to make that choice.
A woman’s virginity is purity, angelic, and valued by the most high God. Premarital sex is a violation of that and makes a woman unclean. Her future husband won’t want an unclean woman. Sure, he may have had sex before marriage, and maybe he was wrong for doing so, but, again, it’s not entirely unexpected if he made that choice. But a woman? How dare she! Losing virginity is like losing the right hand of God. Sadly, I know women who made that choice and were shamed and belittled while the men who willingly took their bodies carried it like a notch on their belt. The double standard is enraging.
Here’s the reality of a woman’s virginity: it is a commodity, a bargaining chip.
This was what I didn’t see or understand when I was a young girl of seventeen. I am going to say this again: a woman’s virginity is a commodity.
The belief holds true across my culture and many others that a woman somehow has more value because she has an unbroken hymen.
I remember wondering as a young teenager if my hymen had been broken due to no fault of my own. I’d heard it could happen. What would that mean for my status as a virgin? Did that make me not a virgin? Did that make me less of a virgin? I wouldn’t have known. The reproductive parts of my body were more foreign to me than God.
Me being me, I eventually found my way to history. Lo and behold my shock when I discovered the lies buried in the books I was originally taught from.
The concept of virginity began somewhere between five and ten thousand years ago. Originally, it was not a term used to define a woman’s sexual status but a term to define her completeness within herself as a woman.
In Greek mythology we have three goddesses — Athena, Artemis, and Hestia — who are known as the virgin goddesses. These ancient deities were considered virgins not because they had never had sex, but because they were their own, sovereign beings, unbeholden to any man. They did not require a man to fulfill their purpose or complete their value. For them, virginity was a representation of wholeness.
“a virgin is a woman who is “one-in-herself, does what she does — not because of any desire to please, not to be liked, or to be approved, even by herself; not because of any desire to gain power over another, to catch her interest or love, but because what she does is true…if a woman is one-in-herself, she will be motivated by a need to follow her own inner values, to do what has meaning or fulfills herself, apart from what other people think.” - Jean Shinola Bolen
According to Jean Shinoda Bolen in her book, Goddesses in Everywoman, a woman who is a virgin is a woman who is “one-in-herself, does what she does — not because of any desire to please, not to be liked, or to be approved, even by herself; not because of any desire to gain power over another, to catch her interest or love, but because what she does is true…if a woman is one-in-herself, she will be motivated by a need to follow her own inner values, to do what has meaning or fulfills herself, apart from what other people think.” (1)
Her virginity is the act of being true to herself rather than adjusting her psyche to fit the expectations of another.
Sue Monk Kidd states in her book, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, that “in ancient times the word virgin had a different meaning than it does now. It didn’t mean being chaste or physically untouched. Rather, being a virgin meant belonging to oneself…[it is] a quality, a subjective state, a psychological attitude, not to be a physiological or external fact.” (2)
Both authors quote the work of Esther Harding, whom I have not yet read.
In looking back over ancient history, this belief is supported in the form of the matrilineal and goddess-centered societies that existed prior to the rise of patriarchy.
According to the theories and beliefs rising today after studying archeology, ancient texts, and any possible glimpse available into history, it is widely acknowledged that the matrilineal, goddess-centered cultures deeply honored the feminine, revered the female body for being the source of life, and held sex as a sacred experience.
Ample evidence exists to support the belief that the goddess was alive and well in her temples, represented by priestesses who honored and upheld her. Men and women seem to have existed in more of an egalitarian state, and both parties were free to experience the full scope of their sensuality and sexuality. Children born within these societies were recognized as the mother’s child, thus the genealogical line passed from mother to child.
What modern day history doesn’t tell us is that the demonization of sex, the rise of virginity as a method of commoditizing a woman’s body, and the suppression of women’s sexual appetites, was largely driven by ancient politics.
According to Gerda Lerner in her book, The Creation of Patriarchy, there was likely a time in ancient history where humanity shifted from an egalitarian people’s state, where the division of labor was shared proportionally between the sexes, to a hierarchical state due to the rise in agriculture and more complex societies. To facilitate this transition, women became commodities. According to Lerner, “the first appropriation of private property consists of the appropriation of the labor of women as producers.” She later goes on to state that, “…relatively egalitarian societies with a sexual division of labor based on biological necessity gave way to more highly structured societies in which both private property and the exchange of women were common. The earlier societies were often matrilineal and matrilocal, while the latter surviving societies were predominantly patrilineal and patrilineal. The more complex societies featured a division of labor no longer based only on biological distinctions, but also on hierarchy and the power of some men over other men and all women.” (3)
When she mentions that the labor of women was appropriated as producers, she is referring to the production of their physical labor (working the fields, cooking, etc.) as well as the production of their bodies…their children.
Controlling a woman’s offspring had a two-fold impact. The first was the growth of the tribe or city. More bodies = more production. The second was the utilization of the mother/child bond to link separate tribes to each other. Put another way, the women of conquered tribes were often impregnated which linked the conquerors to the conquered.
According to Lerner, “In the Inca empire the conquerors extended their rule by forcing conquered villages to provide virgins for state service and as potential wives for the Inca noblemen. This interference in the sexual and marriage patterns of the conquered served the dual function of undermining kinship structures and of singling out particular kin groups for alliances with the conquerors.” (4)
Dominating virgins for kinship alliance isn’t isolated to the Incas. The ancient Assyrians took the harems of the previous leaders when they were overthrown, as did the leaders of ancient Israel, when the “victor acquired the harem of the former king as part of legitimizing his claim to the throne.” (5)
As the shift from an egalitarian way of life gave way to the hierarchical, sexual dominance became the norm. Over time historical records support the theory that, “elite men thought of themselves as those who might acquire power over others, wealth in goods and wealth in sexual services, that is, the acquisition of slaves and concubines for a harem.” (6) Sadly, this way of thinking is alive and well in the modern world. Just look to Epstein for proof of this.
Hierarchy and dominance continued to evolve, with women being the first enslaved group due to the production of their bodies. Unfortunately, it didn’t evolve to a balanced state. Instead, it evolved in such a way that control over women’s sexuality deepened. Gerder states that, “women, under patriarchal [hierarchical] rule do not dispose of themselves and decide for themselves. Their bodies and their sexual services are at the disposal of their kin group, their husbands, their fathers. Women do not have custodial claims and power over their children. Women do not have ‘honor.’” (7)
This process of dominion over women took place over a wide span of time. By the time we get to the biblical period and more detailed recorded history, women’s sexual and physical enslavement was well established. But this leads us to the history that directly affected the aforementioned conversation of the young man berating the young woman for having a child out of wedlock. Biblical history has shaped Western culture for thousands of years; it is often referenced as justification for specific treatment of individuals who are ‘less than’ or ‘other.’
When we begin to read biblical history, it is immediately evident that women and their sexuality are problematic. The interpretations we’ve been given of the Garden of Eden show this quite clearly. The apple is widely recognized as a symbol of sexuality, and Eve is punished for her seduction. She is made to be Adam’s ‘helpmeet.’ This is a misinterpreted term but I won’t go into that here.
The judgment on women’s sexuality is highlighted repeatedly throughout the bible. The Law of Moses lays out women’s ‘uncleanness’ and impurity over and over, with punishments existing for a woman if her husband suspects (he does not need proof) that she was unfaithful. In one story, Judah’s daughter-in-law pretends to be a harlot so he would sleep with her and give her the child he promised; she went to the brothel she knew he frequented and veiled her face while he had sex with her. When she was discovered to be pregnant, he was ready to execute judgment until she produced proof that the child was his. His promiscuity was well known and accepted; hers put her life on the line.
David and Solomon both had hundreds of wives and concubines. Jacob and Abraham had multiple partners. In Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot was willing to throw his daughters out to be raped and killed by the manic men of the city to appease them so they wouldn’t continue to seek the men that were visiting him.
According to Lerner, “Hebrew men enjoyed complete sexual freedom within and outside of marriage…during the early periods the husband had free sexual use of his concubines and slave women. Virginity was expected of the bride at the time of marriage, and the wife owed her husband absolute fidelity in marriage.” (8)
In Hammurabic Law, which is the codification of ancient Mesopotamian law, “marriages were generally monogamous, but the men were free to commit adultery with harlots and slave women…As for her sexual obligations, the bride’s virginity was a condition for marriage, and any marriage arrangement could be cancelled if she was found not to be a virgin.” Marriage was, essentially, the purchasing of a wife. (9)
Both Hammurabic and the Law of Moses go into great detail on the policing of women’s sexuality and her virginity. Those laws may be ancient but they set the precedent for women’s sexuality to shift from something that was honored and revered to something that was wicked and sinful. Coding it into religious law was the icing on the cake for social customs that were really about control and domination. Naming God as the reason didn’t make them less problematic; it just made them more widely accepted.
The more I learn about ancient history the more I realize we are living in a system built on ancient customs, and most of us never question why or how we got here. The young woman had a child out of wedlock. That’s what happened. The judgment came from somebody else. His belief that he had the right to judge her and condemn her for that choice was rooted in ancient customs and ideologies that reduced her value from a person to that of child-bearer for a husband that does not, but may possibly in the future, exist. Her autonomy and value is, therefore, linked to a potential male partner. On her own, she is less.
The question I am asking is not how we got here, but how we have accepted these double standards, the dehumanization, and diminishment of half the human population as coming from God?
Goddesses in Everywoman, pg 36
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, pg 247
The Creation of Patriarchy, pgs 52 and 53
COP, pg 58
COP, pg 70
COP, pg 75
COP, pg 80
COP, pg 170
COP, pg 113 and 114
