why aren't men expected to value their virginity, but women are?

Question

according to many religions, virginity is very important, not only to women, but men too. so why is it that it's always the women that are shunned for not being virgins, while men are considered "powerless" and without control over their sexual urges (as some have claimed)?

why don't men value their virginity?

oh and don't give me that line about men "spreading their seed" and not being naturally monogomous, but women are.
NEITHER gender evolved to be monogomous, but here we are...

men have the say so about who they have sex with. takes two, last time i checked.

men don't have a say in sex?!?!?!?
so any female that demands sex of a man will get it??? lol
you don't make sense.
men DO have a say in sex, men are adult humans that can practice fee will. why do you insist on insulting them by saying they don't have control over it? do you even realize you're feeding some bad stereotypes about men?

[free will, not 'fee'! oops]

society doesn't "make" someone do anything. everyone has a choice to be a sheep or not.

men can resist their lust just as easily as women can.

both should take responsibility for their actions, both have equal control over their own actions.

it seems to me that men should have a similar "fear of pregnancy"... though they don't have to go through pregnancy, they still have to become a parent and support a child. it just seems that men and women BOTH should be encouraged to value their sexual purity. a woman who is not a virgin is no less "pure" than a man who is not a virgin.

being promiscuous is just not a very good thing. honestly, i've been disturbed by how slutty some guys are!

okay, i just have to contest a couple things:

1) pregnancy is not 9 months of pain (the past couple months haven't been too bad, really. perhaps it will get worse?)

2) not all women get cranky when they have pms. i personally just get less social cuz i don't feel well. it's not "acceptable" to be b!tchy for no reason

3) "force men to pay child support even if it was mutual consent"... it WAS mutual consent, SO they have to mutually support a child.

4) rape isn't about sex, it's 100% about power.

Answer 1

I think this goes back to the days when women were considered property and were traded from father to husband as dowry. Their virginity was considered a symbol of their "purity" and they were not considered valuable if they were not virgins. From that tradition, our culture has inherited an unhealthy obsession with a woman's virginity.

Also, men do not have a physical virginity in the form of a hymen. It's more of a psychological experience for men than a physiological one for women (although women can still lose their hymen before their first time).

The most obvious reason, of course, is that men have completely different social expectations and are not held as accountable for any sexual "mistakes." Ultimately, everyone needs to decide as an individual when they lose their virginity and what personal value it has to them.

That last thread really ticked me off, too! I almost asked the same question myself.

Kwmane J: Women and men decide TOGETHER to have sex. There is certainly a cultural expectation that men have to say "yes" and women have to say "no," but men do not have any less control over their sexual inhibitions. Your repeated implications otherwise are very offensive (although not surprising since popular culture feeds into them).

Answer 2

I think it's a cultural preferred idiosyncrasy, touted by religion's eccentricity's... it has accrued so many social and civil amendments over time that the ideology has become a cultural mill-stone.
Just a cursory inventory of religious conceptualitys around the world today tells me a person has to have a sense of hummer about virginity...male or female.
Men got exempted from virginity them selves by shear luck, i suppose...and women got saddled with that hokey-pokers because every guy wanted a few of them.
But, who knows...maybe Neanderthal man , or cromagnun man started things off that way for some reason we just haven't figgered out yet..or ... maybe that was the 'apple' Eve wanted Adam to eat...or ..
Personally, all that hype seems like a distraction tactic to me...the girls postponed sexual activity long enough to achieve a physical growth maturity, and it alleviated a whole bunch of complications once conception was achieved.
...just a guess.. I admit i don't know, ether. I'm just throwing the thought out there...

Answer 3

I was agreeing with one of the answers which said that men don't value their virginity because they are the ones that ask women for sex usually and so being a virgin guy means women have been rejecting your advances and being a promiscuous guy means women accept your advances so you must have something that they want. Where i disagree is that men cannot control their sexual urges while women can. It's amazing but for a gender that claims to be stronger, men portray themselves as irresponsible kids. Everything is blamed on the woman and when they have desires they do what kids do and that is seek gratification without any sort of mental evaluation whatsoever. For a society that is advanced as ours, i don't understand how we can continue to carry on that patriarchial thinking

Answer 4

i answered kwmane j's question that led to this one... and can i just say that he is a complete moron? men have urges and so do women (the only difference is women don't "show" it as easily, if you catch my drift)... it has nothing to do with who is in control! maybe he should realize that it's NOT like it was in the 50's... men and women are considered equals these days. and if he thinks that there is only presure on men to have sex he is by far mistaken... maybe he should take a look inside the most recent cosmo magazine! i see it this way... women can control themselves, so can men...

i agree with arwen... these days men and women decide TOGETHER whether to be intimate or not!

p.s. anyone! have you read some of kwmane j's other questions... he's immature and quite confused... check them out, they gave me a good laugh!
http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt=Ah0MiDWojAiJQDVNDN7HeOkYxgt.?show=543039c61990e753cb9a980f2203ad38aa

Answer 5

Woman is considered just as a property- consciously or subconsciously and so expected to be pure and unused for her owner- husband. A man is the user and woman a commodity. Such psychology is behind iknsisting om female virginity.

Answer 6

I have to respond to Kwmane J's answer. If women are the ones who have all the power in sexual relations, who will you be having this sex with if not a woman who is no longer a virgin? Since this is the case, why is women protecting their virginity so important to you? Obviously, you want the opposite since you want them to have sex with you.

As for my response to this question, since time began men have used sex as a way of wielding power over women. They were not considered to be men until they lost their virginity. Fathers were known to bring their sons to prostitutes to help them out with the loss of this encumbrance. In medieval times, if a king or a knight decided he wanted to bed the bride before his vassal on the wedding night, he had every right to do so (Droit du Siegneur).
Believe it or not, just because we women have the right to say "no" without reprisals does not mean we have power over you men when it comes to sex. We still hope that you will listen and this "no" will mean "no" and we won't be fighting you off.

Answer 7

Men like adhering to the double standard, in my opinion. I remember a male friend of mine wouldn't date my female friend because he heard she had slept with quite a few people. When I asked him how many partners he had, he honestly couldn't tell me. It was okay that he had slept with so many people that he had to give me an estimate on how many there were, but not okay that she had more partners than he preferred. There should be the same standards for both sexes. I have a son and daughter, and I would love for BOTH of them to wait until they were married--but we are an oversexualized society and its likely that they won't. When that time comes....years and years from now, I won't be more disappointed in my girl than my son--both of their virginity's are sacred

Answer 8

*thuds head against a brick wall*

The implication that men are in the grasp of their lust and have no willpower whatsoever is one of my biggest pet peeves in terms of gender relations. It is a HUGE insult to men, turning them into little more than brainless robots whose only programming is to have sex. Yes, they want to have sex, but so do women...and a choice is made to do so!

To say that men are unable to control their sex drive means that every man must be a potential rapist because obviously, he doesn't care if she says yes to the act, right? He only cares about his hormones. Please.

Kwame J, grow up...seriously. The "I couldn't help it" act doesn't work past 5!

Answer 9

It may have something to do with the fact that a promiscuous women has a higher chance of getting pregnant.
Pregnancy involves 9 months of pain and labour , which can result in a goddamn awful amount of responsibilities for the woman.
In contrast, men have almost nothing to lose compared to women, which may explain why they are less choosy.

In the dating game or even marriage, a man can try to initiate sex with a woman, but obviously needs her consent. Likewise for women.
You might say it's mutual consent , and probably in many ways it is, but it is more likely that men have a bigger sex drive and higher desire for sex.
Don't ask, it just is, especially for younger men.

Lets say you want something much more than someone else, would the factor of control or no self-control come into the equation in the first place ??
If the other person, in this case a woman, gives consent to let you do what you want more, would you not willingly take what she has given ?? Im sure most people would. Why do you think rape victims are mostly female ?? Power over a woman, of course, plays a major part, but it is the sex drive of a man that causes it in the first place, not in fact, by social conditioning, as many like to believe.

If you think about it, how much of what we consider "moral" or "right" today are but the results of what was and is considered necessary in the long or short run??

Perhaps the phenomenon of women becoming more and more promiscuos is due to the fact that they can and will take preventive and recently added measures against pregnancy, such as birth control pills and abortion, thus remaining a "virgin" has become less of a necessity, more of a minor inconvenience.
Don't you think it would be the same for most women favouring intelligence over physical strength these days ??
Perhaps 500 years ago, a woman might have chosen a man with physical strength over intelligence, unthinkable as it may seem today.

I could state many examples about the innate biology and unfairness between men and women, such as why women prefer verbal communication more than men, why women prefer to shop in general, why women are more inclined towards reading emotions and such compared to men, why women have the right to force men to pay child support even if it was mutual consent among them, and the man does not want to be a father??
Why are women allowed to bitchy and hot-tempered if they have PMS ?? Women can control the hormonal effects of PMS too, can't they ?? hmm...

I have made my point.

Answer 10

UMM...DONT KNOW MUCH ABOUT THESE THINGS.BUT I THINK WOMEN DO HAVE A GREATER EFFECT AFTER SUCH INCIDENT..AS THEY R LEFT WITH AN IMPACT WHICH IS NOT EASY TOGET AWAY..WHERE AS MEN HAVE NO EFFECT ON THEIR PHYSICAL STATE..BUT
WAT I THINK IS THAT BOTH R RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INCIDENCES SUCH LIKE THIS..BUT IN SOME CULTURES SUCH LIKE INDIA...MEN BEING A OVER POWER MAKE FEW SOCIAL LAWS ACCORDING TO THEIR CONVINIENCE..BUT I SUPPOSE IT WILL CHANGE SOON...