Virginity is an aspect of human sexuality that is not usually given the same critical attention as others, it is largely accepted as a state of being which just exists. In Virgin: The Untouched History Hanne Blank challenges our perceptions and assumptions about virginity and uncovers a rich and varied social-cultural history and shifting medical perspectives.
The first section of the book is titled Virginology – a look at the medical and scientific side of virginity, both now and in the past, and in particular the specifics of the contentious hymen issue. Here Blank also touches on what virginity has symbolized – the supposed pure, untouched state of heavenly, magical virtue – and the significance and purpose of these representations. The lengths that some women took to “prove” their virginity is often horrifying, but the circumstances which force them to have to prove it even more so.
The value we place on virginity is precisely that, placed upon it, and not intrinsic either to human beings or to virginity itself.
While this first section is incredibly interesting, the second section of the book – Virgin Culture – is so well written and captivating, ripe with information and insight into virginity’s place in society and culture over time. Blank does talk mainly about female virginity because it has been loaded with much more meaning than male virginity. Blank posits that female virginity was desired in a marriage to ensure the paternity of the children produced by the marriage. Female virginity then played a socioeconomic role, a valued commodity within the patriarchal marriage market. Historically, our understanding of virginity has moved from one related to socioeconomics and kinship to one of experience, identity and personal autonomy.
This section also discusses the virginal saints and the place of virginity in Christianity and the Bible, Elizabeth I the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth Báthory and the blood of virgins. There have been numerous fascinating examples of virginity throughout history, and Blank manages to cover a wide variety of them here. Looking at contemporary views of virginity she discusses government involvement in creating a moral agenda in schools through the promotion of abstinence programs.
The Centers for Disease Control, the federal medical research organization responsible for addressing infectious and chronic diseases, had until 2002 been conducting research into “Programs That Work,” sex-education curricula that had been proven through empirical review to effectively reduce risky sexual behaviors. Of the five they identified as effective, none were abstinence centered. Since 2002, however, the CDC has discontinued this research program and the program’s findings have been removed from public view at the CDC’s web site. Other CDC statements praising contraception in a public-health context have also mysteriously vanished from the CDC’s online offerings, leaving, instead, statements of presidential and other official support of abstinence programs. It seems reasonable to surmise that high-ranking opposition to anything other than the official virginity-until-marriage agenda has created something of a chilling effect on the CDC’s ability to conduct and present scientific research on reproductive health issues.
One issue I do have, and I have this problem with all so called popular non-fiction works, is the lack of adequate recognition of references and sources. I understand that it is a space issue – but the selected biography cannot even begin to touch on all the resources that Blank must have used.
Apart from this minor, probably pedantic, objection, Virgin: The Untouched History remains a well researched, deeply compelling and insightful look at how our attitudes toward human sexuality change over time and how these changes represent wider transformations in society at large.
