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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everyone, it's me, your host, Kate Lister. I'm just jumping in before the episode to ask you for a little favor. If you are enjoying betwixt, and I hope that you are, we'd love it if you could vote for us for the Listeners Choice Awards at the British Podcast Awards. If you follow the link in the show notes, it should take you to the place you need to go and it would mean the world to us. We were shortlisted last year and the one before that and the one before that. We were so close and it just made us want it even more. I think we can do it this year. Right on with the show.
- [00:38]
B
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C
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- [01:33]
A
Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am me. You are you. And this is betwixt the sheets. And I bet you have come here because we talk about all things historically mucky. But just in case you're a newbie and you've wandered in unsure of what is about to assail your ear holes, I do have to tell you this is an adult podcast. Spoken by adults to other adults about adultery things in an adultery way. Covering my dual subjects. And you should be an adult too. Oh, I feel safer. Do you feel safer? Right, let's get on with it. Okay. Think of watery things. Think of fountains, rain, hose pipes, tears. How about if I just made this noise? Have you ever tried to wee on demand? Those of you that have done this just for shits and giggles or for money? It's not easy, is it? No. And what can make it even harder? Having somebody there next to you when you're trying to pee on demand makes it all but impossible for the most determined of us. So imagine trying to have a wee with somebody watching and listening and having your entire reputation and marriage ability dependent upon this action. If the medieval medical books were to be believed, then if you weed too much or too quickly, then you were not a virgin. If you didn't wee enough, then you were holding something back and were probably also not a virgin. Science. This completely bizarre test is just one of many tests that have been used throughout history to try and determine whether or not somebody has ever had sex before. And the whole thing is a complete load of cobblers. What do you look for? A man.
- [03:22]
C
Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to arise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button.
- [03:38]
A
Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.
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C
Goodness.
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A
What beautiful d. Goodness.
- [03:43]
C
There's nothing to do with it, dear.
- [03:49]
A
Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, History of Sex Scandal in Society with me, Cait Listair. We have been talking a bit about virgins lately. The vestal virgins, they cropped up, as well as the Virgin Mary and all the millions of people who worship her. And it all got me thinking, what is virginity really? What is it? It can't be measured for, it really can't be tested for. It is just an artificial social construct. But where did that come from? So I've headed back into the archive to a conversation I had with a rather marvellous Anka Berno a few years ago. Anka is a senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at the University of Manchester and the author of Virgins A Cultural History. So if anyone can help us pop our cherry, it's gonna be her. Are you ready? Let's do it. So, hello and thank you to Anka Bernau for joining me Betwixt the Sheets. How are you?
- [04:47]
C
I'm great, Kate, and it's lovely to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
- [04:50]
A
Oh, it's so lovely to have you here. Your book, Virgins A Cultural History, was such a big part of when I wrote Curious History, so I've got a chapter on the history of virginity and I read your book before I'd even started writing that one. And I loved it. It was so well done and rage inducing at the same time.
- [05:09]
C
Thank you. It was rage inducing writing it, so I'm glad it carried over.
- [05:14]
A
It's such a strange. The history of Virginity, which is talking about today. How did you arrive at that? What was your process of. Like this. I want to write the history of virginity. What led you to that?
- [05:25]
C
It started out when I was a student really and I was researching during my ma, I was doing medieval literature and I was reading about this poem that was called Pearl and it was all about the pearl maiden who's also a young girl and is imagined as this beautiful young woman in the afterlife who is like a pearl, pure white, virginal. And that got me interested in virgin saints. And so then I started thinking about, well, what is virginity actually? And how do we know that someone's a virgin? And I took it from there really.
- [05:57]
A
Because I think that definitely reading your book and whenever you have conversations about this as well, virginity is one of those things that everyone thinks that they know what it is, everyone thinks that they know until you start asking some questions and then suddenly it all falls apart pretty quick. It's like, well, what the first time someone's had sex? Well, like what kind of sex is it? Only man and woman, penis and vagina sex and therefore is oral sex and finger sex and same sex sex. That just doesn't count.
- [06:27]
C
Exactly.
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A
It's in a small print.
- [06:29]
C
Yeah. I taught a course called Sex and Salvation in the Middle Ages for a while and we talked about this topic. And you know, you have to be careful how you handle it obviously in the classroom. But it was very clear that people thought they knew what it was and it was self evident almost. And then once you start thinking about it and read some of these texts that try to define what it is, it became very confusing very quickly. And it's exactly what you say. Those are questions that arise not just now, but did come up earlier. You know, exactly what kind of sex counts as that kind of sex. And is it just a female thing, Is it a male thing, Is it just a hetero thing? You know, these are all questions that become very pressing very quickly because it's.
- [07:09]
A
Definitely gendered, isn't it? It's like whenever you're kind of thinking of virginity, especially throughout history, there's this huge emphasis on women's virginity. Not so much men's virginity or maybe I'm wrong with that. What have you found?
- [07:23]
C
Well, you know, there's the theory and then there's the practice, isn't there? So in theory I would say that in Christianity, early Christianity, male and female virginity were both very, very important. So that was how Christian itself as different from other religions. You know, in Judaism, marriage is very important. And Christianity basically was trying to distinguish itself from what the Roman Empire did before it was Christian. What Judaism did so it was like, okay, you owe your allegiance to Christianity and to your God. So it's very radical. It was very like, family doesn't matter, kinship doesn't matter, the state doesn't matter. It is just you and other Christians and your God. So it was important for men and for women. But then of course, as the faith became more institutionalized, but arguably even before then, how do you police it? You know, how do you know whether someone is a virgin or not? And then that tied into natural philosophy or what we call science and other definitions of female nature and male nature. And they were defined as being quite different. So women were considered to be more sexually voracious and weaker. And so then it takes on very quickly, it takes on different meanings for men and women. And of course, virginity also had a non religious value. So in Western Europe, for example, even if you were Christian, but maybe that wasn't your main concern, you might want your daughter to be a virgin because that was important in creating marriage alliances, for example, whereas for a son less so.
- [08:58]
A
One interesting theory that I read about why this huge emphasis on women's virginity historically, and one of the theories put forward by, I suppose, anthropologists and historians is that it's about ensuring legitimate offspring in marriage, that you need to make sure that the babies that you're bringing up are actually yours. What do you think? Do you hold with that or do you think there's other stuff going on?
- [09:21]
C
Well, there's more going on, but I think that is hugely important. So, yeah, it's about ensuring that your w and your children are yours. And so if it's about property, especially with wealthier families, you want to make sure the property doesn't get alienated, you want to make sure that it's consolidated. And so how do you ensure that? By knowing that the children are yours and not someone else's. How do you know that? Okay, only if you can control your wife's sexuality or you can be sure that the woman that you are marrying has not had previous sexual relationships. So, yeah, I think property is very much a part of it. It's not all of it, but it's an important part of it.
- [09:58]
A
And that does go some way to explain why it's this big emphasis on women and why it's particularly the emphasis on penis in vagina sex. And for some reason, nothing else counts.
- [10:07]
C
Absolutely.
- [10:08]
A
I remember distinctly being at school and hearing people going, yeah, I'm a virgin. I've done other stuff though. And it's like, why doesn't the other stuff count? Like, wasn't that sexual?
- [10:18]
C
Absolutely. And we see it in. When I was researching the book, I was looking at some kind of evangelical Christian teen magazines in the U.S. and, you know, you did get people writing in, and it was very clear that they thought that if they hadn't had, you know, vaginal, penetrative sex, but they might have had anal sex, for example, that that didn't count, that they were still virgins because only one kind of sex counted. So there was a lot of confusion in young people around that who were being taught particular values or particular, you know, abstinence only education, for example. I think it's getting more varied now, especially because as more research is being done on sort of LGB communities as well, the different ways in which virginity narratives are handled, whether it's being rejected or just being rewritten, more complexity is entering into this. But certainly for a long time, and I still think the dominant paradigm historically, definitely, but well into the 21st century, was this kind of very heteronormative, heterosexist assumption. And what you said, penile, vaginal sex, basically.
- [11:22]
A
Do you think that that goes, like, some way to explaining this kind of obsession that we've got that you can prove virginity? Because that's the other big myth that sort of gets blown apart in your books, is that you can't. It's bollocks. It's just nonsense. You can't possibly look at someone's genitals and see what kind of sex they've been having.
- [11:39]
C
Yeah, and that's a huge problem, isn't it? Because so much can depend for women on. On someone's verdict, on whether you can tell that they're virginal or not, and you can't. And so I think that actually goes back to ideas that aren't just about the body. So for Christianity, for example, it's always about the soul as well as the body. So you can't really be a true virgin if you are a slut in spirit, if you like.
- [12:03]
A
Oh, no. Oh. That's just that how are you supposed to navigate that? You've never had sex, but you are slutty in spirit. I shouldn't laugh, but wow.
- [12:13]
B
Yeah.
- [12:14]
C
Yeah. So loss of virginity, according to that paradigm, begins in the heart or in the mind, and it's only completed in body. So the body is the last step, but it also was brought in in a different way. So people said, okay, so what happens if you have someone who's, let's say, a nun or a woman dedicated to a religious life, and she is pure in spirit, but she is raped, she's violated. You know, is it fair to then say she's lost her virginity because she's never done anything that warrants that? And then there were different opinions then, okay, so some people said, no, she definitely still is a virgin as long as she didn't consent in spirit. So in a way, then, spiritual virginity is used to save women as virgins from physical only definitions. And then others would say, well, yes, theoretically, she might still be a virgin, but we know that women are by nature sexually disposed, and so it's unlikely that she didn't at some point enjoy it and consent to it.
- [13:13]
A
Oh, man.
- [13:15]
C
So, you know, that's where you get a narrative that we're still familiar with, which is, how can you really trust a woman when she says no or when she says she didn't enjoy it or didn't consent to it?
- [13:27]
A
Wow. I mean, the mental gymnastics and the weirdness of that, you know, you get sexually assaulted in. Some prick in a monastery is trying to tell you that you're not actually a virgin because you're not a virgin in spirit. It's. Cheers is so messed up. But we'll talk a bit about sort of the hymen myth and how you prove a virgin in a bit. But what are some of the earliest records that we've got about virginity? It's almost like a cult, like this cult of virginity. What are some of the earliest records we've got?
- [13:58]
C
That's a really tricky question because, you know, virginity of. Or whatever you want to call it, the idea of female purity and chastity are valued in different cultures. And, you know, for example, you could go back to looking at the vestal virgins in Roman culture, for example. So you have versions of that in many different cultures. And I would say that most patriarchal cultures have a version of that. I would say all monotheistic cultures have a version of the importance of female purity. But how that's then developed differs. So in Christianity, for example, what's unusual about Christianity, especially Catholic Christianity, is that it very much valued lifelong virginity for both men and women. And so that is a very different kind of emphasis. Not just virginity until something else happens. So marriage ideally, but lifelong dedicated virginity. And that is quite unusual. And that's something that ties into Christianity defining itself as a new religion in opposition to other forms of belief.
- [14:58]
A
That's interesting. I'd never thought about it before as being that it's not so much about that you're not having sex, it's about that you've given up everything to follow this faith.
- [15:06]
C
Yeah. It's about dedicating yourself and also freeing yourself from the demands of worldly life. So for women, what you get in some medieval texts that recommend or that praise virginity is very much a kind of very knowing discourse around how difficult marriage could be for women. You know, childbirth is dangerous.
- [15:26]
A
True.
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C
Your husband can treat you violently and can use you and abuse you. You know, being a wife is not easy. So virginity is sometimes recommended or praised as a much freer way of life and a safer way of life for women as well.
- [15:42]
A
Oof. I don't want to say that that's a positive thing, but I'd not thought of it in those terms before. And, yeah, marriage sucked. But tell me about the Vestal virgins. Who were they?
- [15:53]
C
They were priestesses dedicated to the cult of Vestes, of the goddess Vestes.
- [15:58]
A
And.
- [15:58]
C
And they entered the temple and they dedicated themselves to a chaste life. And then that practice was abolished in around the 4th century when Rome had become Christian.
- [16:10]
A
They had to dedicate themselves to being virgins, otherwise Rome would fall. Have I got that right?
- [16:15]
C
Yes. Their service and their upholding of these values were closely associated with this success and continuing success of Rome, because the.
- [16:25]
A
Punishment for not being a virgin was quite extreme. If you got caught misbehaving as a vestal, they couldn't be touched, they couldn't be put to death. So they entombed them alive if they were caught, which is a hell of a punishment.
- [16:39]
C
Yes. And I'm not aware of any stories of that happening in later sort of Christian discourses, but you don't think it.
- [16:45]
A
Ever happened in Leeds.
- [16:49]
C
But you do get, you know, you get other stories. I mean, I think in one instance that's really quite famous that medievalists know about is the story of the Nun of Wotton, which I talk about in the book, which is a 12th century story written about by the abbot Alred of Rivo, and he talks about this order called the Gilbertine Order, and they were what's called a joint order. So they had female as well as male dedicated religious, uh. Oh, yeah, exactly. And he tells the story of the Nun of Wotton, who was a young girl and she was given to the monastery by her parents as a dedicatee, which was a, you know, a common practice then. And she was never suitable, and she flirted with monks and she ends up having this relationship with a monk, and they meet in a clandestine way at night, and they consummate their relationship. She is then found out because people are following her and observing her and they want to kill her. Her fellow nuns want to kill her.
- [17:44]
A
Wow.
- [17:44]
C
Well, because what she does is very dangerous for the community because if she is found out, then, you know, the community relies on their reputation of being pure to get patronage, to have authority. So if someone undermines that, it's not just an individual act, it reflects on the whole community. And in fact, the Gilbertines were then eventually dissolved as an order because they couldn't get rid of these accusations of sexual misconduct. She then reveals who her lover is and he's apprehended and she's forced to castrate him and they shove his severed genitals into her mouth. I mean, this is a really horrific story, whether it's true or not, that you can see what's at stake in that story for the individuals, but also for the community. You know, how fragile. So the virgin body is not just the individual's, but their virginity, whether male or female, in this case, also comes to represent the body of the whole religious order. So if you do something with your body, you are dragging everyone else into danger with your own body.
- [18:46]
A
I think that was a harsh punishment. I think I would go as far as to say excessive. Yeah, but now you've explained it. I mean, if you're an order of monks and nuns and your whole deal is we're just really spiritual and they've been knobbing each other behind the scenes. I mean, I'm not suggesting for one second that we castrate our leaders and force their genitals into people's mouths, but I'm just thinking about, like, Partygate scandal, which is like, you know, it only takes one or two of the MPs to have been knees up over Christmas while the rest of us were, you know, in lockdown and waving at our relatives across a park bench, whatever it was. So reputation still matters, doesn't it?
- [19:24]
C
Yeah.
- [19:24]
A
And the sort of collective reputation.
- [19:27]
C
Yeah. And women's bodies are never just their own individual bodies. If you look at this historically, it's always what happens to their bodies is seen as a reflection on the family, particularly on the father or the brothers. It's a reflection on the nation. For example, you know, if you think about World War II, for example, the way that women who slept with the enemy, you know, that's not just about their own choice, obviously, it's seen as a betrayal of the nation, of the state. Or if you sleep with someone from a different community that's not sanctioned by your community, that's seen as providing A gateway to the enemy, to your community. Or if you look at racist narratives as well, you're diluting the purity of your race if you sleep with someone outside the sanctioned boundaries of the race. So women's bodies are always also carrying that burden of community identity.
- [20:18]
A
It's not just about the individual not having sex. It's much, much bigger than that. And you study the virgin saints, don't you? And when you look into some of those stories about what those saints did to try and preserve their virginity, there is some crazy stuff in there.
- [20:37]
C
Oh, yeah, Especially the virgin saints. They're always. Mostly. They end up being martyrs, dying for their faith. And so it's always. It involves a young woman who's desired by an evil tyrant, usually a pagan tyrant. He wants her. He promises her the world. She says, bog off. I've already dedicated myself to Christ. And then the man will exert the full power that he has on her body. So he will torture her, he will arrest her, he will dismember her, he will kill her. And she is steadfast. And she's also often very spirited. So she will talk back. She's very articulate, often. And she'll tell him what a loser he is and how he can't compare to her bridegroom, who's the best in the world. It's very heroic on one level, but it's also very disturbing because it's almost like her body needs to be tested. You can't find virginity. How do you know that she is what she says she is? How do you know she's this amazing pure virgin? So it's almost like she then gets dismembered publicly. Often. You know, it's very public spectacle in the stories. And then at the end, her head is cut off, usually. And she might be miraculously then carried up to heaven, or even she might survive it miraculously. But there needs to be a testing of the body that then can show ultimately that she is who she says she is and what she said she is.
- [22:00]
A
And the testing. I mean, there was a saint who. Didn't she grow a beard overnight? That was the miracle, because she didn't want to marry someone and lose her virginity. So she prayed to be ugly and then the next. I don't think it saved her, though. She was still martyred, wasn't she?
- [22:15]
C
No, no, it worked.
- [22:15]
A
Oh, it did.
- [22:16]
C
Well, it saved her from marriage. He was not impressed. So Saint Vilgafortis, sometimes called Uncumber, she prays to be made unattractive and grows a beard.
- [22:26]
A
Overnight, and somebody else had their eyes plucked out. And just really dark stuff isn't.
- [22:33]
C
Is very. The mutilations are described in ways that are very. You could argue they're very titillating to an audience because you've got these very beautiful, very young women. Their bodies are stripped naked. They're described, you know, so it's horrific violence. Many scholars have read it as being also very disturbing and very problematic because of being titillating. And you can read these stories and you can see that. Absolutely. Even while it's heroic, it's a certain kind of idea of heroism. You know, it's this idea of the impermeable body. So what the man who's been rejected sexually wants to do is he wants to find a way to penetrate this young woman, and he does it with swords or with other forms of torture or by ripping her apart. But he can't do it. You know, she stays intact. She resists any penetration.
- [23:22]
A
It becomes like metaphorical sex. And a lot of the language we use around sex is quite violent, or at least it can be, can't it? You know, things like tear someone in two or, you know, pound somebody. And even the word fuck originally meant to strike, to hit something. That's where the word comes from. So in the stories, the man can't have sex, but he then enacts this huge amount of rage and violence on her body anyway.
- [23:47]
C
And he does it. I mean, it's quite interesting. That's why these stories are quite fascinating, because he does it with the full power of the law. He's a ruler, he's a tyrant. So he has state power. So it's not just masculine power, which it is, but it's also state power and the law. He has it all. And she is so vulnerable because she doesn't have anything on her side, but she doesn't care. She tells him, do your worst, and I will still not give in to what you want from me.
- [24:15]
A
I think I must be a slut in spirit, because I would have just said, not a problem, mate. You carry on. And that's why I'm not a saint. That's why.
- [24:25]
C
That is why you're not a martyr and why you're able to interview me today.
- [24:28]
A
Why? Right, yeah. Thank goodness I'm a slut in spirit. Tell me about hymens, which is another part of this virginity nonsense. Tell me, what is a hymen?
- [24:39]
C
The hymen is a name for a fold of membrane that most women have around the entrance of their vagina. Full stop. Some Women don't have it at all. The shape of it differs, you know, really quite widely. But this idea that we have historically that it's somehow a kind of like a. I don't know how to describe it, even like a door, you know, that completely closes off your vagina and that then is punctured at first intercourse, that is just not true. And in fact, if you had what's called medically a perfect hymen that is one that covers the whole entrance of your vagina, you would have all kinds of health problems, as writers have known for centuries. And the term hymen is also one that you don't really find used before the early modern period much. And in fact, people tried to find other ways of physically proving virginity rather than what then became the focus on the hymen. So the hymen is just this myth, however, a very powerful one. To this very day we have tests, medical tests that claim to be tests to ascertain whether someone is a virgin or not. And that usually seems to revolve around looking at whether hymen is intact or not.
- [25:50]
A
That's perfectly summarized. We have this idea that like the hymen is like this best before. Do not consume if seal is tampered with, don't we? But it's like this kind of vacuum packed thing across the vagina that's pierced and then you bleed. And it's nonsense. It's nonsense. Am I right in saying that you can have sex and your hymen is still intact? You can not have sex and your hymen can be broken. It doesn't bleed every time.
- [26:17]
C
Yep. In fact, I think it's 50% won't bleed if they have penetrative intercourse the first time. You know, your hymen can tear through accidents, sporting accidents, maybe tampon use, maybe never at all. I mean, there have been cases of middle aged sort of sex workers who have an intact hymen. Very tragically, you have the case of very young abuse victims where you can't tell. No. Unless there are other kinds of violence that are visible, you can't tell.
- [26:46]
A
And what I found was so interesting in your book and you just alluded to it, there was that it's not that this has been this myth for centuries that we've believed they knew it was nonsense. Back in the ancient world and into the medieval period, there have always been people going, I don't think this is right, lads. It's never been accepted as this uniform test.
- [27:08]
C
No, it's not. And even when it gets more accepted, 17th, 18th century, you see more writers subscribing to it. It's still always often acknowledged that there is a debate around it, and writers will say, okay, I know there's a debate, but the best authorities say that there is such a thing. So I agree with that. But there's always this acknowledgement that it's never univocal, you know, it's never undisputed. And so you know, you can see the cultural weight, the importance that is there attached to virginity. We need to find some way of proving it. And we know that the hymen might not be reliable, but we need some way of proving it. So we will find some way of proving it in the body.
- [27:55]
A
I'll be back with anchor after the short break.
- [28:15]
B
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- [29:16]
C
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A
And potential death in the Colosseum?
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C
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A
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- [29:58]
A
One of my favorite things in your book is you describe some early tests to prove to virginity. If you can't do it with a hymen, there were other methods so what were some of these early tests that people came up with to prove if you're a virgin?
- [30:13]
C
Well, there are signs of virginity, so the so called physical signs, and they could be quite innocuous, so they could be about the way you walk, or it could be that if you are spoken to, you will blush. So this is a physical manifestation of innocence, your modesty. So you blush, you keep your eyes downcast, you don't look at someone in the face, especially not a man. It could be how your breasts were shaped, whether they pointed downwards or upwards. It could be the sound you make when you urinate. So there is a logic in the sense that you produce a more hissing sound when you urinate because your passage is narrow if you're a virgin. So, you know, it sounds different. Blood, however, is something that's come back to a lot and that's something that unites hymen believers from non hymen believers. So even writers who said there is no hymen or don't mention a hymen at all will say a virgin has a narrow vagina and therefore when the penis first penetrates, and often a penis is inept, that is a word that is sometimes used, it will break blood vessels and so there will be blood. So blood becomes something that's an important test as well, you know, the blood on the sheets kind of myth.
- [31:22]
A
Yes. There's a lot at stake here, isn't there? And I can see why, even if you had never had any sexual contact with anybody, you might be a bit panicked that you wouldn't produce this blood on your wedding night. So you do get these kind of, I don't know, tips or life hacks of how to fake virginity on a wedding night that crop up from time to time, don't you? Let's say you're a girl who's slightly concerned that she's slutty in spirit and that she might not be able to bleed on cue on the wedding night. So what would be some tips for her?
- [31:55]
C
Well, often it's to do with blood. So it's to do with, you know, smuggling in kind of suppositories of blood that burst when you have intercourse. Or, I mean, you can buy that online to this day, you know.
- [32:06]
A
Oh, can you?
- [32:07]
C
Yeah, yeah, you can, yeah. Or you're, you have to find ways of cutting yourself or something, but not obviously, you know, you have to sort of be surreptitious or you could, I mean, this is later, but you could get some stitches inserted. I mean, that's quite contemporary as well. That will be inserted in a way that is guaranteed to rip, because if it's too well done, then that might be a problem. So anything that can guarantee that there will be visible blood.
- [32:32]
A
Oh. In the 18th century, in the erotic novel Fanny Hill, there's quite a lengthy description about how the madam sells virginities over and over again. And the description that they use is, I think that they have a blood soaked sponge in the bedside table that they very carefully insert and you know, you have to go, ooh, ow, ow, ow, in the right times, and then blood is produced. So that's their tip.
- [32:54]
C
And you do wonder, don't you, because there must have been many young women who didn't even necessarily know that something had to happen in a certain way. I mean, how would you know that unless your mother told you or whatever, or your parents or someone or your friends? So if you didn't know that and then you don't bleed.
- [33:10]
A
Oh, God. Yeah. So we've dispelled the hymen nonsense, and I'm just wondering, like, if you could speak to a little bit about how different virgins have been seen in different points of history. I'm thinking in particular about Elizabeth the first, the so called virgin queen. Was there sort of a cult of virginity around her? Why was it important that she was a virgin?
- [33:30]
C
I mean, she used virginity very cleverly because she used it as a way of saying, I'm married to my country, so I don't have to marry someone because there was pressure on her to marry.
- [33:41]
A
Like the nuns being married to Christ.
- [33:43]
C
Yeah, but obviously she's a Protestant, so she's not gonna draw on that narrative.
- [33:46]
A
Yes, of course.
- [33:47]
C
But also this idea that virginity was sometimes associated with being more manly or more man, like.
- [33:54]
A
Really?
- [33:55]
C
Yeah. So the Latin wor vir is associated with virility and manliness. So if women were thought to be more subject to their sexual impulses, more subject to their body's demands, and men were more associated with reason and with spirit, then a woman who decided to dedicate herself to virginity was thought to be acting in more masculine ways. She was deciding to be more spiritual and more rational, if you like, and not enslaved to her body. So being a virgin allowed Elizabeth to draw on certain narratives of virginity, longstanding narratives to her own political advantage, to say, okay, I don't need to marry because I am wholly committed to my country. My country is my bridegroom, James I, who succeeded her. He also drew on virginity narratives, which is interesting. But it succeeded in a different way for him, because there were always going to be parts of the commentariat or the populace who weren't as persuaded of a woman saying that. Who would have seen that maybe always as a potential weakness or struggled with a female ruler, you know, the idea of the monstrous regiment of women, and who were maybe more comfortable with a man using that. And then England becomes the bride rather than the male, the husband. So James sees England as his bride that he's married to, and the country becomes feminized in a way that we also see from similar narratives happening around the same time around colonization, where you get people calling countries they want to colonize as virgins, who need a husband, who need to be taken and need to be ruled over by a husband.
- [35:36]
A
Wow, that's fascinating because I was going to say, has there ever been tests to test for virginity for a man? Has that ever happened? Do they have to like look downcast or have their nipples point in a certain way? No.
- [35:50]
C
I mean, you do have, of course, if you have monks who violated their chastity or their virginity, also very negative. But how would you prove it in their bodies? I mean, if you think about some of the words for hymen, for example, in German it's jungfanhout, which means virgin skin or virgin membrane. But jungfe or jungfrau seems to foreground the woman, a female identity, Frau being woman. And if it's tied to that virginity membrane, then they don't have a virginity membrane. So how would you find it in a man's body? Where would you locate.
- [36:24]
A
It's interesting there that you said that virginity was associated with being masculine, because arguably today, if a man's still a virgin, that's not thought of as masculine, not by everyone, but there's certainly a narrative, like there are films made about it. The 40 year old virgin. Isn't it funny? Ha ha ha. He hasn't lost his virginity yet. Yeah, but it was once associated with being more masculine.
- [36:45]
C
It was. But even then there are very conflicting narratives around masculinity. So for example, for a religious man who dedicates himself to his faith there, it's important to be celibate because he's saying, my spiritual purity is proven by my ability to control my body. Whereas in the secular sphere, to be a virgin, I suspect even in that period, you know, would have been either not important or perhaps considered suspect. What is certainly the case is that being officially at least, being sexually promiscuous as a man, being a man who can't control his sexual desires, that was seen as verging on effeminacy. So you could be virile and have multiple sexual partners to be virile, but if you were considered to be a complete slave to your sexual desires, that then tipped over into being effeminate.
- [37:37]
A
That makes sense. I mean, there's a weird logic to all of this, isn't it? You know, from the. What does it sound like if she's taken a whiz through to how can you be masculine and a virgin? There is twisted logic, and it would be lovely to say that all of this stuff has been resigned to the past and that it no longer has sway over culture. But the cult of virginity and the emphasis on virginity is still very much with us, isn't it?
- [38:01]
C
It's very much with us. And I think it's because it's so powerfully located into life stories, you know, so, you know, the idea of entering adult sexuality, entering your adult sexual Persona, your loss of virginity. These are narratives that even if you're not religious, they still structure the way we think about a life trajectory. And there's been some really interesting work done by a scholar called Laura Carpenter, and she identified three metaphors, and this is around 2002, she identifies three metaphors around virginity loss, if you like, in the West. And she says virginity as metaphor means either it's a gift, you see it as a gift, or you see it as a stigma, or you see it as a process. And that narrative, or that kind of what's called a virginity belief scale that she develops is still very much used today by sociologists and people who study sociology and sexuality. And it's recognized always that even when medical knowledge changes or even if religious beliefs change, virginity is one of those narratives that is so entrenched that it does change, but it's not been jettisoned, you know, it's not been discarded completely. Some communities reject it, and certainly there are movements that reject it. There are definitely feminists who say we should just reject the concept altogether because it's so tied up with patriarchal assumptions. There are definitely sort of non hetero identity groups that would say this is not meaningful for us because it's so powerfully tied up with heterosexual identities and values. But even so, studies have shown that it is actually still a narrative and a concept that gets picked up across the culture in North America and in the uk.
- [39:56]
A
I'll be back with Anka after this short break.
- [40:16]
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- [41:28]
A
Even the language listening to you say it there, the idea that you lose something, that you are somehow depleted, that it's something that you've got to lose, like, oh God, where did it go? It isn't anything really, is it? Nothing's lost.
- [41:40]
C
I mean, that's where I found Carpenter's work so interesting because she said that in her studies, what they showed was that people, and they were often women who associated virginity with the gift metaphor, that they felt quite empowered by that. So they felt that their virginity gave them status, social status, and that it was a gift that they bestowed on the right person, and they therefore chose the right person in a particular way. And that they often then associated virginity loss with a positive experience. Whereas the stigma narrative was more commonly taken up by men, and it was seen as a stigma because they believed that masculinity was tied up with being sexually experienced, with always saying yes. Whether they personally felt that way or not is a different matter. But they felt that was the pressure, so there was pressure to get rid of it. And the process narrative to me is the most interesting. And I think that might be becoming more common where it's neither seen as virginity, is neither seen as something hugely positive or negative. It's seen as part of a life trajectory and something that you then lose as part of becoming more experienced. And it's one experience. It's not the experience, it's not this threshold thing, but it's part of a life journey narrative.
- [43:00]
A
If you like thinking about sort of America. And I suppose even in the UK now, the idea of purity culture, they still wear in like white bands on their wrists, some people to say that they're a virgin and there are purity balls where fathers take their daughters and pledge them to be virgins. And like this stuff is still really mad. It's completely bonkers. But it's still with us, isn't it, this obsession that we've got with proving virginity.
- [43:25]
C
Yeah. And I think that especially in the US you can see a lot of money. I mean, over the decades, millions, billions have gone into abstinence education programs. And you know, you can't speak for the United States as a whole because it differs from state to state. But nonetheless, the success of abstinence programs is notable. The success, I mean, in the sense that people have taken it up. And that's partly because if you're a public school, these were often well funded programs. And if you're struggling for money, you might take on that program if that's all you can offer because you don't have any funding available. At the same time, there is evidence in the U.S. at least, that Democrat voters and Republican voters are interested in having some element of abstinence education tied into sex education. You know, voters have said that they feel that it gives young people the right to say no, that there's a lot of peer pressure, and that young people, male and female, will then feel they have to engage in sexual activity before they might want to because they feel it's a stigma. And so they feel that abstinence education, by attaching value, by associating abstinence with other positive character traits, that, that allows people to develop the self confidence in a kind of culture that is pornified to have the confidence to say no. You know, it doesn't map out neatly politically, necessarily. And different programs are, you know, abstinence can be one element of a much more comprehensive sex education program, or it can be the only thing that is taught. So there's also a great diversity in how that is approached.
- [45:03]
A
See, I would have thought that a good sex education, probably the one that we need to be going for more and more, is to have honest, frank conversations. And part of that would be you can say no, like, you know, without calling it abstinence. I mean, that's where we want to be, isn't it? Is to try and remove that stigma and that pressure and you just find out in your own sweet time, really.
- [45:22]
C
Yes. And I mean, abstinence, that word is related to so Many historical assumptions. You know, if we think about, for example, the importance of Puritan culture in the United States. Puritan culture celebrated marital sex and they celebrated pleasure for both partners within marital sex. But at the same time, it was marital sex. That was the place where you could do those things. And at the same time they also said that it was all about self control, you know, that outside of marriage, it's about internal self control. And this was also the period where we moved from a narrative that said women are more sexual than men and that's why they can't be trusted because their bodies are betray them, because their bodies crave sex, to saying, no, no, women are more pure than men and they don't like sex at all. They just put up with it. And they are in fact, so delicate and fragile and pure. And that then makes them the ideal gatekeepers of the nation's purity. And they are responsible for the raising of children as pure, self controlled, abstinent adults. So abstinence is tied up very powerfully with these religious narratives of self control, responsibility. Which then also explains why people who promote abstinence from a religious context in the 20th and 21st century often relate it to things like being economically successful, not having to rely on state handouts. So it's tied up with all kinds of other ways that show you are a responsible adult.
- [46:56]
A
It's just like the medieval nuns is the body is political and it's about a community. It's never about, well, a bit about the individual, but it's about cultural values.
- [47:06]
C
Absolutely. And so much of it becomes about class, is about race as well as class.
- [47:12]
A
I mean, you can still get hymenplasty, hymenoplasty. There are people out there paying to have their hymens rebuilt and doctors doing it. That's still on offer today, I think.
- [47:24]
C
Yeah. And the way it's marketed is very interesting. So in the west, it's often marketed at Western women as a kind of empowering thing. You know, you maybe you're on your third or fourth marriage, but you want that first time feel on your wedding night. So, hey, why don't you get some hymen enhancement?
- [47:42]
A
Why on earth would anyone want that first time feel that awkward fumbling and like not really knowing what you were doing? Why would anyone want that?
- [47:53]
C
Or it's then marketed as something that helps women where their culture or their families might expect them to be virgins on the wedding night and where there is a danger to them if they are found out not to be virgins.
- [48:07]
A
On Their wedding night just from talking to you. The pressure of this is immense, isn't it? I can see why people would do that. What do you think is, I don't know, the future of virginity? Because it seems to be taking a really long time to debunk some of this stuff. Like, you can't prove someone's a virgin. The hymen is pretty much useless. You may as well try and look at someone's belly button to discern what they've been doing in bed. And when you actually think about it, we don't even really know what it is because there are so many like, oh, I've done this, but I've not done this, therefore, am I a virgin? Do you think we're moving to a place where it's not going to be such a big deal? I mean, it's like, was it only a few years ago that the World Health Organization made an announcement to say we need to stop doing virginity tests because they're still being done all over the world? What do you think is going to be the future of this?
- [48:54]
C
You know, I wish I had an answer to that. I think that in the scholarship, you do see people moving away from the term virginity, not least because of its powerful heterosexist kind of connotations.
- [49:07]
A
What kind of language is being used now?
- [49:09]
C
First time, you know, but even that is tricky because you think first time for what you know. I mean, some of the research that I've seen in relation to more diverse communities suggests that people are redefining virginity in ways that make sense in relation to their identities, in relation to their experiences. I guess. I wonder if we don't have that term. Do we still think it's important to have a term for life experiences that we perceive to be milestones and that we perceive to be really meaningful and that we use to narrate our lives? And it might be that we need to find different terms for that. But at the moment, what the study suggests is that we're not losing that term, but that it is being redefined and that it's meaning more diverse things, and it's also being defined more flexibly. You know, people are now talking about second virginity loss. So, for example, let's say you're bisexual. You might feel that you have, you know, depending on who you're sleeping with, that. That might be a different kind of virginity loss. Or depending on the sex act, if you have anal sex or oral sex or whatever, that. That might be different types of virginity loss as well. Or people are sometimes looking back on earlier same sex experiences that they might not have counted as virginity loss, but are now looking back and saying, actually that was so important to my identity formation that, you know, I want to mark it in some way as having shaped me in positive ways. And so I will refer to that as a first time or a virginity loss.
- [50:43]
A
It's very much in a transformational point, isn't it, of people recognizing that what we think of as virginity isn't virginity. But it still seems quite important to acknowledge a first time sexual experience that was significant to you. So I guess it's watch this space, isn't it?
- [50:58]
C
It is, because for many people it is also tied up with autonomy and consent. So for example, studies have shown that people who are subject to sexual violation or abuse, for them it's very often quite important to still be considered virgins because they want it to be something that they decide. You could argue that that's only the case because the wider culture still values virginity. And if that weren't the case, then maybe they wouldn't feel the need to hang on to that term. And that's of course a conversation to be had. So it's that constant shifting between what's going on in individual people's lives, but the wider culture as well. And so like you say, watch this space to where, where those discussions are going. I mean, of course, as we're seeing at the moment, we know that there isn't just a linear, progressive narrative in things to do with sexual matters, unfortunately.
- [51:47]
A
Absolutely. So yeah, watch this space. And Anka, if people want to find out more about you and more about your research, and they should because you've been absolutely fascinating, where can they find you?
- [51:59]
C
They can find me on the University of Manchester website or in fact, my name is not that common, so you can find my email quite easily if you just type in my name and.
- [52:10]
A
Buy the book Virgin A Cultural History. It's. Oh, it's so good. It's fabulous. And let's get thinking about how we're going to redefine this.
- [52:18]
C
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, things like your program are so important because they do kind of also strip away some of the taboo that actually does still exist around such topics.
- [52:29]
A
You've been amazing to talk to. Thank you so much for joining me.
- [52:33]
C
I've enjoyed it so much. Thank you, Kate, it's been great.
- [52:36]
A
I burst your cherry. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to anchor for joining us. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is that you get. Your podcasts Coming up We are back on the hunt for more historical boys. Can Charles ii, Raphael or the Emperor Nero outdo Henry VII and Byron? I mean, that's pushing it, right Byron? But we're gonna find out. And if you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us@betwixtoryhit.com this podcast was edited by Peter Dennis and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again Betwixt the Sheets the Tree of Sex Scandal in Society, A podcast by history hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
- [53:36]
B
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D
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