"Tell Your Boyfriend I Own a Gun" - Paternal Ownership of Female Sexuality

The internet is quick to spread viral news of "heroes" and "total legends", and more than once this title has been awarded to protective fathers, warning their daughters that a future boyfriend will have to face his wrath.

Society just really seems to love a good display of strong paternal possessiveness over teenage girls, especially when it involves hypermasculine guy-on-guy violence.

Protective-father memes didn't appear out of the blue, they actually have several thousand years of history behind them encouraging paternal ownership of female sexuality. In ancient Rome, a daughter belonged to her father's clan until she was married off, whereupon she belonged to her husband's. Daughters were political tools to ensure profitable relations with other wealthy families, and as such, her virginity was her father's asset, to be carefully controlled until it was needed. This filial duty didn't really change for a couple of thousand years - in Shakespeare's plays, fathers are constantly controlling their daughter's sexuality to further their own power: Polonius warns Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet's advances, and Prospero has a frank discussion with Miranda's future husband about the chastity of her "virgin knot". Fast forward 500 years and honestly very little had changed, by the early 1900's women in almost all societies were expected to be virgins upon marriage, whilst men could happily hire a prostitute or two on his buck's night. Some slight advancements have been made recently upon the sexual revolution of the 60's and 70's, and the growing influence of feminism. But an entire civilisation's worth of patriarchal domination unsurprisingly still manages to seep into today's world.

With the widely held acceptance of the nuclear family, it often goes without saying that children are subject to their parent's control to a large extent for at least eighteen years. Regardless of issues with the historically heterosexual and Westernised nuclear family, it is interesting to note that somehow daughters are expected to submit to their father's control more than sons. Father-son relationships have always been characterised in books and films as being relatively equal, or with a sense of the father teaching the son how to win at life, such as Frank Abagnale Senior and Junior in Catch Me If You Can, or Vito and Michael Corelone in The Godfather. Along a similar vein, fathers are consistently portrayed to support their sons' sexual exploits - think Sean Connery and Harrison Ford sleeping with the same woman in Indiana Jones - whilst simultaneously condemning their daughters'. Understanding these historical and pop-media influences begin to clarify why there is a male entitlement to police and own female sexuality.

Because when a father tell his daughter that he will shoot her boyfriend, what he is actually saying is that she doesn't deserve autonomy over her own body, and must allow her father to claim ownership over her as a sexual being. Oh, and it also assumes she is cisgender and heterosexual. This idea of protectiveness may come from a reasonable place, such as the warranted fear of rape or sexual abuse. However warning a daughter against sex and men altogether has very little impact other than to encourage victim blaming for "not listening to her father" should she ever be abused, and moreover, this attitude is only acceptable if those same fathers educate their boys on consent and appropriate sexual behaviour. Very likely, the extent of education for the brothers of these girls is "get in there mate".

We undoubtedly live in a society which polices and censors women's sexual lives; slut shaming is rampant in all social circles, and there is a problematic obsession with female virginity. Fathers "protecting" their daughters from boys and sex is just another manifestation of society's underlying belief that women do not deserve sexual freedom, but what it most worrying is how we never call these people out; in fact, we celebrate them. It is extremely disheartening to think that our ideal image of a "legendary" father is one who will deny his daughter's sexual autonomy in the favour of outdated patriarchal traditions.

Comment below x

Hannah

Virginity Doesn't Exist

From the awkward moment sometime around eight years old when we learn what the elusive “s-word” actually entails, we enter a realm of obsession surrounding virginity. People lie about it, feel ashamed about it, are harassed and assaulted about it, joke about it… But here’s the thing:

Virginity literally does not exist.

…at least not in the way we’re made to think it does.

Let’s talk about hymens. Virginity is supposedly definitively lost upon first sexual intercourse, with alterations to the hymen being the physical determinant if a woman has had sex. This is false for so. many. reasons. Firstly, this theory is anatomically incorrect. There is often an idea of something “breaking” or “popping” when a girl first has intercourse, but that just kind of doesn’t make sense. The hymen is a thin film of tissue that partially covers the vagina, and instead of being “broken” by a penis or other forms of penetration, it is slightly stretched to the side. It’s logical really – if there is something fully covering the vagina that must be “popped” during intercourse, how does menstrual blood come out…? And hence, notions of pain and blood during first sexual experience are also misconstrued. Pain and blood is caused far more often by tense muscles, lack of lubrication or rough intercourse rather than the hymen tearing, and is not at all indicative of the female state of “virginity”. In fact, in ye olde times, women would scratch their thighs on their wedding night to draw blood and “prove” their virginity. Also, the hymen can be stretched or worn away by activities other than sex. Sport, masturbation, and genetics can all cause the hymen to be stretched or slightly torn before intercourse.

"H" is the hymen; it usually does not cover the vagina

Secondly this model of virginity is extremely cis and hetero-normative. Since it implies that the physical act of losing virginity must be performed by a penis during vaginal intercourse, it leaves little to no room for people who are gay, trans or fall outside of the binary. Does this mean a trans woman is magically a virgin again post-transition? Does this mean lesbian sex will never result in a loss of virginity? The assumption of a physically defined state of virginity almost completely erases non cis-hetero experiences. It can also impose harmful expectations of rape victims, many of whom have not had sex despite being penetrated; they have been a victim of violence. There is a huge difference between sex and rape, which the concept of virginity often does not take into account.

And throughout this article, we have seen a trend – “virginity” in both a physical and cultural sense usually impacts women more than men.

Sure, men are subject to humiliation if their perceived state of virginity is not masculine enough, and gay and trans men are also erased upon issues of virginity. But in more cases than not, it is women who are victimised, shamed and attacked for the status of their sexual activity. The ideas of pain, breaking and “damaging” sexual purity refer almost solely to vaginas, hence predominantly effect women (although not all women have vaginas and vice versa). Once again, we delve into the world of suppressing female sexuality. By encouraging a specific standard of unpleasant consequences upon women – never men – we estrange girls from taking ownership of their sexuality. The idea that a woman’s virginity is something “lost” through pain and force to their own demise is like a leitmotif of humanity. Not only does that statement prove that year 9 English class wasn’t a waste of time, it explains one of the premises for the socialisation that all girls receive, telling them their sexuality must be protected and feared, only to be inevitably taken from them.

So here’s a concluding proposition:

1.      Fix the sex education curriculum in schools to more accurately and comprehensively explain the hymen.

2.      Don’t portray girls who have “lost their virginity” in a slut-shaming, negative light especially when the same treatment is not inflicted upon men.

3.      Change the way we discuss virginity. Virginity can definitely still be used as a concept to refer to a person gaining sexual knowledge and experience, but we have to ensure it is kept separate from any physical attributes.

4.      Celebrate in a land of rainbows and sunshine at our sexually emancipated society.

Xx Hannah

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