Virginity.

Just as Catullus painted virginity with Anacreon's light brush, the author of the Natural History of Man speaks of it as a learned and enlightened doctor. We shall see with what subtle coloring and decency of style he treats such delicate subjects: it rarely happens that we find such tastefully written pieces with which to grace our work.

Men, says M. de Buffon, jealous in all their relations with women, have always made much of that which they believed themselves to possess exclusively, and first; it is this sort of folly that has accorded physical existence to the virginity of girls. Virginity , a moral abstraction, a virtue that consists only of purity of heart, has become a physical object, about which all men are preoccupied; they have established on this matter opinions, usages, ceremonies, superstitions, and even judgments and punishments; illicit abuses, the most dishonest practices, have been authorized; they have submitted to the examination of ignorant matrons, and exposed to the eyes of disreputable doctors, the most secret parts of nature, without imagining that such indecency is an affront to virginity ; that to seek to determine its existence is to violate it; that any shameful situation or indecent state that causes a girl to blush internally, is a real defloration.

We do not hope to succeed in destroying the ridiculous prejudices that people have formed on this subject; that which is pleasing to believe will always be believed, however vain and unreasonable it might be; however, as one often recounts the origins of dominant opinions in a history, we cannot dispense in a general dictionary from speaking of a favorite idol to whom man sacrifices, and to consider whether virginity is a physical reality or merely a fabulous deity.

Anatomy itself leaves us entirely uncertain as to the existence of the membrane called the hymen , and of the spiked caruncles that have for so long been regarded as indicating by their presence or absence defloration or virginity ; anatomy, I say, allows us to reject these two signs, not only as uncertain, but as imaginary. The same is true of another accepted sign, but that is however just as equivocal, that is, the flow of blood: all ages have believed that bleeding was real proof of virginity ; however it is clear that this so-called sign is meaningless in all those instances in which the entry to the vagina has been relaxed or stretched naturally.

So it is that all girls do not bleed, although not deflowered; others, who in fact have been deflowered, nevertheless bleed; some bleed abundantly and several times, others very little and only once, others not at all; this depends on age, health, shape, and a great number of other circumstances.

A considerable change occurs in the parts of the one and the other sex during puberty; those of men undergo a quick growth, reaching in less than a year or two the state in which they will forever remain; female parts also grow at puberty, especially the vaginal lips, that, previously almost without feeling, become larger, more noticeable, and even sometimes exceed normal dimensions; at the same time periodic bleeding begins; all of these parts become swollen by the abundance of blood, and, being in a state of growth, they swell, they press against each other, and they adhere at all the points at which they immediately touch. The vaginal orifice thus narrows, although the vagina itself becomes at the same time larger; the form this narrowing takes, as one can see, must be quite different in different individuals, and according to the differing degrees of growth in these parts. Therefore it appears, according to the anatomists, that there are sometimes four protuberances or caruncles, sometimes three or two, and that often one finds a type of circular or half-moon shaped ring, or even a pleat, a series of small folds; but what the anatomists do not say, is that whatever form this narrowing takes, it happens only at puberty.

Before puberty, there is no bleeding in young girls who have intercourse with men, provided that the size disproportion is not too great, nor the efforts too brusque; on the contrary, when girls are in the midst of puberty, and when their parts are growing, there is quite often bleeding at the least touch, especially if the girls are plump and menstruation strong; because those who are thin, or those with a whitish discharge, do not give this sign of virginity ; and that which proves clearly that bleeding is a false indicator, is that it can even occur several times, and after considerable intervals of time. An interruption of some length causes the rebirth of this supposed virginity , and it is certain that a young girl who when first approached bleeds considerably, will bleed more after an absence, even when the first experience occurred over a period of several months, and was as intimate and frequent as one can imagine. As long as the body is growing, bleeding may occur repeatedly, provided that the intercourse is interrupted long enough to give the parts time to come back together and to regain their original state; and it has happened more than once that girls who had given in to weakness more than once, nevertheless provided proof of virginity to their husbands, with no other artifice than that of having renounced for a period of time their illegitimate commerce.

Although our mores have made women much less than sincere on this point, more than one has admitted the facts that we have just reported; there are those whose supposed virginity renewed itself four or five times in the space of two or three years. This renewal it must be said is limited to a certain age; ordinarily between fourteen and seventeen, or fifteen and eighteen. Once the body has finished growing, things remain in their current state, and can appear different only with outside help, and by the use of artifices of which we will exempt ourselves from speaking.

Those girls whose virginity renews itself are not as great in number as those to whom nature has refused all bleeding; at the least disturbance of health, if periodic bleeding is weak and difficult, if the parts are too humid, and if a whitish discharge slackens them, there is no narrowing, no folding; one finds few obstacles to the first approach and it takes place with no accompanying flow of blood.

Nothing is thus more chimerical than men's prejudices on this subject, and nothing more uncertain than the supposed signs of a body's virginity : a young girl may have intercourse with a man before the age of puberty, and for the first time, however she will show no sign of this virginity ; later the same girl, after an interruption, when she has arrived at puberty, will not fail if she is healthy to show all the signs, and to bleed at each new approach; she will become a maiden only after having lost her virginity ; she will even become a maiden several times in succession, and under the same circumstances; another girl on the contrary, who is in fact a virgin, will never be a maiden, or at least will not give the same signs of being one. Men should thus relax about all of this, instead of giving way, as often happens, to unjust suspicions, or to false joy, according to what they believe themselves to have encountered.

If one were to seek a clear and infallible sign of virginity in girls, one would need to look for it among those savage and barbarous nations, who, having no feelings of virtue and honor to provide their children through a good education, assure themselves of their daughters' chastity by a means suggested by their vulgar customs. Ethiopians, and several other African peoples; the inhabitants of Pegu and Arabia Patraea, and some other nations of Asia, as soon as their daughters are born bring together by a sort of sewing the parts that nature separated, and leave free only that space necessary for the draining of natural fluids: the fleshy parts slowly adhere as the child grows, so that one is obliged to separate them by incision when the time for marriage arrives. It is said that they employ for this infibulation of women an asbestos thread, because this substance is not subject to decomposition. There are some peoples who attach only a ring; women are required, like girls, to submit to this outrageous operation in the name of virtue; they are also forced to wear a ring; the only difference being that those of girls are not removable, and those of women have a sort of lock, to which only the husband has a key.

But why cite barbarous nations, when we have similar examples so close to us! Is the delicacy with which some of our neighbors concern themselves with their wives' chastity anything other than a brutal and criminal jealousy?

What a contrast among the tastes and mores of different nations! what contradictions in their ways of thinking! After what we have just reported on the value most men place on virginity , on the precautions they take, and on the shameful methods they have dreamed up to assure themselves of it, is it conceivable that others despise it, and consider the effort necessary to remove it a servile duty?

Superstition has led some peoples to cede the virgins' fruits to the priests of their idols, or even to make of these fruits a sort of sacrifice to their idol. The priests of the kingdoms of Cochin and Calicut enjoy this right; and among the Canarins of Goa, virgins are prostituted, willing or not, by their closest relatives, to an iron idol; the blind superstition of these peoples causes them to commit these excesses in the name of religion. Purely human motives inspire others to hand their daughters over eagerly to their chiefs, their masters, their lords: the inhabitants of the Canary Islands, in the kingdom of Congo, prostitute their daughters in this way, without bringing dishonor upon them; the same occurs in Turkey, in Persia, and in many other Asian and African countries, where the most powerful lords are only too honored to receive from their master's hand those women whom he no longer desires.

In the Kingdom of Arakan, and in the Philippine islands, a man would believe himself dishonored if he married a girl who had not been deflowered by another, and it is only by offering money that they are able to hire someone to precede the husband. In the province of Tibet mothers seek out foreigners and beg them to place their daughters in a state to find a husband. The Laplanders also prefer girls who have had intercourse with foreigners; they think that they are worth more, as they have demonstrated themselves pleasing to men whom they regard as connoisseurs and better judges of beauty than themselves. In Madagascar, and in some other countries, the most libertine and debauched girls are those who marry first; we could, M. de Buffon concludes, give some other examples of this singular taste, which can only result from the coarseness or depravation of morals.