Some time ago I made this post titled The Million Dollar Explanation for Why Men and Women Don't Chase Sex at the Same Rate, there we found out the million dollar explanation was patriarchy. Due to patriarchy, men ruled and women's only source of worth/significance was to please males.
Being taken under a man's wing was all and all for women and men kept increasing the standards set for women before she could be considered worthy of being taken under their wing out of all the other multitudes of women dying to be taken under a man's wing. And one of such standards aside beauty and attractiveness was to be a woman who has not been touched by any man before - a virgin.
That's what people usually consider gives a commodity a great value: the fact that it had not been used by anybody before and the buyer/obtainer would be the first to use it. One other standard was to be a woman who is not so interested in sex as to make your man fear that you might have it with another man when he's not around.
So women were brought up to meet these standards and non-conformity was always checked through degradation and shaming and calling of names like 'whore', etc. Men on the other hand were free to do as they liked. This culture still linger on in society till this very day in various degrees.
Higher sexual abstinence standards for women dominated almost every culture where patriarchy was practised, from Africa to Europe, to Asia. Being the first man to have sex with a woman seemed to be considered most important and valuable when it comes to chosing a woman, but when given some thought we will come to find that surprisingly the opposite of an untouched woman which is a very sexually experienced woman also holds some value for the man.
A very sexually experienced woman has most probably learnt how to please a man sexually. There are surely many reasons why a very sexually experienced woman wasn't prioritized over virgins, reasons like pride: wanting to have what no other man has, lack of DNA testing to ascertain baby's father, STDs, etc. But in one patriarchal culture somewhere in ancient Tibet the sexually experienced woman was a high value woman for a wife and men would not marry a woman without proof that she has had a lot of past sexual partners!
I first heard about this culture when I was reading about the life of the explorer Marco Polo (1254-1324). Marco Polo was born in Italy at a time when traveling was still really primitive and Europe didn't really know what Asia was like. He traveled to Asia with his father and uncle and reached China. Due to primitivity of traveling he made a lot of stops at different Asian nations, his stop at Tibet was how he experienced this culture and he wrote all about his travels in his book The Travels of Marco Polo (also known as Book of the Marvels of the World and Il Milione, c. 1300).
This Tibetan culture was so interesting. Here is an excerpt from the book:
The people of those towns have a strange custom in regard to marriage which I will now relate. No man of that country would on any consideration take to wife a girl who was a maid; for they say a wife is nothing worth unless she has been used to consort with men.
And their custom is this, that when travellers come that way, the old women of the place get ready, and take their unmarried daughters or other girls related to them, and go to the strangers who are passing, and make over the young women to whomsoever will accept them; and the travellers take them accordingly and do their pleasure; after which the girls are restored to the old women who brought them, for they are not allowed to follow the strangers away from their home.
In this manner people travelling that way, when they reach a village or hamlet or other inhabited place, shall find perhaps 20 or 30 girls at their disposal. And if the travellers lodge with those people they shall have as many young women as they could wish coming to court them! You must know too that the traveller is expected to give the girl who has been with him a ring or some other trifle,something in fact that she can show as a lover's token when she comes to be married.
And it is for this in truth and for this alone that they follow that custom; for every girl is expected to obtain at least 20 such tokens in the way I have described before she can be married.And those who have most tokens, and so can show they have been most run after, are in the highest esteem, and most sought in marriage, because they say the charms of such an one are greatest.
But after marriage these people hold their wives very dear, and would consider it a great villainy for a man to meddle with another's wife; and thus though the wives have before marriage acted as you have heard, they are kept with great care from light conduct afterwards.
Oh your fucking God!!!! Right?
Well, Oh my fucking God too. I'm still jolted by this culture even though I'm not processing it for the first time. Man, this life... This life.
Alright, there you have it, an example of a time patriarchy went for the sexually experienced and put them on a pedestal rather than virgins.
