V is for Virtue

As an unmarried thirty-something year old female, I am constantly bombarded with comments and questions around my state: “Why are you not married?” “What kind of guys do you like?” “You’re too full of shit.” There are many others I can’t readily think of now (they have become like this incoherent hum, and my brain now blocks most of them).

But the most colourful question I have been asked (recently by a colleague) is whether I’d like my future husband to be a virgin. I laughed, and will admit that I did not quite know how to answer this question because it’s the first time I’ve ever been asked. I mean, I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Literally nothing. I don’t know of any woman who has been asked this question (if you have, I’d love to know what your response was).

Do women think about men’s virtue? I did not actively before this week.

Could it be because virtue is sneered at? Or because we still live in a patriarchal world where a woman is expected to maintain her virtue but a man is not (whoever wants to argue this point, ask yourself why a man is admired when he can ‘get’ lots of women but a woman is labelled a slut when she does the same)? Or could it be that despite the labels, more women are adopting the attitudes of men, and saying, ‘Screw it. I’ll do what I like.’

So my response to her was this:

It is difficult to answer because we all make mistakes and people’s circumstances are different (I mean, if I were to marry a divorcee, I couldn’t very well expect him to be a virgin). Ideally, yes I would like someone completely virtuous, because that’s what he will be getting if he marries me. But we do not live in an ideal world. And so I would be happy with a person who has virtuous ideals.