Sick, sad, wrong and maybe a life saver

Sorry to get back on religion’s ass so soon, but I stumbled across this blog post the other day and was horrified by it. I warn, I’m posting something gross looking later in the post, and what I’ll be talking about is disturbing, and I’ll be swearing a bit more than usual. This ain’t some dig at a bad disaster flick (Noah), but a dig at the most twisted aspect of religious ideology: Virginity fetish.

Getting to it…

Gigimo is a Chinese company specializing in sex toys, ya know, rubber genitals and such. But Gigimo is quickly becoming known as a heretical company of epic proportions for selling fake hymen kits in the Middle East. The ideological religious morons (read: fuckheads) in Egypt are going ballistic because in their dim view this product, which spews blood like a Hollywood special effect, will create a world wherein virginity — “provable” with a white sheet catching the blood of a wounded, injured hymen — is obsolete.  Fake blood spews, a non-virgin (or simply a woman who broke her hymen years ago, like by bike riding) is not discovered for her “atrocity.”

Why does this have to be two virgins? Can no one have decent sex on their wedding night?

Of course there need be no proof of the man’s virginity in this whole sordid affair. His is assumed by virtue of being a man, or is all together irrelevant (re: being a man). This hypocrisy matters little in the minds of those with the virgin fetish: the kind of twisted pricks who get off on some perceived innocence about women too which a penis is an unknown anatomical organ. To them it is the woman (Eve, or some other apple eating hussy) who tempts the man, and therefore it is the woman who must be pure. Men, we can’t help but be pure if not for women.

I know that religion — particularly the Catholicism I was raised in — has a deep, and twisted appreciation of virginity, but to reach the point where women feel so worried, and scared of retribution that they are seeking out “fake” virginity…I don’t get how that makes sense in a modern world. I mean, I understand that Muslim women in areas of the Middle East feel pressured to be virgins (even fake virgins) from early childhood, but Christ.

From the original article:

“Bleeding is not the only signal that yes, she’s a virgin,” said Heba Kotb, an observant Muslim woman who hosts a sex talk show on TV in which she fields calls from all over the Middle East.

Kotb noted that … many women still secretly seek out [hymenoplasty] in fear of punishment for pre-marital sex.

Such punishment could include slayings at the hands of relatives, a practice more commonly referred to as honor killings and common in the more conservative tribal areas of the Middle East.” (Italics mine.)

Honor killings? Sick bastards. Here they are saying a bullshit, zombie movie effect like this  may “make it easier for Egyptian women to give in to temptation,” and — just a reminder — if you use it they’ll advocate for your death. If your hymen is not intact, they will advocate for your death. If you’re just being a normal damn human being, these sick individuals will advocate for your death.

Have a look at the product that may lead to some woman being murdered by mindless sadists.

A fake hymen kit. Loaded, and ready to fool an idiot.

A woman places this contraption inside of herself 20 minutes before sex, and then when the moment arrives–BAM!–blood on the dance floor.

But do not dare think that those less “conservative” areas of the Middle East are better. Remember the case of the 8-year-old Liberian girl gang raped in Phoenix earlier this year? Remember it because of what the family did: they disowned her for “shaming” them. I don’t know which is worse: Shunning a raped child or killing for “honor”? I only know that this whole emphasis is backward, archaic, and totally unnecessary.

In my mind I don’t see what the point of lauding virgins. I get at least one spam letter a month about “hot virgins” and I’m always like, “What the hell would be sexy about that?” When I was a teenager most of what I thought about involved sex, and all I wanted was to shed my virginal shame so as to finally understand what all the guys in the locker room were talking about. And having been a virgin, and having been with virgins (in the Biblical sense) I can affirm that it is awkward, frightening, and really not that fun. At all. At least not when compared to later sex when you’re actually good at it. That first time is the worst time.

Most people I know have similar stories. The guys, we came too soon. The gals, they didn’t at all. I remember rolling away from my first girlfriend and knowing full well that that was not a good thing. If there were Olympic judges there I surely would not have gone to the medal round. Virgins are really bad at sex because they’re virgins. That’s the essence of it. I don’t know why we have to give some higher moral standing to virgins, and not simply think of them as “People who have not yet learned to fuck.” There’s no shame in being one, but their shouldn’t be some advantage–holy or otherwise.

Neither I, nor my wife, were “pure” when we exchanged vows. We’d been with other people. It does not in any way reduce our love, or the commitment in our marriage. I did not need a bloody sheet beneath us to know that we were in love, and were fine together. I only needed her with me. John Lennon and Yoko Ono had plenty of partners before each other, and named their avant garde noise album “Two Virgins” because that’s how they felt as they discovered each other. Their “virginity” was one of emotion and feeling, and not the body. When Lennon and Ono got it on there was an innocence, a humble vulnerability. And that virginity says more about two people than a bloody rag.

Above, two non-virgins just after their wedding ceremony. Also pictured: Another non-virgin who just had to be in her own damn photo. Sorry for the douchebag grin on my face. (Photo by Eleena Fikhman)

It depresses me to think that this exulting of virgins exists in 2009. Wouldn’t we all be happier knowing that people are just loving themselves, and others?

Of course, then there’s this fact: this fake hymen is going to save lives. And I guess in a world this backward, that’s a good thing.

Fun with the Bible, Episode One

Recently I’ve had to sit through several diatribes about two things I find obnoxious: The Bible is literal, and AA is good.

Neither is true, but I’m just going to focus on that first part for this post.

First, a disclaimer: I really don’t care what you believe in. It concerns me very little. I have my own odd ideas, and you’ve got yours. These ideas, beliefs, and thoughts should in no way result in wars, fights or anything else. Nothing. They are inconsequential until you decide to get mad because I dislike your (or like a different) person in the sky.

(People have said to me, “Well what about fundy Muslims who blow up discos in Tel Aviv? Their belief is consequential.” My response is that their belief in killing Jews is consequential. Religion in this case is just an excuse to kill Jews. We should work on the killing Jews part. Who cares if that same guy prefers Allah to God?)

So, now on to the Bible stuff.

If this man did exist, his flood wasn't all that damn bad. It was barely worse than Katrina. *And according to the Bible, all these people depicted as helping Noah would have drowned and died. Luckily nothing like this happens in the Bible. Surprisingly enough though the Koran depicts folks helping Noah. These helpers are rewarded with their survival, but they are not allowed to have sex ever again. #Fail

The story of Noah can be summarized as such (but read it here if you don’t believe me): God is mad at everyone, tells Noah to build a boat and grab some critters cause a flood’s a comin’. Noah does. Day saved. God is a little concerned about his choice to kill most of mankind, but decides that He is God so it was a good choice. Noah starts a winery and is either mocked or sodomized by his son Ham. Noah curses Ham’s son. Noah dies at 950 (Ironically this same story is told in the Koran, but there Noah lives to be 1,000, and the flood only occurs when Noah is 950).

To me it’s a story about a guy with a big goal(build a huge boat) and despite getting no help and being treated poorly he succeeds. Moral: Set goals, achieve them and say, “piss off” to naysayers.

But some people say it is a literal tale of a real event (they say this whenever they call the Bible the “Word of God”). So, here is why Noah’s adventure cannot be literal in any damn way.

The volume of the world is roughly 1,086,825,918,019 cubic km. Mt. Everest, highest point on Earth, is 8,848 m high. Why do these measurements matter? Because these numbers disprove the following verse: “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.” (Genesis 7:20)

Go here for a really nerdy breakdown of the math, but essentially just understand this: 15 cubits of water is 22 feet. That’s barely enough to cover a house, let alone all the mountains of Earth. And there is not enough water — even if you melted the ice caps and Ann Coulter’s heart — to cover the Earth.

Literal my ass.

And there are more moments like this in the Bible where it cannot — cannot – be literally true. So why, why goddamned why, do some people even bother? When you try to make it true you take away from the moral lesson. Set goals, achieve them. Not that there is anything moral about a drunk building a boat, God killing all man, and Noah’s sick and twisted cursing of Canaan for Ham’s sins. But that’s a separate post.

My point is that this story is fine without being literally true. Just take the good, and leave the bad. You keep your stupidity out of my public debate, and I promise to keep science off your Bible.

*Added after initial posting.