Fascinating reply, dlish. I hope we're not getting too off the subject of the OP, here--but I'm very interested in understanding the place of virginity (at any age) in other cultures, as I think it gives a good context of why the OP has a right to maintain his own standards and not just conform to the dominant culture.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dlish
so anyways, having an american go to lebanon and stay with ktsp would have had you talk of the town. so in order to minimize all that, i dont find it surprising that the news wasnt spread to all ends of the Jbeil! the would have been aware that if news spread the whole Jbeil neighbourhood would be talking about you.
|
I should clarify and say that ktsp's parents live in West Beirut--not Jbeil--that's just where his mother's family lives.
Also, his parents are both very relaxed (at least about their son), and come from different religions, so I think that's why the religious part of it is not very important to them. But I would think that their daughter's virginity is still important, given the social demands and limited marriage market for Lebanese women right now--and that's something I never would have considered as the context of my own virginity, back in the day.
For my old religious self at the time, virginity into my 20s was more about "keeping myself pure," than a fear of not finding a man who would marry me--in fact, I was the one with pretty high standards for the man, not the other way around! In my social circles, the man's virginity was just as important as the woman's, even though it could not be "tested" as such. Evagelical guys were expected to wait till marriage just as much as the girls, and would be looked down upon just as much if they decided to break that rule. There was some small amount of comfort in the lack of a double standard there, at least.