Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Virgin Envy: The Cultural Insignificance of the Hymen
    Unavailable
    Virgin Envy: The Cultural Insignificance of the Hymen
    Unavailable
    Virgin Envy: The Cultural Insignificance of the Hymen
    Ebook336 pages5 hours

    Virgin Envy: The Cultural Insignificance of the Hymen

    By Zed Books

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Virginity is of concern here, that is its utter messiness. At once valuable and detrimental, normative and deviant, undesirable and enviable. Virginity and its loss hold tremendous cultural significance. For many, female virginity is still a universally accepted condition, something that is somehow bound to the hymen, whereas male virginity is almost as elusive as the G-spot: we know it's there, it’s just we have a harder time finding it.

    Of course boys are virgins, queers are virgins, some people reclaim their virginities, and others reject virginity from the get go. So what if we agree to forget the hymen all together? Might we start to see the instability of terms like untouched, pure, or innocent? Might we question the act of sex, the very notion of relational sexuality? After all, for many people it is the sexual acts they don’t do, or don’t want to do, that carry the most abundant emotional clout.

    Virgin Envy is a collection of essays that look past the vestal virgins and beyond Joan of Arc. From medieval to present-day literature, the output of HBO, Bollywood, and the films of Abdellah Taïa or Derek Jarman to the virginity testing of politically active women in Tahrir Square, the writers here explore the concept of virginity in today’s world to show that ultimately virginity is a site around which our most basic beliefs about sexuality are confronted, and from which we can come to understand some of our most basic anxieties, paranoias, fears, and desires.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZed Books
    Release dateNov 15, 2016
    ISBN9781786990372
    Unavailable
    Virgin Envy: The Cultural Insignificance of the Hymen

    Related to Virgin Envy

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Road Less Travelled

      May 2, 2021

      We tend tiny, empty graves hidden in our hearts. We endure the daily tortures – the careless questions and judgement, the thoughtless commentary, the barrage of propaganda. In our fundamentally conservative country, even in the third decade of the 21

      8 min read

    • Article

      40 We’ll Expand The Definition Of “Chosen Family.”

      May 21, 2019

      When we think of the quintessential chosen family, we usually have a certain picture in mind. Some very Lost Boys- or Breakfast Club-type ensemble of cool misfits, eating Chinese takeout together on Thanksgiving Day in a dirty one-bedroom apartment.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Coming to Terms with Being Involuntarily Childless

      Oct 4, 2021

      I’m Berenice, a freelance designer, and founder of Hello Lovely, a design business in Cambridge creating print material including books for all age groups, including primary, branding, and websites. I guess I’m also a rebel in writing here as I’m not

      3 min read

    • Article

      Counter Culture

      Jan 15, 2023

      Counter Culture
      3 min read

    • Article

      Balancing Secrets

      Apr 27, 2022

      Balancing Secrets
      5 min read

    • Article

      Surrogacy And The Rise Of The Female Patriarch

      Feb 23, 2023

      PARIS HILTON HAS A BABY. I didn’t think this news would interest me. It’s been two decades since I watched her and fellow heiress, Nicole Ritchie, pretend to do “real jobs” — the kind other people do to survive — on The Simple Life. I quite liked the

      8 min read

    • Article

      Surrogacy And The Rise Of The Female Patriarch

      Feb 23, 2023

      PARIS HILTON HAS A BABY. I didn’t think this news would interest me. It’s been two decades since I watched her and fellow heiress, Nicole Ritchie, pretend to do “real jobs” — the kind other people do to survive — on The Simple Life. I quite liked the

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Fluidity Of Sexuality

      Oct 28, 2020

      The Fluidity Of Sexuality
      7 min read

    • Article

      Leaping The Moat

      Apr 17, 2020

      Leaping The Moat
      3 min read

    • Article

      Leaping The Moat

      Apr 17, 2020

      Leaping The Moat
      3 min read

    • Article

      Enter the Ambition Fatigue

      Apr 8, 2017

      Enter the Ambition Fatigue
      6 min read

    • Article

      Raise your Voice

      Oct 11, 2020

      Raise your Voice
      14 min read

    Reviews for Virgin Envy

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words