being the virgin AND the whore
Recently, my family has brought to my attention the dissonance they think they see between my intellect and my inappropriate style and behavior. They tell me that a young woman as smart as me shouldn’t be drinking and partying. That I shouldn’t be wearing clothing that is too revealing. That I shouldn’t go out dancing lest I attract the wrong kind of male attention. That I might get hurt by a man one day if I part take in those things.
They tell me that I should respect myself more than to do those things.
The ideology behind it:
This type of thought process is a part of the virgin-whore dichotomy that assumes one model woman is better and more deserving than her counterpart. One cannot assume both roles because they are so distinctly polarized.
The virgin is all that is pure, good and virtuous. She works hard, is smart and modest, and upholds good values. She will not drink or be involved with any other substance use, and she is saving herself for marriage.She deserves to be treated with proper chivalry and respect.
The whore is dirty, immoral and not respectable. She might drink, dance, and sleep with men. She might drink and dance and party. She is most immoral for sleeping with men too frequently, or without love. Society doesn’t think she has respect for herself. Applying the whore label to a woman leads to rape culture and victim blaming. Ariana De La Torre deconstructs these consequences and brings them to light in her analysis of recent related changes in legislation. Even legislation is caught up in immoralizing the whore. She is not deemed decent. It is the idea that she “doesn’t respect her body” through modesty and virginity, and so her body in turn is not respected.
This was where my family found the trouble in their understanding. Their hija/hermana was a hard-working intelligent young woman, but she also liked to go out, drink, and wear tops with a little less fabric. How could I be both the virgin and the whore?
But it doesn’t stop at just that.
The thing is, in communities such as mine, our struggle as women in a patriarchal society is furthered by being black or brown. Our white counterparts, while still experiencing gender disparity, are able to enjoy the privilege of whiteness. White skin tends to entail more respect for those bodies and more acknowledgement of those bodies as human, while more melanin tends to involve more objectification, sometimes to a point of fetishism of black and brown bodies. That means that women of color are being perceived as sexually pleasing objects.
While all women in the patriarchy have to navigate the virgin-whore dichotomy, women of color have that extra disadvantage of the color of their skin. As a black or brown woman, you are seen as subhuman, an object. And therefore, as a woman of color, you have more to prove. You have to put in extra effort and work a bit harder to be taken seriously. Hell, you have to work twice as hard at womanly modesty to even be considered worthy of human decency.
Black or brown women are judged way more harshly by their own community on the things that they wear and their participation in promiscuous behavior. Many communities have adopted the ideology that the pure virgin is what their women should strive for. The virgin is the epitome of a success, and even though success has a white face many communities of color hope to prove themselves by behaving “correctly.” Being a black/brown woman and anything less than the standards of the virgin deems harsh judgement. If you are misbehaving in that whore type of way, you must not want to be valued. You must not want the hegemonic society to value you either.
Something is wrong with this acceptance of the hegemony.
This type of navigation of societal ideals feels like we are fighting for our worth from within the very system that oppresses us. Michel Foucault describes this paradigm well. He writes, “Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.” The hegemonic ideology tells us that we are not worthy, but our fight to prove that we are is one that is fought from within that very ideology. The power of societal norms is holding us to their own standard, and we are not in any position of exteriority to it. Rather than dismantle the very idea of the virgin-whore dichotomy and its consequences, communities of color are trying to use it as a means to prove themselves as decent and worthy. It is as if we are trying to mask our skin tones through what our society deems as proper behavior. As if our modest appearance and modest sexuality can lead us to success despite all other systemic disadvantages.
But,
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” — Audre Lorde
We are trying so hard to fit the mold, one that just was never meant to be filled with melanin, in hopes that it will bring a change in public opinion of our people.
woman=person=worthy. no matter what.
What we should be doing rather than ostracizing women that stray from the virgin role, is deconstructing the dichotomy itself. Instead of tearing each other down, we need to recognize that a black/brown woman is a person and all people are worthy of bodily respect and humanity.
A woman who wears short skirts and twerks on the dance floor is no less worthy than a woman that dresses up in modest attire and studies her books.
Women can do both of these things. Women can be the virgin and/or the whore. However, we don’t have to fit any certain mold to earn our humanity. The mere fact that we are people is definitely enough to let you know to respect us and also throw a little human decency our way.
I, personally, am both the virgin and the whore. It’s possible.
But regardless of any of that, I need to be treated like a person.
