Virginity and Body Discourse

Far from being an expression of her respectability, a woman experiences the virginity cult as an unjustified heavy burden on her life. It practically signifies a strict social regimentation and denial of her body. Rationalized by the honor code, controlling female sexuality inevitably embodies controlling her body. The family and community appropriation of the female body leads to a bodily denial of an autonomous existence in expressing the self and subjectivity. Mackenzie argues, “A person becomes an object for herself when she experiences her body as alien to her subjectivity, rather than as the direct expression of her subjectivity.”1 Best adds, “When women are perceived solely as objects of the male gaze, when their bodies are so regulated and culturally controlled, they are robbed of their subjectivity, of their identity, and, ironically, of the very sensuality for which they are imprisoned.”2