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December 14, 2019 30 mins

What’s the deal with virginity auctions? Why is virginity associated with both sacredness and stigma, especially for women? Is virginity a valueless construct rather than an actual physical state?

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to Stepma.
Never told you protection of I her radio's house at works. Okay,
So alright, alright. Recently t I made some news when

(00:25):
it came out um that he regularly takes his daughter
to the doctor to have her hymend examined, her hymen examined,
to make sure she's still a virgin intact. Yeah. And
first of all gross, second of all gross um, third
of all that's not even how it works exactly, fourth
of all gross um. And we've talked about in a

(00:47):
couple of episodes we've done together at our cultural hang
ups around virginity and this whole idea that it somehow
makes you more pure or innocent, um, that it has
some value, right, Yeah, And I think what I see
it is such a backdated reference into which they did

(01:07):
sell off young girls and their virginity and their worth
to bring prosperity to a family, which again gross um.
And also we've gotten letters from listeners who feel judged
that they're still virgins, and so that's a part of

(01:27):
the problem too, Like if you want to be uh virgin,
there's nothing wrong either way. I guess as long as consent. Yeah,
it's just frustrating. It is to see that we still
have all of these ideas attached to this thing right,
once again negating what sexuality is for women in the

(01:50):
small part, as well as shaming women in their sexuality,
as well as some ownership often by the father, as
we see with the I of someone's and autonomy, which
is gross, like I don't I don't know how else
to put that um and such a misconception and such
a fearmongering on young women and young ladies or those

(02:11):
who have vaginas in general, is such an absurd pressure
to put on one as well as I just recently
rewatched Parenthood and one of the main characters lost her
or had sex for the first time. I'm gonna say
that way, it's had sex for the first time, and
her dad couldn't even look at her, couldn't even talk
to her, and all of these things. And it's such

(02:32):
a weird conception of the fact that there has to
be that it breaks relationships or it breaks communication skills
because she did something that you didn't like and it
was such a big deal. And don't get me wrong,
having sex it does emotionally tie you sometimes two people,
and different people handle it differently, and different people connect

(02:54):
with people differently when it comes to intimacy. We know this,
um that it's such a weird level of pressure and
guilt that the character, the female teenage character was was
portraying that it does. It kind of relays to all
of everyone else. Was like, Oh, wow, that's all I
should feel, that I should just feel guilty. My dad's

(03:15):
gonna be mad at me. Yeah, it's just the way
we talk about it. And if you think of something like, um,
the scarlettter easy a, uh, that it all that you
go from pure too slutty, like there's no the Madonna
of the Horror um, no in between um. And I
remember in college, I don't know what it was, some

(03:35):
kind of orientation and I was there with a friend
who I had known since I was four years old.
She and I went to the same college, and the
announcer asked, who here is abstinate? And I panicked and
stood up because I didn't want people to judge me
if they thought I'd had sex, And just that level

(03:59):
of it was almost instinctive because I knew some part
of me knew the judgment I would get and that's
what it was for, to single out people and to
make you feel shame. Yeah. Yeah, So this is something
Smath and I definitely want to return to in in
a future episode. But in the meantime, we do have

(04:22):
this classic episode about virginity for you, so we hope
you enjoyed. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from
how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Kristen, I have noticed in

(04:44):
the news that there's some young people doing something that
I had never heard of before that have to do
with the texting. No. Surprisingly, well, maybe it could be involved,
but no. I read about young people selling their virginity
online and I think this is crazy town. But when
I looked it up, when I looked back farther, there

(05:06):
were so many other instances of people doing this for
various reasons. The most recent pair were Katerina Miglioni and
Alex stepping Off. These were kids in their twenties selling
their virginity. There was a woman a couple of years
ago named Natalie Dillon, although that was a pseudonym, who
was doing it for school. Uh. Those other two did
it for to be in a movie like and get

(05:28):
money and all this stuff. So it's crazy to me,
like why why these young people would choose to do this?
And it's certainly, at least in Natalie Dillon's case, lit
up the blogosphere as to like, you know, people were
just going crazy over why she would do this, that
they didn't like that she was trying to tie it
into feminism. They didn't you know, approve of her reasoning

(05:49):
and all this stuff. So I thought we should take
a look at virginity auctions and why the heck anyone
would try to auction their virginity off in the first place. Yeah,
And by auctioning off of virginity, it is essentially someone
buying the chance to have sex with that person for
the very first time. And which you know, for anyone

(06:10):
out there who has had sex before a lot of times,
like the first time, that's like you wouldn't. I would
not pay the money these people have paid to have
that uh sex again, not to b t am I
about it, because it's I mean, it's your first time,
you just don't it's not you're not experienced. Um. And
also reading all this stuff about these virginity auctions and

(06:34):
the reaction to that, to it, it's incredible that, as
in the era of fifty Shades of Gray, that virginity
in a way is still a taboo. Um So, but
let's let's go. Let's let's start from the present and
work back a little bit. Let's talk about the film

(06:55):
in which Katerina and what was the fellow's name, Alex
Katerina and Ali x uh, we're part of this documentary.
The whole thing is kind of shady to me. Yeah. Well,
so there's this Australian director, Justin Sisly, who came up
with the idea for a documentary in which a man
and a woman would each offer their virginity to the
highest online bidder. So he puts ads out seeking people,

(07:18):
puts a website up, and he's adamant, like in all
of the like Business Week had of Q and A
with this guy, he's adamant that he's not just interested
in sex, young people having sex, young people being taken
advantage of anything like that. He says that his main
interest is in change, and in documenting this whole hubbub,

(07:38):
he wanted to portray the changes that these people are
going through the entire time. And you know, I'm I
have the willies from just thinking about it because you
But yeah, I mean, obviously, like justin cisely is smart
in knowing what will get media attention. And if you
make a documentary called Virgins Wanted, then hey, that's a

(08:00):
good job. You're gonna get some some easy pr on that.
But also the fact that there is this assumption that
heterosexual intercourse because that it's all in like very heteronormal
terms as well, they're looking for a dude for her
and a lady for him, and the but the but
the idea that having having intercourse once changes you. I

(08:24):
think it's also one of the reasons why virginity in
a way is still this cultural taboo, myth, huge thing
that we just can't let go of. But I feel
like I'm getting ahead of myself. Well, no, you're exactly right,
and we will get into that. But I think it's
important to point out how much cash these people raked in.

(08:47):
Oh yeah, So the bidding ran from September to October,
and the pair were scheduled to lose their virginity in
the air in an airplane to avoid prostitution laws of
any country. Uh And about mid November and I have
no idea. I tried to google updates. I couldn't find
any more recent updates, you know, as of December. But

(09:10):
Katerina's top bidder was a Japanese man going by the
name Natsu, who offered seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
Alex's top bitter this is a a Russian man. Alex's
top bitter was a Brazilian woman going by the name
Neni b who offered three grand Yeah, and that huge

(09:31):
pay difference that worth in quotes um for male virginity
versus female virginity is also something that we will circle
back to because that also gets at the heart of,
you know, the implicate, the major implications of the fact
that we still talk about virginity so much and get
so worked up about virginity which even you know you

(09:54):
could like really isn't even a thing. But again, I
keep getting ahead of myself because there's so much to
talk about um. And not surprisingly, Katerina has received more
scrutiny than Alex. There was a pro their profiles of
each of them, and the one for Alex painted him
as this kind of sad and depressed kid who wanted

(10:16):
to have sex so that he could get more, you know,
gain more self confidence and wants to find love, whereas
Katerina is just being slut shamed left and right. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
she said that she wanted to start an NGO and
invest in a public housing project in her hometown in Brazil.
But even the director himself just incisely said he was

(10:38):
skeptical of this, to which I say, like, you know what,
if you're going to auction your virginity off, who really cares? Like,
I don't know who cares what you do with the money, honestly.
But uh, Cleon dasca Lakis, who's an ex hockey player
who runs net raffle dot org, which is a site
that raises money for online charities, pointed out that some
charities might actually refuse the money because, as he says,

(11:00):
this type of transaction is setting a dangerous precedent. Not
to mention a call for global prostitution on a one
time basis, Okay, I think that that is a little
bit overblown. I think that's also it's missing the point
in a lot of ways, um, And I think that
we can get to that point a little bit more
when we talk about the two thousand nine case of

(11:22):
Natalie Dylan, which again is a pseudonym, who that year
announced on Howard Stern's Show, along with Dennis Hoff, who
was the owner of the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Nevada,
that she was going to auction off her virginity to
pay for her master's degree in family and marriage therapy
and as part of a quote unquote sociological experiment. Yeah.

(11:44):
She she posted a column in The Daily Beast where
she says that I wanted to study the public's response.
She said that she was doing her upcoming thesis project
on the value of virginity and said that as a
Women's studies undergrad, she learned that the concept of virginity
quote is just a tool to keep the status quo intact.

(12:05):
Deflowering is historically oppressive. Early European marriages begin with a dowry,
in which a father would sell his virginal daughter to
the man whose family could offer the most agricultural wealth dad's,
she says, we're basically their daughters pimps. Well, and one
thing though, that is that is troubling about that dowry analogy,
speaking of it as a relic of a bygone era,

(12:27):
is that hey guess what, that stuff still exists. We
aren't living in some kind of like post feminist society
where that does not still go on. And even like
India is um one place where a lot of times,
even now, money is typically exchanged between families when couples

(12:47):
are getting married, and a lot of times dowries have
and still do equate too many times the household's annual income.
Uh So I'm just saying, you know, Dylan, do little
bit of history work first, but continue. Yeah. Well, so
she's basically saying, like, all right, if if historically women

(13:08):
have been you know, quote unquote pimped out by their fathers,
what's to stop me from benefiting from the value that
society places on my virginity. So she's basically saying that
she wanted to turn her virginity quote into something that
allows me to gain power an opportunity from men. So
using something that you know, whether or not she herself

(13:29):
places any value on it, she knows that society does
that men do, and she wants to see how much
money she can get from the sale of this quote
unquote virtue. Well, in her argument about um, you know,
using this in a way that allows her to gain
power and opportunity with men. Does echo a lot of
feminist arguments in favor of sex work, saying, hey, you

(13:51):
know what, I can I can strip, I can have
sex for money. I'm just you know, using being, using
the turning the tool of patriarchy for my own benefit.
But the whole thing of using virginity as a commodity
is troubling because it still doesn't that's different from just

(14:11):
having sex for money, if that makes sense. It's it's
the whole thing of perpetuating the mythology of virginity that
is that is problematic to me. And I'm not the
only one who has found, you know, Dylan's Dylan's thesis
to be a little bit wonky. Yeah, the whole internet
basically was like what. There was a slew of blog

(14:35):
post articles and everything written about this woman. After her
Daily Beest column in early two thousand nine, Carrie Polos
over at The Huffington's Post said that, you know what,
Dylan is just proving what we already know, that virginity
is still considered something of value, and Polis points out
that the real problem to her is that we have

(14:56):
someone who's willing to spend in Dylan's case, almost four
million dollars to sleep with her just because no one
else has. So why isn't there equal media attention about
those men, about the whole cultural perception of well, she's clean,
she hasn't had any other man or any other man's baby.
You know, I can you know, verify that she's clean,

(15:17):
so to speak. Yeah, the the whole thing, the backlash too,
is not a thing of oh, well, she's selling the
opportunity for someone to have sex with her. No, if
she wants to go to the Moonlight Bunny Ranch and
have sex with someone for money, that's fine, that's not
that's not the issue here. Um. Megan Carpenter, who used
to work over at Jezebel, wrote at the time that

(15:39):
she was acknowledging the patriarchal system, but rather than working
to end it, she's accepting its terms and using it
to make money, which serves one person it serves her,
in which case, do not try to And this is
me now expounding on this. Don't uh, you know, use
feminism as kind of a strong and for for your

(16:01):
own little experiment that you're that you're pulling off here, right.
Kate Harding at Salon or at the time, had an interesting,
interesting take on it. She said that virginity isn't priceless,
but it should be valueless. She says that objecting to
the whole concept of putting a price on a young
woman's virginity implies that I do believe it's priceless. And

(16:24):
so she said that objecting to Natalie Dillon's auction puts
her up there with people who you know, support purity balls,
the dances where a daughter pledges her chastity basically to
her father. Um. And so she says, what I want
is a world in which there are no virginity auctions

(16:44):
because there are no bidders, because nobody fetishize as a
woman's purity or actually thinks of a sexually active woman
as dirty and spoiled. Right, And this is something that, uh,
the implications are so huge for women versus men, because
for men it's a stigma. If you more of a
stigma if you have not had uh sex with someone

(17:08):
you know, just go back to the Virgins Wanted documentary.
You know, Alex, the guy is portrayed as you know,
kind of oh, he's so set someone bid so that
he can finally have sex. You know, whereas for women
it comes with having sex, then comes with the additional
burden of being stigmatized. Um. And one of the reasons

(17:30):
why we wanted to title this episode, what is Virginity
worth is because it is a little bit of a
twist from that title that it should not like Kate
Harding said, I agree with that it shouldn't be not
like worthless sounds like a throw away. We should value
our bodies and have bodily integrity. But I do agree
that it should be valueless. You know, it shouldn't be

(17:53):
an issue of being so titillating right to a portion
of the population. But I mean that gets us into

(18:14):
the whole conversation of why are we obsessed with virginity? What?
What is the big deal about it? So Lauren Carpenter
wrote a book called Virginity Loss and Intimate Portrait of
First Sexual Experiences, and she talks about the etymology of virginity,
which entered the English language in the twelve hundreds and

(18:35):
by nine we were speaking of virginity in terms of
keeping it versus losing it. It is this thing that
we have and from about the twelve twelveth century onward,
women's physiology. This is important. Women's physiology was believed to
allow for a more complete virginity than men's because quote,
as Carpenter rights, the female body was hollow and therefore

(18:58):
capable of both continue the divine and being sealed to
exclude all other influences. So for centuries, a woman's virginity
has been imbued with so many uh different things as
opposed to male virginity. Uh. And she offers the example

(19:19):
of a popular thirteenth century poem, Hail Maidenhead, which describes
virginity as quote, the one gift granted you from Heaven.
Give it away once, and you will never recover another
in any way like it. So that was the thirteenth
century version of what the whole giveaway? The giveaway ice
cream samples here the whole whole cow milk or cows

(19:41):
the milk cows. Yeah? And why yeah, why do we
also equate like intercourse with cows like somehow well, that's
just weird. Yeah. And this leads into the Reformation, during
which time virginity was viewed basically as a stage girls
passed through on the way to marriage. In the eighteenth century, however,

(20:01):
there was the rise and out of wedlock burst, which
became a problem for the church. So virginity became even
more cherished and cult like during this time. And then,
you know, do we even need to go into the
Victorian era of sexual repression and what that did to
people's attitudes towards sex and cross gender relationships. So in
a way, the what Hannah Blank and we've interviewed before

(20:22):
for the podcast, she wrote a book, Virginity and Untouched History,
in which she talks about how it really is more
mythology than fact, and it is something that has been
used as a tool to, you know, make sure that
women aren't causing too much trouble in society, making those

(20:44):
out of wedlock babies and I don't know, enjoying themselves
or or something like that. And considering all of that history,
it really isn't incredibly surprising that only, you know, a
couple of centuries post Victorian era, we are still kind

(21:04):
of like, we don't, you know, virginity is still this thing,
the capital V. Right. Well, Jessica Valenti, who's the founder
of Feminist NG and the author of the Purity Myth,
how America's obsession with virginity. Virginity is hurting young women.
Had a conversation with Tracy Clark Florey, who's a writer
over at Salon all of that to say, they had
a conversation about virginity, and uh, Hannah Blank's book came up.

(21:29):
You know, you mentioned virgin The inn Touch History, in
which she talks about there's no actual standard medical definition
of virginity, that it's completely culturally constructed. And along those lines,
Tracy Clark Floory says that it's often a really limiting
version of sexuality that doesn't include certain types of intimacy

(21:50):
that are pretty important, right because, uh, you know, some
people listening might think, like, I mean, obviously, like you
are a virgin when you you're no longer a virgin
when you've had sex. But that is one kind that's
a completely heteronormative construct of one kind of penis and
vagina action, like disavowing like any other kind of sexual

(22:11):
contact that people can have. Right, So basically they're arguing, like,
does that mean that gay people are always virgins forever
and ever? Well, I mean, according to this very black
and white idea of virginity that we have here that
we're talking about, apparently just a large portion of the
population is very chaste. Well, and I think it's problematic
too that there is so much emphasis placed on penis

(22:34):
and vagina intercourse, where you know, we have young girls
wanting to quote unquote protect this virginity and are doing
other things that are very adult that still can have
you know, physical implications and are arguably as sexually intimate,
if not more so, you know, And same thing goes

(22:56):
for guys too. I'm not saying that guys are left
out of this equation either. It uh, it has been
more of an onus for for the women's right. And
I mean this, we haven't even gotten into how you
can't even prove necessarily that someone is a virgin. And
that's what was going along with all of these virginity
auctions was that the women had to go through medical

(23:17):
exams to quote unquote prove that they had not had sex.
But you can still break your hymen if you have
engaged in vigorous exercise, you know, inserting a tampon, Like
just because your hymen is not intact doesn't mean that
you're not a virgin. Like, there's all these other issues

(23:38):
in this right. Because we've we talked about this on
a long ago podcast specifically dealing with hyman's but it's not.
People imagine it as some kind of cellophane wrapper over
our vagina, when in fact it's more like a doughnut
of tissue that simply with time wears a way. So
if you are, you know, if you're an old, an

(24:00):
old galon you've never had sex like your hyman would
would not look as quote unquote intact as it would.
So when thinking about this whole concept of virginity, auction
and the the worth of virginity again, I I just
think that UM, even even flirting with the idea of

(24:25):
putting a price on it, only reinforces all of these
things that still exists not only in Western society but
around the world. If we're talking about money exchange, if
we're talking about um, sexual stigma, if we're talking about
these myths about like what the himan does and how
you can medically prove whether or not someone is a virgin,

(24:46):
which is completely impossible, as any like sexual practitioner will
tell you sexual practitioner. That makes it sound like like
we just see um, Well yeah, I mean it is.
Virginity is a social construct, a cultural construct, and women
like Natalie Dylan are saying, well, I'm just gonna stick

(25:08):
it back in your face, like I'm just going to
take advantage of your social perceptions and earned two million
or three million, four million dollars yea four million dollars
in the process. Well and she did not end up
doing it the winning bitter. I guess he turned out
to be married and his wife found out and was
not happy. But then last we heard she had found
someone else. To these stories kind of trickle off vaguely. Yeah, yeah,

(25:33):
but yeah, I I think it's an interesting conversation to
have on gender and sexuality. Well, and maybe they trickle
off to Caroline because uh, you know, there's so much
lead up to the grand finale, which is yeah, well
we we had sex and that was it. Yeah. So yeah,

(25:54):
well I know that in the most recent with the
Justin Slicely documentary, like no sex toys allowed, no additional
partners and condoms had to be used, Like it was
very much like you are just buying the experience of
having sexual intercourse with a virgin on a plane, an airplane,
so they get a mile high club. I was gonna

(26:17):
make a Snake's on my plane joke, but not have
mind Oh I like that one better. Well, UM, I
am going to be very curious to hear from listeners
on this um And we're not again like, this is
not saying that people should not be careful with their
bodies and respect their bodies and uh, you know, pay
attention to things like consent if you aren't ready to

(26:40):
have sex. We're not saying like everybody go have sex
right now. If you haven't had sex, you just need
to to do it um or just saying that it's
time to high time to really um examine. What are
we talking about when we're talking about virginity and why
do we get so worked up about it? Well, I've

(27:14):
got an email here from Kirsten and she's from South Africa. Oh,
inter National listener, and this is in response to an
episode we did a while ago. We're talked about Scent
Prince and her subject line is unattractive scent print and
she says, I just listened to your podcast on unique
Scent Prince and I have to say I dated a

(27:35):
guy several years ago who just didn't smell good to me.
In fact, he smelled very unpleasant. I could tell it
wasn't his deodorant or bad cologne, but his natural scent.
It sounds strange, but it was almost soapy, a baby
powder smell but not quite. Who wouldn't like a soap smell?
But nevertheless, it grossed me out. This upset me. I
tried to ignore it and tell myself it was all

(27:56):
in my head, but every time I would get close
to him, I smelled it. Anyway, the relationship ended pretty
quickly and mutual. Maybe he didn't like my smell either.
I've only met one other person in my life who
had a very unpleasant smell to me. And let's just say,
I think there's something to the unpleasant smell connecting with
unsuitability that you guys talked about. Although both dudes were great,

(28:16):
I don't think either are suited for me at all.
I just want to let you guys know about that
little story because I've always thought it was strange and
I've never heard anyone really talk about it before. So
perhaps in love Caroline the Nose knows. Okay, here's an
email from Charles that combines two amazing things, Pinterest and

(28:37):
crazy cat people. Yeah, so he's talking about how he
uses Pinterest and is trying to use it more, and
he does use Twitter as well, but he says I
find that Pinterest is useful for keeping things i'd like
to remember separate from my Twitter and Facebook feeds. I
don't use the social feature on Pinterest. Really, I'm not
particularly interested in what other people are pinning. For that reason,

(28:59):
I'm not concerned with the feminine slant on the public boards.
My Pinterest is for me. Other people can look at
it if they want, but it's a repository of digital
reminders and brainstorming material. If I want to kill hours
and hours, I go to Twitter and Facebook. Still, I
find that the information tends to be more targeted and
less of a time suck. Also, and this is where

(29:19):
the gears change. As an owner of not one or two,
but three cats in a small New York apartment, I
have to say that I can officially come out as
a crazy cat guy. There aren't many of us, but
we're out there. I have at least one friend that
I'm not positive but fairly certain would self identify as
such as well. I probably wouldn't have been such a

(29:40):
crazy cat guy if it weren't for my wife. But
I'm hooked now. Cats really are the perfect city pet
and far more loyal and attentive that people give them
credit for any who. He says, hope this shed some
light on the elusive New York male cat lover slash
Pinterest user. So thank you, Charles, you've enlightened us. That
was delightful. Charles, I kind of want to hang out

(30:01):
and meet your cats sometime. Uh so let us know
about your cats as well. Mom Stuff at discovery dot
com is where you can send us letters. You can
also head over and start a conversation on Facebook and
like us while you're at it, and follow us on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts. And you can also check
out our tumbler blog and tumble with us at stuff
mom Never Told You dot tumbler dot com. And if

(30:24):
you'd like to get a little smarter this week, why
don't you head over to our website It's how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com

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