Sex is primary of course. How else did we get here? But Virginity? I forget how old I was when I first heard that concept. And surprised! -- for I thought it was a joke. Who could possibly care? Who could make such an unusual, more or less unproveable, rule?

I don't mean I wanted to have intercourse with boys. (What a weird word, it struck me, that was in the circumstances.) The idea of coitus, (another word I found in my reading -- of novels not dictionaries) was slightly revolting, a revulsion instilled in me, no doubt, by my mothers' attitude to it which was similar to her attitude toward sleeping without pajamas, i.e. that the sheets would turn yellow and smell bad. She would crinkle her nose.

I, for my part, like -- always liked -- to sleep in the nude -- because, I am restless, maybe, and hate to get all tangled in pajamas or nightgown, unnecessary shrouds wrapped round me at irritating angles. And since Mother washed the sheets at least once a week anyhow, how could they yellow and smell bad in that amount of time?

But Virginity. I remember reading about it in some Greek myth and wondering what it was, so valued, so dwelt upon. I really couldn't catch the concept. It was like the way people named rock bands in the '60's, like "Yellow Submarine," or "Blood Sweat and Tears," a band wasn't a thing or a condition, so such names always made me a little queasy, such use of the language always made me feel a little like I was standing on the edge of a precipice. Same thing in Law: Habeas Corpus, Moot Court, ________, __________. It makes one (me) queasy because it is not How one Uses the Language in Real Circumstances.

I never had a hymen to break, as far as I knew. By the time I had heard of such a thing, and that it was supposed to mean something (who could look at see it anyway?) I had been dancing, both modern and ballet -- quite strenuous exercise, and certainly, having began to menstruate quite early, used tampons -- so by the time anyone might have thought of searching for or proving the existence of my hymen, I could only surmise that I had long since broken, destroyed, by-passed, disregarded, or masturbated it away.

That was another concept I never heard about until quite late in life, my teens at least, and even then I couldn't relate it to "wrong doing" or what I actually did do, sometimes with a pencil, sometimes with my finger, holding it there, my hand under my rump in the car, during family outings. Particular when I wore "sanitary napkins", I found it fun to surreptitiously pick the dried blood off my public hairs. Ah, the secret joys of girlhood! But though I knew I wasn't necessarily going to do this in public where others could see, it seemed to me no more serious than someone picking their nose -- or like indulging in some other custom of fastidiousness, just as one was trained to look upon bodily tics, habits, necessities, idiosyncrasies with disdain.

But to think that you would have to prove yourself to be a virgin. That anyone would care, would look, would... ? How on earth could a member of the human race have invented such a concept?

And then of course growing up to witness the horrors of clitorectomies, circumcision, penile mutilation, adultery, stonings for immorality was another eye-opener. What a world of horrors, mankind (mostly mankind) has devised for his fellows and fellowesses.

Like the parts of the human body you were supposed to cover: Breasts, well, they do have a certain fascination, so I suppose one should cover them. Later one uncovered them, of course, because they became what they always were -- milk bottles. And who can get turned on by a milk bottle? Well...

But that little clump of hair down below, no different than the little clump of hair under each arm -- which one, later, in America at least, felt obliged to shave -- and then outgrew that ritual as well. I mean, other than, beyond the curly hair, you can't see a thing, and if you put a pair of panties on you also can't see a thing, but in both cases you can't see a thing, so why the necessity to cover it up?

Whereas with the boys we recognize, even when later in life we might learn to suck and tease the breasts of men, that their breasts are non-sexual objects, and can therefore be exposed all summer long (except at my sister's house, she always insists that even at the summer cabin men wear shirts. Is she just evening out the playing field? or does she actually get turned on and fears her feelings?). But then of course there's that sometimes nubbin, sometimes long and hard thing between their two balls and their two legs. Now, There Is Something to Hide. And they do. Even when we get the curly hairy female triangle at last exposed in the movies, in playboy type-zines, our society is at pains not to look at the masculine THAT. But does anyone really get turned on by looking at That! Well, possibly the gays. And that's all right. But unless other women are terribly different from me -- and though they may, as I did, profoundly enjoy some of the pleasures of sex -- seeing one of those funny hanging things, certainly never inspired me to lust after a man's body.

But then my relationship to sex may be different than others, woman or man, for I could never see much point in it -- certainly not the centering of whole cultures around it, wars, wars, whores, whores. When I was about 12, and reading Forever Amber, I was amazed and delighted to find the word "whore" and thought it was pronounced exactly like "war" -- how clever of Them I thought to have the "same" word for what apparently was mans" two favorite activities.

I mean, its all very well if you want to make children; then one should get on with it. But for passion, pleasure and addiction, for me, it has always been such a transitory thing, that I simply couldn't imagine others slaying, enslaving, butchering, torturing, etc. etc. for the sake of it.

Of course, it doesn't take my capacity to imagine to make it a real force in the world. I am only describing my own emotions. And that is mystification that almost as many horrors in the world are committed in the name of sex as are committed in the name of religion. Odd. Very very odd.

All this manipulation, hemming around of perfectly normal developmental functions -- it made me, very early on, begin to distrust the rationality of the human species. They must be joking! has always been one of my main reactions to mankind's "rules of civilization." Has it made me feel an outsider? You bet. I mean, its like the Emperor's New Clothes -- you're sure everyone else sees as you see, yet no one speaks up, no one comments on It!

The very idea that I, as a woman, might anywhere in the world be brought up to believe that it was my lot in life to serve someone else! So amazing! I never had a thought in my head but the development of my own talents, understanding of my own impulses, searching out my own meanings in life. I could understand that: "Sure, I'd like my breakfast cooked for me (though I seldom ate breakfast)." So a man no doubt would like that, too. But to enslave another being to Have To Do That! Amazing! We fought a civil war over freeing the Black Man, but we have never come close to having a civil war to free women from the slave-owning impulses of men. Odd that we don't see it that way, that we don't automatically perceive the slavery of the Majority of Peoples on this earth and not only rattle the cages of the Capitalist, but the cages of all Arrogant Men.

It's just as odd that we see (some of the Western world sees) circumcision as a Covenant with God while at the same time being able (dimly) to discern that clitorectomies for women (as practiced in the Middle Eastern world) are about as barbaric a practice as one can conceive.

I guess it must all come from Excessive Time on Our Hands -- the human race has too much time on its hands and must think of things to fill the hours and entertain themselves, hence wars and whores, rituals and rules, indecencies and indelicacies, taboos and must-do's.

I remember W, my first "sex-partner" (when I was 16) trying to possess-me-for-eternity me by saying that I would never find satisfaction with another man -- for "one always longs for the first man one has made love with!" And he was about as ept at sex as a no-hands-man at weaving. He'd apparently heard a lot, but he knew "in the body" almost nothing.

I also remember all those other inept boys trying to get into my pants, for no good reason. Our society, in the circles I was unfortunate enough to travel in when I was young, put a premium on gossip between boys -- "did you get any", braggadocio, which may or may not be based on fact, and girls are the objects on which they practice to become "star" story-tellers among their peers. What a sickening view of the mechanism to make children, to have lovely pleasure. No wonder my mother's nose crinkled up and she thought it smelled bad. Although, I suspect that she, herself, never slept with anyone but the gentle Phillip, and he had only one testicle, and no savvy, I suspect, about the pleasures of sex et al.

Well, they made three of us: one brother, one sister and I'm probably the most savvy of the lot. Still I can't really see how, in so many people's imagination, it runs the world. But there it is. Who am I to argue with 2/4 billion, or at least that small segment that is the American Media, the America Propaganda machine that hardly can conceive of making other than boy-meets-girl movies or novels, who thinks news consists of the DOW and the NASDAQ, murders, plane crashes and wars, preferably with scandal attached, and sex-scandal is, of course, the best seller of all time.

I've also never had the impulse to reproduce. Oh maybe for 10 minutes here or there. Disguised I would say in two incidents, one with Mark one with Matthew, both of whom I was never married to, nor even particularly welcomed into their lives. So that both times when I thought I might be pregnant, instead of immediately running out to have an abortion, I thought for 10 minutes about having the child. And then, as it turned out, in neither case was I pregnant. I was greatly relieve! For I had had an abortion earlier on in life -- John having implanted a embryo, and painted blue babies for a few years, and didn't particularly want that experience again.

A child other than those two ten-minute romantic fantasies of going off , living in an ashram, raising my progeny by myself, never had any meaning for me.

I was so utterly neurotic and unhappy as a young woman that I couldn't conceive of passing that on to a baby -- my "family values", my "heritage", my unhappiness, my psychosis. The only thing that did intrigue me once upon a time, when I first heard of cloning, was to clone myself and try raising me again -- differently.

I always thought it absurd that when the possibilities of cloning were first bandied about that Men kept talking of cloning famous Men, sports- strong-arms, or intellectual giants, never considering that since, at that time, they were still going to have to use women bodies, that women, very likely, would be more keen on cloning themselves, or at the least, Great Women.

Anyway, that fad passed.

But now that cloning is really with us, we are, for the nonce, happy with sheep and fruit flies, and kept almost entirely unaware of the medical/pharmaceutical establishments rush to patent human genes just on the eve of being able to create human beings in a test-tube or a Petrie dish and raise them in an artificial womb.

Women were once about to have the option of getting rid of men, now men are making sure they have the option to get rid of women, especially if women win the long, on-going war of a right to their own bodies.

And again, absurdity! While almost the whole earth mourns the crowds and, in at least a dim sense, realizes that we have just about saturated the planet, perceiving that mother earth may be growing tired of us -- in our present hubris -- others work day and night to make the infertile fertile. Another concept so amazing, it is hard to believe. Too many babies by several millions (especially when we realize the rich can keep refusing the poor a living wage just because there are so many of them!!!!!!), and trying to make more? Mathematics may not be the holy writ it is made out to be by our priests of science. Since it seems a vast majority of the infertile cannot add nor subtract, and do not recognize that they should be praised as saviors of the human race, as ought all the gays and lesbians, most of whom also forgo reproducing, or, in many cases, take children to raise who are already here -- as often as they are permitted to do so.

But reproduction in itself? I have always had the strongest of convictions that my one life is me, that I am just me one time. No matter what "mystical" or "religious" thought I might have adopted from time to time, even if there is such a thing as reincarnation, I won't be back as me. No. One chance per person. So someone else, even with half my genes, would never be me. So I have remained totally indifferent to the "heritage" argument of reproduction. The children-are-adorable argument has also left me cold. I did manage to be a nanny for two infants and, I must say, enjoyed it for almost the exact amount of time, daily (before the parents came home) and totally, (before either of the infants really got into walking and talking), before, immensely happy, I walked away -- after about one year.

I feel immeasurably grateful to be childless as I look around at the crucifying problems that so many of my contemporaries suffer with their off-spring. I get right down on my knees to bless my smarts-of-yore for not having reproduced. I thank God I never possessed the urge to want to be a mother, to never have had to face the desire to reproduce myself.

Now that I am back to being a virgin again, (I masturbate maybe three times a year -- mostly when I am restless and can't sleep, it is better than a couple of aspirin) and have been for eighteen years, I have never been happier. Possessing my own body, no one pressing in on me physically, emotionally, intellectually.

But I still think Virginity is one of the oddest inventions of Mankind. One of the primary reasons for war and whore, for if it's not my child, I've every right to kill it, hate it, underpay it, starve it, savage it. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we couldn't identify our own, then we'd have to love them all.

But even when I was 12 years old??? I knew better than to ask my father "What is a virgin, Papa." He may not have even known himself, he was not terribly well educated, and finding out what a virgin is, takes a bit of Classical Education. And making it an important part of one's moral values apparently takes more education than I ever had.

As I approach 70, I more and more believe almost nothing of what I have been told. Almost nothing. Civilizations is a sweeping up of all the detritus invented by one man to enslave another.

Think about, so called "civilization," where they still punish women for being raped, rather than the fiendish men who rape them, punish so called "prostitutes" rather than the john's who seek out and fuck them.

Also, think of this: Since virginity has never been a primary concept for men about themselves, consider all their unidentified children sprinkled about the earth, indeed, think just of those gigantic sperm banks we now have, ready to make bastards on the bodies of almost any woman who feels she Must reproduce. Odd concept. Along with that other odd concept we are always mouthing: i.e. saving it -- the world -- for our children and grandchildren, perhaps if we concentrated a bit more on making it livable for ourselves and our fellow "living-right-now-humans," we might be better off, get more done. Do your really think it does a starving, or enslaved man much good to think that his children may not have to starve or be enslaved?

Imagine the concept! (Endorsed by the Capitalist) Just image it! that someone could work all day and earn a "fair" wage and not be able to live on it! What monsters hypocrites on this earth could have invented such a concept? The two hundred who own the wealth of this earth never use most of it, but somehow manage to sleep at night, while denying the people who made their wealth a "living wage."

Who needs to bring children into such a world? Reproduce for what? To perpetuate this horror that man has made of the earth? Better that we should die out -- and soon. Let the animals, who are for the most part, kinder to their own, re-inherit the earth.

Virginity. No wonder Elizabeth preferred to become the Virgin Queen, rather than make an heir for the Empire of England. An early isolate! As I recall, she did quite a bit of good. And no doubt she had enough of sexual pleasures as well, while caring for ALL her children.

The earth will get along just fine without my heritage and family values. But it might, it just might profit a little from some of my truth-telling. I will never know.

By JAN HAAG

ESSAYS + MUSIC + POETRY + TEXTILE ART + TRAVEL + FICTION

INTRODUCTION + HAAG'S BIO

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21st CENTURY ART, C.E. - B.C., A Context