After writing about sexual statistics, oral sex, anal sex, virtual sex and various other forms of sexual intimacy, it occurred to me that I’ve neglected a very important aspect of modern sexual culture — abstinence. Other than the only way of remaining 100 percent STD- and pregnancy-free, why do so many abstain from sexual activity? In asking this question, I learned about what many Northwestern students consider abstinence, virginity and sex.

When I started to ask what people thought of abstinence, I quickly realized that I first needed to ask people what they considered abstinence and what they considered sex. Different from the definition offered by the Web site www.4parents.gov, many students considered sex to refer exclusively to the act of penetration. Even more specifically, in many cases students only considered sex to be penetration in a heterosexual sense, that is, phallic penetration of the vagina. I had to keep my frustration with this definition at bay if I wanted to get into what people actually thought of abstinence.

For some, abstinence is exercised for religious reasons. These students explained that sex is a way to consecrate a marriage and should therefore only be had between two spouses. I found this response troubling, given the political landscape of many nations whose citizens may at once identify as both gay and religiously active but who cannot be wed due to restrictions on legal matrimony. I became discouraged at the thought of abstinence as a measure of heteronormative moral righteousness amongst my peers. Surprisingly, this was not the reason offered by most of the students with whom I spoke.

This is cache, read story here