More than a minor worry_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

More than a minor worry

The Chinese fixation on virginity goes back thousands of years and will not fade any time soon. As the rationale goes, if the wife is not a virgin, this implies the child born may be by another man. That doubly violates the husband's sense of entitlement, first that the wife is his personal property, and second, the child is a "mole", so to speak, implanted by some other man to inherit what he owns. Many operatic melodramas are built on this male suspicion and a happy ending ensues only when the bride proves her continence.

Another reason is the superstition that copulating with virgins can help with men's longevity, as implied in many ancient sex manuals. Paradoxically, in times of war and conflict, the median age of the population was so low that men's desire for procreation overrode their insistence on the immaculacy of the women they chose as spouses. During sustained periods of peace and prosperity, however, this mentality of bedding virgins was played out in elaborate rituals and artistic sophistication. There were so many euphemisms for the act that it would take a linguist to decipher them all.

This argument also explains why women are subject to such scrutiny while men are almost encouraged to engage in increasingly more eye-popping May-December affairs. Granted, age discrepancy does not automatically translate into virgin mania. But we must remember that in the old days a girl of 13 or 15 was considered ready for marriage.