Got inspired a bit this morning with a twitter chat regarding telegony. Basically, telegony is the idea that the essence of people a woman has sex with will show up in her children, even if the conception of the child isn’t by a previous sexual partner.
It’s a kind of weird idea that has been around for a long time now (Aristotle apparently talked about it). Lately, there a scientific study which basically “proves” this fact when the study was performed on flies.
While human beings share much of our genetic code with much of the rest of nature (we are 50% banana), flies are not the best comparison to make. If they proved it was happening between a couple of chimpanzees, then maybe I’d consider the study valid.
But I’m no biologist. I’m not really a scientist myself, more an engineer by trade, which is much different in practice and discipline. So don’t look to me (all 20 of you) as some kind of supreme authority on such things.
But this study has been used as an excuse for saying that women should be chaste until marriage. And while by and large I do agree that women should be virgins until marriage (or just slightly before), we don’t need to drag any kind of science into it.
There are always exceptions, but the norm is that most women have trouble properly bonding with their husbands if they have had prior sexual relations with other men. While the incidents may not be as extreme as the incident portrayed in Hellraiser, it still leaves some baggage that a lot of men would rather not deal with.
More so than that, Western women tend to waste their prime years of attractiveness on men who later in life are not their husbands. Should not a husband be the one to enjoy his wife in her sexual prime and not the wanna-be musician with the grungy beard and the drug addiction?
Yeah, that last bit was a bit bitter (didn’t happen to me), but it is sadly more likely to happen these days rather than be an exception.
Women, your virginity should be your gift to your husband. No, a husband doesn’t have to be a virgin when he gets married, but that’s immaterial. Different standards, not double standards in this case. Plus, in my view, both husband and wife should be virgins on their wedding night, even though it makes the husband less attractive and the wife more.
In any case, chastity is a virtue regardless of the current cultural values because I base my moral code on something greater than the whims of the dumb masses. Something changes in women when they lose their virginity (much less so with men) and I don’t just mean a broken hymen. And encouraging men to do that with men who would be unwilling to take responsibility for it is wrong from where I stand.
But there’s not need to drag faulty science into the mix. Morality doesn’t come from science.
It never did.