Meet a happy 29-year-old virgin

Arleen Spenceley

If you've read my previous columns, it's pretty clear that I'm not a virgin. But that doesn't mean I can't learn from someone who is. Arleen Spenceley is a 29-year-old self-described happy virgin and author of Chastity is for Lovers (Ave Maria Press).

We are similar in that we both write about sex, including personal details; but Spenceley advocates chastity and on that point and some others, we are far apart.

For Spenceley, chastity is not, as I'd thought, simply about saving sex until marriage. For her, it's about a way of life centered around God, and not physical urges. As she explains it, "For single people, chastity implies abstinence. For married people, it implies not using or abusing each other. It also requires intentionality about sex. A chaste married couple has to have sex for reasons more substantial than 'because one of us had an urge,' and they must both acknowledge and respect the magnitude of what they're doing."

I'd venture to say that even those of us who aren't practicing "chaste" sex can also find ways to better value our sex lives, rather than simply going through the motions.

Even so, there are plenty of areas where I differ strongly from Spenceley. She says chastity is "for everyone" but "sex is not for people whose orientation is homosexual." She's opposed to contraception and plans not to use it if she gets married. And she considers masturbation outside the bounds of chastity. She says, "Masturbation is deliberate stimulation for the purpose of sexual pleasure. But sexual pleasure it supposed to be part of what [binds] one spouse to the other, tied to the unitive and potentially procreative act of sex."

But what impressed me is our common ground, namely her standing up for sexual-assault survivors and her brave opposition to church sermons that shame those who've had sex. Spenceley praises The Purity Myth by feminist Jessica Valenti, which exposed the creepiness of purity balls, where daughters pledge their virginity to their fathers. Spenceley writes that the purity culture "teaches that sexual activity outside of marriage so irreversibly hurts us, that there truly isn't any turning back." She gets it that this all-or-nothing viewpoint makes those on the receiving end feel worthless.

Instead, Spenceley emphasizes what she considers the positives of her way of life as better talking points. "It's easy to tell a kid not to have sex, or to build a wall between kids and sex by calling it bad, or by calling the people bad who have sex outside of marriage," she says. "But saying that stuff does a lot of damage. On the contrary, it's difficult and probably awkward to tell the truth, but it's courageous — to define sex, to tell kids sex is good, to tell kids it's sacred. Parents or churches who share shame-based messages in order to stop people from having sex have missed the point."

Similarly, on the pop culture front, Spenceley found the premiere of Jane the Virgin hilarious, but didn't like "that Jane remained a virgin because her grandmother used an analogy that implied she would be irreversibly damaged if she didn't."

Spenceley has ended a relationship when it became clear the man wasn't on the same chaste path as she. It's something that's unlikely to happen again once she came out as a virgin in the Tampa Bay Times, where she's a staff writer. She hopes to get married, but has left that outcome in the hands of God. If she never marries, she will not have sex, yet she isn't distraught about that possibility.

Reading her book, I caught myself hoping, for her sake, that she does wind up getting married, then I stopped to wonder why. While my sexual values differ from hers, I don't want to join the chorus telling virgins there's something wrong with them; there's not. If she's a happy virgin, I'm happy for her. Virgins of any age, religious or not, should never feel pressured to have sex just to feel cool or fit in.

Even though she and I disagree on many points, I'm impressed that Spenceley is speaking out without judging those who don't live as she does. An us vs. them mentality about sex, one that puts those who are doing it above those who aren't or vice versa, doesn't help anyone.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is the editor of over 50 erotica anthologies. She tweets @raquelita.