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Well, feel free to get back into the discussion? xd

Just keep it nice and at least somewhat clean, and I guess things will be good? blaugh

The problem with this whole virginity argument (the argument in general, not this thread) is that it takes things out of historical context.

Virginity for women has been huge in most cultures, including the stereotypically sex-crazed Romans. And, from what I've read, they did pretty good at keeping their women virgins until marriage. Thing is, they got married at the beginning of the time when they started hitting their sexual prime. Girls got married at fourteen, fifteen, maybe thirteen, it was common. It made it easy to avoid having sex before marriage.

Now? Now people often wait until they're twenty, or older. Yeah, some do get married young, and I'm sure that helps avoid the years and years and years of denying the body, but realistically it's insanely difficult to thwart your bodies natural functions for that long.

In my mind, virginity till marriage is overrated. Virginity until you're in a relationship with the one you love, and who loves you, is not.

Here's the thing. It's one thing to say don't deny your body and don't sublimate your sexuality, and it's another to say it's fine to be sexual with someone else. Why can't you simply honor your body's needs by yourself, until you're married? Learn about your body's wishes and needs, so that when you do get married, you can help your partner learn what works best for you, without them having to think, "How does s/he know this? With whom did s/he learn this?" There's nothing d'oraisa (from Torah) to prevent this or forbid it for women at all. The only moment in Torah which can be construed as forbidding it for men is the mention of Onan's story -- but his crime wasn't in self-pleasuring. His crime was in sleeping with his brother's widow (which SHE thought was for the purpose of raising up a son for her dead husband's heir) and then withdrawing before granting her a son and his brother an heir. In other words, he slept with her for his own pleasure, and not for the honor of his dead brother.

Now, on the other hand, I actually wish I'd had relations with my high school boyfriend before getting married. But that was because I married too young, too immature, and to someone who turned out to be vastly different from the man I thought he was. I hadn't any experience to rely on to tell me, "It doesn't have to be like this; it's supposed to be good." But that experience is what comes when you marry too young, to the first person you're attracted to. You have no frame of reference to say "This was infatuation, this was attraction, this was love." It's very hard to differentiate between the three, the younger you are. You can really and truly believe that what you have is everlasting, and still be wrong. This is why I strongly discourage having sex before you're committed enough to have a marriage and not just a relationship. If the person is truly right for you, then physical expressions of love can wait. It's only if there's a deep-down lack of certainty that it'll seem like you have to have sex NOW.

I'm not saying what you're hearing. Let me try again:

The reason my first experience was so abysmal is because, though I thought I was ready and I thought that my husband was the right man, I wasn't, and he wasn't. I wished I'd slept with my high school boyfriend -- but not in high school, when I REALLY wasn't ready. I just wish I'd waited until much later to get into marriage and/or sexual intimacy.

No, self-pleasure isn't the same. But it's what a person should start with, until they're capable of dealing with ALL the possible consequences of sex. What consequences?

Well, pregnancy. Sexually transmitted diseases. Injury, which is kind of common for female virgins (and males on the receiving end of penetrative sex). The possibility that you won't enjoy it, or the other person won't enjoy it.

One's family/parents finding out about it. One's peers finding out about it -- both friends, and those one doesn't know so well, or maybe like so well.

The possibility that the two of you may break up later -- do you want him/her comparing you with his/her new girlfriend/boyfriend? Do you want to be comparing your future mate with him, and knowing that your mate knows it? If you break up in a non-friendly way, what are the odds he'll keep your intimate details to himself, as opposed to bragging in the locker room or saying things about your prowess (where'd she learn to do all those things, the slut??) or lack thereof (she was awful in bed, I'd rather be doing it to myself)?

If you're married, the whole world knows you're probably having sex, yet no one ever judges you for it. You may get pregnant, but you're more likely to have (a) taken preventative measures if you don't want that, and (b) be able to handle the question of whether to keep the baby, have it adopted, or abort. It's hard to get a sexually transmitted disease if both partners are virgins and faithful to one another. Marriage is no guarantee, but a lack thereof is almost a guarantee that one or both of you WILL have other partners. And for some reason, few people ask, "Hey, how's your wife in bed?" They know that with a marriage ceremony comes a certain privacy that must be respected, so your intimate details will more likely remain intimate, rather than the whole world knowing everything about your technique, style, and/or enthusiasm.

Again: marriage is no guarantee. But being unmarried does increase the chances of negative consequences.

Definitely, judging someone else is risky at best. However, it is permitted in Judaism. In fact, the Torah tells us to judge one another with kindness -- but not to avoid judgement entirely. If you see someone about to do themselves or someone else a disservice by not realizing that what they're going to do may be wrong, you're suposed to say so. Why? Because to keep silent would be to condone wrongdoing, firstly; but more importantly, because speaking up might help that person avoid something that could hurt them or cause damage to someone else. Sometimes all a person needs is to be caught in time and asked, "Are you sure that's the right thing to be doing?" Then that makes them stop, think, re-evaluate, and possibly choose a more appropriate thing to do.

Now, if someone's already done something you feel was wrong, then the judgement should stop, or at least it should be directed differently. "Well, , I think that might have been a mistake. I love you and think very highly of you, and I hope that in the future you'll stop and think before getting into that sort of situation. But even if you don't, you know you're still my friend, and I still love you, and I still think highly of you. Everyone makes mistakes. And this would've been a mistake if I'd done it, myself, and I think it was a mistake for you. But maybe it wasn't. Either way, it was your decision, not mine. I just want you to know that, wether or not it really was a mistake or a sin, it doesn't change the fact that you're my friend and I'll always care about you and your life." Judge... with kindness.

It's the concept which is so important in Judaism, teshuvah. Turning; return. If someone else thinks we've made a mistake, maybe we have and maybe we haven't. But if we ourselves feel we've made a mistake, we have the opportunity to recognize it, and to sincerely repent of it, and then between ourselves and Hashem it's as if it never happened -- the record is expunged, wiped clean, except that we get to keep the lessons we learned from our mistakes. Only Hashem has the right to judge us finally, but our friends have the duty to judge us kindly.

Exactly. The mikvah removes all forms of tamei (impurity, ritual unpreparedness), but it doesn't mean that "it never happened." It did happen. It had an effect on you. What the mikvah does is help you remove whatever negative feelings you had about the occurrence, or yourself, and simply focus on learning what you can from the experience, in a detached, clinical way. It helps give you some distance from anything that feels like it was a mistake.

Of course, it also removes ritual unpreparedness/impurity/tamei -- anything that would stand between you and the ability to approach your spouse sexually, or approach the altar of Hashem (in Temple times). Anything from having sex or menstruating, or coming into contact with a corpse, or having leprosy -- all things that have to do with death or dying, not with any kind of sin.

(Yes, sex and menstruation have to do with death. Let me explain. Menstruation means that an egg that was released into the uterus a couple of weeks ago is now being disposed of. It bore the potential of life, but did not become alive, so one becomes slightly tainted with death. For a man to ejaculate, EVEN IF a child is conceived, only one sperm is involved in that conception. The other sperm, which held the potential for life, are wasted, and so the man has come into contact with something a little like death, and must be purified. Notice that sexuality and menstruation are themselves not considered sinful, wrong, or bad! This is ONLY because the potential lives did not become actualized. The exact same state of tamei, for which 'impurity' is a poor translation but the closest available to us, is attained by touching a corpse, attending a funeral, being in a graveyard -- which is why we ritually wash our hands after doing any of these things.)