VBB 285 Virgin Spirit

Hanne Blank & Kim Hudson

Intro [00:00:01]:

Virgin Beauty Bitch Podcast: inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear of being defiantly different. Your hosts, Christopher and Heather.

Let's talk, shall we?

Christopher [00:00:20]:

This is part four of our four-week journey into the virgin. We've explored the history of the virgin body, the hymen maneuver, as I call it, the virgin mind, and how false virtue impacts the virgin heart, which wants to love but is often tarred by shame and guilt over anything sexual in nature. In this final chapter, we open up to explore the virgin spirit, and we welcome two iconic names to help us on this journey. We often use this term casually. He or she wrote the book on such and such, but in this case, we mean it quite literally. Our guest wrote the book Virgin the Untouched History, which is a provocative exploration of the complex concept of virginity throughout human history. We welcome historian, writer, and editor Hannah Blank Boyd to Virgin Beauty. Bitch, welcome.

Hanne Blank [00:01:16]:

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Christopher [00:01:19]:

Thank you so much for being here. We are also blessed to have a woman who grew up in the Yukon, a father's daughter with a Cinderella complex, as she states her formative years in geology and a First Nations Lands Claim Negotiator before studying at the Vancouver Film School in British Columbia and the International School of Analytical Psychology in Zurich, which led to her writing a very enlightening book, the Virgin's Promise. Welcome, Kim Hudson, to Virgin Beauty Bitch.

Kim Hudson [00:01:52]:

Thank you. Delighted to be here.

Christopher [00:01:55]:

Fantastic. Now, I thought we might start this conversation, Hannah, where your book ends. Basically, virginity is still a meaningful term, and the sexual status it indicates is still important. But what really caught my attention was your mention of virginity as a development phase, redefining virginity from a one-time sexual debut to a lifetime shift from one sexual status to another. What have you learned since writing that piece in your book?

Hanne Blank [00:02:33]:

I think the most salient thing I've learned since writing that book is that there are a lot of people who disagree with me. I have had a lot of fascinating arguments and disagreements about virginity and its meanings with people because they've read the book. They were attracted to the, oh, here's this book about this topic that I'm interested in. Let me read it. And then, you know, many people have reached out to me over, you know, since the book came out back in 2007, and to say, hey, I read your book, loved it, hated it, whatever. But often, I really disagree with this thing you said, which is always fascinating to me because it's one of the deep issues that I deal with in the book is that this is. This is not a firm history. You know, this isn't the history of the nation of Canada.

Hanne Blank [00:03:36]:

It's not well documented. We have a lot of disparate documents from a lot of different places. A lot of it isn't documented at all. A lot of what we know about virginity only exists in the experience of individual people who are talking from a very subjective point of view. And so, inevitably, there are going to be just an enormous number of opinions, takes, beliefs, and especially experiences. And when it comes to virginity, I think experiences are some of the most important information that we have because this is a human quality.

Hanne Blank [00:04:20]:

It's a human experience. And so, of course, what humans experience, believe, and come to think through their experience is going to be critical to what we can understand and what we can know about this.

Christopher [00:04:35]:

It's interesting because I believe that you came into this project with a mindset that was dispelled, opened, exploded, and became something greater than what you even expected. So it's interesting now that this avalanche of response probably touches on a lot of how you started with this project.

Hanne Blank [00:05:02]:

Yeah, that's definitely true. I am trained as a historian of medicine and as a bioethicist, and so my tendency is to go to the historical record, look at what's there, and see what it tells me. And I know that as a historian, anytime I go to the historical record, there's a really good chance that I'm going to find things I haven't run into before. Information and ideas that are going to explode my preconceived notions. I'm grateful to have had that training, because had I not had that training, working on this book would have been really difficult.

Heather [00:05:43]:

Can you outline for us, Hannah, so our listeners can get a better understanding of some of your core findings in that book? If you're comfortable sharing people's reservations or things like that, I would just love to hear a little bit of a dive into the findings.

Hanne Blank [00:06:05]:

So, the book got its start because I was doing a lot of work in sex education for young adults. Not really surprisingly, one of the questions that I got a lot from people between the ages of about 13 and 20 was, I did such and so with my partner, am I still a virgin? They were looking to me for some kind of definition on which they could base their self-understanding. So, being a medical historian, I trotted off to the nearest medical library, which happened to be Harvard's Count Way Medical Library at the time, and thought, well, you know, I'll go, and I'll look it up, and I'll find out what the official definition is. That way, I can go back to these young people that I'm working with and say, okay, so here's the official definition. Do with it as you will. As it turns out, you can walk into any major medical library, and I've tried this in a number of them and found zero definitions of virginity, which came, was the initial shock to me was discovering that this supposedly diagnosable, identifiable, supposedly physical state, or at least the state that has this long history of being believed to have a physical sort of clinical existence, is not something that medical professionals were willing to actually come out and try to define.

Hanne Blank [00:07:49]:

How weird is that? And when you see that kind of reticence to define something that some doctors claim they can diagnose, you've got an information problem. You've got an information authority problem. Who is getting their information from where? What are they basing it on? How can we back that up? Or is it backed up? Or are we just talking about a bunch of mostly guys in white coats saying, well, I have a white coat in these letters after my name, and that gives me the authority to say what's what. So this already, we're already in the soup, right? You know, right off the bat, just trying to find a definition. And so this book really began as a search for a definition, any definition that seemed like it hadn't just sort of been gathered at somewhat of an arbitrary basis. And that was the first part, where my mind was comprehensively blown because I was looking for this in the two-thousands. I knew that there had been a big explosion of literature on sexual abuse and child sexual abuse in the 1980s and 1990s and a lot of research literature because these became really hot-button legal issues and societal issues. And when things become hot-button legal issues, we start looking for standards of evidence, and judges and lawyers start looking for standards of evidence.

Hanne Blank [00:09:35]:

And that means that they're turning to, for instance, gynecologists and pediatric gynecologists and forensic gynecologists and saying, okay, so tell us what we need to know so that we can adjudicate these cases. And so I was reading through this literature and discovering that over and over again what these doctors, what these physicians were doing was saying, I can't give you that answer, that evidence doesn't exist. We don't have the physical evidence to give you the juridical standards, the evidentiary standards that you're asking for. And that really fascinated me because what that usually tells you, I'm speaking of my medical historian hat on when doctors admit that they really can't prove something, they mean it. Like we really can't prove something. You could tell by the way that some of these physicians were writing that they believed that this was a thing. They believed that virginity existed, but they did not have the means to pinpoint what it was.

Hanne Blank [00:10:48]:

And so they were offering some kind of interestingly vague, but also vaguely, sometimes vaguely interesting explanations. One doctor whose writing really hit me had done a lot of longitudinal work on girls and young women who had been survivors of sexual abuse and penetrative sexual abuse. He had looked at their bodies and looked at their anatomy over a period of some years, from the time of first report into the future. What he said, and this is JM Paradise, he said it's normal to be normal and that most of the bodies that he was looking at sort of fell somewhere in this bell curve of what looks pretty normal for young women's bodies, regardless of what had happened to them. And I found that really moving in a way because that's a lot of humility for a physician to show they're not trained for that kind of humility, but also it says so much about the body and the resilience of the body and the capacity of the human body to withstand an assault, which may have long term consequences. I'm not meaning to minimize it in any way. I think any kind of assault can be, you know, can completely change your life. I won't say destroy but completely change your life.

Hanne Blank [00:12:40]:

The body is incredibly resilient. And the good thing is that that means that there's a lot of resilience to be had and to be dependent upon. The flip side of that is, when we're talking about virginity, people often really want there to be some sort of physical, almost like an archaeological record in the body, right? They want there to be something tangible where they can say, this happened, and this is how it changed my actual physical person. And that's tricky. That's really tricky.

Christopher [00:13:20]:

It's impossible because not everybody is the same. So how do you definitively use that as a guide?

Hanne Blank [00:13:31]:

Well, in my view, just coming from my perspective, as somebody who looks at medicine as a field, you don't. And so when you have to rule out the body as a diagnostic, then it opens up a bunch of other doors. Right? So if this thing exists, and I think that largely speaking, people will say, yes, we think that this is a thing, that virginity does exist. Okay, so then what is it?

Hanne Blank [00:14:05]:

And that's actually a way more interesting question than, does the body do X or Y? Because that's a pretty open-and-shut thing. In fact, when I started working on this book people would say, oh, what are you working on? And I would say, oh, yeah, I'm writing a book on the history of virginity; people would say, oh, that's not a short book. Because they all assumed that it was just going to be a clinical history and there was going to be a definition, and that was going to be the end of the story. Turns out that the original manuscript for this book was 1000 pages. My publishers very sensibly said nobody is going to buy a doorstop; please shorten. And I did. But there's so much to say, and there's so much, of course, that I couldn't fit between one set of covers because we're not just looking at a physical diagnosis.

Christopher [00:14:57]:

Kim, that's where you come in, right? It's beyond the physical. Can you maybe give us a bit of your backstory as to how this became a topic, how you now see virginity, and how you used it in your writing?

Kim Hudson [00:15:16]:

The story of getting here is something I'm not sure I've tracked, but let me start with how I see virginity. I started with the Jungian idea, which is about a relationship with oneself. It's interesting because we don't have another word for that. If there was, I probably would have used it in my book because I come up against this all the time, where people, and usually women, are offended by the word virgin. Men seem to be a lot more comfortable with it, even though I see it as gender-neutral. But what I've come to understand and what I like sort of the best is this moment where we know the word virgin as in a virgin forest, which means that the forest has value just for being itself.  And that being a virgin is actually a state of mind that we awaken to, which is where we become internally referencing. We allow our own opinion to be what guides us in life as opposed to being externally referencing, which would be where we're seen as a victim or unpure or all these things. That's a message coming from the outside that we adopt to be true about ourselves. So virgin is this journey to know yourself and be yourself, to allow your own opinion to be the one that matters to you.

Kim Hudson [00:16:51]:

We are born very dependent on those around us.  We learn to absorb what our environment tells us and to engage people by our behavior being something that's compatible with them and maturity, or I think you did say that it's a developmental stage is this point where we learn to actually turn the camera around and decide who we are and how we want to bring ourselves into the world. And things like rape is basically, on my level, telling you that you are very low value, that it's done without reverence. And actually what's required is this ability, this virgin ability to say, that's not my opinion. And my opinion of me is what helps me flourish and show up as a whole person in the world. And that's actually the soul of beauty. I do believe that when a person is connected to themselves, there is a mind-body connection, and that starts to radiate from that person. And we, as humans, can pick that up as beauty.

Kim Hudson [00:18:12]:

There's a guy, Robert Schenk, I believe, who wrote a book called The Soul of Beauty. When I read that, I was just like, oh, my God, this really is heartwarming. So that's essentially my understanding of what virginity is, or being a virgin. Actually, I'm going to say it differently. I think there's a difference. Virginity and being a virgin it's a way of being. It's not something that you do.

Heather [00:18:38]:

It's wonderful to hear you say that because we had a lovely guest come in to speak about Jungian thoughts on the Virgin, and exactly as you said. What a good interlude between Virgin and our next part of the series, which is on beauty, because there's so much focus on external beauty. But what I find really beautiful in the journey that I've been taking with Christopher is that there has been so much shame put on women's sexuality. And hearing that word virgin, there's almost a negative, visceral response that is clouded or cloaked in so much emotion around how she should have acted or did act or what that experience was like for her. 

Heather [00:19:34]:

Not talking about just one moment, but instead to look at what's possible when the virgin self is really that untouched part of you. That part that no one else can ever see the way that you do. So the way that you've articulated it here, Kim, it just renewing and refreshing in me. I'd love to hear both of your thoughts on how you think about the concept of the virgin while keeping it in mind as a spirit, a sense of self and how can we use that to help rid women of some of the shame that's been inflicted on their sexual self?

Kim Hudson [00:20:19]:

I have come to recognize that there's something almost magical about the more we occupy our bodies, that energy of that self where a virgin grows and comes to your life. Or maybe it's like this union that happens. It just has this wonderful feeling of belonging. So I do think that there's something very important about body and this sense of self, this mind state. So I think the first part is that we need to notice our reality in that we are feeling shame that something has happened, but also notice our ability to feel joy still so that there are things that still remind us and activate that part of ourselves and feed ourselves with that.

Kim Hudson [00:21:15]:

We have to regain that connection. It can be literally that I love Mac and cheese, and I'm going to enjoy that for all it's worth. It activates you. It's a body feeling, reconnection. Then it's important to recognize that our greatest challenges actually give us our greatest heights as well. Viktor Frankl mentioned when he was in a concentration camp and couldn't believe that he met somebody and he had a flutter of love. It made him realize that the profound thing about being human is that we have a range of feelings, and we can choose which ones we want to grow. We do that by giving it our attention.

Kim Hudson [00:21:59]:

So you could take a bad experience and use that as the strength of your ability to reconnect to yourself and know that your value separate from what other people want. But also to know that you can choose what you're going to grow in yourself and consciously know what brings you joy, what's healing for you, the people around you that nurture you and allow those messages to come in. Even notice if your own self is blocking or is not being receptive to this idea of your purity or your right to joy and respect, and just really take charge of your internal world. I think that's what it's about.

Hanne Blank [00:22:46]:

I know. I love that you brought up Victor Frankl; he's one of my all-time favorites. So wonderful. So I was thinking in terms of virginity and selfhood. You may not be able to read it because I think my camera is reversing things, but my mug says, "I've got 99 problems, and heteronormative white patriarchy is basically all of them." A student of mine gave me this, and I cherish it, but it really makes me think a lot and really sort of resonates a lot for me in thinking about virginity historically. One of the reasons that women, when they have been able to, and let's make sure that we give that caveat, when women have been able to choose virginity, one of the reasons that they have chosen it was to get away from the demands of heteronormative patriarchy.

Hanne Blank [00:23:40]:

When we go all the way back to the ancient world and the first records that we have of women who were able to choose virginity, what does that mean operationally speaking?  In terms of what goes on in your day-to-day life, both outer and inner, I think there's a lot of connection to what Kim is saying. It lets you be your own person, your existence, your day-to-day life, your function in the world, who you are, how you react and interact with other people, where your responsibilities lie, is not determined by patriarchy that's trying to get you to react to it and respond to it and serve it. And so that across history, it's one of the reasons that virgins are so troublesome and troublemakers and why people have also created a stigma around being a virgin when you're not supposed to be a virgin because when you're not supposed to be a virgin, and you are, that means that you're still refusing to play the patriarchy's game.

Kim Hudson [00:25:01]:

You're uncontrollable.

Hanne Blank [00:25:04]:

Yeah, you're uncontrollable in a really fundamental way. And I think that is a piece of virginity that regardless of what has happened to you or your body and whether or not it was consensual or voluntary, in terms of your sexual history and your sexual experience, I think that's a really valuable thing to think about, and a really valuable thing to think with is, am I self-serving in a good way? Am I serving myself? Am I doing good things? Am I doing well for and by myself, or am I serving something else? And if I am serving something else, what is that? Am I doing it on purpose? And if I'm doing it on purpose, what's my reason for doing that? That's not to say that being part of the patriarchy or having some interests in common with the patriarchy is necessarily a bad thing. Many people do, but you need to have your reasons.

Kim Hudson [00:26:10]:

I think you said something really, really interesting. There is this idea of being self serving, to be selfish, like, that's the worst thing a woman can do. But it's actually our doorway to allowing ourselves to be our connection to ourselves, to bring that virgin energy forward. So it's almost like that's a real hook of patriarchy, to say that being selfish or self-aware and actualized are, like, bad things, but they're actually the key to. To be yourself in the world. Now, of course, selfish, it's not always good. It can be excessive and that sort of thing, but it's a really important gateway for how we enter our virgin selves into the world.

Christopher [00:27:07]:

You're sort of jumping way ahead in a beautiful way because when you're saying these things, my envisioning is the worst thing women have been called forever, which is a bitch. It is that selfish or self. You know, my needs are important, too, and my opinions are important, too. So what are you? When you put that face out into the world, you are a bitch. Right. But again, that's a space women need to go in order to actually embody and live the kind of freedom that you're talking about.

Kim Hudson [00:27:51]:

Yes. Yeah. And I would say in this virgin world, there is no good or bad. It's just sort of interesting. So if we find ourselves in the world and we have to push harder and be stronger in our opinions, then that's fair enough. People may try and control you with this labeling, but, you know, for yourself, no, this is what it takes. And this is how I get my voice heard. We could also self-reflect and say that I've got unmet needs from my past, and therefore I'm acting that way today to sort of work it out, and in those cases, we take responsibility for taking care of ourselves and work that out and not necessarily have it reflect on every relationship that we've got.

Kim Hudson [00:28:37]:

So it's the empowerment of actually choosing that and knowing that what I think is what matters. So I don't have to convince everybody in the room that I'm important.

Hanne Blank [00:28:53]:

Yeah. I think that something that I would add to that is, again, this is a question of the system in which we exist and the sort of layered structures of power and status and access to resources that we live within, and we all live within. None of us is completely independent. And calling someone a bitch is one of the ways that people who have control of power, status, and resources, it's one of the ways that you police people who have less in the way of power, status, and resources. So, I think that when we think through virginity and think about this idea of independence and being independent and sort of living in this virgin space, does it make you a bitch? Well, absolutely, it does. You're a threat because you're saying, hey, I have decided to separate myself in a fundamental way from the priorities of this system of power and privilege and resources. And to say, I'm going to negotiate with this system on different terms, which generally, systems of power and hierarchies, they don't like that.

Hanne Blank [00:30:14]:

You're upsetting the apple cart. How dare you? Right? So, of course, they're going to come at you with both barrels blazing.

Kim Hudson [00:30:22]:

I love that word, power. I actually think that there is a difference between masculine power and feminine power. Masculine power is the only one in the dictionary, which is to assert your will, even against resistance. And I think when a woman shows strength, they're seeing that as like, okay, well, that's a threat against my ability to assert my will, even against resistance. But I would say that the feminine version of power is to know yourself, be yourself, and support others in doing the same. It's supporting others in knowing themselves and being themselves. It's this generative form of power.

Hanne Blank [00:31:00]:

And much more mutualistic. Yeah. I tend to think of it as not in engendered terms but as hierarchical versus lateral. So if you have lateral distributions of power where power is more shared, and one person having power doesn't detract from somebody else having power, that works quite differently than if you have sort of a pyramidal structure where there can only be one. There can only be one at the top of the heap. Everybody else is a threat.

Kim Hudson [00:31:32]:

I don't like gender or like to attach to a gender. I do think there's a masculine and feminine, but even then, I prefer to say linear and circular thinking, and then we're all capable of both. And there are actually times when either one of those is useful.

Heather [00:31:48]:

I think that's a perfect segue for one of the questions we like to ask our guests on this show. I think, given some of what you've already said here, please feel free to go in any direction and certainly beyond what traditional means have said. But we like to ask our guests: What does feminine mean to you?

Kim Hudson [00:32:11]:

To me, femininity means knowing yourself and being yourself, separate from what other people expect from you.

Christopher [00:32:19]:

I want to add a caveat to that because, in your bio, you said that earlier on in your life, you lived your life as more masculine. Is that correct?

Kim Hudson [00:32:31]:

I was much more heroic, asserted my will, overcame obstacles, right or wrong, that type of thing. Yeah. And I think that's another valuable form of power.

Hanne Blank [00:32:43]:

It's just.

Kim Hudson [00:32:44]:

That's masculine. My feminine is my awakening into my internal world and giving it a physical form.

Hanne Blank [00:32:52]:

You know, I'm a historian, and everything gets filtered through the history lens. It's an occupational hazard. But it also gets filtered through the fact that, as a historian, I know that all histories are relative to other histories. Western history and Western ideas of masculinity and femininity are not the same as histories of masculinity and femininity from other places or even other times. And so I have a really difficult time thinking about femininity or masculinity separate from place on time because the things that we associate with masculinity and femininity tend to change and shift from place to place from time to time. There are some big patterns that we see if we look.

Hanne Blank [00:33:51]:

So we sort of take that 30,000-foot view of human history. There are some big patterns that we tend to see often about sort of an internal versus external orientation to the world, with external orientation being often a more masculine orientation and or way of thinking, way of interpreting the world, and an internal being more of a feminine way. But that is very much sort of, I won't say archetypal in a Jungian way, but archetypal certainly, in that it shows up over and over and over again at some level in lots of different cultures, at lots of different times. Where that comes from, I do not try to speculate because that's above my pay grade, but I think that there is value in recognizing that when we see something appear over and over and over again across the span of human history and cultures, that there's something there that we're reacting to, that humans are reacting to. 

Hanne Blank [00:35:03]:

I think that's valuable to note. But I think it's equally valuable to say that wherever you are, whoever you are, whenever you are, is going to shape and color and texture of what those words, those gendered terms, can mean in your world, as well as what they mean to you. But also what it's possible for them to mean in the world that you live in.

Christopher [00:35:36]:

In this conversation, I get the sense, and I've had the sense for a long time, that as human beings, we are very, very smart. We're very clever. However, there are concepts and constructs of the universe that we cannot define. We struggle to define them. And these words that we're talking about now, virginity, virgin, feminine, we struggle to define because we believe we know them so well. We would swear on a stack of Bibles that we know these words, and we would explain them to our children. And we're right.

Christopher [00:36:20]:

However, as we've discussed, these words are not definable. They're not something you can hold up and pin to the wall and say, this is what it means.

Kim Hudson [00:36:34]:

Yeah. This is kind of what's great about it in that it's, you know, it's our quest to understand what it means and what the real value comes in. I actually think defining things is a masculine quality. You want a box that you can put it in and say, this fits. Or, this doesn't fit. But the person that defines it has the power, and I think in the feminine sense, we are actually comfortable with the ambiguity. It's a felt experience.

Kim Hudson [00:37:01]:

And then curious about the variety. We want to be inclusive of everybody's sense of that. And by doing that, we are acting in a feminine milieu. We have activated the feminine just by not requiring a definition.

Hanne Blank [00:37:20]:

I like to think that. We can look for an answer, or we can look for an opportunity to ask another question. And one of the things that I love about the subject of virginity is that it lets you ask so many questions. One of the big questions that I've asked in my work and that I think a lot of other people have come to ask in their work on virginity is, okay, so we have this idea, we have this word virginity, what does it let us do? What is this doing for us? What does it let us do? Who can do things with this? What kinds of things have we been able to do? Are they the same things that we can do now? So what possibilities does having this little lever?

Hanne Blank [00:38:13]:

You know, it's like when you name something, it comes into existence. And now we have something to explore. That's when we start to recognize the importance of knowing ourselves and bringing that to life because it's got a word.

Christopher [00:38:31]:

The shameful part is that it can also be used as a hammer to hold people in place. Unfortunately, it's been used that way for so long, and that is why it's become a negative experience for so many people.

Hanne Blank [00:38:48]:

Absolutely. And again, you know, systems of power look for ways to self-reinforce. And so when you have virginity being used to shame people, either that you have kept your virginity when you're, quote-unquote, not supposed to, or you have lost your virginity when you're, quote-unquote not supposed to. Who's saying what you're supposed to do? That is the really important question, well, where does that come from? Who's telling you this? Why are they saying this? Who benefits from you believing the things that they're telling you? And how do they benefit if you believe the things that they're telling? And these are questions my students get very irritated with me when I ask them for the 5,000,000th time; well, who benefits from this if we do this? Who benefits? But it's really true.

Kim Hudson [00:39:40]:

Also, the question is, is this for me to decide for myself, or is this for me to be told something that I'm supposed to do?

Hanne Blank [00:39:50]:

And who benefits when they get to tell you? Right. And how?

Christopher [00:39:55]:

Unfortunately, that's the part that brings resentment, like your story about talking to nuns. Hannah, can you share any of that experience about talking to nuns about virginity? Like, my mind blows, just the thought of that.

Hanne Blank [00:40:12]:

Yeah. I mean, I've talked to several groups of nuns and also consecrated virgins living in the world, which is a special religious status within the Catholic and Roman Catholic Church, about virginity. And partly what I experienced was that their responses were generational. The older the age of the nuns that I was talking to, the more likely they were to say, you know what, I could take or leave being a virgin. I could take or leave thinking about sex, but I really wanted to be a nun. And this is how you do it. For some of them, it was I knew that I really didn't want to do the other thing that was available to me, which was to get married and become a mom.

Hanne Blank [00:40:56]:

So for them, at least some of them, virginity was just the price of the ticket. And they were fine with that. They had made that choice. They were like, yep, absolutely willing to make that bargain. I talked to some younger women for whom the yearning for virginity and the sort of, sometimes in a deeply personal way, sometimes in a very sort of icon-based way. This, again, is in a very catholic context. Sometimes I want to be like the Virgin Mary or that, you know, that particular icon of virginity being so appealing to them that they wanted to model their lives after that. And that desire, that admiration, adulation, desire to model their lives after that particular catholic archetype became the impetus for them to choose a vocation.

Hanne Blank [00:42:01]:

And then, I also encountered some women, several of them who were consecrated virgins living in the world. So they haven't taken orders. They're not in convents. They're certainly not cloistered. They're not terribly numerous, but they're out there doing their thing where some of those women that I talked to had a really interesting and very old in terms of how Christianity and the church have thought about virginity. Ways of thinking about it, which were conceived of their own virginity as creating a space in their being for God to occupy. And that's, it's a very, very old way. When I say old, I'm talking like the early church, you know, the first five centuries of Christianity's way of thinking about it.

Hanne Blank [00:43:02]:

The idea is that the body is essentially a vessel for God and that one of the ways that you can make your body not only a suitable vessel for God but also to create the space inside your person's hood for God to not have a sexual existence and to not have those ties or those experiences. And what's fascinating to me about that is it wasn't about pure or impure or good or bad, but is there space? Because all of these other things that you could be doing with your body or your sexuality take up space. And that, to me, was such a fascinating and utilitarian way to think about it that I really enjoyed those conversations so much. And just the range of different sort of standpoints on virginity that I had that I got from talking to so many women who had chosen it religiously.

Christopher [00:44:11]:

That's really powerful. Kim, I wanted you to talk about your book because you take an individual, a woman, through a process that she doesn't have to spend her entire life in a nunnery to experience. So share with us some of the content of your book and what it's envisioning.

Kim Hudson [00:44:35]:

Yes. It's been basically this idea that moving from a place where you are very dependent on your surroundings and you're living to be in harmony with that to a place where you know yourself and you're being yourself in the world that's not just like a switch gets flipped, that there are actually steps to that, and it's sort of how we psychologically are able to grow to that point. And the core of it is that we create this world. What I call a secret world. Where you're in a cocoon, and you're with friends. It's a world where love, unconditional love can exist. Where people want to see the best for you. And that's sort of embryonic fluid.

Kim Hudson [00:45:25]:

That will help you to get that first acquaintance with who you are. You can't connect with that. While you're in this fear-based world, and you're wrong, or you're out of step, or you're this and that, you need to create something different. But you keep going back and forth. Between your dependent world and your secret world. And for lots of interesting things, one is by the comparison, you start to understand.

Kim Hudson [00:45:53]:

Like in a photograph. The background helps you to understand. The foreground black really makes white pop. You're able to say, I'm not this. Which means the opposite of that would be what I am. And you're starting to self-define. Also, you're learning to build a bridge from one to the other. Because your dependent world is full of people that you love as well.

Kim Hudson [00:46:14]:

But you're trying to figure out how you can show up authentically in that world. And there are two kinds of key factors. One is you have to give up the belief that allowed you to participate in that dependent world. There's something that is programmed into you because you're unconscious of it. That tells you this is what it is to be part of this family. This is what it means to exist in this world.

Kim Hudson [00:46:38]:

And you have to let that go. But kind of like an astronaut with that one little umbilical cord. When they're outside of the spaceship you're not just going to be floating there like in a vague space. And then cut that cord. So that's why you needed your secret world. You needed to figure out what's possible.

Kim Hudson [00:46:56]:

What would it look like if I was being myself? And you get a taste of that. But you'll get to a point where you're actually so connected to that. That you will no longer fit one of your two worlds. The two worlds are going to collide. And in that moment, you're what I call wandering in the wilderness. You have to sort of think, okay, I could go back and be small again. Be that old person, make everybody else happy. But now that I have this self-knowledge.

Kim Hudson [00:47:21]:

That's really hard to do. That could be self-destructive, or I could go forward. But I have no reason, no tangible evidence, to believe that I could be that person and actually have a place in the world. But you do it because you're not really living unless you're being yourself, and you want that full, joyful experience. And the cool thing is that when people actually see you, you'll attract people and circumstances that want that to flourish.

Kim Hudson [00:47:49]:

And the kingdom, your community will learn that they actually needed what you had to offer, but they didn't know that you had it. They had to see it first. And then more unconditional love exists. It's sort of a generative. So that's basically my first book, the Virgin's Promise, and my second book, which is on linear and circular thinking, actually addresses what Hannah was saying, what are these two forms of thinking? Where do they come from, and how do we move from one to the other? So how do we balance masculine and feminine?

Christopher [00:48:23]:

What's the name of the book?

Kim Hudson [00:48:24]:

It's called The Bridge: Connecting the Powers of Linear and Circular Thinking.

Christopher [00:48:28]:

And that's available now?

Hanne Blank [00:48:29]:

Yes, it's on Amazon.

Christopher [00:48:32]:

Hannah, you have some new work as well. Share some of the other books that you've written with us.

Hanne Blank [00:48:39]:

So since Virgin came out, I have written a couple of other books. I wrote a book that came out a handful of years ago called The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality. It actually came directly out of my work on Virgin because I discovered that I was spending all this time talking about heterosexual people and people who identified themselves as heterosexual. And that when I started to go and try to talk to people who are queer-identified about virginity, they were like, I'm really not sure how that applies to me. That's an interesting idea, but I don't know what I have to say to you. So I ended up going down that rabbit hole, and that ultimately led me to write a book on the history of heterosexuality, which is an idea that is about as old as the typewriter and the light bulb. Most recently, in 2020, I wrote a small book on a really big topic, and I say that, pun intended, about fat and about the Cultural History of Fat in the West and the ways that we have come to understand fat as a stigmatized attribute. And that includes a lot of gender politics and racial politics and class politics and, of course, lots of big old heap and helpings of medical history and history of science.

Hanne Blank [00:50:05]:

So all of those are out there. And I'm currently at work on a book about sort of the organization of the patriarchy called Penises are Magic: A Guide to Patriarchy for Everybody Who Didn't Consent to it.  Which, by the way, is everybody because we get born into a patriarchy. We weren't asked. We get born into it. And so we have all been sort of forced into this system, which, holy crap, we're here now. 

Heather [00:50:43]:

It's an amazing title.

Hanne Blank [00:50:44]:

Thank you. I hope the rest of the book lives up to it. That's all I can say.

Christopher [00:50:51]:

I'd buy that on the title alone. This has been a tremendous series. Heather and I are really blessed to have had these conversations with such a variety of women and to gather so much experience into these conversations. I truly hope they are helpful to those listening. If you're at all questioning these concepts and constructs, you know, open your mind, hopefully, what things that you may not have thought about this word and where it might lead you moving forward in your life. Hopefully, it gives you a little bit of freedom to explore and grow internally. That's the whole point of all these conversations.

Christopher [00:51:50]:

We cannot thank you enough, Hanne or Kim, for sharing your tremendous knowledge. It is invaluable, and we are blessed to have had you share that with us. Thank you so much.

Hanne Blank [00:52:07]:

You're so welcome. Thank you.

Heather [00:52:09]:

Absolutely wonderful to wrap up this series with you two. And, wow, it has truly been such a journey. I hope you listen to the other three episodes because what you've spoken about here builds really quite an amazing picture. So thank you for your time and your dedication to this topic.

Christopher [00:52:28]:

And you have been listening to the.

Heather [00:52:29]:

Virgin series, the Beauty and the Bitch.

Christopher [00:52:37]:

Find us. Like us. Share us. Come on back. Let's talk some more. To become a partner in the VBB community, we invite you to find us at virginbeauty bitch.com, like us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and share us with people who are Defiantly Different like you. Until next time, thanks for listening.

Lisa Marchiano

Intro [00:00:01]:

Virgin Beauty Bitch Podcast: inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear of being defiantly different. Your hosts, Christopher and Heather.

Let's talk, shall we?

Christopher [00:00:20]:

Welcome to part four of our series on the Virgin being. This is the final episode. I wonder, would you indulge me for a moment? Now, unless you're driving a vehicle or operating heavy machinery, can you close your eyes for a moment to contemplate this? Since everyone begins life as a virgin, can you recall a single positive advantage of your past life as a virgin? Also, is there anything that could convince you to step back into that space? What if you had access to being a virgin for life? Would you scoff at such a thought? Or would you open your eyes to consider a different outlook that's rarely spoken in the form of a virgin spirit? It's a conversation we're privileged to have with author, podcaster, and Jungian analyst Lisa Marchiano. Welcome back, Lisa, to Virgin Beauty Bitch. Now, Lisa, when you were here with us in March, just before we launched this series on the Virgin, we talked about your new book, The Vital Spark, and we couldn't help but note there's a chapter on the Virgin. You mentioned a couple of lifelong virgins, one being the goddess figure that's often used to symbolize an apex virgin, Artemis. What do you recall from your research about Artemis?

Lisa Marchiano [00:01:48]:

Well, there are a couple of important things about Artemis and her virginity. First of all, she asks, according to the myths, she asks her father very early on if she can remain a virgin always. And unlike most of the other Gods, Artemis doesn't spend a lot of time in Olympus. She lives in the forest. She's sort of really her own person. And I believe it's the mythologist Christine Downing who makes the point that she's not, you know, she isn't subject to the fits of passion that Aphrodite can throw people into. And, of course, she's not answerable to any husband. 

Christopher [00:02:30]:

So she really is kind of her own woman, but she had a very unique lifestyle.

Lisa Marchiano [00:02:37]:

Yes, right? Yes. Yes.

Christopher [00:02:39]:

You talk about that for a moment that she was also very highly protective, violently protective of her virginity.

Lisa Marchiano [00:02:46]:

Yes, she was. So, you know, the most famous story about Artemis probably is when the hunter Actaeon spied on her at her bath and she was naked. She was so angered by the violation that she turned him into a stag, and he was torn to pieces by his own dogs. So, yeah, you don't want to mess with Artemis. And, of course, she expected the nymphs who served her to remain virgins also. Her chief nymph, Callisto, as it was sort of implied in the myth, at least this is the way I read it, that they were lovers. You know, Callisto was very beautiful, and Zeus wanted to have sex with her as Zeus always seemed to want to do with everyone he knew. He knew that if he came to her as Zeus, she would say no because she was sworn to virginity, so he came to her disguised as Artemis, and she welcomed his embrace in that form, which kind of says to me that she was used to that.

Lisa Marchiano [00:04:04]:

So when Artemis found out that Callisto was no longer a virgin, she punished her by turning in her into a bear, if I'm not mistaken.

Christopher [00:04:15]:

Yeah, it's a bear. Yes.

Lisa Marchiano [00:04:17]:

So, yeah, even though it wasn't Callisto's fault, it didn't matter. That got Artemis very angry. So she was protective of her own virginity. She was also seen as the keeper of women's mysteries, women's rights, and the transition from girlhood to womanhood, the transition from. Into motherhood.

Lisa Marchiano [00:04:44]:

She watches over laboring women and this kind of thing. So she's very protective of women.

Heather [00:04:52]:

I've also heard of her described as the goddess of the hunt, that she would go out and be very self sufficient. And I think that that juxtaposition for how women have been portrayed in history as the gatherers or the ones that kind of are more like holding the hearth of the family together. She embodies a very different element of femininity to me, where she is the one out in the world, and as you've said, making her own way and getting the bacon, so to speak.

Lisa Marchiano [00:05:28]:

Yeah, that's a good point. She's usually portrayed as this very lithe, lovely woman with a quiver of arrows on her back and a bow in her hand, and she is the Goddess of the hunt. So she is out in the woods doing her own thing and providing for herself.

Christopher [00:05:49]:

There's also apparently a clan of young women who would give their allegiance to Artemis and her way of living as a virgin. They revered that lifestyle even after marriage. They had been trained as young girls to always keep that piece of their virginity with them throughout their lifetime.

Lisa Marchiano [00:06:25]:

So young girls were kind of consecrated to Artemis. I think it was when they were eight or nine, they would go and participate in this ritual called playing the bear. And it was. The sense was that they were kind of consecrated unto themselves. And my imagination is that later, when they grew up and became moms, they still had this little piece of wildness in their hearts because they'd been a bear of Artemis.

Christopher [00:06:56]:

Beautiful.

Heather [00:06:57]:

I love that because when you're thinking of how to bring the virgin spirit into your lives, this conversation for our listeners tuning in is just such a different depiction than what we originally think of when we think of holding on to what time has made virginity to be. And I love that, in this context, holding onto your virginity is holding onto your wild self.

Lisa Marchiano [00:07:25]:

Yeah. And the reality of it is that if a woman is a virgin, it means she's never gonna have kids. And unless you're the Virgin Mary, what that means is you have this opportunity for a completely different life because being a mother is wonderful, but the biology of it, especially before modern times, not necessarily, but if we're thinking kind of it archetypally, the biology of it matters. If you're a woman with a baby on the savannah, part of a hunter-gatherer clan, there's no way you're going to survive alone. There's absolutely no way.

Lisa Marchiano [00:08:20]:

And that is still somewhat true. Right. Being a mother means that you're somewhat dependent. I mean, if you just look at statistics, it shows that women, single mothers, really struggle, and motherhood really has a huge impact on a woman's lifetime earnings because it's very difficult to work and care for a child at the same time. So, not being a virgin usually means that you're going to get pregnant again, sort of pre-modern. That's what happens most of the time. And that means that you're going to be substantially dependent on someone, and usually, that person is a man. So there's something about the idea of virginity meaning that you can remain independent.

Lisa Marchiano [00:09:14]:

We even see this throughout European history. The way that women lived the Artemis life was to enter a convent. Women who did so had a chance to live the life of a nun. I mean, not always, but women who ran a convent, for example, could be fabulously well-educated. They might live the life of the mind. They might wind up writing poetry and composing music. Like Hildegard von Bingen.

Lisa Marchiano [00:09:53]:

Most of the female intellectuals in the Middle Ages were virgins because they were abbesses. There are some notable exceptions, but that is the alternative. Virginity, in some sense, equates with being heather, as you were saying, self-sufficient and independent.

Christopher [00:10:21]:

Yes, I think that Artemis definitely is the role model, the badass role model for virgins. However, there was also in your book, you speak about Hera and her version of virginity, and she was a mother. Maybe talk about what you learned about her expression of virginity.

Lisa Marchiano [00:10:47]:

Hera is a rather sorry figure in mythology because her main role is running after Zeus and being filled with indignation and a thirst for vengeance because he's always having affairs. So she's a really unhappy woman, honestly. She's always upset and running after his paramours, trying to punish them. So she kills several of them, you know, brings down awful punishments on others. And so it's like, you know, did she have her own life? 

Lisa Marchiano [00:11:39]:

And there's this part of the myth where she goes to the sacred spring in Argos. When you bathe in the spring, it returns you to your virgin state. She would do this once a year, and that would be this idea of returning, just belonging to herself. So a virgin is a woman who belongs to herself. And, you know, it's part of Hera's great tragedy that she didn't belong to herself. Her happiness was placed in the hands of her husband, who wasn't really keeping up his end of the bargain very well.

Christopher [00:12:17]:

And I think that is the crux of it, is this sovereign state of which virginity actually is. It's not necessarily about physical expression or loss. It's about something that's spiritual, that is forever. Evergreen, as Heather would say. And I think the work of Esther Harding really speaks to that. What can you share with us about that woman? Because she was amazing.

Lisa Marchiano [00:12:53]:

So Ester Harding was a Jungian analyst; she was the founder of The Analytical Psychology Club of New York. She's really one of the people who really helped introduce Jung's ideas to the United States. She is the author of some really important books, including Women's Mysteries, Ancient and Modern. She also wrote another good one called The Way of All Women. In this book, she articulates the idea of virginity as a psychospiritual state. She's really the one who, again, first gives voice to this. And it's such a great framing.

Lisa Marchiano [00:13:38]:

And I think, as you've said, it's not the typical way we think about virginity. But if we think about it as kind of a psychological principle, she has this great phrase that a virgin is one in herself. The virgin is she who belongs to herself. She has the freedom to choose which way you go. To a certain extent, she's not beholden to the same kind of social dependency. Not the interdependency that you get with a woman who lives the life of the family, and your children are dependent on you, and you're dependent on other adults to raise them. Which is a lovely thing, but there's also a cost. So the virgin foregoes all of that and is one in herself. The beautiful thing about thinking about it psychologically is it's not a state that you're either in or out of; it is an attitude that you can cultivate. Just like Hera going to the springs of Argos.

Lisa Marchiano [00:14:49]:

We can all have part of ourselves that is a virgin. We can have a place where we belong to ourselves. So, if it's okay, I want to read just a little bit from it. Because she just says it so well, I could never say it any better. So she says in the same way, the woman who is a virgin is one in herself. Does what she does not because of any desire to please. Not to be liked or to be approved, even by herself. Not because of any desire to gain power over another. To catch his interest or love. But because what she does is true. Her actions may indeed be unconventional. She may have to say no when it would be easier as well as more adapted, conventionally speaking, to say yes. But as the virgin, she is not influenced by the considerations that make the non-virgin woman, whether married or not, trim her sails and adapt herself to expediency. 

Lisa Marchiano [00:15:57]:

And it goes on from there. But that's the idea, and I love this idea that what she does is true. Because, you know, there's this truth about women that, generally speaking, we would rather say the thing that was kind rather than the thing that was true. But I think part of being a psychological virgin of belonging to yourself is you just say what's true.

Heather [00:16:23]:

Those words just hit me so deeply. Because of the expectations that women feel from society are internalized to have very high expectations of themselves. Or that the self-critic can be very loud. To hear the line that says not to be liked even by yourself. That is because the bar is so high, as you said, to be kind and to be liked that you can very easily feel or lose sight of what's true about you.

Lisa Marchiano [00:17:03]:

Yes. Am I likable? Do you like me now? It's like, no, it's just, there's just none of that.

Christopher [00:17:15]:

How, as an analyst, would you suggest to women what their outlook is on reaching that standard? What can be done to even head in that direction?

Lisa Marchiano [00:17:35]:

Yeah. You know, in some sense, that's, that's sort of the, the important question, right. How do you, how do you live this? And what I'll say is that I think that living with a new attitude is never a, like a sort of step-by-step process. Like, well, first you do this, and then you do this. And in some sense, it's having a kind of dialogue between the inner world and the outer. So, you know, if this is an appealing idea, you might read a little bit about it. You might read about Artemis.

Lisa Marchiano [00:18:11]:

You might read Esther Harding and see where that lands and see what that does in you and watch what comes up. And what's your inner life? What are your feelings, your intuitions, your dreams? But then these things actually matter and get lived out in the outer life. So there has to be a kind of dialogue between the inner life and the outer life. And what that might look like is you might, oh, I don't know, be in some kind of conflict at work. And what you do is you start noticing, what are my motivations? Where do I trim my sails for expediency? And maybe you have to do that because that's wise and that's okay. But you can start to watch yourself. So you start to have this reference in the inner world, and these mythological images can be part of that. But then you start watching yourself in the outer world, and you start seeing the patterns, and you get curious about it.

Lisa Marchiano [00:19:14]:

And over time, that kind of self-reflection begins to create a space between the stimulus and your reaction to it. And that space is the space of choice. So maybe, you know, maybe your boss lands a zinger and usually you would have just curled up. And then you start to watch yourself, and you've thought about it, and you've reflected on it, and you maybe have a sense of what Artemis might do in that situation. And maybe the next time it happens, there is that little space and you could choose to do something different. And it might be a very subtle thing. Maybe instead of skulking away, you simply don't say anything. But you look your boss in the eye.

Lisa Marchiano [00:20:07]:

It might be very subtle, but it feels different, and you're approaching it with a new attitude. I think that it's somewhat of an organic process, and it's a little bit hard to pin down. So I realize that, in some ways, that's not that helpful. But really, I think the answer is something like self-reflection and consciousness, self-awareness.

Christopher [00:20:34]:

And it would take a lot of courage, really, because you are dismantling everything that you have believed up until now about how you should be and how you should respond, especially as a woman. You're dismantling all of that in a fraction of that second, that space, in order to do something different or feel different about it. But I love that approach, to take it one piece at a time.

Heather [00:21:11]:

I also think even the visual of dipping into that spring, it's, I think, like, that visualization for me is so powerful. Like, even the thought of going back to understanding this part of yourself that is for no one else and is untouchable by anyone else and is really just for you, and the thought of going into the water and kind of being replenished is that feeling like that just feels like a very accessible pathway to a place where you can really try to tap into that part of yourself.

Lisa Marchiano [00:21:52]:

Yeah, it's great, it's a really wonderful image, and it's a great thing to think that oh, I can, you know, I can become a virgin again as a psycho-spiritual principle that's always open to me.

Christopher [00:22:10]:

When I started this conversation and started with, close your eyes and think about yourself past life as a virgin, I'm sure for a lot of people it was, I would never go back there again. However, the positives are that you were a young child, you were innocent to the world, you had the ability of imagination and curiosity, and everything you did was something new to you. You were not just a virgin physically; you were literally, spiritually a virgin. And that never changes. What has changed is someone has told you that physically, now that you have done this act, you are no longer this entity, which is a virgin spirit, but that is still with you. It will always be with you.

Christopher [00:23:10]:

You have to now reconnect to that part of yourself that has never gone away. But someone has told you it is dependent on your physical actions and has taken that away from you because of that thought. Do you understand where I'm going with that?

Lisa Marchiano [00:23:30]:

Yeah. Well, what that brings up for me is that, you know, this is something that Jungians talk about sometimes, is that in childhood, we have what's sometimes referred to as an original wholeness. So especially as a young child, you know, you are one unto yourself. There is this original, intuited, experienced sense of wholeness, and then as you develop an ego, you become split. So, you know, in the Jungian way of thinking about it, I think every psychological school would have some version of this. You know, you have to learn how to adapt to the outer world and the demands of the outer world. That's absolutely appropriate.

Lisa Marchiano [00:24:11]:

Like, it's a tragedy. It's kind of a fall from grace, but it's a totally necessary one. It's like when Adam and Eve leave the garden, they're no longer innocent. They no longer have that original wholeness. They're driven out of the garden. It's a fall from grace.

Lisa Marchiano [00:24:26]:

But they gain knowledge, they gain awareness. So as you gain consciousness, that original sense of wholeness goes away. But we can have a mature sense of wholeness that we work towards, where we reclaim some of the knowledge of those parts of ourselves that we had to lock away. And this time, you know, and this is in some sense, it's just aspirational. We can never totally get there. But if you can sort of manifest as much of your unconscious potential as possible, you approach a kind of mature wholeness in which all of you, again, is allowed to be there, this time with consciousness.

Christopher [00:25:17]:

Yes. I would add to that that there are chapters in your book that speak loudly to contrast what is expected of a good woman. We talked about that in our last conversation, and I would recommend that people read your book and get a sense of what that means and how you can bring that into your everyday life. I cannot recommend that highly enough as an opportunity to get to know that part of yourself and maybe express it in a way that you never thought was even possible for you. So I want to definitely bring that to the front.

Lisa Marchiano [00:26:09]:

Yeah, definitely read my book.

Heather [00:26:13]:

Yes.

Christopher [00:26:15]:

So give us the title again. Tell us where people can definitely put their hands on that.

Lisa Marchiano [00:26:20]:

Yeah. It's called The Vital Spark: Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies and Find Your Feminine Fire and is available as an audiobook, ebook, or paperback. My website is LisaMariano.com.

Christopher [00:26:36]:

As I said from the beginning, I cannot thank you enough. I know that you are a crazy busy professional, and mother and I cannot tell you how we appreciate how much we appreciate having this conversation because this conversation we cannot have it with the average person because they don't have your knowledge, background, and experience to share the way that you can in such clear terms. And we appreciate that so much.

Lisa Marchiano [00:27:03]:

Well, it was a pleasure. Thank you for having me back.

Heather [00:27:06]:

So nice to see you again, Lisa.

Christopher [00:27:09]:

And as the virgin fades not too far away, you've been listening, too, the.

Heather [00:27:18]:

Virgin, the Beauty, and the Bitch.

Christopher [00:27:21]:

Come on, back when we extend this series in the fall to talk about Beauty for the fall equinox, and for the winter solstice, we're going to talk about the bitch. So stay with us. To become a partner in the VBB community, we invite you to find us @virginbeautybitch.com, like us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and share us with people who are Defiantly Different, like you. Until next time, thanks for listening.