Italian
Chastity is said to be a virtue. Virtue comes from the Latin virtus which means heroic strength, courage, qualities that are characteristic of the vir, that is, the man. It is therefore implicit that it is a strain, something that requires an unnatural commitment.
And the woman? The woman is not allowed chastity! The woman must first and foremost be a mother. This is the role assigned to her. The woman exists because she must procreate, have children in a nutshell.
Man can choose whether to be chaste or not, while a woman can only sacrifice herself if she chooses to be chaste or not. Fragility is attributed to women. “Fragility is your name, woman,” says Hamlet to Ophelia.
Therefore, it must be protected, women first and foremost, even before children when the order is given to save oneself! The issue of chastity/maternity would exclude women from that common natural pleasure that only sexuality can provide.
Here then, the woman, in order to have her right to pleasure, the anteroom of happiness, finds herself forced to choose celibacy. She thus deprives herself of motherhood to claim her independence.
Medicine attributes to the trauma of childbirth and the cyclical hormonal effects present in the female body a series of somatic and especially psychological disorders. This also gives rise to the idea of female fragility.
In fact, the female body tends to get sick less frequently and less severely compared to the male body. We learned this from the Covid epidemic. Women were infected less and had a more effective organic protection, which meant the consequences of the virus were less severe.
We also know that women live longer than men. Mentally, they are affected by less severe disorders. Another fact is that they are less prone to suicide.
I could add more examples, but in general, it must be recognized that female fragility is an evident stratification of civilization. We know that in very ancient times, the matriarchal regime was dominant over the patriarchal one.
It is indeed the women who bring about the end of the war between Athens and Sparta as depicted in Aristophanes’ comedy. Those women are anything but chaste.
Other women like Medea by Aeschylus and Antigone by Sophocles demonstrate extraordinary dramatic strength. These characters silence the world of men forever because they propose a metaphysical universe where the essence of things resides.
She is the mother of Jesus who presides over the first small Christian community of Jerusalem. It is Mary Magdalene who announces the Resurrection. This is where it all began and if today we are what we are!
The male-female comparison is part of the duality of the person that is completed precisely through this duality. It is not ambivalence or ambiguity but completion.
Love cannot be struggle and oppression. Equal and different but always human. With all this humanity we have, we must accept flaws and defeats. They help us understand and improve.
