WMST 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Virginity, Bride Price

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Women's Studies
• Course: WMST 1000
• Professor: Amy Butchart

Document Summary

Men and women are treated very diferently for doing the same thing. Women are either pure & virginal or whores & dirty. Based on heterosexual male desire: men want sexual relaions with degraded women, not respectable women. Whore and madonna are feishized in fantasies. Sexually curious women, unlike men, are seen as abnormal. A woman"s moral standing is ied to her body. Madonna is irst in this phrase because being pure is seen as beter. Historically virginity had an economic enity, ownership damaged goods . Virginity is now a stand in for morality- good or bad based on sexual status. You belong to a morally superior & pure group (madonna) or you don"t (whore) Women are deined by what they don"t do, instead of what they do. Desire to have women return to tradiional gender roles.