Psycho-sociological comments on the social representation of virginity as purity fetish

Abstract

This text presents some psycho-sociological comments on the social representation (or SR) of the object “hymen” and its practical counterpart of defloration. The main argument is based on the observation of the recurrence of fetishistic attitudes towards bodily objects and ritual behaviors associated with the initiation into sexuality and the idea of physical and moral purity. The SR of virginity is observed in a heterogeneous corpus: history books, short stories, novels, anthropological archives, secondary data on the conception of virginity among young people, essays, online press, ethnographic reports, etc. This social representation may also include other terms such as “chastity”, “purity”, “first time”, “sexual initiation”, “abstinence” or “continence.” First, the genesis of the objectified and anatomical meaning of virginity and defloration is analyzed as a scientifically and institutionally constructed imaginary process. Entering the world of sexuality, however, involves bodily techniques and behaviors that are less and less regulated today. The representational, semantic (connotations, effects of cultural matrices) and historical evolution of the purity associated with virginity are also examined. Various themes will be addressed in turn: the disjunctive structure (instrumentalization/idealization) of virginity; the proximity between puritanical and perverse attitudes towards these phenomena; certain mythographies and rituals (magic, novels) and the practice of bodily rituals, remnants of earlier practices. The interpretation of the social representation of the virginity and its anthropological logic are synthesized at the end of the article. Finally, the philosophical and psycho-sociological meanings of the purity fetish are presented. The couple virginity/defloration and more generally any form of bodily organization that conveys eroticism and sexuality, are seen as structures of protraction, quite very close to the notion of apparatus (or device).