Yeah, it’s back. I don’t think it ever went away. There was a time when women had the pill and they could be sexually adventurous, but then AIDS came about and shoved it all down the crapper. Recently, the move towards abstinence-only sex-ed brings it back a lot, because not only does it say that the only way to not get pregnant or STDs (which, obviously, not entirely true), it also reinforces traditional gender roles and female virginity as a commodity. Gems like “Your body is a wrapped lollipop. When you have sex with a man, he unwraps your lollipop and sucks on it. It may feel great at the time, but, unfortunately, when he’s done with you, all you have left for your next partner is a poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled sucker” come up a lot, as does pledging your virginity to your father until he can hand it off to your husband. There’s actually a really good book on this entire issue, The Purity Myth (also good, Yes Means Yes which talks about this issue as well and issue of consent and moving away from an absence of no to actively having a yes). So while I’m disgusted by it, let’s not discount the power of the Christian Right. Or, for that matter, how many older women who once thought that the idea of holding out was crap have now become more conservative with age, and have become disillusioned and things haven’t worked out, so they aren’t so sure that not holding out isn’t the way to go. And it is really hard to move away from the idea of virginity and sex as a commodity when it’s been steeped in our culture for thousands of years – way more than a couple decades of some groups saying “nah-uh!”.
But, I’m totally with you. The idea that my vagina is milk, and why would any guy ever buy me/the cow (nothing turns me on like talking about me like I’m property) is vile. I’ve never gotten the idea that if a man just wanted sex, I could be assured he wouldn’t dump me once he got it so long as I waited x number of dates to put out (and I think waiting till marriage to have sex is like buying a car without test driving it). And why on Earth would I want to marry a man who only cared about my reproductive system, and not me? I don’t want to trick someone into being married; I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life than be in a marriage where I didn’t know if he actually liked me or just the access to my womanly parts. But, the idea is out there, in “science”, in the media, in liberal tv shows that you’d think wouldn’t dream of putting it in there…. There was an article I read awhile ago that said that a possible reason that people who hook up sooner in a relationship don’t have relationships that last as long is because so many don’t necessarily want to. So all the people who are just looking for one-night stands, or 2 week flings, or just a casual relationship but marriage/babies/etc is off the table tend to make the statistical number of long-term relationships lower. But that that lower number doesn’t mean that the people in those relationships, however short they may be, are unsatisfied with them or wouldn’t call them a success. And it said that if both partners are looking for a long-term thing and are compatible, whether they have sex on the first date or the twentieth isn’t really going to have an impact on if they work out or not.