Why the teenage girl is more spiritually scarred by pre-marital sex than is the teenage boy.



Over the years I have discovered that it is much easier to identify sexually active girls than it is boys. As one priest - referring to girls - put it: "Premarital sex drains the soul right out of them." This is not to suggest that premarital sexual activity causes little damage to a boy's character. Nothing could be further from the truth. But one more readily sees the depletion in the woman's countenance. A girl simply has more to lose, which is why when she does lose it, the loss is more manifest in her gaze. Let me explain.

On the Distinction Between the Sexes

The reason premarital sex causes greater harm to girls than to boys is grounded in the fact that there is a real distinction between the sexes. Male and female are profoundly different. It was Rene Descartes, the great mathematician and father of modern philosophy, who is responsible for the habit that blinds us to this obvious truth. Descartes wanted to build his philosophy upon an absolutely certain principle, from which he would deduce all the rest of his philosophical ideas; for he wanted universal agreement in the world of philosophy, as there is in mathematics. To find this certain principle, he would begin to doubt everything that he could doubt, for example, all his senses, memories, etc., until he arrived at one thing he could not doubt. Eventually he discovered that he couldn't doubt that he was doubting. And if he's doubting, he's thinking. If he's thinking, he exists (Cogito ergo sum, or 'I think therefore I am'). Descartes eventually ended up defining man essentially as a "thinking thing". And so the body, according to Descartes, was no longer part of the essence of man, since the notion of "thinking thing" does not include in its meaning "extension" or "body" (he was able to doubt the existence of the body and the external world). So within a Cartesian perspective, male and female eventually came to be seen as different only on the surface (bodily), but essentially the same (both are 'thinking things'). That is why modern feminism regards the differences between male and female as nothing more than anatomical, and thus superficial.

But we think such a viewpoint is mistaken and that Descartes' method was misguided. Man and woman are both spirit and matter. Man is not merely a thinking thing, but rational and animal, that is, a rational and physical, social and emotional being. Hence, both male and female are persons and thus created in the image and likeness of God (in the image of knowledge and love), and thus both are essentially equal. But to be equal is not necessarily to be identical. Man and woman are not merely different anatomically, but psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, and physically, that is, through and through.

The critical difference, fundamentally, lies in the fact that women are naturally more integrated than men. What this means is that in women, there is a greater unity between the body and her personal intentions (her will and her feelings). As an example, consider how often we see girls embracing one another, or kissing one another on the cheek as they are about to go off to class. On the day I returned to school after a five week absence, I was warmly greeted by all of my students, but it was only girls who stepped forward to throw their arms open to hug me. And this was a very natural gesture for them; for they more naturally allow their own personal intentions to manifest physically.

On the other hand, I know some boys who were just as happy at my return, but they were not prepared to hug me in order to prove it. The reason is that for the male, his body is more of an instrument, or as David Knight puts it: "His body is a shield that hides his feelings." There is a greater distance between a man's body and his personal feelings and intentions. What he does with his body is not necessarily an expression of his deepest and innermost self.

It was precisely this point that caused me to lose an argument with a former student of mine on the issue of fighting in professional hockey. I had suggested that hockey players who drop their gloves and assault one another in front of 20,000 spectators should be charged with assault. To my surprise, he became incensed at my remark. For he was a serious hockey player, and thus proceeded to argue that fighting was not as horrible as I was making it appear. The players may fight, but what we don't see is that later, after the game, the two will often buy one another a drink while the incident is forgotten. Their fighting was not the expression of a deep-seeded resentment. From this angle he was right, and his point took a great deal of strength out of my argument and rendered it far less effective than I had intended it to be.

But this is not quite the case for girls. It seems much more difficult for girls to let go of a grudge. A girl puts much more of herself into a fight, and her physical violence is to a much greater extent an expression of her deepest self (her personal will or intention). This is because a girl is more naturally integrated than a boy. And that is why there seems to be a greater gravity and a more intense darkness that overshadows female violence.

Implications for Sex

This natural integration in the female and ...