Tulipa said:
Well duh I have an agenda. I asked a question and expected to get a solid answer. Which so far has either been related to religion, cultural values or vague assertions of it being special "because". My above post was a brief overview because it is funny how this goes in waves.
And we did, because of cultural values/expectations.
Let's go into it deeper:
Virginity as a concept went as far back as Rome and Greece (afaik but could be predecessors) with the Vestal Virgins and the Greek understanding of it as a pious and moral virtue.
Now lets trace why this might be, entertain me as this is predominantly guess work, but working logically, virginity arose from a realisation, prior to medicinal beliefs, that sleeping around gave you STDs or some other negative effect. Say that then a decision was made to 'ban' such actions from happening, to minimise the risk of these negative effects. Now fast forward a few generations, this has been passed down as a practice but with the situation changing so that these negative effects are more or less non-existant in these future generations, the practice becomes somewhat obsolete or derided as old.
Now comes an epidemic, or some other sort of instance where they are again placed in a similar situation. Looking through the country-side, they see that the only people not affected are these people who still practice virginity and so it is seen as a way of offering a 'solution' or 'prevention' mechanism.
Now lets put this into the Early-Middle Ages, whereby the Church has now assumed a role of power and command. They as an institution see this solution and so implement something there which draws upon a previously held passage and then the act becomes enshrined not only in culture as a practical but also religious act.
This is vastly understating a possible history or understanding of it, but yeah.
