Virginity and the State: Government Policies

Just as an initial clarification, I'd like to inform our readers that we have bounded our topic through choice of place. In order to keep the information consistent and contained, our research shall pertain to North America and in some cases when stated, Europe. Although it would be ideal to explore the concept of virginity in a variety of cultures and countries, within the confines of this assignment and our selected topic this will not be possible.

Having said that, I think we are all aware that it is often difficult to obtain research and statistics from just Canadian documents and therefore may need to resort to info relating to the United States and in some cases Europe as well.

I have already found some interesting articles relating to virginity and government policies, however this may be an area that has yet to be fully explored. So far I've found a lot of overlap between several of our selected topics, so communication will definitely be important. I have saved an article relating to both government policies and religion that I will bring to tutorial on Friday which should provide some valuable ideas to both sides.

I found this fairly fascinating article online which I think we could definitely incorporate into our presentation, or at least touch on within our work. Since we choose such broad topics to focus our research around (religion, government policies, education and the media) we left out quite a few interesting subtopics which are definitely worth mentioning.

The medicalization of sexuality is a topic we discussed in detail in class, and I think that the medicalization of virginity is a concept worth exploring as well.

Check it out:

http://www.theprovince.com/life/More+Canadian+women+getting+controversial+surgery+restore+virginity/3236826/story.html

As well, the Department of Justice website has some interesting information on it relating to state policies and virginity. For instance, the official legal age of consent to sexual activity is 16 years old. But here's a quote directly following that information:

However, the age of consent is 18 years where the sexual activity "exploits" the young person -- when it involves prostitution, pornography or occurs in a relationship of authority, trust or dependency (e.g., with a teacher, coach or babysitter). Sexual activity can also be considered exploitative based on the nature and circumstances of the relationship, e.g., the young person's age, the age difference between the young person and their partner, how the relationship developed (quickly, secretly, or over the Internet) and how the partner may have controlled or influenced the young person.

I found it very interesting that we provide one age of consent for regular sexual relationships, and a different one for exploitative relationships. By that I mean... why is there an age of consent for illegal or exploitative relationships at all? To me that just creates an atmosphere in which it becomes progressively easier to get away with illegal activity through the law. It mentions classifying exploitation based on the relationship of the two individuals to one another... then lists options such as teachers or coaches. Is there a difference between sexual relations involving a teacher and an 18 year old, versus a 16 year old? If the nature of the relationship is exploitative or is taking advantage of an individual, why is there a clarification regarding at what age this exploitation may begin?

I'm sure many of these questions and more, will be answered as further research is conducted. Thus far, I am having difficultly locating information regarding ages of consent in past years. If anyone comes across anything that looks like it could help, please let me know!

Also, I think as a group we need to make a decision based on when we are going to start our time frame... 1900, 1920, 1950? Ideas?