Threnos
Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed, in cinders lie.
Death is now the phoenix' nest;
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,
Leaving no posterity,
'Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.
To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.
'How ought man to rejoice that his chastity is always in his power; that, if he hath sufficient strength of mind, he hath always a competent strength of body to defend himself, and cannot, like a poor weak woman, be ravished against his will!'
When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
“It is as unfair to brand women with chastity as with unchastity," said Poll.
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The epidemic spread of HIV-Aids in Africa seemed to demand the use of condoms to prevent the transmission of the disease. But for Papa Wojtyla, the use of condoms was never justifiable, even in pursuit of an undoubted good like the halting of disease. The Church recommended chastity as the best and only protection against the disease, while highly placed Vatican spokesmen even harnessed dubious science to query the effectiveness of condoms as protection against the Aids virus. The world beyond the Church, and many within, found such intransigent teaching hard to comprehend – or to forgive.
"Mr Adams hath often told me, that chastity is as great a virtue in a man as in a woman. He says he never knew any more than his wife, and I shall endeavour to follow his example."
The will to live is most apparent in the sex drive; and in acting on that drive, we perpetuate suffering by creating another human being. Only through chastity, then, do we break the cycle of desire and end the suffering of mankind. But Mainlander’s emphasis on chastity is sometimes extreme; he went beyond the demand for chastity and called for nothing less than virginity, which was for him the only certain sign of self-denial (219). There is, of course, a great difference between chastity and virginity: a chaste person has learned to control his or her sex drives, though he or she has perhaps indulged in them; a virgin, however, has never acted on his or her sex drives. Mainlander insists on nothing less than virginity because—in a world of uncertain birth control—this alone ensures that life does not perpetuate itself. The demand for virginity caught the notice of Nietzsche, who dismissed Mainlander as the “sentimental apostle of virginity”.
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All reversals, enlightenments of wills, which we have seen up to this point, were reversals of wills, who still wanted life, and the hero, just like the Christian saint, sacrificed it only, i.e. he has contempt for death, because a better life is obtained. Now however the will should not only merely have contempt for death, but he should love it, because chastity is love to death. Unheard demand! The will to live wants to live and exist, being and life. He wants to exist for all eternity and since he can only stay in it through procreation, so concentrates his fundamental willing in sexual instinct, which is the most full affirmation of the will to live and significantly overrules all other urges and desires in intensity and power.
Now how can a human fulfill the demand, how can he overcome the sexual urge, which presents itself to every honest observer of nature as insurmountable? Only the fear of great punishment in combination with an all advantages outweighing advantage, can give human the force to conquer it, i.e. the will must enlighten itself at a clear and a completely certain recognition. It is the already above mentioned recognition, that non-existence is better than existence or as the recognition, that life is the hell, and the still night of death is the annihilation of hell.
Bataille introduces the all-or-nothing variant: she can choose to be chaste or she can choose to be whore. The assertion that she has even this choice—that she can choose chastity—ignores the whole history of the world, in which rape is the perpetual sexual motion of the male. Any so-called choice for sex is a choice for prostitution. Since she is prey “in so far as she is attractive,” she can choose chastity only insofar as she is not attractive. Once raped she is, ipso facto, attractive because she has attracted a predator. Once raped, retroactively speaking, she has chosen—chosen her prostitute nature. Since she is prey “in so far as she is attractive,” forced sex reveals the prostitute nature that is her true nature “in so far as she is attractive.” If a man wants her and takes her, she is a whore and has made a choice. No matter what is done to or with her, the idea is that she has chosen her “price” and “circumstances.”
"Dixon's head switched angrily to and fro in vain search for a clock; the inhabitants of this mental, moral and phsyical backwater, devoting as they had done for years their few waking moments to the pursuit of offences against chastity, were too poor, and were also too mean..."
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