Celibacy is not interesting because ideology, the logic of an idea, is not interesting.
Virtue in abstinence is easy enough. What is not easy is to participate fully and openly in life, in sex, in relationships without using anyone or anything for what one imagines to be gain.
To replace material rewards with spiritual rewards is just to trade one form of ambition for another. The fact that one trades in spiritual goods -- prayers, rituals, self-abnegation -- does not mean that one acts virtuously. You cannot achieve virtue through an act of calculation, even if your'e calculating with religious tokens.
At a time when sexual relations with a woman were entirely up to the male and meant either the prostitution of the woman (outside of marriage) or the prostitution of the woman ( within marriage), it makes some sense that celibacy seemed the only state in which chastity could be attained. (I would argue that spirituality is not ahistorical. This is one of the reasons why the study of history is so interesting.)
But in a time when women understand themselves to be sexual subjects -- having the freedom to choose, accept, or reject a partner, without courting social ostracism or death, chastity can include sex....as paradoxical as that may sound.
Joanna