"I’ll be 25. I can’t rent my first car as a virgin. They’ll know."

August 6, 2015 3:03 PM

The Atlantic: On "Late"-in-Life Virginity Loss. Vice's predictably Vice-ier take. Meanwhile, Dr. Nerdlove and Gawker's After Hours have advice.

Previously:

What it's like to be a 58-year-old virgin.
The Hairpin's interviews with virgins.

posted by Rustic Etruscan (15 comments total)

From The Atlantic: "According to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, survey respondents who lost their virginities 'late'—a mean age of 22—more frequently reported sexual problems than those who lost it at a 'normative' age—a mean age of 17.5, in this study." I'd be interested in the direction of causality: my guess would be that someone who is already aware of some possible or likely sexual dysfunction (e.g. due to a genetic condition or prior problems masturbating) would probably be less willing to have sexual intercourse. The article alludes to this later when discussing adults who experienced sexual abuse in youth.

From further: "we tend to have sex with people we know the least well". What?
posted by koavf at 10:51 PM on August 6, 2015

I remember really liking the last (I think?) Hairpin interview with a virgin, Bette.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 11:13 PM on August 6, 2015

Sorry, but no.

"Virginity" is not actually A Thing.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:29 AM on August 7, 2015 [5 favorites]

I agree we're all fucked, and I accept your apology.
posted by Segundus at 2:08 AM on August 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was 29, that is if you count oral sex as losing your virginity. If not, well, then I'll be the 40 year old virgin soon. Still not really interested in sex with somebody else obviously.
posted by ZeroAmbition at 2:21 AM on August 7, 2015

I still don't know why people care about it, unless they're trying to repel unicorns.
posted by Foosnark at 6:03 AM on August 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

I love how Vice-y that Vice article is. When you read the Atlantic one first, the Vice one almost seems like a parody.
posted by dogwalker at 8:31 AM on August 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Just a quick content heads-up on the Hairpin interview with Bette Gin and Broadband posted: it discusses her eating disorder.

I have to vigilantly keep myself from reading about that stuff right now, this is not a call-out for it not being tagged, I just wanted to warn any others who might have the same issue.
posted by Juliet Banana at 9:19 AM on August 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

What is this orgasmic meditation class?
posted by persona au gratin at 10:59 AM on August 7, 2015

What If We Covered the Material for a Vice Story in the Voice of The Atlantic
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:04 AM on August 7, 2015

Foosnark:

"I still don't know why people care about it, unless they're trying to repel unicorns."

It's mainly an issue if you still would like to have sex some day. If potential partner finds out you're over thirty and have never had sex before it is often assumed that you'll be a lousy fuck. Either that or there is something wrong with you that everyone else has avoided that they haven't noticed yet.
posted by charred husk at 12:39 PM on August 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

If potential partner finds out you're over thirty and have never had sex before it is often assumed that you'll be a lousy fuck. Either that or there is something wrong with you that everyone else has avoided that they haven't noticed yet.

This makes me so sad. I don't feel this way at all, but I suppose it probably is the dominant narrative about virginity in American society. I feel like the focus on virginity is mostly a holdover from the way men used it to control womens' sexuality, and that it doesn't have a lot of value as a concept outside of that framework. Ultimately, what about the concept of virginity is useful, beyond the way it enforces sexual purity as a virtue for women and enforces patriarchy by devaluing men who have less experience? I can't really think of anything about it that is meaningful or useful outside of those contexts. It just seems to make people feel bad all around. That said, I completely understand why it's still important to lots of people - I just wish it weren't so.

It's not even a half-decent proxy for suitability as a partner. I've been with partners who had more and less experience, and to be perfectly honest, experience has had almost no correlation with how much I enjoyed myself. Lots of guys are experienced but still terrible in bed, and lots of guys are new but still great lovers. It's more about chemistry and attentiveness than it is about experience, I think. Being as honest as I can with myself, I really don't think it would change my feelings of attraction for someone if they told me they had never had sex. Maybe that's different for other women? I don't know. This being the internet, I'm actually slightly surprised that there aren't places for men who haven't had sex to meet women who find that appealing. I would be shocked if there weren't women who thought it was a turn-on, in the right situation.

The patriarchy really hits men especially hard on this issue. Adult women who haven't had sex are certainly subject to a ton of sexist judgment for sure, but there's something about the way we treat men with less experience that is just so cruelly demeaning, and even fundamentally emasculating. Just reading these articles, I realized that I would feel tremendously, profoundly isolated if I were a man who hadn't had sex. Not only does it invite a raft of personal judgments when you disclose that to people, but even the people who aren't judging you tend to respond with sympathy/compassion which can easily be read as pity, which would feel even more emasculating. It seems like a very difficult and isolating double-bind.

Then there's the way that shitty behavior from other men poisons the well. I know that some men who identify as "forever-alone" (for lack of a better term) are associated with some scary, shitty behaviors, and those people give everyone a bad name. They make women feel like they need to be more cautious about men who haven't been "vetted" by other women, because some of those guys have such toxic and downright dangerous entitlement issues. But those behavioral red flags should stand on their own, not just be a reflexive judgment on someone because of their sexual experiences. Shaming adults for being less experienced is just as pernicious as slut-shaming adults for being "too" experienced. I would love to see people in social justice circles work harder to keep virgin-shaming rhetoric out of their vocabularies too - all it does is further uphold toxic masculinity.

Thanks for the great, thought-provoking post!
posted by dialetheia at 2:07 PM on August 7, 2015 [14 favorites]

I feel like the focus on virginity is mostly a holdover from the way men used it to control womens' sexuality, and that it doesn't have a lot of value as a concept outside of that framework.

Firstly, let me state that the concept of virginity is an anachronistic holdover that we could do without in todays world.

However, I think "the way men used it to control womens' sexuality" is a little simplistic.

In more primitive times, well before contraception and social safety-nets, probably even before organised religion, sex before marriage was likely to produce babies. The 'no sex before marriage' rule eventuated to stop men from skipping out on their responsibilities as fathers.

Marrying a virgin meant that the offspring one brought up were less[*] likely to have been fathered by someone else.

Of course once organised religion got into the game, it became 'sex before marriage is bad, M'kay', or even just 'sex is bad (especially if you enjoy it)'.

[*] Now that we have DNA testing, we can see this happened a lot more than most people thought.
posted by HiroProtagonist at 8:55 PM on August 9, 2015

Why Do We Judge Virgins? - "Rachel Hills on her new book, ‘The Sex Myth,’ which explores our cultural obsession with sex and our disdain for prudishness, vanilla tastes, and virginity."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:41 AM on August 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Interesting link, tmotat!

To get into the Sex Myth itself, part of what you explain is that we have vast misperceptions of how much sex other people are having. One survey you reference found that 40 percent of respondents had hooked up with three or fewer people throughout college, and that one in five hadn’t hooked up in college at all. You then take it further: not only do we think that people are having tons more sex than they really are, but we attach a moral value to sexual openness and performance. We used to uphold being pure and chaste, and now it’s not just that we accept promiscuity and adventurousness, it’s that it has become the new imperative.

I think of the Sex Myth as the weight that we attach to sex, and this idea that whatever we do when it comes to sex has huge meaning and is greatly significant. Sex is the window into our attractiveness, sex is the greatest pleasure that we can have, sex is a measure of how intimate our relationships are and how intimate other people want to be with us.

But then on the flip side, we’ve also got this idea that sex is terribly dangerous and if people are doing it in the wrong way, terrible things will befall our society. In our society, we often think of those two threads—the celebration of sex and the condemnation of it—as being the opposite of one another. But what I argue is they’re actually two parts of the same force, which is this idea, as I say, that whatever we do in relation to sex is really significant and holds this heavy weight. That makes it harder for many of us to behave sexually in a way that is true for us, or to do that without anxiety.

[...]

I’m wondering what the feminist response will be, because I feel like some parts of the feminist world are very invested in the importance of sex as a source of liberation. And you’re kind of saying, well, this is actually unhelpful.

Mmhm. But, on the other hand, I’m not saying that it’s unhelpful to have lots of sex or to have casual sex or to be sexy. Those things are all fine and they can be empowering and liberating on an individual level. I think what isn’t helpful is the idea that this is what empowerment looks like, and this is what you have to be doing, and if you’re not, then there is something wrong with you or you’re being repressed. It’s just a slightly more expansive view of sexual freedom. And while there are absolutely some feminists who will disagree with that, I also think that it’s a view of sexual freedom that feels really intuitive to people younger than me who I speak to.

The feminists invoked in the second question there smell a little like straw to me, but on the other hand, I'm not familiar with the literature.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:29 PM on August 16, 2015 [2 favorites]