Women prefer the top 10% of men. They give the time of day to maybe the mid 50%. Anyone below that are the runts of the litter, the reject pile. So if you’re a heterosexual male and an adult virgin, by definition you’re a reject, just like a fat woman who men won’t service or will discriminate against is a reject.
Notice my numbers are relative. A man who might be king of the town in a small town, sleeping with a dozen women, might not have a prayer of getting even a first date in, say, LA.
It’s truth. And the OP is right. We shouldn’t shame people. Most of the reasons someone is a virgin are due to biological factors barely within their control. By definition for every person who is tall or a good earner there’s going to be several men who are shorter and/or poorer. And this is going to be the case even if all the men in your hypothetical sample are doing the best they can consciously do to be the best men they can be.
It would be delusional for me to think that everyone has guessed that I’m a virgin.
But it also would be delusional for me to think that no one has ever wondered about it. Or that no one cares.
It’s not like it weighs heavy on my mind or keeps me up at night, mind you. It’s just that I don’t find it useful to tell myself something that I can’t possibly know (i.e., other people aren’t thinking certain things about me).
It’s arguably unreasonable to think nobody has ever wondered, or doubtful that nobody has ever wondered. It’s not even in the same galaxy as delusional to think it.
Having sex isn’t a big deal to adults. It’s part of growing up, like learning to drive a car, getting in trouble in school, or having a job. There’s an incredibly strong presumption that if you’re an adult, you’ve had sex at least once. You have to behave incredibly strangely to stand out so much that someone would start to wonder if you’re a virgin. And again, even if someone wonders, it’s extremely unlikely they care.
According to you, all one has to do is act like a nerd for it to cross someone’s mind.
Frankly, I’m sick of being lectured to by people who haven’t had my experience. Have you ever been a 38 year old woman who doesn’t have stories to share about dating and romance? Because I am telling you, if you aren’t participating in the on-going discussions your peer group is having, then it doesn’t take long for them to guess. How do I know this? Because people have guessed. It’s not a daily thing, but it happens frequently for me to not be under any delusion that no one can possibly tell.
This year, I have made a concerted effort to socialize more. The downside is that I have noticed that my lack of experience is not so easy to hide. People can tell not because I go around with a sandwich board and a bullhorn, but because I can only act as the interviewer in certain conversations. People aren’t stupid. When someone is talkative when it comes to certain subjects and then real quiet when it comes to others, it’s noticeable.
I mean, shit. It’s one thing to tell someone that they are responsible for their own feelings. It’s quite another to do as you’re doing by telling someone they’re totally imagining that there’s even a “thing” to feel insecure about. If you aren’t doing the same kind of dance that everyone’s doing, people wonder about you. And a subset of these people will care enough to think bad things.
This is not something you should be disagreeing with me about, since you pretty much said as much upthread.
No. It’s just an insult mean people say. It’s not something they’re seriously thinking about. Of course people pick insults with a hint of truth to them, but that doesn’t mean they’re literally assuming nerds are virgins when they make mean jokes.
As a 38 year old virgin, you have no idea how small of a thing it is to have had sex at least once to the rest of us. I didn’t say nobody would pick up on the fact that you get awkward about relationships or seem uncomfortable talking about physical intimacy. Of course people are going to pick up on that. It’s a pretty big leap to jump to the conclusion that you’ve never had sex even once, not even some clumsy awkward sex. You can suck at intimacy and relationships without being a virgin.
If I meet a 38 year old unemployed guy who gets uncomfortable whenever I talk about the great job interview I had recently or how much I enjoy my new job, I’ll assume he might have had a disappointing career. Maybe been out of work a long time. I’m not going to assume he’s never ever had a job unless he’s so insecure he makes a big thing of it and really wears it on his sleeve, which is his issue not ours.
[QUOTE=monstro]
People can tell not because I go around with a sandwich board and a bullhorn, but because I can only act as the interviewer in certain conversations. People aren’t stupid. When someone is talkative when it comes to certain subjects and then real quiet when it comes to others, it’s noticeable.
[/QUOTE]
I’m sorry if I’m the first person to inform you that this is awkward and uncomfortable behavior.
Even if I’m listening and asking questions, I’m being awkward and uncomfortable? Even if I’m laughing at the funny parts and expressing sympathy at the unfunny parts, I’m being awkward and appearing uncomfortable?
The only way that I could not appear “awkward and uncomfortable” in this situation is by doing what, exactly?
If your point is that virgins can avoid being detected as long they act like everyone else, even in circumstances when this isn’t possible without being deceptive, then I guess I agree with you.
You said yourself people aren’t stupid and put 2 and 2 together. I’m sorry to say it, but we’re being not-stupid and picking up on the fact that you get awkward when talking about relationships or physical intimacy.
Yes, you can probably fake it if you want to. Or you can be yourself and get quiet during certain conversations where most people would continue to contribute. Honestly though, when you say it’s noticeable, what is noticeable is you not behaving like most adults do. Maybe calling it awkward and uncomfortable was too harsh, but it’s that deviance from how most adults will behave in that type of conversation that makes people think “ahh, she doesn’t seem to have any relationship experience…”
I don’t know how you can say all of this and then turn around and say that no one cares about one’s virginal status…or that someone who feels ashamed about it has only themselves to blame.
Personally, I don’t want to fake my life or personality. It wouldn’t be convincing fakery, first of all, and then secondly, why? Why fake it? If there’s nothing shameful about not having a sexual/romantic history, why should I do anything except do my best to hang in there until the conversation changes?
When someone starts talking about sports, I tend to go quiet too. Doesn’t mean I’m being “awkward and uncomfortable” in those situations, or that I should fake being a fangirl to avoid negative judgment. And a person who thinks bad things about me for not being involved in sports is a person I’d rather not be around anyway.
That’s because you have a blind spot for this huge middle ground area where people think you’re probably just inexperienced at relationships. It’s a much less “strong” assumption to make than that someone has NEVER had sex or a relationship. It’s a lot less binary.
I don’t think you have anything to feel ashamed about either.
It’s less awkward or uncomfortable because it’s so much more common to not be interested in sports. That said, I wouldn’t want to be friends with anyone who cares I’m not into sports either.
To me, I think it’s a semantics game to quibble over “virgin” and “inexperienced at relationships”. No one gives a person “credit” for the sexual abuse they experienced as a kid, or a childhood game of doctor that went a bit too far. If a person claimed they weren’t a virgin because they had such experiences, I think they’d be laughed out of the room.
And if I were a guy and I tried to convince my friends I wasn’t a virgin by citing my experience with a prostitute, I wouldn’t expect them to respect me any more than if I had claimed I was a virgin. Not unless they were 17-years-old or something.
Yeah but all those examples are really extreme. A 38 year old who doesn’t contribute to conversations about relationships may have been single for 5 years. Or maybe she dated a few guys in her 20s but they never went anywhere. Maybe she was married and it went really badly. Maybe she makes poor personal decisions and has sex with a lot of guys who never want anything more than a physical relationship even though she craves a meaningful emotional connection. Maybe she’s a lesbian who was raised in a very religious family and has experimented but isn’t comfortable enough in her own sexuality to really accept herself.
There’s literally dozens of possible “inexperienced” scenarios and actually being a virgin is only one of them.
I don’t know which applies and I’m not going to actually speculate, even in my own mind. All I’m thinking is “gee, Monstro doesn’t ever contribute to conversations about relationships. She must be inexperienced”.
I don’t know how many women you know, but ex boyfriends typically don’t fade from memory after five years. They are often mentioned whenever someone else starts talking about their triflin’, no-good boyfriend. That’s really their only purpose.
And a dry spell that’s decades long isn’t something that carries a stigma? It doesn’t send up any warning flags?
Neither of these things are positives.
I don’t want people thinking I’m closeted and/or repressed. This would be worse, IMHO, than just being a virgin.
And just about all of them are associated with negative qualities.
You are just one person. You might be thinking “she’s just inexperienced” and your thoughts don’t go anywhere else. Another person may think “I bet she’s a virgin!” and then their thoughts go somewhere negative. And that’s fine with me. I’m fine with people thinking negative thoughts about me. I’ve grown to accept the reality of this. It thickens my skin. Just don’t try and tell me you know better than I do about what people are thinking and why they are thinking it. Telling me that people are more likely to assume I’m a closested repressed homosexual than of being a virgin doesn’t change my mind at all about virginity having a giant stigma. It just confirms it even more.
Those were just four examples I thought up on the fly. I could respond and keep the hypotheticals going but the truth is people would never even get that far. They’d be more likely to think “hmm, I wonder why monstro never speaks of her relationships. She must be either very private or very inexperienced (but not necessarily a virgin)”.
You’re totally right. People see romantic relationships as highly positive. I’m obviously not a woman but my understanding is that’s especially hard for women. All I’m saying is I think people are much more likely to conclude you must be some crazy cat lady adult spinster than a virgin crazy cat lady adult spinster. I wish I could tell you nobody views the former negatively but unfortunately I’d be lying.
I’m just not sure how you could know so well what non-virgins are thinking about you, since you’ve never been one. It’s an understandably sensitive subject for you so it’s natural to fear it’s some kind of eye-catching part of you. The truth is, most people stop thinking about virginity in their teenage years. Late bloomers by their early twenties. It’s not on anyone’s radar as far as I know.
Again, I wasn’t trying to list other specific things people might conclude about you based on you never talking about relationships or sex. I was trying to say that there are so many possibilities that it wouldn’t make sense to conclude one in particular.
By the way, can I ask, do you go into your interview-mode moreso when relationships are discussed or physical intimacy? I have a hard time imagining that sex is a common topic of conversation. I’m pretty sure the last time I talked about sex was in August with an extremely close friend. She and her girlfriend weren’t having sex regularly and I felt pretty damn out of place myself because I don’t know much about lesbian sex lives.
Talk about relationships and dating is far more common, but even then I think a generally good ability to mentalize is a lot more helpful than drawing on my own experience. It’s fairly rare people are talking about things I’ve dealt with in my own personal life, but it doesn’t relegate me to purely asking questions.
I know because people have come out and asked me. It’s not like all this is theoretical for me, and that I’m just being a hypersenstive paranoid freak. People have put me on the spot and I have either told them the truth (rare) or I’ve played coy. It does not take a genius to figure that if these people have thought it, other people have thought it too and just don’t have the balls to ask.
And? Both of these things carry enormous stigma. If 50% of the people are thinking “crazy cat lady who once got it on with a nerd in high school”, 25% of the people are thinking “crazy cat lady who is closeted and repressed”, and just 5% are thinking “I wonder if she’s a virgin! And hehehe, she’s got a cat too!”, then my surmise is absolutely correct. While yours is not.
What would be wonderful is that no one thinks anything about not me participating in the dialog. Yeah, yeah, maybe this is an unrealistic dream to have. But wouldn’t it be great if a person who doesn’t talk that much about his or her relationships could be seen as a non-crazy, non-cat person who just has a deep private life? Perhaps if this stigma were to go away, folks like the OP wouldn’t feel so defensive about their situations. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to question the unfavorable portrayals they make of a person who deviates from the norm. Rather than going to something like “she’s repressed and/or bad at relationships”, maybe they can consider that not everyone enjoys the dating game. Or, maybe not everyone enjoys talking about the dating game. And these things are 100% okay.
No, I wouldn’t say sex is a common topic. But relationships are, so sex does occasionally come up. Especially in relation to the topic of dating and hooking up.
So how many? 1%? 5%? 10%? I still say the overwhelming majority of people just don’t care that much to ever think about it.
And they’re two different things. It doesn’t really matter if you think they’re both negative. They’re still different.
I’ve met people who won’t openly talk about any aspect of their private life and I’ve always assumed they’re intensely private people. When you talk about other aspects of your life but never relationships, people are going to figure out that you’re inexperienced at that aspect of life. It’s not even a moral issue, it’s just basic reasoning.
Personally I think it’s unrealistic to think the negative stigma will ever go away, but I’m all for the mean-spirited judgmental part of it to evaporate.
And yet comedians are able to bank on the fact that people find the notion hilarious, correct?
I’m not going to play the “guess a number” game. Neither of us know what other people are thinking at any given time. But it’s stupid to think that no one is thinking about it, given the memes embedded in popular culture (crazy cat lady).
I see them arising from the same bigotry. If you ain’t getting none or actively pursuing getting some, something is wrong with you. You’s a crazy cat lady closeted homosexual relationship-killer. Or you’s a big ole virgin LOL. You seem to think the differences matter somehow. They don’t.
I don’t mind people thinking I’m inexperienced, because 'tis the truth. I’d just love it if that could be the end of it. No psychoanalysis or diagnosing. No peculiar looks or chortles. No “crazy cat lady” jokes. No pitying.
People probably felt this way about homosexuality. The gay stigma isn’t gone by a long shot, but it has lessened a whole lot just by straights raising their own awareness and being less judgmental.
It’s a stupid cheap laugh though. It doesn’t mean it’s on the public’s mind.
Crazy cat women aren’t virgins.
They’re definitely related.
Anyone in your shoes would want that. My original point was that people making peculiar looks or chortles or cat lady jokes are being mean and ‘shaming’ you. It’s wrong and uncalled for. On the other hand, people analyzing you and pitying you are just failing to behave the way you’re prefer, which is different. It’s not shaming you, even if it makes you feel stigmatized. I mean if they’re expressing those opinions aloud they’re just being plain rude, but I suspect you’d pick up on it even if it was never openly stated and still feel stigmatized.