You are in a priviledged position. You spent your formative years surrounded by awkward nerdy guys decades before social media was a thing. So OF COURSE you aren’t going to know that people use “virgin” as a slur. And presumably you have spent the majority of your adulthood in a sexual relationship. So OF COURSE your ears aren’t going to pick up on all the ways that people (particularly guys) make subtle and not-so-subtle digs at the sexually inexperienced.
Imagine for a moment you aren’t and never were an awkward guy. You are a hella cool guy who just happens to be a 25-year-old virgin. You are playing a game with a group of friends and one of them trash talks another player with a jab about his lack of sexual history (maybe something, "You need to stop wacking off so much and go get laid with a real girl instead the sex doll you keep under your bed, you incel! "). Can you not see how you might internalize some shame listening this, despite knowing you are neither “awkward” or “incel”? Can you imagine how that shame might keep you from talking openly about your lack of experience?
Just because you can’t imagine shit like this happening does not mean it doesn’t happen.
Saying that (generic) you prefer romantic/sexual relationships with your own gender, or that you have not yet had a romantic/sexual relationship are not exactly the same thing, but they aren’t a million miles apart, either. I don’t see why the former should be greeted with support and encouragement, and the latter is best not talked about.
And Kovitlac, please compare it to pooping again; that’ll prove there’s no stigma attached.
It should be exactly the same as for people preferring relationships with the opposite gender.
Not that any kind of virgin shaming is appropriate, but if you don’t want to take the risk, just don’t advertise your status.
Just to be clear, I consider any time of virgin shaming (or awkward person shaming) to be wrong.
In your example, how much of the shame of the “cool” virgin is self-directed as opposed to coming from others? If this person was of a religious bent, perhaps he has no shame since his lack of sexual experience is aligned with what he considers to be moral.
His friends probably assume he is not a virgin.
How do the friends know the other player has no sexual history? Has he blathered about it, or do they assume it based on his awkwardness?
I’m not denying that this person would be upset by the conversation, but this applies to any area where a person has fallen short of his or her goals. It could be the college you get into. It could be your job. It could be your car. It could be your house.
I could think of a similar scenario where a person would be upset if some guys make fun of a person for going to a community college, while our person only got into this fourth choice college. Even if that college is better than that of his friends, it might still trigger him.
BTW the assumption that the awkward person is a virgin seems a very incel thing. Incel in that they seem to think that the only option is sex with a hot woman (using their definition of hot) and anyone not likely to get this must be a virgin. So the guys in your story could be totally wrong.
Let’s say the other guy getting trashed-talked is a totally non-awkward, non-obnoxious guy. But he is fat and has a neckbeard. He wears hats (none fedoras) and likes sci-fi. He lives with his parents, like lots of early 20-somethings do. But he’s self-confident and socially adept. He even has a couple of female friends. But he never a girl on his arm like a lot of his associates do in their social media. Do you understand why a guy like that might catch the “incel” label from a knuckle-dragger?
Do you honestly think the only people who are “virgin-shamed” are people who go around “blathering” about their virginity? Do you think this is how other kinds of bullying work too? Like, do you think women who are slut-shamed must be going around blathering about their escapades? Or people who are gay-shamed must be blathering about their same-sex crushes?
Um, why are you presuming that having sex is everyone’s goals?
I also don’t get what larger point you are making. What, we can’t talk about virgin-shaming because everyone feels shame when their lack of success is ridiculed? That’s crazy bullshit logic. It’s like saying there’s nothing special or significant about anti-fat discrimination since everyone gets teased about their looks over the course of their lives.
Shaming people about those things is horrible. But shaming people over their virginity is horrible in a different way they shaming someone over what school they didn’t get into or what car they drive. Cuz, you know, sex is considered a universal goal. If you deny this, just look at your own words. Sexual activity with another person is considered the hallmark of a happy, healthy person. If a person is teased for not having a nice car, chances are they simply AREN’T going to internalize the idea that something is fundamentally wrong with them. They may feel like they are loser, but they won’t feel broken or weird or ashamed of who they are as a human being. Because driving a nice car is not conceptualized as a biological imperative the way sex is.
Your privilege is showing again. Only snobs and elitists make fun of someone over the college they attend. If someone teased me for having attended public schools instead of Ivies, I would just turn around and tease them for being the kind of elitist asshole who cares about stupid stuff like this.
Virgin-shaming is something folks do no matter what socioeconomic strata they inhabit. Sex is something everyone is expected to want and attain. It’s the low hanging fruit of biological functioning. It’s something almost all young people talk about quite a bit. College choice, in contrast, is something geeks from MIT talk about. In quite a few circles, poking fun at someone for not going to a certain college will earn you a punch in the face. Virginity doesn’t work that way.
If someone were to create a thread talking about their disappointment and sadness over being rejected from their first three college picks, don’t you think they’d get a lot of friendly advice and assurances that everything was going to work out? There would be lots of posters telling that person that these things sometimes happens, but it will work out somehow. You can transfer after your second year, people would say. Ivy Leagues are overrated, people would say. Cheap is better anyway, people would say.
If someone were to create a thread talking about their disappointment and sadness they feel over their virginity, do you think that person would be treated with the same level of kindness and compassion? I do not think so. There would be a lot of tough love for that person, even if there was no reason to think they needed it. There would be people telling them to quit whining and look in the mirror and figure out what they are doing wrong. Hell, I might even be one of these people, depending on how much of a sadsack the OP is. There would be very few people who would be brave enough to assure the poster that they are OK the way they are and that there’s nothing wrong with them. There would be shitload of posters eager to diagnosis the poster’s “brokenness” and issue prescriptions for them.
Is this virgin-shaming? I don’t know. But I do know that “missing out on Harvard” and “adult virginity” are so far apart that I’m kinda wondering if you’re pulling my leg here.
And my point, which seems to be flying over your head, is that it doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong. Just like you don’t have to be morbidly obese to feel the stigma of fatness and you don’t have to be effeminate to feel the stigma of male homosexuality, you don’t have to be an awkward, Incel nerd to feel the stigma of virginity.
Why are you so poop-phobic? Pooping is a natural act of the body in eliminating waste. There’s nothing wrong with it, just like there’s nothing wrong with vomiting (other than that it could indicate illness, but that isn’t something blame on the individual), farting, etc. No one needs to know my pooping habits, just like they don’t need to know how much or how little sex I may be having. Unless I decide to share that information with them.
I’ll emphasize, for your benefit, that using it as a slur is gross and wrong. What I take issue with is the comparison of being a virgin to being gay (the ‘what, just keep it in the closet??’ comment).
Hmm, how did they know this woman was a virgin?
Last Sunday on an atheist call-in show, a woman called to say she was slipping away from religion but was held back because she believed in virginity before marriage. The hosts said that she didn’t need religion - that was her right, since she controlled her own body. You don’t understand, she said, I think that no one should have sex before marriage.
Was that what this woman wrote? Why write a column saying “I’m a virgin?” Who cares? But if you want to influence others, you’d write a column saying here is why I’m a virgin and here is why you should be also. Pushing back on that is not virgin shaming. (Not that it excuses being obnoxious to a potential interview subject.)
Same for the other case, with pornography. The pushback was not “you should watch porn also” but “leave me alone.”
I thought incel was a self-identification. In my experience guys who complain that it is tough to meet women get sympathy, not disdain. But not if they start blaming women like incels do.
And note that this problem is a social one. If this guy got a girlfriend, would his friends treat him differently depending on whether or not they had sex? How would they know unless he told them?
In an ideal world no one would shame anyone for anything, but living with your mother shaming is not something someone can avoid by not blabbing.
There is a big difference between these two cases. If a gay person is shamed for acting in public the same way a straight person would act, that’s worse than being shamed for private things.
I’m not. But the person in your example shouldn’t be distressed about sex if he doesn’t want it. (He should be distressed about his friends being dicks to another friend.)
I’ll say it again. In your example, the group is shaming on appearance, with supposed virginity a supposed result of unattractiveness. Do you think the person being shamed would be less disturbed if he wasn’t a virgin?
The other person isn’t being directly shamed at all. The “friends” seem to think he’s fine. Why would he be upset unless he was upset about being a virgin?
I look like I should be good at sports (at least when I was younger.) I’m not. If someone made fun of a person who looked unfit, and thus was terrible at sports, I’d be upset that they were beating up on him, but I wouldn’t be upset about the sports reference since I don’t give a shit about sports. If my dream was to be a star pitcher, though, I might be.
Sex is about as close to a universal goal as our species has. Which does not mean that every member of our species wants it.
A car by itself means nothing. A car as a symbol of social status means a lot. I don’t buy expensive cars. I drive my cars into the ground. My cars can have dents, which I don’t care about. I’m not car shamed because I can choose to buy a cheap car, I’m not forced to. I could afford a fancy car if I wanted one, I don’t.
Sex is also a sign of social status - for men at least, probably women too. Many rich men like to show off trophy girl friends. That’s why not much slut shaming for men.
Do you think the impact of being virgin shamed is going to be the same for someone who has turned down offers of sex from people they’d be interested in and for someone who has never had an offer? Hell, do priests and nuns get virgin shamed? Saying “you don’t know what you’re missing” is not virgin shaming. No more than telling someone to taste a new vegetable.
And is there a big difference between someone who has had sex once, and who perhaps didn’t like it, and someone who has never had sex? You can’t virgin shame the first person, can you?
You think it is just making fun? You think there isn’t a pecking order? My old company wouldn’t even talk to those who didn’t go to the “right” college. That’s a lot more harmful than shaming.
It’s not a matter of public school versus Ivies - no one gets teased for going to Berkeley.
Of course people who tease about this are assholes. So are virgin shamers. But it happens.
College choice is never talked about? Where, you clearly never had kids in high school. And yes, being interested in sex drives a lot of behavior. The reason for premarital sex is to check compatibility. Read up on dead bedrooms and the grief that drives. There are a lot more people not interested in going to college, and who do well not going to college, than people not interested in sex.
I wonder if people punch the HR departments of companies who don’t recruit at colleges they deem inferior in the face.
There have been threads like this, and my recollection is that most people are sympathetic and offer advice. Not much different from recommending taking an SAT prep course if you didn’t get into a first choice college.
Now, if the people say they didn’t get into college because colleges hate white people, or that they are virgins because women are evil who are only interested in guys with money, the reaction might not be as sympathetic.
And you are missing my point, which is that the “stigma” is more internal than external. No one can force you to feel bad about yourself. (Though that may be my position on the autism spectrum talking.) People can discriminate, and I’m far more concerned about actively hurting people who are not considered mainstream than shaming.
Virginity, unlike so much stuff, is a choice, assuming one has opportunities. That’s unlike being gay, unlike having the brains to get into Harvard, unlike having movie star looks.
I’m an atheist, by choice. In some parts of the country a much worse thing than being a virgin. Religious people can’t shame me. I’m happy with my choice.
If someone is paid to write a column–which presumably she was–then obviously someone cares. You may not care, but obviously someone does since someone actually read the damn thing.
Why write something like that? Well, because virgins are often portrayed as awkward, socially inept, prudish, pitiable weirdos. Maybe she wrote that column to help dispel the stereotype and thus dispel the stigma. It’s the same reason why people write any self-disclosure piece. She may have also been writing to help other virgins not feel so alone. “I’m X and I’m proud” is age-old.
Why would you assume that was her motive?
Most importantly, why are you even going down this rhetorical path? People get teased for their sexuality or lack thereof without even opening their mouth. It amazes me that this is unimaginable to you, since you generally strike me as a wise and intelligent person.
Maybe we inhabit different universes or something, because I see a lot more disdain than sympathy. I’m not saying I don’t see sympathy. But it is frequently paired with a whole lot of tough love. If you are over a certain age and you write a post expressing despair over your lack of success in finding someone, you will have to endure internet tough guys like this guy, who think that guys who are struggling to connect with women are best described as “shitheads”. Yeah yeah, he was being self-depreciating and over-the-top. But study some of the other attitudes expressed in that thread and you will see why a guy might hesitate before admitting that he hasn’t had much romantic success.
You can’t imagine a situation where a group of guys are hanging out and the conversation turns to their first time? Maybe Virgin Guy doesn’t want to lie to his friends and he tells them the truth. I mean, you can’t say that virginity is nothing to be ashamed about and also admonish someone for bringing it up in conversation. If it’s no big deal, why shouldn’t someone talk about it?
A person can avoid religious bigotry by not blabbing about their religion/ethnicity.
A person can avoid homophobia by not blabbing about their same-sex spouse.
A person can avoid ableism by not blabbing about their learning disability.
A person can avoid classism by not blabbing about their socioeconomic background.
A person can omit all kinds of details about their life to make their lives easier. They can also fabricate details too. I know all about these games because I do them all the time. These are shitty games. Upthread I mentioned eating lunch with mean girls who talked shit about the unmarried, childless, no-boyfriend-having secretary. I could have let them know that I’m unmarried, childless, and no-boyfriendless too. But I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to be the next punching bag. It sucks having to hide like this. It sucks having to make up a story about your sexual or romantic life just so a conversation doesn’t get awkward. If you don’t know how this feels, maybe you should pause for a moment and consider that you are not in the best vantage point to have an informed opinion about this topic.
How is telling one’s friends, “I don’t have romantic/sexual experience” akin to sharing with them “private things”?
Here’s a realistic conversation.
Friend A: Did you date anyone in high school?
Friend B: Nope. Did you?
Friend A: Of course I did! Are you seriously telling me you don’t have any experience, bro? Not even first base?
Friend B: I’ve had crushes on a couple of girls, and I took one girl to the prom. But that’s it.
Friend A: Sorry, man. That’s really gotta be tough. <swallows back laughter>
A couple of weeks later, Friend C (who swaps gossip with Friend A) playfully calls Friend B an incel.
Do you think this is Friend B’s fault?
My hypothetical didn’t place you in the shoes of the neckbeard. It put you in the shoes of the bystander–the guy that’s not a fat neckbeard but who happens to spend his evenings wacking off to porn because he doesn’t have a girlfriend and has never had one–unbeknowst to his social circle. The fat neckbeard may not give a fuck about being called an “incel” because maybe he has a girlfriend and gets plenty of pussy. The hypothetical was never about that guy, yet for some reason you’re making it all about him. WHY IS THAT?
Because people aren’t logical rational creatures all the time. Feelings are inherently irrational. I don’t have any problem being a government scientist, for instance. I love my career. But whenever I think about my graduate advisor, I feel some shame because I know how she feels about scientists like me. I remember what she used to say about scientists like me when I was her student. Intellectually I know that feeling shame over this doesn’t make any sense. And yet for the past 15 years, the shame hasn’t abated completely.
I love being single. I love not being burdened by relationships. But when those mean girls were ragging on my coworker a couple of weeks ago, I felt second-hand shame. You can lecture me all you want about how stupid this is, but it isn’t going to make me “feel” the right way. Sorry.
I have Tourette’s. My tics have been pretty bad lately and I have gone back to therapy just to have someone to help me deal with the feels. My therapist tells me that my tics aren’t anything to be embarrassed about. People know you can’t help them, she says. So don’t feel bad! she says. I find this frustrating and insensitive. It’s like she’s suggesting that my feelings of embarrassment aren’t 100% normal and understandable. Like her ass wouldn’t be feeling the exact same way if she were in my shoes. I know my tics are neurologically-driven and that I can’t help them. My embarrassment is not due to self-blame or hatred. It’s due to the fact that I don’t want to look weird. IMAGINE THAT! As a social creature, I just want to fit in. I want people to like me and to consider me goodfolks. I don’t want the stigma of crazy weirdo hanging over me.
99.9% of people just want to fit in. They don’t want to be seen as a weirdo-in-a-bad-way. They don’t want to be the subject of a Very Special conversation. They don’t want to be the subject of ridicule. Shaming is always about singling someone out and treating them like they are a weirdo-in-a-bad-way. People can feel shame even when they aren’t actively trying to feel shame. It’s derpy to try to play the “why?” card here. Why do people feel anything? People gonna people, that’s why.
Well great for you! I wish I had a box of scoobie snacks to give you, but the store didn’t have any left. The corona virus ate them all.
Really, who cares how stoic you are? Seriously, who woulda guessed that an older middle-aged man with a lot of conventional symbols of success under his belt does not internalize shame for his lack of sports prowess! How does your example help a 20-something male not feel shame over his lack of sexual prowess? I can rattle off a list of trivial things I’m not ashamed about either. We all can. You aren’t that special, man.
Sex can be a status symbol. It can also be an indicator of one’s social skills and mental/physical health. The kind of car you drive, not so much.
I think virgins who are depressed over their state are always going to be folks who don’t want to be virgins. So yeah, shaming will impact them harder.
I don’t think “you don’t know what you’re missing” is shaming, but I do think it can be an obnoxious response depending on the conversation. If someone asks me if I’ve ever had sex and I say no and they come back with “you don’t know what you’re missing”, well, that’s a shitty thing to say. I don’t go around telling people they don’t know what they’re missing out on all nilly-willy, so I don’t know why I need to listen to that kind of thing from someone about something I have no interest in.
But if I am telling people that sex is overrated and everyone who has sex is a stupidface, then by all means tell me that I don’t know what I’m missing.
Bro, you seem really intent on overthinking this. I don’t know why. What’s your angle here?
I never denied that it happens. Only it doesn’t happen nearly as much as virgin-shaming. This may surprise you, but most people don’t go to college and don’t give a fuck about college. It’s privileged nonsense to analogize virgin-shaming (or any other kind of identity shaming) to college snobbery. I don’t even know why you’re doing this. No one is arguing that virgin-shaming is the only shaming out there.
The cluelessness in your responses is exhausting. I’m going to stop right here because I just can’t anymore. You have a lot of thoughts and opinions about something that you don’t have any first-hand experience with, and it shows.
Being attracted to the same gender is perfectly natural to some segment of the population. There’s nothing wrong with it, just like there’s nothing wrong with being a virgin. No one needs to know your sexual preference, unless you decide to share that information with them.
That used to be the policy in the U.S. military; remember “don’t ask, don’t tell”? That wasn’t good enough. People didn’t want to have to hide a part of their identity.
You clearly think that there’s some clear difference between virginity and sexual orientation. What you haven’t done is explain it. You’ve compared virginity to other natural bodily functions. How 'bout you tell us what’s different between homosexuality and virginity, such that one can be discussed openly and the other is best kept to oneself.
If a random dude started sharing his sex habits with me at a bar, whether he’s sexually active or not, I’m going to be distancing myself from him, because I don’t give a damn about his sex life. If, however, that guy happened to be a friend and he wants to talk about his struggles with being a virgin, that’s entirely different.
If a random dude came up to me and mentioned having a boyfriend in passing, that’s a conversation I’m cool with continuing. His orientation isn’t by business either way, but his homosexuality is probably a pretty big part of his identity. Being a virgin is only as big a deal as that person makes it.
I don’t feel any of the above reactions makes me stand out in any way.
Well in fact bizarrely there was a film a few years ago called The 40 Year Old Virgin which I saw a few times and obviously somebody must have thought here’s a good idea for a film that it was s bit odd that someone would be 40 and be a virgin. The idea people might actually think there was something wrong with them and say something like You need to get laid, bro! And that they feel people should be having sex and if they don’t for some religious reasons or because they prefer to, people might actually think it’s odd. But at the end of the day it shouldn’'t matter what they do then and things like this.
I think this is a valid point. Losing your virginity takes the co-operation of at least one other person.
If you’re a virgin because you’ve decided to remain a virgin, then it’s nobody else’s business. But if you’re a virgin because everyone else has decided that they don’t want to have sex with you, then it probably is a poor reflection on you.
Why did you remind me that movie exists? :smack: I haven’t seen it, and honestly, it isn’t one I care to see. I’m not a fan at all of the mockery of virginity. I don’t think it’s something anyone should be ashamed of; I just ALSO don’t think it’s something that’s anyone’s business but one’s own. Not that it need not ever be spoken about - I perfectly understand talking to a trusted friend or a partner you’ve been taking things slow with. Maybe in time the stigma that exists will shift. I hope it does.
It probably doesn’t make you stand out, but that doesn’t make it right. There was a strong backlash against showing gay characters on television (and still is, but somewhat lessened). Everybody knew there were gay people, they just didn’t want to be reminded of it. Those people weren’t right, either.
I haven’t seen it, either, but I understand there’s a happy ending; he has sex! Not a message that’s very accepting of virginity, is it?
Because this degenerate “culture” (I can’t put enough quotation marks around that word so I’m not even going to try) worships sex and sexuality. So if you’re not getting any (particularly if you’re a male) then there must be something deeply wrong with you.
In past times, the entire concept of male “virginity” was non-existent. When people used the term ‘virgin’ it almost always applied to females. Men simply could not be virgins in their minds. The concept of male virginity really began to rise with the so called sexual revolution and the societal euphoria around sex that followed in the following decades.
It’s been a loooong time since I watched it, but in my fading memory, the movie presented it as not really weird that he was a virgin, it was just a combination of circumstances. He was a regular attractive guy (and Steve Carrell is an attractive guy) who was normal and healthy but sort of shy. I didn’t find the movie offensive. It did portray his buddies/co-workers as being kind of dicks for their attitudes, but he was definitely the better adjusted of them. And it was a good excuse to watch Jane Lynch being funny.
I give up. You aren’t even listening to me. All of these things are naturally public. Which I said last time. We know people with children aren’t virgins. We know people we see having sex aren’t virgins. We know people we have sex with aren’t virgins. Anyone else is a guess.
Virginity is like atheism - it is the lack of something. That’s hard to prove. If I didn’t go to shul this week or this year that does not mean I’m an atheist. If I don’t go on a date this weekend or even this year that doesn’t mean I’m a virgin.
If anyone shares an intimacy with friends, any kind, and they laugh at it, maybe they need new friends. Or one could say “wouldn’t you like to know?”
Virgin shaming is bad. Any shaming is bad. Some people suck. But terrible stigma?
Might I remind you that there has never been a law excluding virgins from public office, unlike the case for atheists.
