This article is from WeChat official account:Simple psychology (ID: janelee1231)< span class = "text-remarks">, author: lakes and pools, Yu Ning, the original title: “” virgin discrimination “: after a 24-year-old virgin, is the social minority? “, the title picture comes from: Japanese drama “Adult High School”
Andy is forty years old this year and a virgin. He works in a small electrical supermarket.
His single life is full of flavors. The small room is equipped with fitness equipment, as well as a bunch of favorite games and toys…In short, it is very fancy.
One day, Andy inadvertently told his colleagues about the privacy of “I am a virgin”, and everything changed dramatically-the people around began to try their best to help him “break the place”:
Go find a drunk woman. No, it’s a drunk woman.
Picture/”Forty-year-old Virgin”
But when you read this story, do you have a feeling: It offends women, and offends “virgins” in a negative and shameful way?
Sex is one of the most widely used violence and bondage. This is true in women, but in men it appears in another, more concealed way.
“Virgin shaming(Virgin shaming)” is a kind ofThe concept of construction.
For example, when people ask a woman to “purely keep her virgin body”, they openly laugh at a virgin without any scruples: “Haha, loser”.
Picture/”Adult High School”, Haruma Miura as the virgin
1. How many modern “virgins” are there?
Virgin men are indeed a minority, but not as few as you think.
A 2009 China reproductive survey showed that 34% of men were still virgins at the age of 24.(Guo et al., 2012).
The virginity of young people of all ages in China. The abscissa is age and the ordinate is virginity rate. This is the first nationally representative survey of Chinese youth’s sexual behavior, jointly carried out by Peking University, the National Women and Children Working Committee of the State Council, and the United Nations Population Fund.
The proportion of virgin men in the United States is even lower(23%), and the virginity rate of men aged 20-24 in Japan is 40.5%(2010).
The data of the United States and Japan have a long time span, showing us the changes in the male virginity rate in recent years. The male virginity rate is not going down all the way, which may reflect that social culture is not static.
For example, the virginity rate of men of all ages in Japan was the lowest around 2005, and then there has been an upward trend. The percentage of Japanese men who maintain their virginity in each age group is as follows(Year refers to the survey time):
Data source: Japan’s National Institute of Social Security and Population Issues “Fifteenth (2015) Basic Survey of Birth Trends”, the header of the table means ” No sexual experience”.
Although the virginity rate fluctuates, as long as there is no sexual experience after the age of 24, it basically becomes a minority in society.
A virgin is similar to a stigma to some people, especially “old virgins.”
Forty American virgins have been interviewed by GQ Health News. They all said they felt a lot of pressure. When people around you know this fact, they tend to think that they are “poor, lonely, unhappy, and have some sexual problems.”
Some men feel that “there is no break” is a pity, it brings a sense of frustration to themselves, and fear that others will know that they areVirgin. Some people feel that they are unattractive, while others have problems with sexual orientation and gender identity.
Japanese drama “Escape is shameful but useful” The hero is afraid of being discovered that he is still virgin at 35.
Second, “male chastity” being laughed at and consumed
In fact, some people seem to think that men are born to have sex.
In a survey conducted by Berger and Wenger(1973), more than half of the respondents thought it was meaningless to talk about “male virginity” .
For example, Colton Underwood, a 26-year-old former professional football player, was put together into a ridicule because he revealed that he was a virgin in a show.
Some people angrily wrote down their opinions below the paragraph:
So women can be virgins till marriage, but men cant… sounds pretty sexist to me… (Women can be virgins, but men can’t be virgins , Sounds very “double standard”)
Another example:
A certain variety show in Japan found a 21-year-old “virgin” who had never had a girlfriend, and lived with an active actress who had filmed more than 500 AV movies for 3 days and 2 nights, to see what stories would happen between them.
Unsurprisingly, the actor seemed to urge the marriage to nurture the upper body of the great god, and persuaded the virgin: “It’s better to break a place quickly, there is nothing to save.”
Just because the girl was fed a bite of rice, the flower character was typed: This was an opportunity to usher in a major change in life.
When I watched this paragraph, I really suffered a work injury and automatically substituted into the “virgin perspective”: How big is it, without a girlfriend, is it “Diaosi’s life”?
I don’t understand such feelings either.
People seem to default that sexual experience is an important aspect of masculinity (Lewis&Casto, 1978). Men are seldom encouraged to think about whether they are “decisions of their own” when it comes to breaking a place.
In fact, you always hear that a woman “lost” her virginity, and you are less likely to hear someone say who “takes away” a man’s virginity—their peer pressure is “how to make yourself look More masculine”, for this, we need to find a “hunting target” as soon as possible to get rid of the virgin body… Whether it is a girlfriend or a one-night stand.
Because, virgins are unsocial, unattractive, and lack traditional masculinity.
3. Virgin Anxiety and Standard Narrative
In gender stereotypes, there has never been a single-sex victim.
Men’s internalization of “toxic gender temperament” has even spawned a class like “Incels” (involuntary singles ) Such a community.
According to Wikipedia’s description: Incels users are generally male, And may not have any sexual experience. They may be poisonous men, or some “goddess” Guanyin soldiers, but it is also possible that they are neither. This group of people later became a sub-cultural group in European and American societies.
Men gather in such communities and condemn women for not having sex with them. For them, sex is seen as an unquestionable need that must be met. “Women should meet my needs” is a norm, even a natural human right.
This is a seemingly extremely unreasonable community, and it will inevitably become a social unrest factor.
The standard virgin narrative tells us that men should lose their virginity at a certain age—for example, 18 or 21. The sooner he loses it, the better his life will be (regardless of the way through).
The virgin was not his fault, but everyone told him that the virgin was wrong, and his masculinity was questioned. So, who is to blame? Blame this society.
“Chastity” is related to power. It is regarded as a profound, meaningful, and visceral possession, which is related to our free decision-making power over the body.
It is a product of misogyny culture. For women, who they have sex with and when they happen are the “kidnapping factors” of her self-worth and are used to control women.
On the other hand, male virginity is vilified.
For a man, he is either masculine or not masculine enough, or he is too active for sex, or he is not active enough for sex.
In the contest of gender stereotypes, everyone is a victim.
Maybe, we all need some courage to resist.
Reference materials:
L. R. Petersen et al., Secularization and the Influence of Religion on Beliefs about Premarital Sex, SocialForces, 1997, DOI: 10.1093/sf/75.3.1071
B. Finer, Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954–2003, Public Health Reports, 2007, DOI: 10.1177/003335490712200110
W. Guo et al., The Timing of Sexual Debut Among Chinese Youth, International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2012, DOI: 10.1363/3819612 p>
Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949, Translated by Tao Tiezhu, China Book Publishing House, ISBN: 7-5068-0698-3
S. Benoit, What It’s Like to Be an “Old” Virgin, GQ Wellness Newsletter, 2019, https://www.gq.com/story/losing-virginity- later-on
This article is from WeChat official account:Simple psychology (ID: janelee1231), author: lakes and pools, Yuning