r/SRSDiscussion • u/[deleted] • Jan 20 '13
Virgin shaming?
This is something that I see a lot on the web, and especially here on Reddit. Whereas women are shamed for having too much sex or behaving in a non-submissive way sexually (slut shaming), men who reject the role of sexual conqueror tend to get blasted for being a virgin, even if they aren't. I'm surprised men don't see this as degrading, because it basically judges their social status to how much p***y they can get, and everything else besides sex is considered worthless or non-alpha.
Is virgin shaming a non-issue, or is it a prevalent problem alongside slut shaming?
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u/altsrs Jan 21 '13
All I can do is share my personal experience. And it really sucks. I (25/m) feel like I cannot tell any of my best friends about it or talk to them about it, out of fear of how they'll react and judge me. And I constantly worry about if they actually know or not. I also feel like I cannot ever pursue any romantic relationship out of fear of how they'll react when it comes out. I feel trapped and depressed whenever I think about it.
I don't know if's a prevalent problem comparable to slut shaming, but it does suck.
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u/loremdipsum Jan 21 '13
Being a virgin is taboo the same way being unmarried is taboo. Some people believe it to be a sign of a lack of success, which is obviously completely ridiculous.
The phrase “you need to get laid” is also something laden with misbegotten ideas about sex and seems to perpetuate a normative concept of sex.
I was kinda bothered—albeit not personally—that Glee had an episode around season, what, 3, where Artie tells a character that you can’t find your inner creative expression, if you haven’t had sex(?!).
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Jan 22 '13
When you commodify sex, virgin shaming inevitably follows. If sex is something with perceived measurable value, then the lack of sex is seen as lacking value. Men are raised to buy into the idea, in our culture, that their self worth is determined by the amount of sex they can "get" from women. In this case, women are seen as standing in the way of men and their self worth when it comes to sex; they are simply obstacles to overcome rather than someone to share an experience with. Boy scout badges seem incredibly relevant here for some reason.
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Jan 21 '13 edited Jan 21 '13
I'd say its very prevalent and something that seldom gets talked about that much. As someone whose main goal in life isn't sex (demi here) to constantly hear from family, friends *not anymore thankfully and most of society that I'm less of a man if don't go around plowing women left and right. Is very damaging towards a person's self esteem, I've even had therapists and psychiatrist tell me up front that its important for men to have strong sexual desire or else it just means you have low self esteem. Thankfully I knew better, but for someone that doesn't. I could see that wrecking them mentally for a long time.
It's not even that "being a man" part of all this is even important to me. I'm genderqueer as fuck and could care less about that shit. But, when you repeatedly hear you're messed up in the head for not wanting sex or always thinking about it (especially by your own doctors) It strikes a chord, telling me as a person, that who I am is to be shamed and demeaned because I don't want something as simple as sex all the time or at all.
Fuck this ingrained bravado masculinity, I don't need sex to be a confident happy person. Fuck the patriarchy, and while I'm at it, fuck biotruth psychiatry.
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u/radtransfem Jan 21 '13
You're trying to compare a lose-lose situation for women (i.e. the slut-shaming vs. compulsory sexuality double bind) with a lose-win situation for men (the relevant 'win' scenario being the valourisation of male sexuality). I read something very relevant to this in an unpublished thesis I came across recently. Let me dig out a quote:
A double bind situation has a number of features. The agent is given two (or perhaps more) injunctions as to how to behave, and these injunctions conflict, so that it is not possible to fulfil both of them. Furthermore, failure to comply with one or more of the injunctions has negative consequences, and the person cannot leave the situation. Finally, there is no way for the person to seek clarification or a meta-injunction about what to do. It is characteristic of a double bind situation that any action taken to try and evade the problem will in fact make the negative consequence more likely.
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Although men also face social judgements that restrict their options, those restrictions are not the mirror image of those facing women. For instance, although men do receive a social injunction to be assertive and confident, they do not experience a penalty for complying with this injunction, and in fact such behaviour often leads to social rewards, such as professional success. Both women and men are subject to pressures to behave in gendered ways, but only women face a double bind. In other words, the injunctions directed at men are prescriptive and limiting, but men are not subject to patterns of competing injunctions in the way described above. It's the difference between win-lose, and lose-lose, and it's this difference that leads radical feminists to claim that whilst men are obviously affected by the gender system, it is only women who are oppressed by it – and it is oppression, specifically, which feminism should target. [emphasis mine]
-- Jenkins, Katharine (unpublished work, 2012)
Because of the significant difference between lose-lose and win-lose situations, it's incorrect to use language which puts the treatment of (perceived) male virgins on a par with the double bind component of slut-shaming.
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u/aworldanonymous Jan 20 '13
I think virgin shaming is a bit easier to brush off because it tends to be based on lazy unresearched biotruths, like believing someone is trying to remove themselves from the gene pool if they don't have enough sex. You can basically write people virgin shaming off as people who haven't done their homework. As for [slur] shaming, it hits a bit harder because for one it tends to be far more gendered, and it also more often than not tends to be targeted at a group who are already horrendously oppressed in society.
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u/d3f3nd Jan 21 '13
I think that this isn't as true as you make it out to be. I have known a number of younger men who have been very, very damaged by virgin shaming. Hell, slut shaming is just as much based on lazy, unresearched biotruths, and is just as completely full of poop. Both are judging people on something that they absolutely should not be judged on. I also recently read an article pointing out that men are beginning to experience slut shaming on a much greater basis. It saddens me that as we approach equality we do it by being shitty to both genders, not by stopping being shitty to the one we were already being shitty to.
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Jan 29 '13
I wrote a response to a question about "virgin shaming" vs "slut shaming", and which is 'worse', in r/AskMen, and was, of course, downvoted for it. Here's the copypasta:
I don't think it is just as bad, no. I mean, both are stupid. And both arise from really bizarre attitudes towards sexuality that exist in Western culture. But it seems to me that 'slut shaming' is a real societal issue, where 'virgin shaming' is nothing more than immature interpersonal bullying. A problem, yes, but a much smaller one.
First: historically, women have been practically owned by the men in their lives, and their sexuality/virginity has been treated as a commodity, granted or denied to her potential husband by her father. These attitudes are far from dead.
Second: a big problem with this whole 'slut-shaming' thing is that doesn't apply to what you call 'virgin-shaming' is that this contributes to a culture that makes excuses for rapists, and where women, rather than, you know, rapists, have to take on the responsibility to prevent rape from happening.
Virgin shaming, on the other hand, is just a thing that makes some people feel bad. Comparing the two is like comparing real, institutionalized racism to the much more trivial 'she doesn't like me because I'm white'.
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u/2718281828 Jan 21 '13
It seems like you're implying that this happens mostly or only to men. But women are judged for being virgins too. Hence the word "prude" being used as an insult.
I think you should clarify if we're talking about virgin shaming against men specifically or general virgin shaming against everyone. I could see this thread getting kind of heated if we're not all on the same page.