Being like a virgin not OK for the boys
Jacinta Hannaford, Contributor, Jakarta
As a writer, I have taken Carrie Bradshaw from the TV show Sex and the City as my role model.
OK, I know: Odd choice. Miss Carrie is, after all, a fictional character. But you have to admit she has a certain allure, a certain coolness.
She sits at a laptop with a martini in hand, telling about the disposability of men. The title of the show isn't Relationship and the City, for men are expendable, putty in the quartet's well-manicured hands. So cool!
So when I got my laptop, I set myself about the task of making me the new Carrie.
Laptop? Check.
Drink? Check. (Although I had to admit my own drink was of the orange juice kind, not an alcoholic beverage.)
City? Check.
Sex?
My excitement fizzled. How could I be Ms Bradshaw without this important part? I hadn't had a boyfriend in three years. And was I really willing to admit my virginity to a whole bunch of strangers?
I'm an 18-year-old girl. By now, there are some girls I know who have done "it", as it is usually slyly referred to by embarrassed adolescents. But then again, there's a portion of us who haven't. Just speaking for me and some of my friends, none of us feel pressure to be "deflowered", so to speak.
This led me to thinking: Is being a virgin really that much of a stigma today? (Wow, I really have this Carrie thing down!) I don't feel any pressure. When asked whether I had ever just wanted to have sex just to get it "over and done with", my answer was an immediate "NO!"
I pondered the subject a little. If I don't feel any pressure from my female peers, then why does the opposite sex find it necessary to keep nagging me about it, putting so much importance on it?
BAM! It hit me. I didn't know a single 18-year-old guy who would publicly admit his virginity to a whole bunch of strangers, like I have just done. Maybe being an virgin really is so very shameful ... to guys.
I had to find a teenage virgin boy to interrogate, which proved a hard task in itself.
I struck out on the first guy I asked, Steven. He wasn't a virgin, surprise, surprise. He had lost his virginity a year earlier, when he was 18, which he admitted was a more mature age than most of his friends were when they lost theirs.
Had Steven found it hard to be among people who were talking about their experiences, or did he, like me, not feel any demands?
"I was mature enough to see past the pressure and wait for someone special."
However, Steven admitted that he did feel the need to lose it at a certain age.
"The pressure affects you. Being left out can create insecurity for guys as they get older, and has been known to lead to suicide," he said, rather dramatically.
Many jokes are made about the virgin guy, and this can wear down a boy's self-esteem.
It seems to me that at this age, all we desire is confirmation about ourselves from our peers, and if we do not receive this confirmation, we see ourselves as failures, because our peers, who represent society, call us such.
For it's only those who are "weaker" than the rest, who do not measure up on some count, who become the butt of the joke.
I was starting to understand why being a young virgin man was such a stigma, feeling lesser compared to everybody else.
Out of the many guys I asked, only two admitted to me that they were virgins.
One of them was at first very defensive about his answer, which changed to embarrassment.
It was as if he were afraid that I would not talk to him anymore simply because I now knew that he had not been intimate with a woman. Why did he jump to such a conclusion?
Traditionally, it is usually the male that pursues the female. It is then up to the female to reject or accept the offer. In my opinion, it is this tradition that causes being a male virgin to be such a stigma. Accordingly, if a guy is constantly rejected by girls, he will end up a virgin.
Nobody likes to be rejected, for it not only makes you feel like a loser, but look like one, too. And if people think you are a failure, they lose their respect for you.
We all have a fundamental need to be accepted by society. And the reason why being a virgin is not an issue for girls is because of the double standard in the world. A girl gains respect if she doesn't sleep around -- and a boy gains respect on the fact that he does.