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The real 40-year-old virgins (13.9% of men and 8.9% of women)
- ComputerGuru 17y ago"And women with college degrees were 5.4 times more likely to be virgins than women who never got their Bachelor's." That was totally unexpected.
- Alex3917 17y agoBased on some other research on this I've seen I think it's actually biological. There is a pretty high correlation between virginity and IQ also.
- jackchristopher 17y agoGood analysis on that: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-intelligence.php http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-intelligenc...
- Alex3917 17y agoThanks for the link. While the reason for the link is unknown to science, I suspect that people with high IQs just tend to not start using certain parts of their brain until later in life. It seems very possible to reprogram your brain though if a person wants to and has adequate help and resources.
- onewland 17y agoNot sure if you're being sarcastic, but I'll assume that you're implying that college girls are slutty partiers, and respond to that. That may be somewhat true, but in general women with college degrees come from financial backgrounds/households where there is more information available about the risks of sex (with regards to pregnancy/STDs). Also, if you haven't been on a campus lately, the religious voice is VERY loud. If you were a woman thinking of remaining a virgin until marriage, you could easily find company who would make you comfortable with that decision.
- fenrir 17y agoNot surprising. A lot of people in college have a lot of sex, but a lot have none. It makes sense for a lot of reasons that people who are sexually not precocious would be more intelligent.
- nostrademons 17y agoI think the result was actually that people on both ends of the bell curve have less sex than people in the middle. More intelligent people tend to be less sexually precocious, but so do less intelligent people. This sorta makes sense from an assortative-mating POV. People tend to mate with people of roughly equal intelligence. When you get to the outer edge of the bell curve, there're many fewer people of roughly equal intelligence, and you're far less likely to run across them randomly. Perhaps grad school's real contribution to human science has been the perpetuation of genes for intelligence. Without it and similar institutions, a bright person might never find someone they care enough about to have sex with.
- cpach 17y agoUniversities has not existed for more than a few thousand years, so I don't think they could have made much of an impact on the natural selection yet. And I would be surprised if the admittance of female students wasn't quite a recent phenomenon.
- gort 17y ago"His team's survey found that 13.9 per cent of men [...] said they have never had sex." "The study also found that male homosexuals were 11 times more likely to be virgins than heterosexuals" So, I'm trying to find some plausible interpretation that would reconcile these two statements... anyone? [Edit: I don't just mean what would cause gay people to be virgins... I mean how can these figures both be true?]
- yummyfajitas 17y ago13.9% of men includes all age groups. It's probably something like 50% of 18-22 men, and a much smaller number (e.g. 0.5-1% or so) of 35-45 men. I'm guessing that perhaps 5.5-11% of male homosexuals are virgins? That seems strange, however, considering that it's vastly easier for gay guys to get laid than for straight guys. (I'm basing this last statement on common sense and my own experience; I've been approached by strange men offering sex, but never by women I've never met.)
- edw519 17y agoI've been approached by strange men offering sex... Well, what do you expect with a name like yummyfajitas?
- dgabriel 17y agoI bet there are a number of devoutly religious, non-practicing homosexuals.
- mahmud 17y ago"Self-hating" gays too; who are uncomfortable with themselves. Heterosexuals have an easy time since their sexual identity is sanctioned by society. Gays go through their youths being forced to be something they are not. For some, even when they become comfortable in their own identities in private, it's still impossible for them to confess to them socially. All the more reasons to encourage gay-friendly communities in town and cities, somewhere they can be themselves.
- rauljara 17y agoI am more than a little shocked that those numbers are so high. That's almost one in seven men! I guess it just goes to show how much society has conditioned me to believe that everyone is having sex. It's kind of a vicious cycle. If everyone believes everyone else has had sex, people will be less likely to admit (or at least bring up) that they haven't had sex, and so further contribute to the idea that everyone has had it.
- jpeterson 17y agoNature needs us to have sex in order to continue the species, so it has built in very heavy biases to get us to do that. It's the number one imperative besides keeping ourselves alive. I believe that even for a reasonable person who is well practiced in recognizing biases in his own point of view, getting past all biases involving sex would be extremely difficult.
- riffer 17y agoThe title is just linkbait: It's one in nine people 25-45 years old, which isn't quite as surprising as one in seven 40 year old men.
- rauljara 17y agoI'd be just as shocked if the title of the article only reference people over 25. Once you've been out of school for a few years, I imagine the odds of ending your virginity in any particular year goes way down. ie., a 25 year old virgin stand a pretty good chance of becoming a 40 year old one. A 20 year old virgin stands a pretty good chance of not being one for much longer. edit - Or so I'd expect, but this article has me questioning a lot of those expectations.
- pgbovine 17y agothat would be a cool idea for a longitudinal study: re-survey the sample every year for 10-15 years
- MikeCapone 17y ago
- rokhayakebe 17y agoOh please, sex is overrated.
- ilkhd2 17y agoInteresting to know AIDS and STD prevalence among these people.