Every once in a while I come upon a story and I end up with more questions than answers. Here is one such story from Ewen Callaway and Short Sharp Science blog at New Scientist. What are the characteristics of a virgin in America today (well, those between the ages of 25-40)?
He is a church-going teetotaller who has neither been to jail nor served in the military, according to a new survey of more than 7000 people. He also represents an estimated 1.1 million American men and 800,000 women aged 25 to 45 who have never had sex.
I want to party with those guys. OK, kidding aside, I really wonder what the correlation coefficient is on that description. The article continues,
His team’s survey found that 13.9 per cent of men and 8.9 per cent of women said they have never had sex.
Apparently that should read men and women who have never been married. More,
Men and women who attended church at least once a week were respectively 5 and 3.9 times more likely to be virgins than those who attended church less often. Virgins of both sexes were slightly less likely to have swigged a beer in the last year, compared to non-virgins. And women with college degrees were 5.4 times more likely to be virgins than women who never got their Bachelor’s.
My antennae are twitching….this is starting to sound like pseudo science masking anti-religious bigotry. Of course without seeing the actual data there’s no way to break it down.
Men who attended the military or spent time behind bars were slightly less likely to be 40-year-old virgins than those not exposed to such discipline. “We used incarceration or military service as surrogate markers for exposure to violence or aggressive behaviour,” Eisenberg’s team writes.
Well, I suppose that’s a good a way to attempt to measure high T individuals as any other they had at their disposal. It would also tend to agree with observations of the game community.
Just as notable as the characteristics associated with middle-aged virginity are the traits that aren’t. Weight, income, and health all showed no association with virginity in men or women.
I would say social dominance or game is more important for men than those other three. They are more of a side dish as opposed to the main course.
So the questions I want to know are: What % of men 18 and older are virgins, what % of men 18 and older are semi-celibate with long dry spells. I’d also like to see the same answers for women. This is all very interesting, but it’s not enough data to draw any real conclusions.
