Virginity at College
I have to admit to a certain confusion at the information here. You understand of course, that I’m English, and so view American society through a slightly distorted lens. I’ll tell you of my confusion later: the first part of this information set causes me no confusion at all.
Someone went out and surveyed the state of virginity or sexual experience amongst the undergraduates at Wellesley College (which I am pretty sure is still an all female college). They were able to find not one single virgin (although I do have to admit, that state or not of the hymen was self-reported rather than physically checked) in the Studio Art program. While 83% of the women in the mathematics program were indeed still virgins.
There are some departments which seem to deviate a little from what we might expect but the general pattern could have been culled from an examination of our EQSQ personality tests. Moving along the continuum, from those subjects which we would expect to be colonised by the empathic types, along to the hard sciences which we would expect to be full of the systemizers, we pretty much see that the virginity rate rises the more likely the students are to be systemizers.
Not too hard to understand: those at the systemizing end do indeed have greater problems with human relationships than those at the empathic end.
So I’m not confused by that part. But I am as I said above by another.
Now my exposure to American teenagehood is of course minimal, really only from the movies and TV (I have lived in the US, but at an age when if I were thought to be taking an interest in the sex lives of teenagers I would be at best run out of town on a rail) so it is of course a very partial view.
But certainly the impression I get is that all of that virginity thing is taken care of by the time people go to college, isn’t it? In fact, I’m under the definite impression that driving home from the Prom date is written into everyone’s personal organiser.
Isn’t it?
June 27th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Uh … no.
Hollywood’s portrayal of this question is sensationalized for both ideological reasons (most directors are pervs) & practical reasons (sex scenes are popular with certain audiences).
There are certainly subgroups where early first-boinking is the norm, but there are many subgroups where post-teen first-boinking is the norm.
June 29th, 2008 at 5:56 am
this sounds like generalizing and a bit cruel, but there are certain fields in this country that seem to attract, um, less than attractive women. Maybe they really are not unattractive as much as they care to not make themselves appear as attractive. Math is one of these fields. Engineering and computer science, and many sciences, too. It’s not always true, of course, but overwhelmingly it’s more true than in the liberal arts.
I suppose it might have to do with the more systemizing mind: if black and white dominate, worrying about one’s attractiveness might be less common than those who think and work in gray.
July 13th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Well I come from a country where it is common for women to chase the man, prostitution is legal and business for them is not good. My wife is from Europe and a qualified Judge in a conservative society. She says all is upside down here with relationships but on the other hand she had a friend who was a virgin until marriage at nearly thirty years old. Her comment was that there is no merit in virginity as 3 months into the marriage the relationship failed. She saved herself for what? Deprived herself of knowing other people intimately. It would seem most religions (or governments a like) use virginity for some sort of moral reference as their general teachings, are flawed. Nothing wrong with sex only unsafe sex. Virginity is a biological left over similar to men having nipples.
July 26th, 2008 at 10:55 am
John, I know, I know, allow a writer a little hyperbole for rhetorical effect, please…..
Lucy, strangely, one of the very few college students whose sex life I do actually know something about (American ones, that is) is a mathematician. Tenure track now, she was publishing research papers while still an undergraduate, so she’s certainly “got it”. Also had one of the more interesting love lives I’ve seen, switching back and forth between hetero and lesbian relationships and so on. No, I know that one anecdote isn’t data, but it’s not a 100% thing, that arts/science divide. She was also a stunner, so it’s not the looks thing (totally) either.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:51 am
[...] might want to tie this together with our recent information on the prevalance of virginity at college compiled by major [...]