early marriage

take that to it's logical extreme: arranged marriages at 13.

oh yeah!

Green finally lost his virginity

A handsome, NBA athlete remaining chaste until he was 38? Shit, that is impressive.

I'm of a different generation. Those who weren't married by 25 were quite likely never going to be married. Most people were married by their late teens or early twenties. It's harder raising small children in your thirties than it is in your twenties and by your forties, you're too old. It's fashionable today put off getting married and having children but there really is a human biological clock that makes your twenties the best time to have children. You are less likely to have children with birth defects and you are better able to keep up with small children.

re: a.c. green, i never saw charles barkely as reverent as when someone asked him about a.c. green's virginity. i mean, all due respect to jesus, but talk about tempted by the devil....

Anyone else think of the Handicap Principle when they read this? Deliberate chastity for males seems like a fitness-killer, but what if it were an honest signal for desirability? You figure most genetic losers would jump at any opportunity that was offered them, knowing it very well may be a once-in-a-lifetime chance. But genetic winners have so many females banging down their doors that they have to kindly ask them to form a line. An extreme form of this "form a line" message is telling females, "Hold on now, I've got too many I-wanna-have-your-children applicants to make a decision on who to accept just now. After a grueling selection process where none of you will actually have a shot at having my children, I'll announce my wife-to-be as the winner of the grand prize of having my children."

And it sure beats the other honest signal that a male has far too many opportunities -- namely, proclaiming (perhaps proving) he's had sex with 50 or so women. That'd be an honest signal of desirability, but also a damagingly honest signal that he's a pig and won't invest resources & emotions in any prospective wife and/or her children. Not surprisingly the males profiled were 20-something somewhat dangerous charismatic rockstars but still non-threatening Christians, none of whom appear ugly in the picture.

Plus Razib's right about this "born-again" crap -- it's the optimal solution: spread your seed far and wide in your teens & early 20s, which you can later use to honestly signal your desirability. Then when you're ready to settle down, rediscover your chastity to still honestly signal your desirability but this time your good father potential as well.

look to the proximate, not the ultimate:

In August, Power and his fiancee will be married back home in Visalia, where Dunbar will be his best man. Power feels like he has waited a long time. He didn't want to marry for sex, so he restrained himself from proposing until it did not even enter his mind. Soonhe will experience his reward. A "sexual payoff," according to the authors of Every Man's Battle, that will "explode off any known scale."


better sex through chastity priming (the use of the phrase "explode off" is i think indicative that the author of every man's battle is so stuck in his own lingo-world that he doesn't know how evocative his phraseology is of a certain scene in the movie american pie).

So, in my circle of friends in high school, there was a definite notion of anything-but-sex meaning you were still a virgin. Though this was *not* a state most of us guys aspired to, it was often a limit set by girls of that age. (This led to a rich appreciation of the ironies of the law, since in Missouri, oral sex was technically illegal. Get those kids thinking about the difference between the law and right-and-wrong early!)

--jmk

--John

A handsome, NBA athlete remaining chaste until he was 38? Shit, that is impressive.

more like evolutionarily disadvantageous. there's a reason that behavior isn't too common, and it's the same reason other men might say AC Green did a good thing -- more's the pickin's for them.

Durant claims that no society ever had a word for a male virgin.

No word for male virgin? How about "loser"?

You can add Italy to your list of cultures where buttfucking is used as a way to "preserve" virginity. Or I think you can anyway -- god only knows how these things can be proved. But I've got friends of Italian descent, know a few people who've lived there, and have read some of the books. Anyway: apparently it is (or once was anyway) common for gals and guys to use buttfucking as a way to enjoy the passion while maintaining the technical virginity. As I recall, the phrase "a virgin up front if not behind" was often put to jocular use.

A number of NBA players thought AC Green was gay.

One thing that might make it easier for guys to (technically) keep their "virginity" in the future Razib,
Check out this really cute robot.

I agree that people who proclaim themselves "secondary virgins" are playing fast and loose from the language, but I don't have the contempt for the term that Razib does.
For centuries many Christians believed that a woman who committed a sexual sin even once was permanently "ruined" and deserved if not a literal, at least a metaphorical "scarlet letter." Skeptics were, quite justifiably, often critical of this attitude. Now some Christians are trying to have a more Christ-like and forgiving in atttitude, and non-believers mock this new attitude too! Can Christians ever win?

Now some Christians are trying to have a more Christ-like and forgiving in atttitude, and non-believers mock this new attitude too! Can Christians ever win?

don't misrepresent me, my problem is that many of these "born again virgins" is that they are very judgemental and filled with righteousness because jesus has "cleansed" them. my experience with some extreme christians is that quite a few led lives of debauchery and found that christ was an "out." i don't particular care about that, but these same individuals all of a sudden feel confident about lecturing others on issues of morality. i do feel it is unseemly when the town whore get's the spirit of preachin'. and christianity has way too many contradictory tenets to not be open to mirth on the part of us unbelievers. christians shouldn't take offense, after all, we don't think they are going to hell but we don't begrudge them the liberty to believe we are going to burn for eternity (this applies to a particular subset of "chrsitians" obviously). in any case, religious folk often seem to be get offended that we don't respect their traditions, but why should we? anyone who is an atheist knows very well that the religious usually have little respect for the unbelievers.

I agree. Judgmentality on the part of the recently reformed can be a very annoying thing. On the other hand, I don't think anyone in this particular article, even the genuine virgins, seemed very preachy.

Also, I agree wholeheartedly that any anally experienced person who claims to be a virgin is a sick freak.

The only reason being a vaginal virgin could possibly matter is to preserve attributable fatherhood, neh? This is about the question of whose child am I going to be raising, mine or some stranger's.

I have an acquantaince who is a nurse and over the years has worked with many female nurses from Africa, particularly Ghana, and it seems to be a widespread practice there to engage in anal sex so as not to get pregnant - both before marriage and while married. I suspect in many traditional cultures that this practice is also common, for this same reason.

Needless to say, this doesn't help them in their fight against AIDS!!