The real 40-year-old virgins (13.9% of men and 8.9% of women)
newscientist.com
newscientist.com
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.
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.
edit - Or so I'd expect, but this article has me questioning a lot of those expectations.
It is ridiculous for the original article to conflate prison and the military. If it's lower for veterans it's because girls like a man in uniform!
You have a point.
I guess some men might have sex with other men as an escape. (That's what happens in American prisons. Though there it's more about power and abuse.)
It is interesting to observe how Americans view sex in prison as if it was inevitable. If inmates were raped in my country, there would be an outrage. And the number of rapes in prison here are very close to zero (don't have the stats but I remember reading that it almost never happen). And this is a western European country, so in theory the culture should be relatively comparable.
A lot of sex in prison also isn't rape.
The biggest cause for the rape problem in prisons is prison overcrowding (Europe doesn't have that problem at the scale of the USA or RSA). The problem is that the USA has a much higher incarceration rate than European countries.
Are condoms still forbidden in prison in the US?
If the mean across all males (not just those who reproduce) is one wife, as expected by a 50/50 sex distribution, then that means King Solomon's 600 partners meant that 599 men have no wives. Dunno how that would compare with the number that had 1 wife, but I wouldn't be surprised if the former is greater.
Surely you mean (ahem) the mean man-who-actually-reproduced.
Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men...To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.
"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?]
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.)
Well, what do you expect with a name like yummyfajitas?
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.
Limited sexual network in small towns
closeted yet no desire for heterosexual intercourse
Straight people don't know the fear, oppression and loneliness gay people might face in small towns.
We all have this image of wild, cruising gay guys and girls, when in fact, a huge percentage of them live under the laws, both written and unwritten, of despotic communities.
Even in big cities, unattractive gay people might be alienated by potential partners.
The 13.9 per cent of men would include homosexuals. Let's say there are 1000 men, 5 percent of which are homosexuals.
So 950 straight men, 50 homosexuals and 139 virgins between them.
950 * x + 50 * y = 139, where x is the straight virginity rate. y is the homosexual virginity rate, and y = 11 * x.
So 950 * x + 50 * (11 * x) = 139 950x + 550x = 139 1500x = 139 x = 0.0926
9.26 percent of straight men are virgins, 101.9% of gay men are.
If homosexual men make up 10% of the population 900x + 1100x = 139 x = 0.07 76% of gay men are virgins.
If homosexual men are 20% of the population 800x * 2200x = 139 x = 0.046 51% of gay men are virgins. Less than 5% of straight men are.
The first situation is impossible. I guess 10% homosexual one might be plausible if they very narrowly defined losing one's virginity to having had anal intercourse. A lot of gay men exclusively have oral sex.
A = P(gay), B = P(virgin | gay), C = P(virgin | not gay)
If 5% are gay: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=A+*+B+%2B+%281+-+A%29+*...
If 10% are gay: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=A+*+B+%2B+%281+-+A%29+*...
If 20% are gay: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=A+*+B+%2B+%281+-+A%29+*...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientat...
The biggest problem is that nobody really agrees with what a "gay man" is for the purposes of counting them anyway. Does just one homosexual experience count? What about if (as this survey suggests is common) you have a lifetime of clear homosexual thoughts but no opportunity to act on them? What if you're any of the infinite variations of bisexuality between completely homosexual and completely heterosexual?
I tend to work with 4%-8%, depending on definition, but I'll be the first to admit it's a total shot in the dark.
That was totally unexpected.
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.
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.
"The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous."
- Lord Chesterfield