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Female Virginity Seen as Sacred Amongst Men...

Male Virginity and Mental Health

We assume they haven’t “entered” society yet; we shun and frown upon mine that haven’t broken the virgin seal by their adult years, and frown upon females that have.World Health Organization definition of virginity makes it clear what virginity is and what it is not, "The term 'virginity' is not a medical or scientific term. Rather, the concept of 'virginity' is a social, cultural and religious construct - one that reflects gender discrimination against women and girls, ... Performing this medically unnecessary and harmful [virginity] test violates several human rights and ethical standards including the fundamental principle in medicine to 'do no harm'. WHO recommends that this test should not be performed under any circumstances." Men lose virginity to upgrade social status, emotion most of the time is not involved. There is this form of “virgin-shaming” is seen amongst adolescents who have not yet lost their virginity. but “Knowledge about the relationship between gender norms and sexual cognitions and emotions might further the understanding of continued gender-norm conformity”. Sometimes, even being a virgin can be a deal- breaker amongst relationships but, in other cultures and locations in the world, virginity is highly valued for both females and males. However, in the U.S as a society, it is an outlier in understanding that we shouldn’t shun people for that or even force females to feel self-conscious about not being a virgin, but realize the people that are virgins are an integral part of society and how it functions as a whole. One recurring theme across these subsections is there is this sort of toxic culture that surrounds masculinity and that in turn affects Men in a negative way. Hegemonic/ Toxic Masculinity and Sexual Jealousy among Men affects the mental capacity of the man and promote unstable aggression towards losing the virginity.

Gender roles within Virginity

Tentative conclusions are drawn that norms relating to virginity tend to be supported by both males and females, but for different reasons, and that these norms are supported and rejected about equally in society as a whole.We are groomed and taught “this is for boys”, and “that is for girls” when it comes to even the actions and behavior we should reflect...So, it is no different when it comes to the institution of sex. Specifically, virginity. The males are seen as supposed to lose their virginity by a certain age, with aggressiveness, and emotionless. While the females supposed to keep their virginity as long as they possibly can, and it is seen as sacred, and gentle, and undiscovered. Within society there has always been a struggle of power between Men and Women, when it comes to equality as well, and even down to the sexual interaction's women have, they see it as men having all the power, and usually when referring to someone losing their virginity it is a female losing hers to a man, then you actually give more into the “interpretation of virginity—as a gift, stigma, or process—…[giving] unequal roles for virgin and partner, which interacted with gender differences in power to produce interpretation-specific patterns of gender subordination, only one of which consistently gave men power over women”There is this ambiguity to virginity loss, that adolescents portray, that shows that the sexual choice to go from being a virgin to not being one actually, can help shape and mold someone’s identity, male or female, and growing up different gendered experiences, can determine what exact definition of being a virgin do you identify with. One goal as humans is to help society from a sort of positivism lens/ perspective, and try to promote positive social change, thus fueling and creating more gender-neutrality amongst society. Also, that “having sex” is subjective and it is in fact gendered. When it comes to the male norms there are “descriptive norms (the characteristics individual men are perceived at having) and the sociocultural norms (the attributes and behavior men should typically have) ...that prescribe and proscribe what men should think and do”

Social Theories

Gender differences narrowed from the 1960s to the 1980s for many variables. “social role theory, and script theory” are just two of those theories that could help explain. Also, the “signaling” and “handicap theory” is somewhat present across the different articles. Females have different influences than men and one of those go hand in hand with the handicap theory that they need clicks. They have different people within the clicks that serve as different people and add different personalities you have the virgin good girl, and the sexually advanced one, what one does in the group sometimes will affect the whole. So, the females won’t shame each other but the females will encourage each other to explore and become each other. But amongst males, we talk and have our own meeting, and listen for clues and hints amongst the conversation and then we go try to explore and apply those things we heard to our different situations. So, for example if Johnny lets the group know he lost his virginity, the person hearing isn’t going to let the group know he’s a virgin for he will be shamed, so he goes and tries to do the same, and come back for acceptance using the signaling theory. There is also a prevalence of the double standard within sexuality, “the sexual double standard is the tendency for men and women alike to judge other women “more harshly than [other] men for comparable sexual behavior” (Papp et al., 2015, p. 57)” . Even within that double standard come sexual script theory which basically says everything that we know sexually has been taught to us and handed to us in a script from, from movies, to the music we listen to, to even the “aphrodisiacal” food we eat. In viewing these scripts, they provide what is supposed to be normal for the culture at the time, for example sex between two men is still seen as out of the normal but heterosexual sex is seen as appropriate or accepted, because we’ve been shown and exposed the heterosexual things as our minds were developing. Even when diving into the progression of the relationships of heterosexual couples as compared to the other types, Londo states “men are socialized to value short-term relationships and adopt a pleasure-oriented approach to sexuality, whereas women are socialized to prefer long-term/commitment-oriented relationships with an emotional/relational approach to sexuality” . Another theory used to explain the whole stigma can be the social cognitive theory. This theory is basically that portions of our knowledge can be contributed to media, outside influences, and watching the actions of others and mimicking what we see, which also promotes toxic masculinity. When conducting a research using television shows and the analytical lens they found, and the results indicated, that “toxic masculinity occurs within 36.8% (n = 869) of scenes on adolescent television shows. Furthermore, gender differences occurred in the enactment of specific indicators of toxic masculinity. Physical aggression was exhibited more often by male characters than female characters, but female characters enacted a suppression of vulnerable emotions more often than male characters” .