My Love-Shyness
& Asperger's BLOG
Why Are Scientists Afraid of Virgins?
My initial excitement upon finding the paper “Who is the 40-Year-Old Virgin and Where Did He/She Come From?”
by ML Eisenburg MD et al. in the Journal of Sexual Medicine
2009;6:2154-2161 faded quickly. Even though the problem of adult
virgins is addressed through scholarly research, the paper is useless
as it does not come close to answering the questions in its title. All
the authors did was to use data from the National Survey of Family
Growth to glean information on adult virgins through basic
characteristics such as demographic and socioeconomic data. It's like
compiling data finding the color of car people with swine flu are more
likely to drive.
What useful results can come by publishing such
a paper? It offers no help in identifying virgins who come into an
office, except to suggest that if the person is an unmarried, highly
educated Asian woman then she has a much better chance of being a
virgin than an African-American man who has spent time in prison.
However, for what the paper is and claims to be—secondhandly analyzing
basic survey data—the paper appears competent. My only specific
criticism of the data and discussion as written is that the paper
computes around one percent of the adult population are virgins, yet
the authors fail to offer any explanations why their results differ
from the consensus of past studies showing adult virgins making up
between about 3 to 6% of the population. For example, see “The Social
Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States” by
Laumann et al. 1994 page 191.
Why was the paper written in the
first place? What can urologists tell us about the problem of adult
virginity? Apparently next to nothing. Likely, the pressure to “publish
or perish” played a pivotal role. This situation seems similar to the
old joke about the drunk looking for his keys under the street light.
He didn't lose his keys there; it was the easiest place to look.
Analyzing already gathered data is certainly much, much simpler and
easier than studying subjects in person.
This paper exemplifies
a systemic problem with science and allopathic (AMA approved or
“Western”) medicine where practitioners would rather look at numbers
than the actual people they seek to help. I was appalled when my doctor
claimed that I was “fat” purely according to my height and weight
without him actually looking at me and determining that I am a muscular
guy. HOW CAN YOU WRITE A PAPER ABOUT VIRGINS WITHOUT ACTUALLY
TALKING TO ANY?
Furthermore, Eisenburg and co. didn't even
reference anyone who actually specifically studied virgins. These
authors seem part of the problem of whitewashing over the issue by
presenting data without offering anything remotely practical. Why does
something that the authors conclude seriously negatively affects over
one million US adults remain unstudied? Why are scientists afraid of
virgins? Scientists study gorillas and other dangerous things and
travel to extreme conditions, but they refrain from interacting with
virginal humans.
Perhaps, if scientists would actually
interview virgins and ask what happened to them, papers might get
written that would lead to help, and maybe even prevention, for these
desperate adults. Since Dr. BG Gilmartin published his study in his
book “Shyness & Love”
of 300 virginal men from three different college campuses in 1987, no
one has studied virgins as a group. Dr. Gilmartin's research was
generally dismissed out of hand, and no scientist corroborated his
research and conclusions. But no one disproved his findings either. To
her credit, Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan
has written about virgins and their problems, but her research seems
limited to case studies of patients she has come across and who are
usually married.
Are virgins just too unsexy to study? Are they too difficult to find? Are scientists too infected with erotophobia to act on this subject with any competence? The urologist authors seem to find virgins more disgusting than urine.
