The show Virgins on TLC sucks. An Asexual's Rant.
I have an honest question to ask everyone.
How many people here would be okay with staying a virgin for life? Or just going without having sex ever again?
I can’t be the only one, can I?
I was turned on to a show on TLC, titled Virgins. Obviously, it’s a TV show about adult virgins. I watched it, and the entire show is repugnant.
The whole gist of the show is apparently to follow 4 adult virgins and mock them for never having had sex. They basically chose 4 stereotypical adult virgin tropes and decided to portray them in the most unflattering light.
One guy is made fun of by his own family for still being a 34-year-old virgin who lives with his parents.
His sisters constantly poke at him and harass him. He was bullied in school. There was a story where a girl pranked him, telling him to meet her at a spot in school, only for her to bring her boyfriend and all her friends to laugh and mock him for falling for the prank. Just cruel. So, he has some esteem issues from all of that bullying as a child.
I can sympathize with him because I’m also a 35 year-old virgin who lives with his parents. If I didn’t, I would be homeless, since I can’t afford to live independently on my personal salary. I hate making fun of people for living with your parents. In today’s economy, how else can you expect to find housing?
Another is a 35 year-old virgin who is always being coaxed by her friends…
She just doesn’t like anyone she meets and is told she is “too picky.” She’s supposedly conventionally attractive to most people, and she gets approached by others interested in dating her. But she just isn’t interested. Her friends keep cajoling her into trying dating even though she doesn’t like anyone she dates.
She ends up going on some blind dating show, where the hosts constantly make fun of her for being a virgin. It was among the most mean-spirited moments I’ve ever watched on a show. There’s an audience there that is in total shock because she hasn’t lost her V-card and hasn’t been in a relationship. A couple audience members are mouth agape when she mentions she’s a 35 year-old virgin, and the hosts are asking these invasive questions, trying to persuade her into trying sex. The whole show seems so prickish, honestly.
The next virgin is a 37 year-old Indian-American woman who remained a virgin because of her religious upbringing.
The show constantly harps on her being an uptight prude who just needs to “loosen up” and “live a little”. She talks about how she’s demisexual, but it seems like everyone is constantly trying to force her to do things she doesn’t want to do. I’m not even sure she even wants to have sex for the sake of having it. She seems to want sex because she feels like it’s the only way to have a romantic relationship, which she wants. It’s just so cruel.
She mentions that she falls in love after one kiss, and that’s why she doesn’t want to kiss just anybody. The world makes her sound like a hopeless romantic because of it. She has a lot of romantic feelings, and personally, I think she really isn’t wanting to have sex, but rather sees it as the only way to find romance.
The last one is a 42 year-old woman who is just horny all the time.
She’s always talking about wanting to do BDSM, since she sees it in porn. She is just very sexually charged all the time. She was married, but she never had sex with her ex-husband, because he only married her for citizenship status and then ditched her, pretty much. She has esteem issues from that failed marriage, and from the fact she doesn’t feel she fits societal beauty standards. So, there is just a lot there with that.
The show constantly makes it seem that being an adult virgin is like being an alien. It’s always seen as like “We need to devirginize these people”, so they can become “normal” like the rest of us.
One friend said we just need to get her to have sex, so she can join “the rest of the world”.
The way they treat these virgins is infuriating as hell, honestly.
This show just sucks, for real.
This show doesn’t reflect my experience as an asexual man — an asexual male virgin at that!
I’m a 35 year-old virgin. I’ve never been in a relationship, never been on a date, and I have no desire to change any of that.
I’ve never even been on deck, let alone made it to any of the proverbial bases.
I prefer to keep it that way.
Additionally to being asexual, I’m sex-repulsed. Sex just is off-putting for me. I’d rather pretty much do anything besides having sex. My ideal night would be to play trivial pursuit or any board game.
I’m happy to be a 35-year-old virgin. I’m happy because I am living life on my own terms, not on anyone else’s timeline.
I grew up in a town where the expectation was that you become some wild teenage boy that gets drunk and loses his virginity at some party, then goes to college and live as some frat boy, and then settles down by getting married and having kids by age 22.
I wanted none of those things.
As an aromantic asexual teetotaler, I’m proud to say today that I have never drank alcohol, I’ve never smoked, I’ve never had sex.
Shoot! I’ve never even drank coffee.
Those things just don’t appeal to me.
Yet, all the while, I’ve had to deal with peer pressure to have sex all my life, pretty much.
In my town squarely centered in the heart of the Bible Belt, people find it more understandable to be divorced by the time you’re 35 than to be a 35-year-old virgin.
I find that ironic, considering Jesus supposedly died a virgin, and the Apostle Paul said being celibate was the best option.
People always try to tell me that I need to “live a little”, “experiment”, and “just try sex, because I may like it”.
Few people I’ve met have respected my autonomy and my personhood, with regard to not wanting to have sex at all. I’m always told that I’m “repressed”, “unliberated”, and not “living life to the fullest”.
They don’t care when I tell them I’m aromantic asexual. Matter of fact, many refuse to believe it, since “no man doesn’t want sex”, according to the stereotype.
I have been shamed for being a virgin, even as I’m asexual.
What makes it worse is that the worst amount of shame oftentimes comes from people who call themselves sex-positive.
Society always talks about being sex-positive when it comes to having as much sex as one wants, but when a person like me wants to have no sex of any kind, they dismiss and ridicule me.
On countless occasions, I’ve been told I’m an uptight “prude” who hasn’t “become a man”, like Peter Pan.
On countless occasions, I’ve been told that I just “need to get laid”, in order to become a “real man”.
On countless occasions, I’ve been told that I’m just a little kid, and that I haven’t “matured”, since I’m not married and not having sex.
My eyes start rolling whenever I hear that.
Society always loves to say “my body, my choice” when it comes to respecting people having sex, but they never seem to reciprocate that respect towards people like me who don’t want to have sex.
Society has gotten much more progressive in terms of calling out slut-shaming when it occurs as a bad thing.
However, when it comes to virgin-shaming, there isn’t enough condemnation for it.
In olden times, we used to have an entire profession for people who desired to remain sex-free, asexual or no. It was called the priesthood or nunnery. People used to respect a priest or nun for “foregoing the way of sex and marriage”.
Today, we parade their lives on screen, in the most cruel form of virgin-shaming. Today, we depict virgins in a manner that makes them look like geeks and losers.
TLC’s Virgins as a show fails to recognize that everyone has a unique story and journey. They don’t recognize and esteem the journeys of virgins; they only shame their experiences.
TLC’s Virgins doesn’t respect the multitude of reasons why someone would remain a virgin into adulthood, including mine being a sex-repulsed asexual.
TLC’s Virgins shows no respect for the personhood of adult virgins, including me as a 35-year-old aromantic asexual.
TLC’s Virgins as a show only exists for one thing: virgin-shaming.
TLC’s Virgins is the personification of virgin-shaming. TLC’s Virgins makes being an adult virgin seem like being an extraterrestrial oddity.
Why do they always show virgins as complete losers and weirdos all the time? Why must television and media always treat people who don’t have sex as being losers and pity cases?
They never seem to show people who are happy to remain virgins and aren’t interested in sex. They never seem to show someone like me, an aromantic asexual guy who has no interest in having sex of any kind.
They always pick these sad sack, pity cases that they can portray as being “losers” and conventionally “uncool”. TV is constantly stereotyping virgins as being uncool losers who deserve to be laughed at.
Honestly, it makes me mad. Maybe it’s because I’m a 35-year-old virgin myself, so I can relate to the shame.