Male Virginity In Popular Romance Novels

Great Essays
Male Virginity

Before I started my dating my fiancé, he confessed to me he was virgin. He told me about his lack of experience in a whisper, head low and eyes refusing to meet mine. After we started dating I got the full story. From sixteen to seventeen my significant other could not wait to lose his virginity but the opportunity never presented itself. When he was eighteen he started dating his ex who was determined to get pregnant even though she was only sixteen and still in high school. Her desire to be mother disturbed him so much so that my fiancé refused to have sex with her, and after they broke up my fiancé promised himself that he would not start dating until he was twenty-one and that his first time would be with someone he loved.
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Jonathon Allen theorized three types of male virgin heroes in his research essay Theorizing Male Virginity in Popular Romance Novels: the sickly virgin, the genius virgin and the student virgin. The sickly virgin either had an illness or an accident that somehow made it physically or emotionally difficult for the man to engage in sex when it was societal expected of him . As a result he missed the chance to lose his virginity when his peers did and therefore has not become an adult. It is typical for sickly virgins to be characterized as boyish or young because by not having rid themselves of their virginity they have not entered adulthood or manhood. The genius virgin, on the other hand, is not physically or emotionally incapable but rather is too logical or intellectual to concern himself with sexual desires. This lack of wanting to pursue sexual desire baffles both the female protagonist and the women around her. It is inconceivable to them that a man has the self-control to not act on his sexual urges and the unfamiliarity of the situation leads the female protagonist and her friends to insult and sometimes make the genius virgin sound monstrous. These women show the clear societal expectation that men are supposed to pursue sexual …show more content…
One example of a male virgin hero who engages with these concerns but is not pathologized by his author is Jamie Frazer from Outlander. From the beginning Gabaldon makes it clear that Jaime is an attractive young man who follows masculine gender roles and is highly desired by both men and women. As a result both Claire and the reader are lead to assume that Jamie is sexually experienced. So when Claire is trying to think of ways to get out of this arranged marriage so she can go back home to her husband Frank in the twentieth century, she wields her sexual experience as a

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