Needs Help (new crowner 9/23/16): A Man Is Not A Virgin

I second Shimaspawn's suggestion of Virgin Stigma as a more appropriate title. I'll just add a little to this bit:

...except for, perhaps, the Sensei for Scoundrels who tries to persuade him to stop being a good boy and start living the good life.

edited 13th Apr '16 9:41:06 PM by Prfnoff

NEVER get too bogged down in listing every possible character, plot, or scenario that could be linked to a base trope. It just makes for messy incoherent descriptions and it makes it hard for tropers to figure out what you're actually troping.

A line like that is something I'd honestly cut from the definition for clarity since it's not this plot. It's another plot that can spawn from this plot or from a host of related plots, but when you stick in in the main definition it confuses people into think it's essential.

You want to focus on the base tropes and it's most common variations rather than going off into related plots. Things like that are better off on the Analysis page. Especially when they're as rare as that one seems to be.

edited 13th Apr '16 10:07:00 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

"NEVER" in capital letters? You overreact. I think linking tropes to other tropes in the description is generally a good idea. The main pitfall is that, if done badly (to apply to trope descriptions a judgmental phrase that should not be used in them), this can become a narrow-looking or hard-to-follow Example as a Thesis.

Virgin Stigma would be a third trope here. There is plenty of actual Virgin-Shaming going on in media as well as teasing.

I don't think it's worth differentiating. After all, stigma is the direct cause of shaming. And I don't think "character shames himself" counts as an inversion; it'd be a straight example of the trope because even if others don't actively shame him, he's been made to feel inferior because that's the idea that society has instilled in him.

Not really, some people get made fun of for being a virgin but they themselves don't care or are proud of it.

The opposite happens too where a character is stigmatized for being a virgin but those around him are ones themselves and don't care. Or are not one and admire him or flat out advise for him to not lose it and such. This one pops up a lot when its the Lovable Sex Maniac being the virgin.

Heck series like B Gata H Kei really explore and mess around with this a lot with both sexes.

The fact that they don't care that they're being shamed doesn't change the fact that they're being shamed nonetheless.

And again, being shamed and being admired aren't mutually exclusive.

People acting inconsistently in reguards to a stigma doesn't make it not a stigma. And you're making a distinction here that 99% of our troper body is just going get utterly confused and flail over.

It's a distinction without a difference.

Also, both of your examples are examples of stigma. Just because the character is proud of being a virgin, doesn't mean there's not a stigma attached to it. Just because their friends idolize them, doesn't mean there's not a stigma attached to it. The stigma is the reason people mock. It's the reason that people feel bad about themselves. It's the root cause to all those things.

edited 14th Apr '16 8:27:55 AM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Yeah, the word "stigma" means that the thing which has the stigma is seen as shameful or disgraceful. That handily covers both cases where other people shame someone for having the stigmatized trait, and cases where someone personally feels ashamed of having it. I don't see the point in splitting the trope.

Okay, this is much later than I should have come back to this, but:

Tropes are a reflection of real life. The cultural assumptions we pick up on in real life affect how we both consume and create media. Of course, the reverse is true as well: the messages the media we consume send affect how we perceive real life.

The difference between Slut-Shaming and Virgin-Shaming is that, while there's a double standard between the genders, there is also a broader sexual norm that applies to both. At least in Western or American culture, there's a lingering taboo against any sex before marriage, so Slut-Shaming men makes sense there. Women are held to a higher standard because of expectations of "purity", but the general principle isn't really gender-specific; in fact, it's arguable whether historical slut-shaming, where someone could be stigmatized for life if not put to death by an entire community, should even be the same trope as modern slut-shaming which more takes the form of gossip.

As the current name of this trope indicates, though, sexual activity and not being a virgin is heavily tied up in cultural notions of masculinity. I'm sure there are cases, in media and out, where women are called out for not having sex, but there are different expectations and assumptions underlying those cases, and that makes them a different trope. That would not necessarily be a female Virgin-Shaming trope, precisely because it's not as universal across the female gender as it is for men, but a trope or tropes about the specific reasons why a woman would be shamed or stigmatized for being a virgin.

So at best, I would want to have a trope about the stigma of being a male virgin, and one or more Surprise Virgin-esque tropes about specific, gender-neutral character types who are expected to be sexually active. The first trope is about a pervasive cultural norm that is heavily reflected in and reinforced by media; a Virgin Stigma trope that doesn't properly reflect this would inadequately describe the trope it purports to describe.

Whoa, wait, women are NOT supposed to be virgin? Since when??

It's a Discussed Trope in The Breakfast Club, which is three decades old at this point. There are almost certainly older examples.

See, the argument that female examples should be excluded because the causes of virgin-shaming in women are different is precisely what I'm talking about when I say, "excluding examples to suit an agenda". The social stigma that men are expected to have sex isn't a trope. It's a cultural expectation. The act of shaming virgins within a Work is a trope, but that act can have multiple causes.

There are multiple reasons for why any trope happens. Slut-Shaming, for instance, does not require that the victim be a woman. It does not require a specific societal expectation. While the page description discusses the history of slut-shaming, all that is required to be an example is that a recipient be shamed for having sex. The trope is the action itself, not the historical significance or its societal cause.

Excluding female examples from whatever we name the virgin-shaming trope would be as much an agenda-based exclusion as purging all male examples from Slut-Shaming would be. Including a historical summary of virgin-shaming and its impact on modern culture can certainly be valuable to our goal, but deliberately excluding perfectly valid examples on the assumption that their visibility is harmful to an external agenda is an absolute contradiction of our purpose as a wiki.

And, as an aside, any agenda whose purpose is to raise awareness should never be afraid of example visibility. If the agenda is so fragile that acknowledging that a few women suffer from the same thing would completely shatter its foundations, then maybe it needs some reconsidering. So far as the movement goes, women aren't the enemy here. As the wiki is concerned, there are no enemies here; agendas are to be checked in with the man at the door and can be retrieved on the way back out.

edited 18th Apr '16 11:38:15 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

That big chunk of text is analysis page fodder. It is not a trope itself. It's interesting, but it doesn't belong on the main page of either trope.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Bump. Last I checked, we had consensus for is redirecting A Man Is Not A Virgin to Unexpected Virgin, then launching a separate Virgin-Shaming trope. Should we start a crowner?

I'd have thought to redirect A Man Is Not A Virgin to Virgin Shaming. As for Unexpected Virgin/Unexpected Not a Virgin, should that be a single trope, or are there enough examples of each to split? A coverall could be Unexpected Sexual Experience Level or Unexpected Sexperience Level.

As a side bump, I've been thinking about something related to Virgin Stigma... or, rather, its inverse: Not so much "You're a virgin, therefore you suck", but, rather, "You're married/in a steady monogamous relationship, therefore you're awesome". I seem to recall that attitude being exemplified in Alas, Babylon by the protagonist's brother about said brother's career about to end due to impending nuclear war with him not quite making General (emphasis added):

I originally thought it would be the Inverse to Never a Self-Made Woman (i.e. you're not a successful man until you have a wife) but it fits here, as perhaps the "family friendly" version of A Man Is Not A Virgin. It could also account for why an otherwise homosexual man would get a nominal wife: until recently, homosexuality was seen as being worse than being an unmarried man (let alone a married man) but a (trophy) wife cures all ills.

Big bump. Current plan is redirecting A Man Is Not A Virgin to Unexpected Virgin, then launching a separate Virgin-Shaming trope. Made a crowner, though there aren't any other options on there yet.

I'll hook it up.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

Bump for votes.

So we're at 16-0. Should I start sandboxing up the pages?

Safe to call, so go right ahead.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

Sandbox.Unexpected Virgin and Sandbox.Virgin Shaming. They're both terrible right now, but I wanted to get something up. I also haven't sorted the examples yet. Would appreciate it if someone else can get to it, but I should be able to manage it in a couple days.

I sorted a couple examples I was personally familiar with and added a page quote to Virgin Shaming.

Finally sorted the page examples. If anyone wants to check my work, go for it.

Now we just have to sort 992 wicks.