Can I be the asshole who brings up that a male who uses protection during consentual sex feeling like their life could be over due to an accident is maybe a huge problem that more echoes slut shaming than shows progress beyond gender roles?

It's the same kind of bullshit Virginia's telling women- "just don't have sex and you have nothing to worry about". This just seems like equality's going to be everybody having their agency marginalized instead of women being given the same agency as men. 

Can I be the asshole who brings up that a male who uses protection during consentual sex feeling like their life could be over due to an accident is maybe a huge problem that more echoes slut shaming than shows progress beyond gender roles?

It's the same kind of bullshit Virginia's telling women- "just don't have sex and you have nothing to worry about". This just seems like equality's going to be everybody having their agency marginalized instead of women being given the same agency as men. 

I read the article - and had a completely different reaction than you to it, Lisa. I kept facepalming. This is all pulled out of thin air. There is no proof that the "Dr House" law doesn't apply anymore ("everybody lies").  I am highly skeptical regarding any claims that boys and young men are having less sex. And the romantic stuff seemed invention at best. There was very little verifiable stuff in this frothy (pun intended) article. Which brings me to my next point: Anal sex... oral sex. Which is what boys get. And which is usually (I've read several studies on this) not counted as "losing your virginity"... yet is what those "romantic" boys at that age get.

An interesting post. As others have asked, I wonder at the truthfulness of responses. However, it seems entirely plausible that this is a real trend. We have as many stereotypes about men as we do about women, and they are just as hurtful. It is good to see some actual studies on the matter.

"credited to feminism"

Seriously? You've been pumping the hegemonic male for years as an example of all males and now that you're finding it's not true it's "credited to feminism?"

This is why gender wars exist in the first place. Neither side wants to admit that it doesn't fully understand the other.

I posit that the percentage of virgins in the population of teens has always been about equal between males and females, and the change reflects a decreased in the amount of male virgins who lie about their virginity.

Which is cool too, really.

Let's get off the engineering schools- and back to the article at hand... which fails to provide proof for any of its 'romanticing' (IMO wishful) points.

does the "fear" part mean that an abstinence message is affecting the margins?

This is a bit of digression on the topic at hand, but concerns the issue of using words as male-default and othering women. I thought I would bring a different perspective, since the one on this blog is understandably anglocentric.

Interestingly, in French every word is gendered. An entire new word has
to be invented in order to specify that a person working a job is
female.

For instance, in English an author might be either a man or a woman, and the perception that it is a man or a woman depends entirely on the person being communicated to. There is nothing intrensic to the word "author" as being of either gender.

In French, a male author would be "Auteur" while a female author would be "Auteure". Before the advent of (french) feminism, the perception that only men could be doctors, scientists, etc.. was *reinforced by the language itself*. We had to invent, apply, bring into usage entirely different words to change public perception.

So of course, ever since then we double up words whenever we speak/write, in order to be sensitive and not discriminatory. Sometimes we can get away with just adding a parenthesis with an e at the end like so : Auteur(e). Sometimes we can't. There are many who complain that this makes public speaking more awkward than it was before feminism.

Interestingly, there is a counter-movement that wants to make the male word non-gender specific. The perception is that having gendered words leads to othering of females, and so unlike in the 80's we no longer see a Docteure, but rather a female Docteur. It went full 180 degrees.

I'm a big fan of Schalet's work, and in my own project on Virginity, I hear from lots of guys who would much rather have sex within caring relationships. I also hear from a lot of guys who are not sexually active well into their 20s and 30s. Many guys really aren't all walking hormone bombs of popular culture, but the pressure to 'perform' masculinity is quite overwhelming.

But the story goes on to say that romance is *not* the main reason, but
terror at getting STIs or becoming an unplanned daddy. Is it healthy
concern over sexual health, or total ignorance at how such things can be
prevented? Given how shitty our sex ed is, and how prevalent abstinence-until-marriage programs are, I wouldn't be surprised if a
lot of teen guys don't quite get that you can have various kinds of sex
and not get pregnant or infected with something awful.

Also, if
intercourse is going down, what are the numbers for oral sex? Haven't
they gone through the roof in the last 10 years?

No matter. Even if guys are choosing to become sexual later, they still are judged completely differently for their choices. The slut/stud division lives on loud and clear in our culture and only a much larger re-thinking of the 'consequences' of women's sexuality is going to change that.