I decided to make a list of many myths people believe about romantically/sexually inexperienced people. Many people believe in these myths and I am here to debunk them all.
Myth 1: There are zero virgins left after a certain age (e.g. 18 or 21 or 25 or something)
Many people believe this myth. Nope. There are still virgins after 18 or 21, etc. Most people think almost everyone (95%) loses their virginity by the age of 18 and that 100% of people have by the age of 21 or so. Many people think there couldn't be any virgins at 25 or 30. If you're that age and you tell people you're a virgin they won't even believe you sometimes.
Unfortunately, the CDC didn't make any new surveys figuring out how many people are a virgin as of 2022 (recent years). According to the
CDC data from 2006-2008, of men ages 25-29, 3.8% have never had any sexual contact with the opposite sex, and 3.1% of men ages 30-34 haven't. 1.3% of men ages 35-39 and 1.2% of men in their early 40s haven't. This is compared to 3.4% of women ages 25-29 being virgins, 1.9% of women in ages 30-34 being virgins, and 0.4% of women in their early 40s being virgins. Prevalence varies, with some
studies showing that 5% of men at 25 and 3% of women that age are virgins. In fact,
in the UK, they found 12.5% of 26 year olds are now virgins and that virginity was more common in recent years, but almost 80% lost it by age 19. According to CDC in 2006-2008, 12% of women and 14% of men age 20-24 were virgins, so this is like prevalence of left-handedness. These percents might be higher because many virgins don't admit they're virgins.
Guess what?
Less than 3% of YOUNG people (they're more likely to admit it and most are pro-gay) identify as gay or lesbian, which remained stable in the past few decades while the percent admitting to being bisexual skyrocketed. In
2022, only 2.5% of Generation Z reported being gay and 2% were lesbians. 15% were bisexual, while other generations were way less likely to admit to being bi. Just 2.1% said they're trans. In May 2022,
on pew research polls, 2% of young adults said they're trans and 3% said they're non-binary.
So, the odds of meeting an adult virgins in their mid-20s or older are like the odds of being a gay person or trans person. Admittedly these percentages for gay or trans people could be higher because they won't admit it but the same could be true for virgins. Also, these people who admit it could be ones who are out of the closet, so it could be maybe like the odds of meeting an openly gay or trans person (although many closet ones might admit it in anonymous surveys too). Nonetheless, most gays and lesbians are out of the closet, unlike bisexuals. Maybe that's why the percentage of young people identifying as gay didn't skyrocket much in recent decades unlike the percentage of young people identifying as bi.
75% of gays/lesbians said all or most people important to them in real life know their sexual orientation, compared to only19% of bisexuals. Only 23% of bisexuals said SOME knew. Only 11% of gay people came out to a few or none of them, compared to 57% of bisexuals. So it could be most gay people are honestly about admitting they're gay in polls unless they're a gay elder.
