In many respects, Colton Underwood is the ideal Bachelor. He’s a former NFL practice squad member, a conventionally handsome Colorado native whose abs are more ripped than a pair of jeans from 1993. He fits in perfectly with the cast of other Bachelors who have appeared on ABC’s show, now in its 23rd season. But while Underwood never succeeded in his goal of becoming a world famous football player,  the 26 year-old has become famous for not being another kind of player; he will go down in history as the franchise’s first “virgin bachelor.” Sadly, Underwood’s sexual inexperience has made him the butt of many jokes.

Watching this season of The Bachelor is an illuminating case study in how society associates manliness with heteronormative sex. This truly toxic notion of masculinity marginalizes any man who hasn’t had vaginal intercourse, whatever his reasons might be.

The part of Underwood’s virginity currently receiving the most side-eye is his the reason he’s given for keeping it. No, Underwood’s not abstaining because of religious beliefs. In his words, “I’m waiting to be in love.” It is this dream of having sex with someone he loves that the world seems to find hilarious. It also has fans champing at the bit to see if Underwood finds someone he’s willing to let deflower him in The Bachelor’s famed Fantasy Suite.

On The Bachelor’s January 7th premiere, the 30 women competing to marry Underwood made a plethora of not-funny barbs. There were references to “virgin cocktails,” and oblique references to “first times.” On the second episode, Billy Eichner made an appearance. He also snatched the opportunity to mock Underwood, implying he had yet to get laid because he was actually gay. Of course, having a gay Bachelor would be an awesome victory for TV diversity. However, the implication was that no straight man would willingly postpone vaginal intercourse.

The virginity jokes aren’t just taking place on the show itself. In an episode of The Ringer’s Bachelor recap podcast, Bachelor Party, host Juliette Litman expressed sheer confusion about Underwood’s virginity. The podcaster quipped there were only a few things she was certain of in this world, “Death, taxes, and professional athletes having sex all the time.” The fact that Litman was pushing stereotypes didn’t seem to be a problem for her.

We need to call out the jokes for what they are—virgin-shaming, slut-shaming’s chaste but equally problematic cousin. It is time to stop deriding Colton Underwood, and all men, for not having coitus.

This truly toxic notion of masculinity marginalizes any man who hasn’t had vaginal intercourse, whatever his reasons might be.
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The stats reveal there’s nothing remarkable about a man being a virgin in his twenties. The average age for a cisgender American man to lose his virginity is 17, if virginity is defined as penetrative vaginal sex. But average does not define normal. There are plenty of guys (14.3% of them, in fact), who remain virgins between the ages of 20 and 24. Between the ages of 25 and 29, 5% of American men have still not engaged in penetrative sex. And of course, there are gay and asexual people who aren’t interested in vaginal intercourse.

The data shows twenty-something virgins are actually pretty common. To put things into perspective, it’s estimated only 5% of Americans are natural blondes, but no one balks when a natural blonde pops up on TV. As is true of every aspect of human existence, there’s a lot of diversity when it comes to sexual activity. Regrettably, Hollywood has all but erased the existence of male virgins over age twenty.

When adult male virgins do get portrayed by Hollywood, they’re usually represented in one of two ways—as tragic misfits, or complete rubes. For the former trope, an excellent example is Michael Ginsburg of Mad Men. Ginsburg is a prodigious ad man whose status as a twenty-something virgin is presented as the symptom of a severe mental illness, which culminates in the character cutting off his nipple. On the comedy side, we have Steve Carell in 2005’s The Forty Year-Old Virgin. As the film’s on-the-nose title suggests, the middle-aged protagonist’s virginity is the entire plot of the movie, though it turns out his reasons for waiting are much like Colton’s—he wasn’t ready until he met the right person.

In my real-life experience, adult male virgins do not fall into a reductive binary. I personally know a number of smart, funny, attractive men who didn’t have sex until their late twenties. My friend Calvin was 27 when he lost his virginity. A personable entrepreneur with an active social life, Calvin was never tragic, nor was he a buffoon.

When adult male virgins do get portrayed by Hollywood, they’re usually represented in one of two ways – as tragic misfits, or complete rubes.
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While Calvin has always been a cool person, that didn’t make him immune to the effects of virgin-shaming. He tells me the trope of older virgins as weird and inept took a toll on his self-esteem. He recounts a sense of “shame” surrounding being a virgin: “I worried I would be bad at sex.”

Today, Calvin is a happily engaged thirty-something with no complaints about his sex life. Losing his virginity at a later than average age did not derail his life. However, he still takes umbrage with the portrayal of Colton as the “first virgin Bachelor.” As Calvin sees it, The Bachelor is turning Colton’s virginity into a spectacle, making his virginity into his entire personality. Calvin contends, “They’re presenting him as a one-dimensional character to gain ratings.”

Obviously, virgin-shaming hurts people. And the worst part is that virginity is an entirely social construct. The idea that people who have had coitus are fundamentally different from those who haven’t is a patriarchal idea created by men as a means of controlling women’s sexuality. Not to mention how it marginalizes any sex that isn’t penis-in-vagina sex by suggesting it somehow doesn’t count.

Historically, the idea of a sexual purity that could be sullied by penetrative sex has been applied more to women than men, a double standard that was a strategy for safeguarding paternity. After all, how could you trust your wife’s kids are yours unless you’re certain she’s never slept with anyone else? Hence, the creation of a long list of epithets used to other women who’ve had sex outside marriage, and the idea that a woman who has had vaginal sex before marriage is impure, “damaged,” or otherwise unsuitable.

The idea that people who have had coitus are fundamentally different from those who haven’t is a patriarchal idea created by men as a means of controlling women’s sexuality.
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By contrast, dudes have pretty much always been given a free pass to have copious amounts of nookie, and are considered more “manly” the more sex they have. Look at the case of, Henry VII, the British king who executed multiple wives on grounds of infidelity. Henry killed these women despite himself siring multiple children outside of marriage. Rather than condemning sexually voracious men as wanton or out of control, society has naturalized the myth of men as hypersexual beings. Even today, the idea that men’s uncontrollable sex drives cannot—and need not—be contained is used to justify toxic behavior. And if a man is not having sex, he becomes less of a man—which in a patriarchal society is never what you want to be.

Male virgins like Colton Underwood threaten the patriarchal logic that underpins the sexual double standard. By waiting to have sex, Underwood is publicly defying the toxic logic that redblooded men are somehow at the mercy of their sexual urges. He is a walking refutation of the adage that “boys will be boys,” that their innate desires are somehow beyond their control. Perhaps that’s why adult male virgins make society so uncomfortable…

Choosing a dashing virgin as this year’s Bachelor could have been a valuable opportunity to fight virgin-shaming. Underwood’s casting had the power to normalize the existence of twenty-something male virgins. Next time a man in the public eye proclaims he’s a virgin, let’s hope society doesn’t reduce him to a poorly written punchline.

By Cade Leebron

This past August, my brand-new husband and I drove in a rental car to Bar Harbor, Maine. We picked a cute restaurant without a wait for a table and sat down and were looking at each other in that glowy post-wedding way when a waitress came over and asked us for our drink orders. We ordered beer. She asked for our IDs, then raised her eyebrows at us and said, “Wow.”

Because, I assume, the birth date on my ID is in 1992 and his is in 1982. Suddenly, the wedding rings around our fingers felt cheap instead of practical, like maybe if they weren’t plain silver bands that we’d bought at a used jewelry store she wouldn’t have commented. Suddenly I wanted to never order a beer or get carded again. I wanted to get up and leave, except we’d just put in our drink orders so we were stuck. Luckily, we had each other. And luckily, we agree on some fundamental things. Like: the fact that we’re equal partners, that our age difference isn’t the most interesting thing about our relationship—and also that we both really hated this waitress.

Watching this season of The Bachelor, I wondered if this was how many of the contestants felt, too. In a twist casting stunt, the show selected a 36-year-old man, Arie Luyendyk, Jr., a race car driver and realtor, to the be the lead, while stocking the contestant roster with mostly twenty-something women. Of the remaining four contestants who visited hometowns in this week’s episode, all are about a decade younger than Arie: at the time of filming, Becca was 27, Kendall and Tia were 26, and Lauren B. was 25.

In response to these age gaps, the nation has — like the waitress I encountered with my partner that day in Maine — let out a collective judgmental “wow.” “The Major Gap On ‘The Bachelor’ Is Glaringly Obvious This Year,” reads one Refinery29 headline. “‘The Bachelor’ Arie Luyendyck Is A Decade Older Than The Average Female Contestant,” states a Newsweek article, ominously. In response to the controversy, Arie himself has even weighed in, displaying a rare penchant for humor:

Undoubtedly, though, the most vehement backlash has been reserved for Bekah. Before (SPOILER ALERT) getting kicked off on last week’s episode, the 22-year-old had to contend with very loud public outcry over her age. To take just one representative example, a New York Post article crowed, “Bachelor Arie Wary To Rob The Cradle With 22-Year-Old Nanny.” Naturally, social media, too, was rife with ridicule:

Deleted scene of Arie and Bekah M. on a one on one #TheBachelor

???@CynthiaPAgustin

Bekah: "I'm 22" Arie: #TheBachelor https://t.co/G8D6jHetFP

???@sammypryce

RosesAndRose: Does Krystal keep going one step too far? Is Bekah too young for Arie?! https://t.co/gIeI7lJLhj

???@etnow

Bachelor leaderboard: 1. Lauren 2. Becca k. 3. Tia 4. Kendall 5. The camera man 6. Chris Harrison 325. Bekah M, but after she becomes the legal age to date arie

???@LaurenOatman19

I want Bekah M to get to hometowns and then Arie sees her dad and they realize they went to high school together. #TheBachelor

???@eandgpodcast

This national backlash was also echoed by the cast of The Bachelor. Arie himself seemed stunned when he found out how old Bekah was, uselessly repeating “She’s just so young” until it felt almost fetishistic. The women waiting in the house as Bekah told Arie her age while on a date seemed to unanimously feel that as soon as Arie discovered how old she was, he would certainly send her home. Some of them seemed to think that this would be the only appropriate choice he could make. And when Bekah was finally booted from the show, it seemed at least in part to be caused by a fellow contestant, Tia, telling Arie privately that she worried about Bekah’s maturity.

There are valid reasons to question, at least, the decision on the part of Bachelor execs and producers to cast young women exclusively (especially considering Bachelorettes are always provided an array of older men).

But when people critique relationships with age differences, I suspect they aren’t actually concerned about the effects of the patriarchy. I suspect, instead, that they’re concerned with young women expressing agency in a world that demands they have none.

It’d be one thing if age-difference vitriol was directed at The Bachelor franchise. Instead, it has been largely directed toward the young women on the show — and in particular, Bekah.

Headlines like HuffPo’s “Is 22 Too Young to Marry a 36-Year-Old?” place any “blame” for the relationship squarely on Bekah’s shoulders. By showing up and being 22, she’s apparently done something that is up for public debate, despite the fact that contestants don’t know who the Bachelor will be when they sign on. (And of course, despite the fact that the Bachelor himself is in charge of doling out roses and marriage proposals, making him the final arbiter of TV love.)

Meanwhile, Life & Style described Arie and Bekah’s first meeting by saying “Our 36-year-old suitor was clearly a little too mesmerized to see any red flags.” The overarching message here is that 22-year-old women are just way too sexy for 36-year-old men to resist. Neither party has much agency in this version of the story, as though if ever these two types of people were to collide, it would set off a chemical reaction that not even Arie’s total lack of charm could stop. On a more serious note, there’s also not much room for consent—or even basic conversation—in this narrative. The young woman simply attracts the man by virtue of her youth and physicality, while the man is “mesmerized.” It’s hard to imagine, if this is how we see these young women, that a relationship could ever evolve from this power dynamic. But why is this how we see young women?

Bekah M: I'm 22 Arie: I don't think you're ready. Bekah M: (wraps hands around neck) Arie: Ok. Here's your rose. #TheBachelor

???@jtrain56

True feminism demands that, rather than relegating young women to sexy red flags, we trust and believe them. That means allowing them to choose their partners regardless of race, gender, ability, sexuality, and, yes, age. Mandating equations for how big an age difference can exist for couples (I’ve heard “half your age + 7 years” quoted as a way to find the minimum age for one’s romantic and sexual partners) serves to create a separate category of agency for women who date older men. And that category means not viewing these women as full adults. It means not trusting the choices of young women. It means telling them: Sure, date whomever, love whomever—but also that there are secret standards society can and will judge you by, that anybody has the right to step in, to comment, to sabotage.

If that sounds reasonable, contemplate how it feels when we hear that men who’ve committed sexual crimes are young men, are boys, that boys will be boys and thus should be judged differently. But just as young men, in reality, have full agency, so, too, do young women. Of course, young men who date older women also face stigma, with older women often called “cougars” while the men are lauded for their sexual prowess. This is problematic and unacceptable as well, as it reduces both parties to their age and sexuality.

Misogyny, however, adds an extra dimension to the older man/younger woman dynamic, allowing the women to be painted as temptresses, children, and all the other reductive categories they’ve been restricted to for decades (bimbos, arm candy, trophy wives, midlife crises, etc).

It’s easy to pretend critiques of these relationships revolve around men’s problematic “taste” for younger women. Presumably, nobody decent is in favor of the Lolita dynamic (nor, of course, the scourge of pedophilia). Thus, saying things like a woman is “barely legal” or that her partner “could be her father” is a quick way to reframe a relationship as sketchy and gross, even when that relationship involves two consenting, legal adults.

People may also find older men-younger women relationships questionable because of certain societal expectations placed on women. It’s an unfortunate reality that older women are often relegated to the mother/aunt/grandmother role and denied any sexuality (see: this fantastic Amy Schumer sketch), and there’s a fear that, as a result, in approving of or promoting the relationship between a twenty-something and Arie, we’re approving of this whole dynamic. We’re saying it’s okay for younger women to “win” the sexuality game, to beat out more “age-appropriate” women time and time again, and also that it’s okay for men to only be attracted to women half their age.

These arguments are understandable, and deserve a dialogue. But feminism also demands more nuanced thought processes. By deeming some women “age-appropriate” and others “not so much,” we’re really saying that we don’t see younger women as intellectual equals, or as equal partners at all. While men can dump their younger girlfriends and move on to “wife material,” what happens to the so-called bimbos? When do they become “wife material,” and when does “wife material” become “no longer sexually viable”?

And who gets to draw these lines?

These arguments also tend to conflate age with maturity, when the distinctions between the two aren’t always so clear. In fact, there’s no easy metric for maturity. For every experience (going to college, working full-time, living alone, attending a prom, losing our virginities, getting our hearts broken, etc.) that we might view as necessary and formative, there are people who grew into mature adults just fine without it. Plenty of those experiences also depend on circumstances of race, class, ability, and sexuality. Beyond that, it’s quite possible that a young woman growing up in rape culture is more “mature” than a white man who’s spent his life racing very fast cars for lots of money.

Bekah is the perfect example of how age doesn’t necessarily correlate to maturity. She’s a whole human being (or at least she plays one on TV). She’s smart, funny, charming, and not always polished. She stands up for herself in situations where it’s frowned upon. Sociologist Holly Wood, PhD, writes that in the current Tinder-affected era, “Date nights start feeling like a series of auditions for the role of girlfriend, performed for the benefit of a judge who ultimately determines whether or not his commitment is on the table.”

On The Bachelor, this isn’t just a feeling, it’s reality. Dates each come with a rose for the Bachelor to give to a woman, and being given a rose means you’re still up for the role not just of girlfriend, but of wife. The atmosphere this creates is often one of desperation, with contestants going out of their way to have “deep” conversations and to apologize for any possible slight. Another contestant (the infamously painful Krystal) found herself groveling for Arie’s forgiveness after daring to sit out a group date with him. Krystal was sent home after that conversation. Moreover, it’s hard for contestants to stand out from the pack; women with the same names have to go by their first name and last initial, which can’t feel especially dignified.

Why Do Teen Magazines Idealize Underage Girls Dating Adult Men?

In this environment, Bekah dared to tell it like it was. She informed Arie that the reason he was nervous around her was that she didn’t need him to be complete and she wasn’t going to pander. She also explained that nobody else got to define her emotional readiness for marriage or commitment, and that she had doubts and fears about their relationship but wanted to continue and see what happened. Typically, contestants tell the Bachelor that they’re all in: They’re falling in love (after 3–6 weeks of knowing this person), they’re entirely ready to be a spouse, the connection they’re building is meaningful and unlike any other they’ve had in the past. Expressions of doubt mean a one-way ticket home.

Bekah’s willingness to challenge Arie wasn’t surprising because of her youth, but because nobody on the Bachelor behaves that way. The main “story” of Bekah M. and Arie shouldn’t be a story of an age scandal, but a story of a woman who respected her own agency and emotional maturity in a scenario where we assume both will be disregarded.

I’m not just talking about The Bachelor here, but about these relationships in general. It’s problematic to assume that young women who date or marry older men are bimbos, and it’s problematic to dismiss anyone solely based on their age or their age difference with a partner. While it’s important to be on the lookout for abuses of power in relationships, it’s also important to acknowledge healthy relationships, and to see women’s agency in the many situations where it can and does exist.