Virginity Makes You Stupid

This trope is the reverse of the virgin as portrayed in classical literature. In ancient myths, virgins were often dedicated to some higher purpose. They were supposed to be above such things as lust and passion, upheld as an example that people should strive to follow... and if they fell from this pedestal, boy, did they fall hard. Just ask the goddess Artemis' attendants; if they gave in to the pleasures of the flesh, there was a world of hurt in store when the Boss Lady found out.

But sometime in the 20th century, there has been a sharp reversal. Virginity no longer guarantees Virgin Power or some higher knowledge; in fact, it often indicates the opposite. Many contemporary characters who are still virgins over the age of consent will be The Ditz. The men will be shy to the point of social ineptitude -- or so desperate to prove their manhood that they make idiots of themselves. By contrast, female virgins are usually portrayed as hopelessly dim, both in terms of intelligence and social skills. At best, such characters may be good at their jobs and/or book smart, but naive to the point of ignorance (remember, this trope often overlaps with The Ingenue).

On the upside, these characters will seldom be downright nasty. While some virgins are inept-but-harmless, most are examples of Dumb Is Good. They're usually sweet-natured and kind - you just wouldn't want them on your quiz team. In fact, their pleasant demeanor is one of the qualities that makes the opposite sex (and sometimes the same sex) want to sleep with them, whether it's because they appreciate these nice qualities... or because they can't resist the challenge of deflowering an "innocent".

It's this plot line that showcases Virginity Makes You Stupid at its worst. A conniving Vamp or Casanova sets themselves the challenge of sleeping with someone previously thought as pure, untouchable, naive. And their target will almost always fall for it, even when anyone with two functioning braincells could spot their intentions from a mile away.

The Family-Unfriendly Aesop in this case seems to be that in order to understand how people work, you have to have slept with someone. Clearly, basic common sense, body language, and the word "no" are a poor defense against manipulative bastards with a sex drive. To be fair, generally the (former) virgin's goodness will transform their pursuer into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold... but probably not before they've slept together.

Rather than being shamed or punished for losing their virginity, a character is promoted. Their sexual initiation will magically solve all of their personality "problems" and they will usually become more capable, rounded characters.

There are many possible explanations for this trope. It may be part of a larger trend where any form of innocence or optimism is interpreted as foolish. Perhaps it's inconcievable to a sex-orientated media that anyone with half a brain would choose not to have sex. Or maybe a lack of carnal knowledge was taken to mean a lack of knowledge of carnal matters and then extended to any general knowledge as well.

See also: My Girl Is Not a Slut, A Man Is Not a Virgin. In the context of musical theatre, this character will ALWAYS be The Soprano or a Tenor Boy (frequently called a "dolt-boy"). Compare Innocent Bigot and Innocently Insensitive; contrast Virgin Power. Exceptions to the "nice-but-dim" virgin rule occur when there is a Chaste Hero or Amazon Brigade running the show - even then, expect their virginity to be challenged (and more likely than not, relinquished) at some point in the plot.

Anime & Manga
"Ivan: [As Fire Emblem said, this was a club that catered 100% to his taste. It was sort of like a Host Club. As to why Sky High called me out to it...]
 * In the anime version of Valkyria Chronicles, this was reasonably inferred from the game about the protagonist Welkin Gunther, but the anime goes on to show that if Welkin has a fault aside from being a little too much of a Nice Guy, it's this trope. In college, he had a chance to get married to the most sought after girl in school, and he friend zoned her almost immediately, and his best friend (who also hit on the same woman) blatantly lampshades it. By present day, it's obvious Alicia Melchiott has feelings for him, but Welkin repeats history to the point Faldio not only starts hitting Alicia himself, but in his frustration over Welkin's use of this trope he throws down the gauntlet in Episode 12 and tells Welkin he has feelings for Alicia himself as a Batman Gambit to get Welkin to grow a spine and sex drive and see Alicia as a woman. Thankfully, by the end of the game and anime, he wises up.
 * Belldandy, oh Belldandy. She can live fighting demons and impeding doom and usually be the most competent character in the series, but was completely sheltered from damaging knowledge such as the fact that guys have penises and that lovers usually kiss. Her most blatant example of this may have been when Aoshima tricked her into coming with him into a love hotel. She recognized the decor -- because Urd had earlier done up Keiichi's room in the same style -- but still didn't seem to have any idea of Aoshima's intentions until he grabbed her and shoved her down on the bed. At time she has shown more initiative in terms of her relationship with Keiichi and has even kissed him while he's been asleep, but she also seems to be both ignorant and terrified of sexuality.
 * Not to mention naive, like when they were at the hot springs and she thought Marller injured him because he was covering himself up, totally unaware that he was embarrassed at being nude. Or when the two of them were at a love motel during an Urd-created rainstorm and while Keiichi was wondering if she was ready for sex, Belldandy was completely unaware of where they were, she was only focused on the rain.
 * Inverted in Hellsing with Sir Integra, holder of "100% virgin blood", yet portrayed as intelligent, highly competent, downright badass and ruthless.
 * There's also Seras. She's pretty innocent and sweet, until you push the right button, that is. Her virginity is also the reason she was able to be revived as a vampire by Alucard.
 * Inverted a little too far by Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig. The amoral Chessmaster Big Bad reveals he's actually a virgin.
 * A rare male example is Sagara Sousuke from Full Metal Panic!. He is very obviously a virgin, and... he is incredibly stupid when it comes to relationships, being socially inept. However, he is extremely competent when it comes to military combat, and is a teen genius when it comes to handling the Humongous Mecha AS. In fact, it's even Lampshaded in-series by Kurz, who calls Sousuke numerous times as being a "gutless, stupid virgin" - something which Sousuke only vaguely understands as probably being an insult.
 * He thinks a condom is used to hold a backup water supply!
 * One assumes that he knows what the intended use is, but the reason he carries one is for this utility. He doesn't care about the intended use.
 * B Gata H Kei is what happens when the IVOS heroine is also a Lovable Sex Maniac.
 * Goku from Dragon Ball accepts a proposal, believing marriage is a form of food. Hilarity Ensues when he grows up.
 * To defend Goku, he lived most of his life with his adoptive parent in the wilderness, who happened to also be a martial artist. His first social meeting with someone other than this adoptive parent happened at the start of the series when he was a teenager and most of what he had been taught was how to talk, how to fight, and how to eat. I.E. he had no real reason to know what marriage was in the first place.
 * His son Gohan also seems to have inherited his father's cluelessness, as Videl had to jump through hoops to get him to notice her love for him.
 * Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi
 * Pandora Hearts offers a hysterical subversion of the standard plot with Ada and . The Manipulative Bastard and Casanova's thoughts directly reveal he finds her innocence sickening and only wants to see her tainted. When he asks her to 'lay herself bare' and 'show him the real her', she nervously agrees and leads him to an unused home of her family's only to reveal she didn't pick up on the sexual implications at all; rather, what she shows him is the "real her": . Needless to say, poor is too shocked (and annoyed) to bother going through with his plans for the time.
 * At least once in Code Geass, C.C. calls Lelouch a "stupid virgin" (which was changed in the English dub). Lelouch is actually quite intelligent, but in that situation C.C. was criticizing him for letting his feelings for a girl jeopardize his overall plans.
 * While Keith Goodman's ditziness and chasteness have occasionally been demonstrated, the fourth Tiger and Bunny Drama CD just how phenomenally dense he is when it comes to sex: he invites Ivan to a rather risque gay club. That he goes to regularly. Completely oblivious to the fact that it's a gay club.

Keith: Why, you ask? It's because this place has the most delicious lemonade in the city!

Ivan: Eh?

Nathan: It appears our dear Sky High thinks this is a cafe."

Film
"Liv: "I stayed in a room like this with Tom Jones for about a month!" Ricky: "Oh, I bet I know what you were doing with Tom Jones for a month..." Liv: "What... No! It wasn't like that! He said he just wanted someone to keep him company!""
 * The plot of Legend is kicked off when Jack takes virginal but headstrong and foolish Lili to see unicorns, which she just has to touch despite Jack's protest to the contrary. That contact sullied the unicorn enough to let the minions of Darkness take its horn.
 * Cruel Intentions demonstrates this perfectly since it's another film version of Dangerous Liaisons (see below in Literature).
 * Forbidden Planet explicitly relates to Altaira and a docile tiger to the legendary virgin and unicorn. Sure enough, the tiger turns on Altaira after she loses her virginity, but this turns out to be justified: the apparently misplaced Terran animals on Altair-4 are completely unnatural creatures.
 * The virgin of the 'heroines' in Hostel II is flaky, socially awkward due to anxieties, emotionally immature and lacking common sense. It doesn't even take a Casanova; a little alcohol and desperation for acceptance lubricates her path to
 * The 40-Year-Old Virgin plays with this trope; Andy is definitely a bit of a naive Man Child, and the plot of the story revolves around his quest to get rid of his virginity, but the story gradually makes clear that he's actually a lot more well-adjusted, mature and sensible than many of the more 'experienced' men and women around him.
 * ...and the moral is...
 * In Hocus Pocus, the main character is a virgin and no one in the film ever lets him forget it. The term is practically interchangeable with "idiot" from the way everyone talks. And he lit the candle that virgins were explicitly not supposed to light.
 * Liv Dean from Duets is portrayed as being very gullible which, combined with her beauty, makes her a popular target for men. For the most part, though, she avoids trouble by being completely oblivious to it, much to her estranged father's chagrin.


 * In the 1987 movie version of Dragnet, to some extent Joe Friday and Connie Swail, although it's more them being incredibly old-fashioned and uptight than idiotic.
 * Don't you mean the virgin Connie Swail?
 * Averted in Clueless, when the super-cool Cher reveals that she never......
 * Invoked in The Last Temptation of Christ when Jesus throws the money-changers out of the temple. One of the patrons recognizes him as Jesus from Nazareth, and notes the lack of sex has forced the semen to back up into his brain.

Literature

 * In many variations of the "Virgin and the Unicorn" tale, the maiden was duped into attracting and soothing her unicorn friend until the hunters who convinced her to do so could attack and kill the unicorn for its horn. The version found in Nigel Suckling's The Book Of The Unicorn goes so far as to have the virgin princess ask her father -- a tyrannical, greedy king -- why they have brought a large company of armed men to meet a peaceful creature such as a unicorn. Amazingly, she believes him when he reassures her that they are only there for her protection. What an Idiot! indeed.
 * Modern unicorn stories challenge this trope, although they do it in different ways. The novel of The Last Unicorn includes a scene where a maiden tries rather half-heartedly to summon a unicorn as part of a ritual she has to perform before she can get married. The scene serves to show that virgins can be every bit as cynical and self-serving as anybody else. (It's also heavily ironic, since the only unicorn in the world is there to see it and decides not to go to her.)
 * Von Jocks' short story Yes Virginia, there is a Unicorn redefines the terms of the word "virgin" altogether. The youngest of the story's three female protagonists (and the only "technical" virgin), however, falls squarely into this trope and has to be protected from conniving men by the unicorn.
 * The short story White Beauty by Cynthia Ward features the virgin-as-bait-for-unicorn trope, but throws the hunters for a loop when, despite its looks, . Didn't See That Coming, indeed.
 * Subverted in one of Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger books - it doesn't work, because the unicorn in question is both gay and apparently not too enchanted with humans.
 * Also, the human girl they attempted to use to summon the unicorn was a streetwise orphan who was definitely not stupid.
 * Terry Jones of the Pythons related, in a book on medieval folklore, his surprise in finding that the pure virgin/unicorn thing was a sort of Forgotten Trope /punchline. The joke being you send a mythical creature to FIND a mythical creature. The joke has been repeatedly reinvented since; see, for instance, the conversation between the monster-hunters in Guards! Guards!
 * Subverted with the manga-esque series Tales of the Dark Forest. Virgins have to be smart, so they can outwit and kill the unicorns they stay virgins in order to hunt. The reason it's a subversion is that the first virgin we see in the series is used for unicorn bait, and really is that naively stupid at least until she's on the run with and apprenticed to a real unicorn huntress. Then again, she did arrange for said huntress' deflowering beforehand.
 * T.H. White's The Once and Future King has Gawaine and his brothers, while children, pull a servant girl from the kitchen to use as bait to catch a unicorn. It works, but Agravaine ends up killing the unicorn because of his... issues with his mother.
 * There's an interesting inverse example there as well. The boys get the idea to go unicorn-hunting because their mother went off on one with some knights, acting as the virgin. Clearly she isn't one, since she, you know, has sons. Even though their mother is a dark sorceress who has no problem manipulating people to have her way, she's still something of a shallow flake who can't stay focused on any serious matters for long.
 * In one of the books of The Witcher, Spoony Bard Jaskier is mocking a moment of Wangst of the protagonist, monster hunter Geralt. He compares witchers, who hunt monsters with the Virgin Unicorn Hunters, who eventually gave up on their virginity when Unicorns went extinct and took up other professions and everyone was happy.
 * Sherlock Holmes, while almost certainly a virgin due to his disdain of romantic love, was no fool. His less-gifted friend Watson was married(presumably with all that entails), but it's not quite an aversion, as Watson was much more capable than many adaptions painted him to be, especially given anyone will look less-gifted next to Sherlock Holmes.
 * Sansa Stark in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is a good example of this... and boy does she pay for it.
 * Brienne of Tarth, too, though we only meet her after she's already become a tad disillusioned in regards to men. She's still a complete Wide-Eyed Idealist, but once she believed that all men were as noble and true as her father, whom she looks to as a paragon of virtue. After being spurned all her life due to her appearance, imagine her confusion and hope when men in Renly's army finally started flirting with her. Then imagine her heartbreak when she was informed that they were doing so as part of a bet to see who could get to her maidenhead first.
 * Lady Crysania, Head Cleric of Paladine in the Dragonlance books, fits this trope. Though very sophisticated and intelligent, she is also very ignorant of "the real world". Part of this is due to her sheltered upbringing rather than just lack of sexual experience. She does manage to fall in love with Raistlin over the course of the Legends trilogy, resulting in a two-virgins-passing-in-the-night scenario where Raistlin at one point inhabits the healthy, curse-free, and virile body of Fistandandilus. He struggles with urges he's never dealt with before and considers seducing Crysania (who'd likely be more than willing if only he'd make the first move) but backs down, remarking that he knows next to nothing about seduction or lovemaking. Oddly for Raistlin, the possibility that Crysania's implied Virgin Power might be necessary to open the Gate comes in a distant second for reasons not to make a move.
 * In Tanya Huff's Summon the Keeper, Dean is a knock-down gorgeous guy, kind, handy around the house, and so well-grounded that world-weary Claire instinctively looks for roots sprouting from his sneakers. He's twenty and yep, a virgin. He blushes at the slightest hint of any "funny stuff", takes a while to understand anything, and Claire falls deep and hard for him.
 * Averted in Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane stories. The titular character is a Badass who will pursue evil-doers across oceans, but is a devout Puritan who doesn't frolic with the ladies. (This might explain why he's not as well known as Howard's other creation Conan the Barbarian.)
 * In the Discworld novels, the witches Nanny Ogg, Magrat and Granny Weatherwax fit The Hecate Sisters mold. As the maiden, Magrat is nominally the virginal one and is The Ditz. This gets contrasted with Nanny Ogg whose "maiden" years involved her really getting around, linked it seems with her becoming the most knowledgeable midwife of all time (in fact Time gets her to be her midwife). When a (rabid, feral) unicorn needs catching, the only one who can do it is As Nanny Ogg says to Archchancellor Ridcully: "She always could run faster'n you..."
 * Dracula: Jonathan Harker. It doesn't help that every time he does get a chance to hop in bed with his wife, a certain somebody tends to interrupt. With blood-drinking.
 * Warden Ramirez of the The Dresden Files, despite all his big talk, is a virgin. He's not exactly naive though, and he's confident and competent enough to be a Warden. Lara Raith is so stunned that she mockingly asks if Dresden brought him as a present for her. He even manages to come out of a White Court house with it intact. Mostly because of the sword and grenades and other killy things.
 * Cecile Volanges in Dangerous Liaisons--even after forsaking the basic requirement for this trope.  To be fair in the 18th Century (noble) girls were kept pretty ignorant on this topic.
 * In Mercedes Lackey's By the Sword, the heroine's mother had just enough instinct to avoid falling for a cruel noble with an eye to her estate but otherwise exemplified this trope, thanks to a head stuffed full of romance stories and bad poems.
 * Another Mercedes Lackey novel the Fairy Godmother plays with this. Ella may be a virgin, but she's extremely intelligent. It's the unicorns who are ditzes, to the point of annoyance.
 * Besides the aforementioned examples in The Once and Future King, Arthur himself is a very naive and sweet person when he's still a virgin. He loses his virginity when and the narrator even says that "innocence is not enough". Things quickly start to go downhill for him from there. Lancelot likewise finds his life going much more complicated and thus making him much less idealistic and innocent after . He is very upset, mainly because he believes that only virgins have the power to work miracles.
 * This must be a thing in the Arthurian mythos. The prologue to The Mists of Avalon implies this. As Morgaine considers the Blessed Virgin Mary as a possible aspect of the Goddess, she dismisses the idea with "What does a virgin know of the sufferings of mankind?"

Live Action TV

 * Quite a lot of Hispanic Soap Operas do this regularly, because of all the drama you can milk from the habitual consequences of sex in countries which are mostly Catholic, and I'm not talking about pregnancy. Strangely, this applies even if the Official Couple marries (but only if they do that in the middle of the story).
 * Played with to great effect in "Yo Soy Betty, la Fea": given her awful appearance, her social awkwardness, her nerdiness and her heroine status, you couldn't suspect she wasn't a virgin anymore... until she confesses to her romantic interest after their first night together that her first time was with a boyfriend who only did her because of a bet, and the experience left her so hurt she preferred not to talk about it. Too bad she didn't learn the lesson then.
 * In its America adaptation Ugly Betty, Betty outright told Christina in Season 1 that her boyfriend at the start of the series (Walter) was the only guy she'd ever "...you know." Christina is kinda grossed out by the idea of Walter-on-Betty sex.
 * Janice in Waterloo Road.
 * Juliette, the main character in Septième Ciel Belgique is a very shy and inexperienced woman, both sexually and romantically speaking, who suddenly ends up in a job environment with a boss who is a Ms. Fanservice with a penchant to let slip about her sexual life, and an old flame she believes is a heartless Casanova. She compensates with a lot of shameless lies about her romantic past (easily uncovered by just seeing how uncomfortable she becomes when sexual themes arises), a cynical attitude who quickly descends into Tsundere territory, and a tendency to take a lot of her prejudices and misunderstanding for real. Although that attitude makes her immaturity more obvious, she somehow manages to hide her virgin status to the other characters until the end of the first season, just before losing it. Interestingly, in the second season, her lack of knowledge about how relationships works and her Tsundere attitude remains even after she had sex and began a (strained) relationship with her romantic interest.
 * Averted in Babylon 5 by Marcus Cole: He's idealistic and good-natured, but he's also worldly, deep, and completely badass. And he's saving himself for Ivanova;
 * In the family sitcom Step by Step cousin Cody, while not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, is portrayed as hip, cool, easygoing, popular -- and a virgin. And on two different episodes people come to grief who try to jerk his chain about it -- or worse, jerk one of his cousins' chains about being a virgin as well. Though dumb and a Cloudcuckoolander, he definitely comes off as being cooler for it... so, subversion, inversion, aversion?...

Theater

 * Paul Rudnick's I Hate Hamlet includes a 29-year-old virgin, who while not an idiot, is incredibly childish and idealistic. Her boyfriend calls her "the victim of a relentlessly happy childhood, which she fully expects to continue." Eventually, a lascivious ghost helps her realize her desires, and she and her boyfriend, well...

Video Games

 * Leisure Suit Larry 6's final beau Shamara is a rich Granola Ditz. Guess what.
 * And at the start of 7, after having sex with Larry she's lost all her purity and goodness, and abandons him to find a "real man". While he's tied up. In a room she (accidentally) set on fire. Does having sex with Larry make you evil, or does he simply have a very bad track record?
 * In Mass Effect, Liara has little social skills due to spending decades on solitary studies. Guess what? She is also a virgin. Ash, not so much. Also, Liara is the species equivalent of around 20-something human years old... which is 106. However, she is an archeologist specializing the Protheans, and she did piece together from her research that something happened to the Protheans and organic life before them consistently (which is the Reapers, the main threat within the storyline), so she's clearly not stupid. She states her social inability is from her constant researching in the field and out of it leaving her alone for lengthy amounts of time.
 * The follwoing is even more surprising when you remember that the human lifespan has doubled.
 * Also averted with Tali. Lair Of The Shadow Broker allows you to view records relating to your recruited crew, including Tali's suit install/uninstall records. Besides for a... nerve stimulator she installed a lot of human courting manuals. Shepard doesn't even need to be male for Tali to have downloaded them.
 * Fallout 3 has Sierra Petrovita, a 26-year-old woman who fits this trope to a T.
 * Alluded to in Tales of Vesperia concerning Estelle. When Kowz refers to her as Innocent Girl, she is confused and asks Raven what he meant by that, to which he replies, "If you have to ask, you're better off not knowing." Ultimately subverted, however, when you remember that she's extremely book-savvy.
 * The PG version of the Vesperia example occurs in Breath of Fire II. Katt is Dumb Muscle. Nina is The Smart Girl. Double Subverted with Deis/Bleu; the Really Seven Hundred Years Old Lady of Black Magic who is more than a little bit of a tease. Especially more so in the third game.

Webcomics

 * Jessica in Loserz. See this strip (and the following ones). She eventually gets over the first part... which leads to her getting over the second part.
 * Subverted so very hard in Shortpacked, where the shy and (comparatively) sweet one has "never been the virgin", while the most sex-crazed of the lot never quite managed to get all the way.
 * Played completely straight in the webcomic Ménage à 3. The comic's protagonist, Gary, is a naive, geeky virgin who faints every time he sees real naked boobs. Half the cast are virgins, while the rest have crippling or downright bizarre sexual dysfunctions.
 * Doubly subverted in Flipside. Regina's character is introduced as this, having been raised in a monastery and being utterly shy about anything having to do with relationships. Her lack of self-confidence is the major obstacle to her gaining her next rank as a sorcerer. Subverted when, in the "Silhouette" chapter, she suddenly reappears and starts vamping on the not-so-innocent Maytag, having apparently lost her innocence in record time. Then subverted again when it turns out.
 * Played straight and subverted at the same time with Norman Gates from Poisoned Minds, as told in this strip. He's a dumb brute, but certianly not innocent. He just seems to genuinely lack those particular cravings, being busy spreading chaos and destruction instead.
 * Matt of Concession almost seems to gain 20 IQ points after hooking up with Joel. Most likely related to how badly closeted he was before then.

Web Original

 * "Fucking virgins, man. Why do we even have them?"

Western Animation
""It turned out that the princess didn't know a damn thing about sex -- how does she get guys to pay her rent?""
 * In Undergrads, Cal is an amiable dolt who at one point is horrified by the fact that he's gone hours without sex, while virtually all of the other characters are both more intelligent and far less sexually experienced.
 * In the second episode of Drawn Together, Princess Clara is revealed to be not only a virgin, but hopelessly naive and ignorant about sex, a fact which the oversexed Foxxy Love is completely unable to grasp.

Real Life

 * One French verb for "to lose one's virginity", se déniaiser, basically means "to de-idiot oneself".
 * Given that the standard Biblical euphemism is "To know," the link between obtaining knowledge and... well, de-idioting isn't too hard to follow.
 * Okay, a little etymology here: a "niais" originaly literally meant "an hawk which as yet to leave its nest for the first time", by extention it started to mean "someone without wordly experience", at which point se déniaiser merely meant "losing one's inexperience": the niais = idiot meaning came later.