Virginity Makes You Stupid: Difference between revisions

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

 

 

 

There are many possible explanations for this trope. It may be part of a larger trend where ''[[Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids|any]]'' [[Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids|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 [[Miss Conception|a lack of knowledge of carnal matters]] and then extended to any general knowledge as well.

== Anime & Manga ==

* 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.

** 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, [[Berserk Button|until you push the right button, that is]]. Her virginity is also the reason she was able to be [[First-Episode Resurrection|revived as a vampire by Alucard]].

* A rare male example is Sagara Sousuke from ''[[Full Metal Panic]]''. He is ''[[Chaste Hero|very]]'' [[Chaste Hero|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 [[Chivalrous Pervert|Kurz]], who calls Sousuke numerous times as being a "gutless, stupid virgin" - something which Sousuke [[Chaste Hero|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]].

** 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.

== Film ==

* The plot of ''[[Legend]]'' is kicked off when [[The Hero|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.

* ''[[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 Wildlife|misplaced Terran animals]] on Altair-4 are completely unnatural creatures.

** [[Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped|...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. [[Too Dumb to Live|And he lit the candle that virgins were explicitly not supposed to light]].

{{quote| '''Liv:''' "I stayed in a room like this with Tom Jones for about a month!"<br />

'''Ricky:''' "Oh, I bet I know what you were doing with ''Tom Jones'' for a month..."<br />

== 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.

** 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, {{spoiler|the unicorn turns out to be a vampiric creature that drains the girl's blood with its horn}}. [[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.

** 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... [[Freud Was Right|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.

* [[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... [[Break the Cutie|and boy does she pay for it]].

* 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 ''[[Keepers Chronicles|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. {{spoiler|In subsequent books, Claire and Dean do end up together, love-smitten enough to make you barf, and he loses his virginity quickly in the second book.}}

* 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 Gets Around|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 {{spoiler|[[Good Is Not Nice|Granny Weatherwax]], proving that you can be a virgin [[Subverted Trope|and]] a proud, cynical badass.}} As Nanny Ogg says to Archchancellor Ridcully: "She always ''could'' run faster'n you..."

* 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.

* 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 [[Brainless Beauty|unicorns who are ditzes]], to the point of annoyance.

== Live Action TV ==

* Quite a lot of Hispanic [[Soap Opera|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).

** In its America adaptation ''[[Ugly Betty]]'', Betty outright told Christina in Season 1 that her boyfriend at the start of the series ([[The Scrappy|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.

 

 

== Webcomics ==

* Jessica in ''[[Loserz]]''. See [http://the-qlc.com/loserz/go/435 this strip] (and the following ones). She eventually gets over the first part... which leads to her [[Coming Out Story|getting over the second part.]]

* 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.

* Played straight and subverted at the same time with Norman Gates from ''[[Poisoned Minds]]'', [http://www.poisonedminds.com/d/20020208.html 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 [[Transparent Closet|closeted he was]] before then.

 

== Web Original ==

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* 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.

{{quote| "It turned out that the princess didn't know a damn thing about sex -- how does she get guys to pay her rent?"}}