This week, my Gript colleague Laura Perrins penned an op-ed pointing out that “at the ripe old age of 27”, far-right American commentator Nick Fuentes “has never had sex with a woman”. She was responding to a viral interview with Piers Morgan wherein Fuentes explained that he is a Catholic, and as such, believes in waiting until marriage.
Perrins responded by arguing that Fuentes being a 27-year-old virgin meant he is clearly “rubbish with the ladies” and proceeded to mock him for his self-professed celibacy.
“I think it says a lot about the West that a 27-year-old-virgin has a big influence with young men,” Perrins wrote.
“Traditionally young men looked up to men who were good with the ladies, but now it seems admitting that you’re rubbish with women is a point of pride and cements your street cred with your fellow losers”.
I feel no desire to defend Nick Fuentes or his broader platform, but I am intrigued by the new approach of conservatives ridiculing young people for choosing to live in a more traditional way.
When Piers Morgan mocked the idea of a 27-year-old virgin, it was at least understandable to the extent that Morgan is a liberal, so I would expect little else from him.
Of course, I could quibble with the hypocrisy of libertine progressives like Morgan who have made the central tenet of their worldview “choice” suddenly becoming extremely judgemental the instant you espouse a traditional lifestyle.
If you told Piers Morgan “I have bisexual orgies every week, I have an OnlyFans and I’ve been divorced 4 times,” he’d say “Hey, that’s your choice – what you do in the bedroom is your own business.” He’d have nothing to say about your personal life, like the good little midwit centrist boomer he is.
But tell him you’re waiting until marriage, and he goes for you with all the mockery and scorn of a comically-petty school bully from a ‘90s movie.
What happened to respecting people’s personal choices and lifestyles, Piers?
But Laura isn’t a liberal. Laura is a conservative, and significantly more sensible than Piers Morgan. I have a lot of respect for her, and frequently enjoy her podcast takes.
Which makes her mockery of 27-year-old virginity much more surprising. She went for Nick Fuentes, and seems to have unintentionally caught a perfectly good life choice in the crossfire as collateral.
After all, I thought that conservatism was supposed to be about encouraging young people to abstain from sexual licentiousness that has destroyed their entire generation. Isn’t that the whole point?
I’m 28-years-old. My generation, Gen Z, is the generation of Bonnie Blue and Lilly Philips. We are a generation that grew up with unrestricted access to hardcore porn since the age of 9.
You have guys walking around in their early 20s with erectile dysfunction because they got exposed to adult content when they were too young to know better. Their elders failed to give them proper moral guidance, and now they’ve ended up desensitised to anything remotely normal at a young age and have lifelong addictions and self-esteem issues.
You have girls walking around with trust issues and lifelong relationship intimacy problems because they lost their virginity at a party at 14 and they weren’t mentally ready for it. This stuff is widespread and commonplace.
In short, my generation has stared into the abyss that is the late-stage sexual revolution, and many fell victim to it in extremely self-destructive ways that they now bitterly regret.
And it is in this context that many young people – not a majority, but a growing minority – are making the choice to sprint in the opposite direction as far as they can. They are choosing to go back to church and live their life in a radically different way to the prevailing worldview that failed them and their peers so badly.
And so, some young people reject that depravity and choose to wait until marriage. I know because I’m one of them.
I got married shortly before my 25th birthday, and as a devout Catholic, I waited until marriage by choice. My wife was the first and only woman I’ve ever been with, and I fully expect to keep it that way until the day I die.
I’m not remotely embarrassed by this. In fact, I’d be more embarrassed if I’d been a degenerate manwhore running around catching every disease in the book due to small-minded pride, lack of self-control and immaturity.
It’s not even just a religious thing – I am personally Catholic, but I have an atheist friend who said he admires it, though he finds it too taxing to practice himself.
“I wouldn’t want to be with a woman who’d had a tonne of sexual partners, so why would I do that to my future wife?” he noted.
If we (rightly) slag off men who fall for the kind of Andrew Tate redpill sexual nihilism, but then we also slag them when they try to live in a more modest way, what even is the message of conservatism?
It seems like we’re saying “If you go to the club and pull every night, you’re a degenerate, but if you abstain and wait until marriage, you’re a virgin loser who can’t get laid.” What are young men even supposed to do with that? What are we trying to accomplish at this stage?
Particularly in a religious context, when people are actually trying to abide by the teachings of their faith, which is obviously a good thing that should be encouraged.
Of all the things we should mock or criticise an individual for, rebelling against modernism’s hypersexualised culture is definitely not one of them.