by Who’s Really Keeping Score?
In what can only be described as humanity’s most absurd spreadsheet, someone has apparently been keeping track of virginity statistics by religious affiliation. Because nothing screams “spiritual enlightenment” quite like competitive rankings based on people’s private lives.
This virginity ranking phenomenon represents peak human obsession with quantifying the unquantifiable. It’s like trying to measure love in milliliters or rate someone’s soul on a scale from one to ten. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work, but that won’t stop us from trying.
The methodology behind these rankings is about as scientific as reading tea leaves during a thunderstorm. Self-reported data about intimate behavior? What could possibly go wrong? It’s not like people have ever been less than completely honest about their sexual history, especially when asked by strangers with clipboards and judgmental eyebrows.
What makes this particularly Austin-relevant is the tech-bro mentality it embodies. Someone looked at human sexuality and thought, “You know what this needs? Data visualization and competitive rankings.” It’s the gamification of chastity, which sounds like a mobile app that would definitely get rejected from the App Store.
Religious communities have responded to these rankings with the kind of competitive fervor usually reserved for college football. Suddenly, maintaining virginity isn’t just about spiritual purityit’s about beating the Methodists in the abstinence league tables. Nothing quite captures the essence of humility like bragging about your congregation’s superior self-control.
The University of Texas psychology department has a field day with this stuff. They’ve probably got entire research teams studying how humans can simultaneously believe in privacy and dignity while also desperately wanting to know how they rank compared to others in every conceivable category, including ones that should definitely remain private.
Perhaps the real ranking was the judgment we cast along the way. Or maybe, just maybe, we should stop treating human intimacy like a competitive sport with winners and losers.
SOURCE: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1832455175015620608?referrer=bohiney
SOURCE: Bohiney.com (The Great Purity Ranking Fiasco)
