Interest in my project and its subject
matter began with my sociological research methods course, in which one of my
major assignments for the semester was to create a viable research design for a
sociological question of my choice. Racking my brain for a workable and
interesting research question, I overheard several classmates discussing
slut-shaming in women as potential topics. Myself being male, I began to wonder
what that might look like for men, and thought that, if anything, I might be
more likely to be looked down on as a man for lacking sexual experience rather
than possessing too much; I decided to investigate the extent and causes of
this phenomenon, if it even occurred at all. Thus my project idea, later titled
“Masculinity and Virgin-shaming in College-aged Males,” was born.
On a weekly basis, I am almost certainly
transcribing audio interviews into written form, as well as re-reading these
transcripts to pick out relationships across the data. My method of choice in
investigation is field research in the form of one-on-one interviews to answer
questions as to the prevalence of virgin-shaming, its causes, its potential use
in manipulating other guys’ behavior, and in what sorts of social settings it
would or would not occur. Besides transcribing, I am often otherwise making
connections in data obtained from multiple respondents; this week, for
instance, I discovered that, though calling someone a “virgin” derogatorily
might well be used as a form of bullying, many of my respondents reported that it
could just as readily be used to try and provoke a friend into engaging in some
masculine activity, say, going out to a bar or flirting with a girl across the
room.
The opportunity to actually engage in
research is invaluable to my long-term goals; not only am I gaining hands-on
experience with procedures like consulting relevant literature, conducting
proper data analysis, and writing a professional article for publication, but I
am also investigating and learning about a field that is highly relevant in
sociology and interests me, as well as learning about the social contexts and
surroundings in which I myself am embedded as a man in modern society. This
project, then, will help me both practically, with future applications to grad
school and jobs, as well as personally, in understanding myself and my social
environment more thoroughly. In the future, I am considering work in teaching
or in sociological research—or maybe teaching sociology!
My research project has to do with the concepts of social
support and mental stress among international students at George Mason
University. Specifically, I am interested in the association (if any) between
international students’ living situation and their levels of perceived social
support and perceived stress. Students who befriend nationals of the country in
which they are studying often adjust easier and undergo less acculturative
stress. Because of this, my hypothesis is that international students at GMU
who live with at least one American will experience more social support and
less stress.
