"Purity"
"Abstinence"
"Chastity"
"Value" (equals no sex)
"Virginity"
For those who are utterly sick of these made-up words filled with made-up meanings conceived by men in order to control and shame women, 'The Purity Myth' is for you.
All the above words have the same fundamental purpose: To keep women young and caged. To keep their "chastity" - perceived cleanliness - fetishized, their value as a person to lie in their "pureness", their morality to depend on how much sex they have. Women as inexperienced, childlike, feminine, unsullied, not "dirty", and as submissive commodities.
Or keep women like un-sucked lollipops, un-plucked flowers, un-popped cherries (urgh! WHY?), and keep men like natural sex predators who need to have sex early with the "pure" girls (see the nonsensical contradiction and double-standard already?).
It's just to keep women from doing anything at all, really, so they'll stay at home as ideal, silent wives and mothers, available for men to do as they please to them.
The US epidemic, the "virginity-movement", as the author describes it, and abstinence-only education - which is proven again and again never to work but is prioritised over actual, effective and safe sex education regardless, that's how entrenched our male-dominated society is in controlling women's sexuality - these really feel like a widespread cult. It's a system aiming to reinforce old sexist ideas to "protect" women, and empower men as the "keys" to open clean "locks" or passive "gatekeepers" (this rhetoric makes no sense whatsoever, but that's misogynistic double-standards for you). It's another method of treating women like property to be owned and passed down from man to man - from father to husband. Women are continuously discouraged from having a choice in how they express their sexuality and live out their sexual lives - or even from thinking about it, except as a dirty thing only dirty, "impure" girls do. They aren't given the information they need for a healthy sex life, because the idea of a woman even having a sex life (especially if it isn't to please men) is viewed as immoral, unnatural.
It is natural. It is the idea of virginity and purity which is the dangerous lie.
Jessica Valenti writes like a kind, reassuring and savvy friend. She sources the facts, sites real stories relating to how the obsession with women's sex and virginity - how it is they who are made to be responsible for men's actions towards them - is endangering them. She analyzes this issue and takes into account all its widespread, complicated angles (What is virginity, exactly? It doesn't physically, biologically exist, so how is it meant to work? Where did the notion come from? Ect.)
There's America's disturbingly common tradition of the creepy "purity balls", filled with incestuous undertones and overtones (it's all about ownership; suddenly "daddy's little girl" takes on a much darker subtext). Abstinence pledges (which boys don't have to take, or aren't pressured to be as serious about it, because their sex lives are not made a huge part of who they are by society's standards, and they are not shamed because "Boys will be boys"). The culture of men and macho "manliness" applying to dominance and remaining above women in human rights.
There's the constantly-controversial debate on the rights to abortion - where the decisions are made, dictated and controlled by the men in the US and other governments. Their approaches to this include prioritizing the humanity of the foetus over the pregnant woman (even hiring lawyers for the foetus, I wish I was joking), treating women like clueless idiots, and using scare and shame tactics to try to discourage them from having abortions. Even today, available US abortion health clinics are at risk - it is all about taking away women's right to make choices for herself, with or without a man's permission (I am pro-choice).
There's “femiphobia”, the patriarchy-created-and-controlled Madonna/Whore complex, the illogical fallacy of victim-blaming - which stems from misogyny, rape-apologists and the media's and law's desperate attempts to shift responsibility from the rapists, and how the "virginity-movement" completely erases the existence of the queer community and the experiences of anyone who isn't white, skinny, English-speaking, and of traditional, attractive and "safe" Christian values.
It's all ludicrous and insidious. When it comes to sex and women, it's all about dehumanising women - distrusting them, confining them, taking away their liberties, shaming them into traditional gender norms of marriage and sex only for procreation. Remember, sex for any other reason is immoral in a female; once she's seen as a slut or a whore, she is no longer worthy of human status as far as the patriarchy/virginity-movement is concerned (not that she had been respected much as a person before).
She is seen as less than nothing, because lord forbid that women enjoy sex.
This needs to stop now.
I love 'The Purity Myth' - an absolute must-read feminist book. So shocking, so utterly unbelievable, yet the stories included really are wretchedly happening. So reassuring - the end chapter gives the reader information about existing sex-positive, feminist factions that are honest and aspire to shatter purity myths in our ever-changing culture.
Mainly about America, but whose problems are present in other countries as well, here is a collection of important facts about the awful, over-funded epidemic of abstinence-only education, and the obsession with women's non-existent virginity status above everything else about her as a valued human being.
For girls, being good means sex after marriage, for marriage and babies is all the virginity-movement expects from them. Through communication, let us change that!
Final Score: 5/5
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