The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women

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The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women

by Jessica Valenti (Goodreads Author)

4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 · rating details · 2,882 ratings · 346 reviews

The United States is obsessed with virginity — from the media to schools to government agencies. In The Purity Myth Jessica Valenti argues that the country’s intense focus on chastity is damaging to young women. Through in-depth cultural and social analysis, Valenti reveals that powerful messaging on both extremes — ranging from abstinence curriculum to “Girls Gone Wild” i...more

Hardcover, 263 pages

Published April 1st 2009 (first published March 21st 2009)

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Sep 26, 2011 Ashleigh Paige rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-time-favorites, the-great-shelf-of-awesome, wow-it-s-nonfiction

Also appears on The YA Kitten!

The Purity Myth has been on my to-read list for a while now due to good word about it, my own curiosity about why society slut shames, victim blames, and judges women based on the sex they are or are not having. It took me a while to read, but I finally did it! It's pretty much about how society judges us as women based on how sexual we are and regardless of what our orientation is. Whether you're a straight, gay, bi, trans, or another sexual orientation, the book a...more Also appears on The YA Kitten!

The Purity Myth has been on my to-read list for a while now due to good word about it, my own curiosity about why society slut shames, victim blames, and judges women based on the sex they are or are not having. It took me a while to read, but I finally did it! It's pretty much about how society judges us as women based on how sexual we are and regardless of what our orientation is. Whether you're a straight, gay, bi, trans, or another sexual orientation, the book applies to each and every woman because there is not one of us that hasn't been affected by the purity myth at one point or another. Heck, I'm asexual and the book still applies to me because it's also about the sexuality forced upon women against their wills by society whether or not they actually have any.

The points Valenti makes about the treatment of women in society based on their sexuality are all very true; I read about girls judging another another based on their sexuality in the books I read (YA books, which is probably one of the worst places to drop those damaging messages) and hear teens doing the exact same thing in real life. One friend of mine called another girl a slut for sleeping around with numerous boys and an attempt at intelligent discussion about why she felt that way was useless. The effect the virginity movement has had on teens and the media really shows and I hate that Valenti has to be right about the damage the movement has done.

While I agree with much of what Valenti has to say, there is one minor point where I strongly disagree. On page 28, one of her footnotes says this as she discusses beauty pageants: "Who, after all, can maintain a pearly white perma-grin through humiliating bathing suit competitions and inane questions--all for scholarships that are paltry in comparison to the money spent on gowns and coaches--other than women looking for some serious validation?"

I'm not going to try and say beauty pageants don't have deeply sexist roots; denying that fact is only a waste of time and words. However, I dispute her opinion that women only do it for validation. I was in exactly one beauty pageant (I was thirteen and we do not speak of it) and I didn't do it to be validated; I liked dressing up and I just wanted to have fun. That wasn't how it went in the end, hence the event's status as "we do not speak of it," but I do have one thing to thank it for: teaching me how to strut, which eventually became part of my natural walk.

Back on topic, have you noticed how society has a worshipful relationship with beautiful people? Just look at a tabloid or think back to how the pretty people were treated when you were in high school. Being beautiful can bring you a surprising amount of power, though it comes with its drawbacks the way any kind of power would. Perhaps some of these young women grew up seeing what power came with beauty and entered beauty pageants to use their beauty to their advantage. Maybe they simply loved the spotlight. There are any multitude of reasons a woman could enter a beauty pageant and not all of them include validation.

Chapter five, focused on abstinence-only education and what it does to children and teens, really stuck with me. I remember very little about how sex ed was taught to me, but I know it was abstinence-only education. For one thing, the speaker that came in every Wednesday showed us a horrific, brain-scarring slide show of what male and female genitals look like when afflicted with STDs or STIs. I don't remember learning about birth control, condoms, or and other method of safe sex. For another thing, the school newspaper was barred from writing about safe sex by the principal as recently as last year.

My bad memory led me to do a little research. This is a PDF I found about sex ed in Florida that was made as recently as late 2009 or early 2010. My sex ed classes happened in 2007, so I think this is close enough for use. I did a search for mentions of my county's name and it comes up in a few places: one of them spotlights the gender-stereotypical pamphlets given to students and another one talking two PowerPoints shown to children and teens (the scare tactic STD one I saw and another one that shames teens who have sex).

That PDF and the information it provides support Valenti and the sad yet true points she makes. Young adults are not being properly educated on sex and if they have sex anyways, it's because they have low self-esteem or want to be popular or they're on drugs, not because they want to. The people who abstain from sex and the good ones no matter how rotten their attitudes are and the one who have sex are the bad ones whether or not they have hearts of gold. This is not how people should be taught about sex.

All in all, The Purity Myth is a smart book. It's frustrating how women are treated even in the present time when we're supposed to be equal, and I think it's important for young women to read this novel. I think I liked my trip out of the world of YA and into nonfiction. I might have to do this more often.(less)

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Helen Cory wrote: "Am I weird in that I think it's problematic to segregate based on sex education for any reason? Leads to the "ew, icky" factor IMO, or id...more
updated Jan 23, 2013 07:46pm

Rebekah Martin I don't think they made the boys leave for the period talks. It was part of the biology part in 7th grade science. And the whole glass got the joy of...more
Jan 23, 2013 07:29pm

Mar 07, 2013 Regina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, available-at-library, owned-kindle, gender-studies

Very interesting read. The author puts forward the argument that defining women and labeling their morality by their sexual activity and choices is problematic. Valenti argues that overvaluing virginity is on the same continuum and spectrum as labeling women “sluts”. In the end, Valenti is not promoting promiscuousness. She is not promoting prudishness. She is not discouraging men from finding women attractive. What she is arguing is for an identification of women that is separate from their app...more Very interesting read. The author puts forward the argument that defining women and labeling their morality by their sexual activity and choices is problematic. Valenti argues that overvaluing virginity is on the same continuum and spectrum as labeling women “sluts”. In the end, Valenti is not promoting promiscuousness. She is not promoting prudishness. She is not discouraging men from finding women attractive. What she is arguing is for an identification of women that is separate from their appearance and separate from the judgment of how much sex they have. As Valenti stated so well, "Our daughters deserve a model of morality that's based on ethics, not on their bodies."

Valenti is well known for her role on the website www.feministing.org; even if I had not known that, it would be obvious from reading this book that the author is a blog writer. I think she overstates the power of blogging, but I understand why as that is who she is. The book read too much like a blog entry and every paragraph ends with a snarky comment. Which was fun at first to read, but I am not sure if that is effective over the long read of the book -- snark and cutting comments may rob the book of any broader base appeal beyond feminists and may prevent its staying power. The topic is already inflammatory, so that people who approach the topic and are not in agreement with Valenti (unlike myself), may very well put the book down from insults. She ends the book with asking for a positive and non-attacking response from the purity pushers, but I can see how the snark could turn them off. Despite my liking the message, it was my impression that Valenti attempted to cover too many topics in this book. I think it would have been more workable had she limited it to less topics.

Great quotes from the book:

“It isn’t sex unless you’ve had an orgasm.”

“equating this inaction with morality not only is problematic because it continues to tie women’s ethics to our bodies, but also is downright insulting because it suggests that women can’t be moral actors. Instead, we’re defined by what we don’t do – our ethics are the ethics of passivity.”

“there’s no separating virginity, violence, and control over women’s bodies. When it comes to women who are perceived as ‘impure,’ there’s a narrative of punishment that underscores it.”

"[t]here's no getting around the fact that society's current version of sexuality makes it difficult for young women to have a healthy sexual outlook that centers on their desires .... raunch culture promotes inauthentic, performance-based female sexuality."

"The thing is, naked women aren't the problem -- a woman believing her only venue is sexual is what's dangerous. It's not women's sexuality that we have to watch out for, it's the way [it is constructed].”

“The desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. She’s young, white, and skinny. She’s a cheerleader, a babysitter; she’s accessible and eager to please.”
(less)

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Sep 27, 2012 tfc rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: religion, women-gender-sexuality, christianity, evangelical-christianity

Valenti makes a number of good arguments in _The Purity Myth_: that it's dangerous and damaging to teach young women that their morality or lack thereof hinges on whether or not they have sex, rather than whether or not they are kind people living ethical lives; that obsession with sexual purity infantilizes women; that the virgin-whore dichotomy enables the abuse and marginalization of women, and pushes a view of masculinity that is toxic to both women and men. Valenti is right on the mark in c...more

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Feb 25, 2009 Meen marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Recommended to Meen by: http://www.feministing.com/

Shelves: feminist-womanist-gender, sexy-sexy-splashy-splashy, politics-rants-opinion-policy

I saw this book on an ad on this page:

http://www.feministing.com/archives/0...

which is making me throw up a little in my mouth every time I think about it. At some point we have to start calling some aspects of religion what they are, just plain abuse.

7 likes · like · see review

Jan 28, 2013 Crystal Starr Light rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, feminism

UPDATE: Bumping this up to 4 stars after reading Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, because this book is a lot more balanced and speaks with more facts.

This isn't really a review, more of a mish-mash of my thoughts and feelings about this book. So be warned: it's messy and unorganized.

I found the book very insightful, brimmed with thought-provoking arguments and comprehensive research. I appreciated a book that looked at the Virginity Myth from all aspects--wha...more UPDATE: Bumping this up to 4 stars after reading Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, because this book is a lot more balanced and speaks with more facts.

This isn't really a review, more of a mish-mash of my thoughts and feelings about this book. So be warned: it's messy and unorganized.

I found the book very insightful, brimmed with thought-provoking arguments and comprehensive research. I appreciated a book that looked at the Virginity Myth from all aspects--what virginity was, how it affects women, where it is found, how pervasive it is, etc. This topic is close to me, as I was one of those women raised under the Virginity Movement (not so much by my parents, but by my church and by Focus on the Family's Brio magazine and Boundless.org website--two places that anyone who isn't 100% a virgin would want to avoid AT ALL COSTS). I was told to maintain my virginity until marriage (to a virgin male), that sex would lead to babies, STDs, and lots and lots of heartache (Uh, doesn't LIFE ITSELF lead to lots of heartache???), that women weren't as sexual as men, and other miscellaneous scare tactics that Valenti addresses. Reading a book like this opened my eyes to a lot of the myths I was told as a teenager, and more importantly, affirmed something that I've really embraced as an adult: that a woman is more than capable of being responsible for her own sexuality. That no one should tell her what her worth is based on who she has sex with or how much sex she has (I mean, MEN aren't held to that standard, now are they?). That virginity is a CHOICE that a WOMAN should choose if she wants to--not something forced on her by society or the men in her life.

Two of my favorite quotes:

"When I argue for an end to the idea of virginity, it's because I believe sexual intimacy should be honored and respected, but that it shouldn't be revered at the expense of women's well-being, or seen as such an integral part of female identity that we end up defining ourselves by our sexuality."

"For the record, I think virginity is fine, just as I think having sex is fine. I don't really care what women do sexually, and neither should you. In fact, that's the point. I believe that a young woman's decision to have sex, or not, shouldn't impact how she's seen as a moral actor."

This book wasn't perfect. In Chapter 6, Valenti notices the similarity between the Virginity Movement's agenda and the anti-abortion agenda and then suddenly uses the two interchangeably. I would have liked to see who and what were supporting abstinence-only education and anti-abortion, a deeper connection between the two houses of thought.

I found that Valenti could be very harsh to the Virginity Movement proponents. I don't doubt the abstinence-only education lies (I remember a few myself), but I have a hard time believing all abstinence-only education is that sloppy and horrible. In fact, many times it seems that Valenti is rather harsh to the Virginity Movement, in a way that goes above and beyond what is required. Is she doing that because she was hurt by the slut-shaming (which is understandably horrible and SHOULD NOT be done)? Or is she using this as a tactic to get her point across? And while Valenti makes a lot of good points in the book, not all of her beliefs agree with mine (which ones aren't the focus of this "review").

I am really glad I read this book; I found it empowering and educational, a hope to women everywhere that one day they will be judged like men--by their character, instead of how "tight like Spandex" they are.(less)

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Oct 29, 2009 Christy Stewart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: feminism, history, nonfiction, philosophy, politics, reference, religion, favorite, female-authors, sociology, gender-studies, reviewed, books-i-own

Reading the book was like being lifted of a burden because with every chapter I was SO relieved that what I felt helpless to argue about anymore was covered so succinctly and eloquently in this book. I don't tend to like to read nonfiction books I agree with (because what's the point? I might as well sit in the bathroom and talk into the mirror) but I've never been more pleased to agree with a book in my life, if someone asked me what I felt about feminism and/or sexuality I could hand them this...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Amy or "Ames" rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, feminism, self-challenge, b-2-f-challenge, read-in-2013, m-tbr, rape

Is America a dystopian society when it comes to its neglectful and abusive nature towards its women?

I ask this question honestly, not to shock or offend, but because I genuinely want to know. I'm not saying America is the worst country in the world for a woman to live, just that the 'virginity movement' comprising of powerful conservative, Republican and Christian groups, have a worrying number of ideals in common with Al-Qaeda.

As a Brit, I'm spoilt. I take my country for granted for its forwar...more

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Nov 25, 2009 Ms. Online added it

Shelves: 2009-spring-reviews

MORAL HAZARD
Laura M. Carpenter

Review of The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women
By Jessica Valenti
Seal Press

For decades, Right-Wing think tanks and conservative Christian organizations have promoted what Jessica Valenti calls the “purity myth”: the belief that virginity separates moral/good women from their immoral/bad sisters. In its blatant attempt to re-establish traditional gender roles, the purity movement backs restrictions on birth control and abortio...more MORAL HAZARD
Laura M. Carpenter

Review of The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women
By Jessica Valenti
Seal Press

For decades, Right-Wing think tanks and conservative Christian organizations have promoted what Jessica Valenti calls the “purity myth”: the belief that virginity separates moral/good women from their immoral/bad sisters. In its blatant attempt to re-establish traditional gender roles, the purity movement backs restrictions on birth control and abortion and vilifies rape victims who are insufficiently chaste.

“There’s no room…for the idea that young women could want to be sexy, to have sex, or to express themselves in ways that fall beyond wearing ankle-length skirts and finding husbands,” Valenti writes of virginity advocates. “The idea that young women could have a sexuality that’s all their own is just too scary.”

The purity movement teaches girls that their moral status derives from their sexual (in)activity, while boys learn that being moral means making responsible, adult choices. Although its rhetoric sounds all encompassing and ostensibly includes boys, its vision of purity is embodied by white, conventionally attractive, middle-class girls. Women and girls of color, consistently hypersexualized in U.S. culture, are never positioned as “pure,” nor are women with disabilities or impoverished women. Our nation’s obsession with virginity overshadows real issues that afflict women, such as lack of affordable reproductive health care and sexual trafficking. While father-daughter purity balls, virginity vouchers and abstinence rallies are busy celebrating and commodifying virginity, our tax dollars are funding abstinence-only sex-education curricula that use fear and shame to promote chastity outside marriage and provide no (or incorrect) information about contraception or safer sex. Not only are these classes steeped in traditional gender politics that identify women as sexual gatekeepers and men as sexually out of control, they ostracize LGBTQ youth by ignoring their needs for relevant information on sex.

Ironically, the purity movement has much in common with pornography; both idealize passive, doll-like women who desire only to please men. Like pornography, it finds myriad ways to denigrate women. Those who remain virgins effectively remain girls and, as such, can’t—or shouldn’t—be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies. The fetishizing of virginity inspires grown women to embrace girlishness via vaginal rejuvenation surgeries and Brazilian bikini waxes. It’s hard to miss the connection between this glorification of “innocence” and the backlash against women’s advancement in education, work and the public sphere. My own research suggests that the women (and men) who most prize their virginity are those most likely to be disappointed, even devastated, by first sexual experiences that don’t live up to the hype (note: Valenti interviewed me for her book). But given the hullabaloo about its importance, virginity itself eludes definitions. If the first time you have sex is when you lose your virginity, Valenti asks, then what constitutes sex?

“If it’s just heterosexual intercourse, then we’d have to come to the fairly ridiculous conclusion that all lesbians and gay men are virgins and that different kinds of intimacy, like oral sex, mean nothing,” Valenti writes. She argues that the very concept of virginity is a sham perpetrated on women. With The Purity Myth, she urges feminists and other progressives to stop ceding the definition of morality to social conservatives and asks that we trust young women to make their own intimate sexual choices.

---
LAURA M. CARPENTER is an assistant professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University and the author of Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (NYU Press, 2005).(less)

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Jul 28, 2011 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: politics, queer, nonfiction, womens-studies

This was an excellent book, and Valenti's best in my opinion. The reading style is breezy enough and avoids a lot of mucky gender studies theory while simultaneously presenting pretty meaty concepts. A lot of it wasn't new to me, as a fan of her blog for many years, but she did a great job of putting everything together to make a neatly packaged argument. I was impressed by the quality of evidence used to make serious arguments about the well being of woman, and how Valenti was able to meld her...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Amber rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fic-and-work-related

Jessica Velenti took on a huge topic and tried to parse it down into sections and language that the average person would have no trouble understanding. She made it clear from the beginning that she was writing from the perspective that people can have sex and not be bad or immoral. I think I only have two problems with what she wrote and how she went about it.
1 - She mentions that there are 8 criteria that every abstinence only program must teach in order to receive funding, but doesn't even giv...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Ashley Suzanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cannonball-read-v

From my Cannonball Read V review, which was posted onto Pajiba!

This is a nearly impossible review to write, as this book is amazing, infuriating, and endlessly quotable. I like to write in my books (I know, the horror), underlining passages, commenting on paragraphs, dropping the occasional “the FUCK” in the margins, and fiendishly circling page numbers so I know which ones REALLY need to be remembered. In the case of this book, nearly every page has at least one passage underlined. And I was be...more

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Oct 21, 2012 Bre rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book's realness. Growing up going to a cult-like church camp every year, I heard the story about every time you have sex you are like a chocolate bar with a bite taken out of it. The Purity Myth helped me realize how ridiculous this idea is and how it was hurting me (and not to mention how it sounds like making horcruxes which is way more awesome of an idea).
I also remember quotes about the subservience a woman is supposed to display. I cannot say accurate this book is. One time I t...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Chris Lake rated it 3 of 5 stars

An examination of the obsession Americans have on the sex life of girls and women, and how they try to control it. Valenti, in particular, focuses on the obsession with virginity and how this harms young women and society. The book looks at the very creepy movement among some fundamentalist Christians, of hold purity balls. These are fancy dress up balls daughters have with their fathers (think prom) during which the girls pledge there virginity to their fathers. All very creepy. The book also d...more

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Aug 22, 2012 HaQuyen rated it 2 of 5 stars

I agreed with a lot of Valenti's positions and her critique of various interrelated issues such as rape culture, pro-abstinence education, media hypersexualization of women and hypermasculinity as related to how our culture treats women's sexuality, but I found the writing and organization to be uneven (wobbling between blog-like snark and academic semistructures), and the tone, frankly, was often annoying. Valenti advocates in her last chapter for people to build dialogue and keep an open mind,...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Ashley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jessica Valenti’s The Purity Myth is a book that, were it read by a broader audience, would be best described as polarizing. Given the number of positive reviews on Amazon, I’m going to wager that few in the Purity movement have read the book- or else are very restrained in their desire to review. I myself have struggled with how much of my own viewpoints to put in this review, mainly because I agree with the case Valenti is making, and that is an emotional reaction. I’ll be honest, this one fir...more Jessica Valenti’s The Purity Myth is a book that, were it read by a broader audience, would be best described as polarizing. Given the number of positive reviews on Amazon, I’m going to wager that few in the Purity movement have read the book- or else are very restrained in their desire to review. I myself have struggled with how much of my own viewpoints to put in this review, mainly because I agree with the case Valenti is making, and that is an emotional reaction. I’ll be honest, this one fired me up, and angered my inner activist.

At the heart of The Purity Myth is an examination of what is called the Purity movement and it’s impact on women and society’s views on women.

The Purity Myth examines the impact of the growing societal obsession (by some) with chastity and virginity on young women. In fact, the book examines how our hyper-sexualized culture in general places a woman’s (or girl’s) worth on her sexuality- she’s either chaste and “good” or a girl gone wild and “bad”.

Valenti examines the impact of morality based on sexual behavior and proffers this analysis in a social, cultural, and historical context.

For those unfamiliar with the Purity movement, it is a program popular in mostly evangelical christian circles. The premise in a nutshell is that a girl’s most prized possession, her most character defining trait, is her virginity. At Purity Balls, girls dress up in ball gowns and, accompanied by their fathers, attend a prom-like dinner dance. At this point, the fathers promise to be guardians of their daughter’s chastity until they give her in marriage to a worthy man. Yeah.

In theory, the Purity movement seems to be a nice idea. But what Valenti points out is that it is an outward sign of an overarching ideology that somehow women and girls are not competent enough to make decisions on their own about their sexuality, and that a status of virgin is a better determinant of morality than say, our intelligence, empathy, kindness and any other number of characteristics by which we generally define morality. Valenti goes on to explore how the Purity movement is really a mechanism for keeping women second class citizens, with impacts more far-reaching than they initially appear.

I’m glad I read The Purity Myth. While I thought at times Valenti might be a bit far-reaching in some of her conclusions, and I would like more time to examine the context of some of the sources she cites (as I like to do with anything controversial I read) I believe that she is on to a fundamental truth. Tying up a woman’s worth with whether or not she is a virgin- of which Valenti points out there is no standard accepted definition- is detrimental to women and girls. We are so much more than this, and should be judged on our character, not whether or not we meet some arbitrary definition of a virgin.

Although published in 2009, I believe The Purity Myth is particularly relevant to our current political climate and the women’s issues that are, appallingly in 2012, up for debate in this election. If you have any interest in or concerns about the future of women’s rights in this country, I encourage you to read The Purity Myth. (less)

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Jun 22, 2012 Dray rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: controversy, airplane-reads, fast-reads, feminism

Whoo! My first book on feminism! I heard about this book a couple of years ago and was intrigued, simply because I grew up in a world where purity was everything.

...everything.

Your virginity/purity was your worth. Not if you were funny, not if you were kind, not if you had great ideas...even if you had all those things, if you were not a virgin before marriage then you were ruined. So anyway, I've casually been on the lookout for this book for awhile. This past week my fiance and I went to Portl...more Whoo! My first book on feminism! I heard about this book a couple of years ago and was intrigued, simply because I grew up in a world where purity was everything.

...everything.

Your virginity/purity was your worth. Not if you were funny, not if you were kind, not if you had great ideas...even if you had all those things, if you were not a virgin before marriage then you were ruined. So anyway, I've casually been on the lookout for this book for awhile. This past week my fiance and I went to Portland on vacation (yes, together) and went to Powells every day of the vacation, naturally. By our last day there I hadn't gotten my "I-can-only-buy-ONE-book-at-Powells" book yet, and this one came to mind.

And everything Valenti says about the Virginity Movement? I absolutely know it's true because I lived it. I had a "Modest is Hottest" baby tee. (that, yes, was skin tight) I was told that good boys wouldn't marry a girl who was like "a piece of gum that had already been chewed." I was told that birth control didn't work. (wtf?) And yes, the standards were ridiculous. Girls were essentially supposed to be sexy virgins. Valenti gives Jessica Simpson as a perfect example of this dichotomy. In the early 2000s she was used as a sex symbol, but yet preached about how she waited until marriage. You can't win!

Of course you can't. That's the point. You are a woman and therefore cannot win.

So obviously I agreed with almost everything in this book. The only reason I took off a star was because I wish it had been edited a bit more thoroughly. Valenti had a pattern of going off on other feminist tangents and then in the last few sentences of the chapter saying, "I bet you're wondering what this has to do with the purity myth..."

But good for her for seeing this problem and speaking out. Maybe a bit too much information about to happen here, but I guess that's why I only use my first name on Goodreads. The truth is, teaching girls that they are not allowed to have sexual feelings is harmful. I cannot count the number of times (but easily over 20) that as a preteen/teen I, sobbing, asked God for forgiveness because I had masturbated and felt so guilty. That disturbs me so much now. I hope this book/movement catches on and that girls stop 1. feeling guilty for being sexual beings and 2. know that their worth has NOTHING to do with sex. It has to do with who they are on the inside. (less)

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Mar 15, 2012 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was fantastic. Thumbs way up Ms. Valenti! The book did get a little dry around chapter three, when she was making her initial point for the millionth time, but then again, I've also read Full Frontal Feminism and went into both books with a basic understanding of the middle ground she was trying to push for so maybe for someone else she was just driving it home.
I'm a teenage girl, and I'm saying that because I think it's worth mentioning, and most of my friends are happily abstinent. T...more

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Feb 07, 2012 laaaaames rated it 3 of 5 stars

Valenti's overall thesis is one I'm totally onboard with, but by midway through the book gets a bit repetitive. I'm also not in love with her tone, which vacillates between academic and blogger. I feel some of her points are diminished by striking some tonally weird notes. Also I wish she'd found a way to lace in the more memoir-esque aspects better. It's like, research paper, blog, personal story, research paper.

Also not quite sure who the audience is for this book. As someone who reads femini...more

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Nov 03, 2011 DivineMuse rated it 2 of 5 stars

I gave it 2 stars, as some of it was interesting, but the good did not stop me feeling the bad about it.

I will quote the awsome response from author Nina Power, her view is very much the same as mine:

"Stripped of any internationalist and political quality, feminism becomes about as radical as a diamanté phone cover. Valenti ‘truly believes’ that feminism is necessary for women ‘to live happy fulfilled lives’. Slipping down as easily as a friendly-bacteria yoghurt drink, Valenti’s version of femi...more

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Sep 13, 2011 Britni rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminazi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I think Valenti makes some fantastic points. Granted, I agree with her point of view already, so convincing me that the virginity movement is not necessarily a positive thing wasn’t exactly difficult.

What I found most disturbing was Valenti’s description of purity balls and what a girl’s relationship to her father should be. I knew, of course, what these balls were, but as she explained the function of the father at these balls, and what a father’s role i...more

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Sep 03, 2011 Kelly Lynn Thomas rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, library-books, womens-studies

Valenti's book The Purity Myth takes a hard look at the virgin/whore dichotomy in our culture and really takes the virginity movement to task. She exposes much of the rhetoric the movement uses to appear feminist and forward-thinking.

What she doesn't do that disappoints me is correct much of the movement's lies. She talks many times about the lies and false statistics abstinence only education feeds our children, but does not provide the actual facts.

The book is a call to action, and a compellin...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone, and their mom

Shelves: non-fiction, political, read-in-2011

Young women have their morality defined solely by their sexuality. A "good girl" keeps her legs crossed; a "bad girl" doesn't. There is nothing in that definition about not stealing another girl's Game Boy Color, volunteering at a local homeless shelter, or considering the effect her actions have on others. In other words, there is nothing related to morality in that definition, which seems obvious to me but less so to the entirety of American culture. Which, as we know from her website Feminist...more

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Mar 31, 2011 Ana Mardoll rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Purity Myth / 978-1-58005-314-3

I wasn't sure that I'd like "The Purity Myth", although I was comfortably certain that I was a member of the proverbial choir for this book. As much as I've enjoyed Valenti's writings in the past, I'm not always comfortable with the blogosphere and sometimes find that I disagree with some of the more "if you disagree, you are wrong" writing style of some blog writers out there.

"The Purity Myth" does not fall into this trap, however - the book is well-researched...more The Purity Myth / 978-1-58005-314-3

I wasn't sure that I'd like "The Purity Myth", although I was comfortably certain that I was a member of the proverbial choir for this book. As much as I've enjoyed Valenti's writings in the past, I'm not always comfortable with the blogosphere and sometimes find that I disagree with some of the more "if you disagree, you are wrong" writing style of some blog writers out there.

"The Purity Myth" does not fall into this trap, however - the book is well-researched, well-written, and well-argued. Valenti is careful to cite her sources, respond directly to quotes (rather than assertions), and lay out her opinions in an easy-to-follow format. Indeed, the writing alone is very tight and skilled - most people will be able to zip from start to finish in a couple of days, save that the heavy subject matter of some of the latter chapters may give pause.

Valenti's main thesis is that a person's worth (male OR female - Valenti deals with both) should not be boiled down to a laundry list of "has" and "hasn't"s of sexual experience - a boy does not need to have had sex to be a "man", and a woman does not need to have never experienced physical intimacy in order to be a "good girl". That premise may seem terribly obvious, but it is crucial to note - as Valenti does - that much of the federally funded abstinence-only classes in our country deal in those stereotypes - that all men are slaves to their genitals, and that all women want hugs and settle for sex instead. This truly sexist attitude - that men are pigs and women are gatekeepers - causes a multitude of problems later in life: men who are disturbed by their partner's sexual desires; women who feel shameful and guilty for being 'different' and liking physical intimacy; relationships where aggressors feel within their 'rights' to push for more than their partner is comfortable giving - either because the reticent man "really" wants it, deep down inside, or because the reticent woman is "only" withholding herself for shallow, manipulative reasons. In a word, these teaching foster a culture of rape, and Valenti is dedicated to showing how dangerous this is for *everyone* in our society.

If "The Purity Myth" has a flaw, it is perhaps in trying to embrace too much information in one volume - a side tracking chapter into mainstream pornography and Real Dolls (in an effort to drive home yet another manner in which this culture can and does hurt men as well as women) seems to wander a little, although another chapter regarding masculinity shines nicely. Still, this is a broad over-view type of book - with each chapter dipping as deeply as it can into the subject matter before moving on. I'd love to see Valenti devote a new book to *each* of the chapters here - there's a wealth of information out there that can and does need to be explored.

Everyone should read this book and hear is reiterated, again, that a person's value is so much more complex than their sexual history.

~ Ana Mardoll(less)

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Jan 22, 2011 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2011

While I think some of the conclusions Valenti came to were preposterous and I was disappointed that she minimized the damage to our boys as well as girls the book was very intriguing. I caught myself needing to rethink my own preconceptions about the importance to abstinence. I find myself at some point falling into the same traps about whether girls and women desire sex and are the gatekeepers. While I don't view sex as a moral or immoral action, nor do I feel strongly about the importance of a...more

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Jun 29, 2010 Grumpylibrarian rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, feminism, non-fiction, history, politics, religion, sexuality

I'm disappointed in this one. I really truly enjoyed "Yes Means Yes" (co-edited by Valenti) and felt that perhaps this volume would expand upon several of the key points in that anthology. Instead it was rehashing many of the same issues, using the same examples, and in general was written with a tone that implied readers will have a lack of familiarity with the subject matter.

S argued that perhaps this book is written for "people who don't read books" (that is, people familiar with the Feminist...more

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Jun 23, 2010 Daniel Stafford rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Imagine if you will that you are a young, white woman applying for a job. Now, imagine that the person interviewing you asks if you are married. You, as a young, pretty, white woman answers no. The interviewer then mumbles and writes a notation on his paper and asks, to your astonishment, if whether or not you're still a virgin, and that you must answer honestly. So, you as this young, pretty, white woman answers back to him that you have had in your lifetime two men that you had had sex with. T...more Imagine if you will that you are a young, white woman applying for a job. Now, imagine that the person interviewing you asks if you are married. You, as a young, pretty, white woman answers no. The interviewer then mumbles and writes a notation on his paper and asks, to your astonishment, if whether or not you're still a virgin, and that you must answer honestly. So, you as this young, pretty, white woman answers back to him that you have had in your lifetime two men that you had had sex with. The man mumble some more and tsks slightly louder than a normal person would (or should) and makes more notations. He then tells you that you can have the job. However, you must tell everyone else that you are "a slut" and rather "dirty" and that, unless you reclaim your virginity, you cannot succeed as other young, pretty, white women have in your position.

Of course, the preceding paragraph is an exaggeration. Nevertheless, the evidence (along with the massive amounts of endnotes) would suggest that there is a virginity movement propagated within these here United States that suggest a woman's true worth is within her chastity and her eventual role when married early. Based on the literature that Ms. Valenti has extrapolated from, it seems that this governmentally funded (billions of dollars worth) would be very happy with the above scenario between the young woman and her potential employer. And the author proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that what goes on within these movements for chastity is very Caucasian-centric while other races are believed to be "hyper-sexed" and beyond saving. The virginity movement is also faith-based and tax-free. The virginity movement has influenced states to continue with disingenuous, fear-tactic education about sex. Abstinence-only education is not allowed to mention any form of alternative, safe sex approach a young person can make for him or herself (funny that the people who promote abstinence-only sex are the ones who desire that Intelligent Design be taught as an alternative to Darwinism—talk about freedom of choice!).

Much more is within this truly powerful book. It goes into the details how men make laws for women simply because they, in whole, cannot make correct choices for themselves. Ho even when abortion is legal, a woman must jump through one humiliating hoop after humiliating hoop just to get a pregnancy terminated (and this doesn't matter if the situation is due to rape and/or incest). The book goes into the porn culture and how it is very similar to the virginity culture by making virginity into a fetish (t-shirts proclaiming "I'm tight like Spandex!" being sold on virginity movement websites). It even delves into the sad expectations of machismo that all boys are expected to have (and one, seemingly, can never have enough machismo) by other males.

Overall, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women, is an excellent book. But, aside from the information that the author gives and references, in the appendixes are lists of resources and websites and magazines that the reader can explore to fight the virginity movement, to feel good about themselves, and most importantly, to know that they should have the freedom to make their own choices and how to obtain such rights.(less)

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Jun 13, 2010 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sd-fem-bookclub

Valenti sets out to write an expose of American cultural obsession with virginity and its effects; mostly, she succeeds, and the book is interesting and provocative. The cultural obsession here is mostly coming out of the conservative religious corner; although abstinence only education has federal funding and legislative support, Valenti emphasizes that most Americans don't support it (80% think school sex ed should include contraceptive information) and purity balls are a decidedly evangelical...more

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Aug 27, 2009 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, politics

This is a really fascinating, frightening and most of all, important book to read. Some of it you may be aware of, some of it you may not. One statistic that was shocking to me: the 1,400 Purity Balls (Where a young woman or girl pledges her virginity to her father in a prom-like setting) that are held each year are federally funded. Or that a Utah woman was jailed for murder after she refused to have a c-section and one of her twins emerged stillborn.

I have read Female Chauvinist Pigs, another...more

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Jul 06, 2009 Dena Landon rated it 5 of 5 stars

An excellent, excellent argument for re-shaping society to measure a woman's worth on something other than her sexuality. This is not, I must add, an argument for irresponsible sex, what it is a good breakdown of the myths behind a false concept of 'purity.' Valenti analyzes the message of many purity movements and organizations, abstinence-only education, and the concept of a woman as a passive being. In short, she argues that we are not giving young women the tools they need to be moral actors...more

3 likes · like · see review

May 31, 2009 Kathryn Houghton rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminism, nonfiction

This book takes a look at the virgin/whore dichotomy, specifically by exploring, as the subtitle says, America's obsession with virginity. From abstinence only sex education to pornography, purity balls to issues of rape, this book explores a wide spectrum of symptoms and consequences of a society that too often defines women's worth by how they choose to use--or not use--their bodies.

This book, while it explores areas traditionally defined as feminist, does not require a reader have preexistin...more

2 likes · like · see review

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About Jessica Valenti

Jessica Valenti is the founder and editor of the popular blog and online community, Feministing.com.

She is the author of Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, He's a Stud, She's a Slut...and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, and The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession With Virginity is Hurting Young Women. In 2011, the Purity Myth was made into a d...more

More about Jessica Valenti...

Books by Jessica Valenti

Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters

He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know

Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness

Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape

Madonna and Me: Women Writers on the Queen of Pop

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“Now, should we treat women as independent agents, responsible for themselves? Of course. But being responsible has nothing to do with being raped. Women don’t get raped because they were drinking or took drugs. Women do not get raped because they weren’t careful enough. Women get raped because someone raped them.” — 196 people liked it

“The desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. She's young, white, and skinny. She's a cheerleader, a babysitter; she's accessible and eager to please (remember those ethics of passivity!). She's never a woman of color. SHe's never a low-income girl or a fat girl. She's never disabled. "Virgin" is a designation for those who meet a certain standard of what women, especially young women, are supposed to look like. As for how these young women are supposed to act? A blank slate is best.” — 111 people liked it

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