The Purity Myth (8 page)

of the decline of women’s sexual morality.

Prude
author Liebau, who believes that premarital sex has widespread political consequences, has written, “Rather than themselves urging girls not to behave in ways that conform to the ‘bad boy’ stereotype (and which, objec-

tively, are destructive), feminists instead label those who do so as enemies of female liberation.”
29
(Claiming that feminists want to end “femininity” is a common antifeminist trope and an effective scare tactic. Never mind that the femininity antifeminists are so quick to defend often centers on subservience and regression.) Liebau has also written that feminism is “completely irrel- evant and silly to most well-adjusted women.”
30

Eden has noted on her blog that the feminist movement is “inextricably linked with the movement for a sexual ‘freedom’ that was in fact ‘utilitari- anism’—a ‘freedom without responsibilities’ that is, as John Paul II said in his ‘Letter to Families,’ ‘the opposite of love.’” And, of course, there’s Stepp’s above-mentioned epic article “Cupid’s Broken Arrow,” about feminism as the root of impotence.

The antifeminism connection isn’t limited to the written word, though. These authors also have ties to virulently antifeminist organizations that are central to the virginity movement. Grossman, for example, is a senior fellow with the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, a conservative women’s orga- nization that runs campaigns like “Bring back the hope chest”; Liebau is a regular columnist for the conservative, antifeminist publication
Townhall;
Stepp, Shalit, and Eden even spoke together at panel called “Modest Propos- als” sponsored by antifeminist organizations.
31

If the virginity movement cared about young women, the link to anti- feminism wouldn’t be so evident. What other movement has ensured that young women have the rights that they have today? Feminism is responsible not only for the decline in violence against women over the last decade, but also for equal pay and rights legislation, reproductive justice, and the list goes on. So I’m more than a little suspicious of those who see women’s advance- ment as a
bad
thing. Besides, the regressive messages the virginity movement

jessica valenti
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pushes through these books and the media is clue enough about what it really wants from women: not independence and adulthood, but submissiveness, “modesty,” and adherence to traditional gender roles. Focusing on our sexual- ity is just one piece, and a tool, of the larger agenda. After all, there’s a reason why the assumed goal for women in virginity-movement screeds is marriage and motherhood only: The movement believes that’s the only thing women are meant for.

s e x u a l i t y r e a l i t y

Despite these panicked myths and sensationalized media about the physi- cal and emotional consequences of premarital sex and hooking up, the truth about young women’s sexuality is far from scandalous—or even dangerous.

Nearly all Americans have premarital sex. In fact, by the age of forty- four, 99 percent of Americans will have had sex, and 95 percent of us will have had sex before marriage.
32

Single women, the primary target of the virginity movement, are not excluded from these numbers. One-third of U.S. women, ages twenty to forty-four, are single, and nine out of ten of them have had sex.
33
The only thing that’s really changed in recent years—despite the protestations of those who fondly reminisce about the good old days when women were pure—is that the median age of women’s first marriage rose from 22 to

25.3. (I wonder how the numbers would change if same-sex marriage were recognized.)

Laura Lindberg, who conducted a study of single American women in 2008, said, “For the majority of adult women, living without a partner does not mean living without sex. Yet policymakers continue to promote policies that fly in the face of reality. By neglecting to teach our youth how to protect

themselves against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, we leave them ill prepared to become sexually healthy adults.”
34

Teens, too, are having sex—and a lot more responsibly than we give them credit for. They’re using contraception more than ever, and teen preg- nancy rates have been steadily dropping since the early 1990s, thanks to increased contraceptive use.
35
(Of course, abstinence proponents have tried to take credit for this decline, failing to note that the decrease in teen preg- nancy preceded funding for abstinence-only education.
36
)

That’s not to say all is well, though. One-third of young American women get pregnant before they’re twenty; of those who carry the pregnancy to term, 80 percent of the births are unintended.
37
And a 2008 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that one in four young women in the United States has a sexually transmitted infection.
38
Since this is the type of information the mainstream media loves to dwell on, these statistics have received an overwhelming amount of attention, most of it more pan- icked than necessary. The majority of those infections are HPV, most strains of which clear up on their own; the other infections were, likewise, on the less dangerous end of the STI scale.

Jacob Goldstein, of
The Wall Street Journal,
wrote in response to the study, “Indeed, several common infections lumped into the big bin labeled ‘STD’ can have mild or no effects on many patients—an issue that has prompted some leaders in the field to call for a dialing back of the nomen- clature.”
39
Perhaps there’s less need for panic than we thought. So, without discounting the real harm of serious, and especially life-threatening, STIs, it’s worth noting that the panic surrounding the escalating rates of infection might be a bit overblown.

What
is
cause for concern, however, is the racial and economic

jessica valenti
59

disparity in those numbers. Forty-eight percent of African American girls, ages fourteen to nineteen, for example, have had a sexually transmitted infec- tion, compared with 20 percent of white teen girls.
40
STIs are disproportion- ately higher in low-income neighborhoods.
41
Yet, ironically, it’s
these
young women whom the virginity movement forgets about—or ignores.

It’s also difficult to take the virginity movement’s concern about sexual health seriously when, arguably, the increase in STIs is a result not of casual sex, but instead of the predictable outcome of teaching a generation of young people that contraception doesn’t work.

And regarding the claim that hookup culture is running rampant across America, it’s simply not true—at least, not to the extent that extremists would have you believe it is. Young women are still forming short- and long-term relationships, and they’re still dating, getting married, and having children. Just because they feel less stigmatized doesn’t mean that they’re out having sex willy-nilly. It’s just another figment of the virginity movement’s very active (and sexually obsessed) imagination. It’s telling Americans what they want to hear—salacious stories about young girls having lots and lots of sex—under the rhetoric of helping women.

After all, what better way to sexify your cause than to focus it on virgin- ity, promiscuity, and young girls’ sexuality? By colluding with the cultural obsession over young women’s sexuality, the virginity movement not only gets extra attention from the mainstream, it also ties women’s sexuality with its larger agenda—to roll back
all
women’s rights.

c h a P ter 3

forever young

“Virgins are hot.”

t - s h i r t s l o g a n ,

Heritage Community Services, an abstinence- only organization

Six-year-olds don’t need bras. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a girl under ten who requires one—even a training bra would be gratuitous. So when the nationwide superstore Target started selling Bratz* “bralettes”—padded (yes,
padded
) bras with cartoon characters on them marketed to girls—consumers and parents were justifiably horrified.
1
A similar reaction erupted when it was revealed that Wal-Mart was selling panties in its juniors’ section with Who needs credit cards . . . emblazoned across the front.
2

Unfortunately, inappropriateness surrounding girls’ sexuality doesn’t end

* Bratz dolls are frequently cited when discussing girls’ sexualization—the toys are dressed up in miniskirts, halter tops, and heavy makeup, sparking some people to say they look like “toy prostitutes.”

with tacky underwear. Toy stores are selling plastic stripper poles, and “model- ing” websites are featuring prepubescent girls posing in lingerie. Even main- stream pornography has caught on: In 2006,
Playboy
listed
Lolita,
Vladimir Nabokov’s novel about a pedophile who falls in lust with his landlady’s twelve- year-old daughter, as one of the “25 Sexiest Novels Ever Written.”
3
I love Naba- kov and I thought
Lolita
was brilliant. But sexy? Seducing a twelve-year-old?

The message is clear, and dangerous: The most desirable women aren’t women at all—they’re
girls.

But this isn’t news. Most of us are aware of how subject girls are to inap- propriate sexual attention, and how younger and younger women are presented as sex objects in the media. What
is
news, though, is how this sexualization is coming from someplace other than an easy-to-blame hypersexualized pop culture—it’s also coming from the virginity movement.

After all, the “perfect virgin” is at the center of the movement’s rhetoric, and its goals revolve largely around convincing girls that the only way to be pure is to abstain from sex. This means there’s an awful lot of talk about young girls’ sexuality in the movement, from T-shirts like the one quoted above to absti- nence classes to purity balls. By focusing on the virginity of young women and girls, the movement is doing exactly what it purports to abhor—objectifying women and reducing them to their sexuality.

And while there has been public outrage over girls’ sexualization—when it comes to bralettes at Target or the ways in which girls are portrayed in ads, for example—much of this concern focuses on what affects our “perfect virgins,” not on the more insidious sexualization coming from the virginity movement, or the kind that hurts girls whom the media doesn’t care about.

Case in point: Bratz dolls, provocative Halloween costumes, and panty- less pop singers dominate public discourse and outrage, while even more

obvious (and, arguably, more dangerous) sexualization of girls—like traffick- ing, rape, and child pornography—isn’t given nearly the same amount of at- tention. It’s no coincidence that these more serious issues are ones that over- whelmingly affect low-income girls, girls of color, and young women who don’t match the American virginal ideal.*

And, sadly, it’s not just girls who are bearing the brunt of what author M. Gigi Durham calls the “Lolita effect.”
4
Grown women, buying into the notion that the only desirable sexuality is a young one, are embracing girlishness in more and more ways—even getting plastic surgery on their genitals just to be seen as sexually attractive and youthful.

But whether it’s training girls to be women before their time or expecting women to act and look like little girls, when youth is the most desirable sexual characteristic and girls are the most desirable sexual beings, all of us suffer.

P ur e g i rl s

Th re’s no doubt that the sexualization of girls has hit a crisis point. You need look no further than something as simple as Halloween—long gone are the days of girls dressing up as ghosts, witches, or a beloved superhero. Now the standard costume is “sexy ghost” or “
Playboy
witch.”
†
(Th re are even child “pimp” and “ho” costumes.) But we don’t sexify girls just one day a year; you