Why Is America So Obsessed with Virginity?
Think you know the meaning of virginity? You'll be surprised to find out what Jessica Valenti discovered. In her new book The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women, the founder and executive editor of Feministing.com takes on the virginity movement, and argues that it's high time we disassociate female morality and sexuality. Recently, I sat down with Valenti to discuss the book, the myths, and what's going on at those Purity Balls.
So, what is the purity myth?
The purity myth is the lie that virginity or sexual abstinence has some bearing on who we are as people, as good people, women in particular. More specifically, what the book talks about is how that lie and how that myth is really a driving force in a lot of the conservative moves to regress women's rights and to reinforce traditional gender roles. So, how they're using this myth of sexual purity, this fear of young women's sexuality, to promote their agenda for women.
You argue in the book that America is obsessed with virginity, female virginity specifically, and that there is, in fact, an entire movement fuelling this obsession. How exactly do you define the "virginity movement?"
The virginity movement, specifically, is a group of--and they certainly don't call themselves the virginity movement--conservatives, anti-feminist organizations, legislators, all with this really specific agenda in mind for women that's definitely regressive, definitely old school, definitely traditional. But instead of using the normal ways of pushing their agenda they're really focusing on young women's sexuality as not only a scare tactic but as a salacious way to get their point across.
One of the more fascinating things that's revealed in your book is that there is actually no official medical definition of "virginity."
Right. Isn't that crazy!
How, then, is virginity defined by those who are working so hard to defend the so-called purity of girls and women?
The virginity movement uses the definition of virginity that's the most culturally accepted one--heterosexual intercourse. And I think that limited definition of virginity is probably why so many virginity pledgers have oral and anal sex, because they don't necessarily see it as infringing on their virginity.
So young people are engaging in sexual activity, and considering themselves still virgins because they say "If I have oral sex I can still be a virgin..."
Right. And that's what I found really interesting when I interviewed Hanne Blank who wrote Virgin: The Untouched History, which is this amazing history of virginity. The reason she started to look into the definition of virginity was because she was answering young people's questions on this website she ran, and a lot of the questions were, "Am I still a virgin? I did such and such." And she was like, "I don't know? Do you want to be?" She told all these really interesting stories of how young people will--I think she calls them Process Oriented Virgins--make excuses, like "Oh, yeah, I had sexual intercourse, but that's not really when I lost my virginity. I really lost my virginity when I did this." Or "I really lost my virginity when I had an orgasm." Everyone has different definitions for it.
In some ways, virginity, as it's defined by the virginity movement--
It's completely irrelevant.
And, if purity equals virginity then virginity is a myth, as well.
Right. Oh, I definitely think that virginity is a myth. I think that virginity is a huge lie. Having your first sexual encounter certainly is important, and I don't mean to demean anyone's understanding of their sexuality or how they want to think of themselves in that way. And I think that can be a really powerful experience and a wonderful first thing. But, as a concept it's more dangerous than not, because it puts us into these virgin or not virgin categories, which doesn't really give us a very nuanced perspective or understanding of sexuality.
Speaking of danger, what are the things that abstinence only educators are actually teaching young children, particularly girls, and how are they dangerous?
Oh, there are so many! I don't think it's any secret that most abstinence only education is medically inaccurate. They lie about contraception in terms of its failure rate; one class was taught that condoms cause cancer. What ends up happening for a lot of these kids is that they've been taught that birth control is ineffective or birth control is dangerous so they don't use it.
Outside of the medical and health dangers there's also a social message being taught in abstinence only education, which is that boys want sex and they'll do anything to get it and girls own sex and have to keep it. It's up to young women to be the gatekeepers of sexuality. There's a lot of talk about dressing a certain way, you control what men think of you. It's this very disturbing message that somehow young women have control over male sexuality, and that you shouldn't get a guy too excited. Which, of course lends itself to all sorts of victim blaming and sexual assault situations and things like that. So, that's also very dangerous.
Recently teen mother Bristol Palin was asked about using contraception and she said, "Everyone should be abstinent...but it's not realistic at all." Do abstinence only supporters and educators actually think what they're doing works? Or is there something more to it?
I think there are a lot of folks who believe that it truly works, because they have these kids and they're pledging their virginity. You know, not understanding that, of course, if you get a 14 year old in front of their community members and church members and parents they're going to pledge their virginity. It's not like they're going to say no. So, yeah, I think [they think] they're being effective. But, they aren't honest about their larger agenda--that this isn't about keeping kids healthy, this isn't about teaching young people to make good choices sexually and morally. It's about reinforcing traditional gender roles in a really, really specific, rigid way. It's about relaying specific messages about sexuality and what's appropriate. And, of course, that's being straight and married and having kids.
The people behind the virginity movement go to great lengths to connect purity with abstinence, one of the more shocking examples are Purity Balls - which, you note, are federally funded. What are Purity Balls and why are we paying for them?
[Laughs] Purity Balls. I could talk about Purity Balls all day. Purity Balls are essentially daddy-daughter dances where young girls at some point in the evening will pledge their virginity to their fathers, and their fathers, in turn, will pledge to be the caretakers of said virginity. If you can watch a video it's very, very disturbing. The language they use is mired in ownership and these really old school, antiquated norms about daddies owning their daughters. There's one video where the fathers give the daughters a necklace--it's a lock and a key. She keeps the lock and he keeps the key until the day she gets married and he gives the key/penis to her future husband. Very, very disturbing.
[Purity Balls are] put on by crisis pregnancy centers, which are federally funded through abstinence only education money. What's really interesting about them is when people started to complain, "Where are the mother-son purity balls?" and people started to call them out on their patriarchal bullshit, if you will, they create something called Integrity Balls. Integrity Balls are mother-son dances, but instead of the son pledging his virginity to his mother and his mother pledging to protect his virginity until he gets married, the language is, "I vow to be abstinent because I don't want to do that to someone's future wife or someone's current daughter." It's still framed in this language of women-as-property.
Is this rooted in religion?
Purity Balls are definitely rooted in Christianity and Evangelical stuff, absolutely. But, I don't think it's necessarily relegated to one religion. A lot of folks are having the purity balls. More broadly, the idea of virginity and women's morality being tied up with virginity, young women being good when they're virgins, that's certainly not just a religious thing. It's a pretty culture-wide thing, I believe.
How does feminism factor into the virginity movement?
The most interesting thing to me about the virginity movement and what reveals their true agenda--that it's not just about helping women--is the fact that they're so antifeminist, and the fact that a lot of the books that are written about this, a lot of the speakers, either have ties to antifeminist organizations, like Independent Women's Forum or Concerned Women for America, or straight up blame feminism for the woes of young women today. They're very direct in saying that they think feminism is the problem, which I think is really telling--what does it say about their movement that they think that women's equality is a problem for women?
Admittedly, I never identified as a "feminist" in my teens and early 20s, and as recently as last weekend heard a close female friend, who's 30, insist that she's not a feminist. What would you say to young women and girls who are reluctant to identify as feminist, especially those who are strong, independent, self-determined individuals? What is it about feminism, or the notion of feminism, that turns them off?
There are a couple of things. There are a lot of folks out there that don't identify as feminists because of more political reasons. A lot of women of color don't identify as feminists because of the racist history of the movement. I get that. But overwhelmingly what you see are a lot of women, especially young women, who have feminist ideals, who believe in feminist issues, who don't call themselves feminist because they're afraid of being called a man-hater or they're afraid of being called ugly--whatever bizarre antifeminist stereotype they believe. Or, they're afraid of being questioned. This is [true] for much younger women I've spoken to who are like, "I don't really know all that much about feminism and I don't want someone to be like, what is it about?" Young women already feel apprehensive in terms of talking about politics, and stuff like that, so [there's a] fear of being called out.
What I find really interesting about it is, once I do talk to younger women about feminism, and once you debunk those antifeminist myths and make clear that not only are these myths untrue but they exist for a reason, that they're really strategic, then they're like, "Oh. Yeah. That's true." So I think that it doesn't take much.
To get more young women, or women in general, on board...
Exactly. And the truth is there are a ton of young women out there who are doing feminist work who don't identify as feminists. And that's okay with me, too. You don't need to call yourself a feminist in order to be doing great feminist work. People often ask me that: Well don't you think it's important that they call themselves feminists? Not for me it's not. For them, though, there's a real benefit in calling yourself a feminist because you have access to this community and this support system that you may not know is there. So that's why I really try to encourage young women to not only keep believing in those feminist values, keep fighting for them, but also to identify as feminist for their own sake, and for their own well-being.
You write a lot about pornography in the book - how does pornography relate to the myth of purity?
Oh, God. So much. Mainstream pornography is very much tied up in the virgin-whore thing. They have virgin porn, they have barely-legal porn. This idea that the sexiest women are not women, they're girls. Then, of course, there's the whore porn where you have to do the most dirty, disgusting horrible things to someone. Porn plays into this dichotomous, binary vision of sexuality, that girls are either innocent and need to be taken advantage of, or they're whores who just want...I was going to say something disgusting but I won't. But, of course, as I say in the book, there's a lot of great feminist porn out there.
Yeah, you argue that there is a progressive approach to pornography.
I do think that. It's difficult because feminist porn is really dwarfed by the mainstream pornography industry. It's difficult to be like, "Oh it's fine because there's feminist porn," when there are a couple of feminist porn makers and this huge, multi-billion dollar porn industry. But, the answer of the virginity movement and the conservative movement has been trying to put it away and hide it which has not been effective, and just makes things worse. Instead of doing that, why don't we talk to the women, few as they may be, who are making progressive pornography, who are looking at sexuality in a complex way. Why don't we look to them for answers, not just about sexuality, but about pornography. When we talk about pornography why aren't we talking to the people who are actually doing it right?
The purity movement has such a specific idea of what purity means--it's only white, female, heterosexual purity. Where do homosexuals and women of color fit into the picture?
Well, they are the impure ones. If some of us are pure and innocent, then the rest of us are dirty and bad. Certainly with women of color I'm not the first person to say this. It's not a new idea that they're so hypersexualized, that they're never considered the virgin, that they're never considered innocent. But I would argue that the same is true for queer women. They're queer--they're the "other" in that way. Any deviation from straight, vanilla, procreative sex is impure, dirty, wrong. That's why I even think masturbation is seen as impure--because it's not procreative, because it's purely for pleasure, it's bad. So lesbian sex, or gay male sex for that matter, is wrong, impure, dirty, bad. Which not only says terrible things about their homophobia and heteronormativity, but also says terrible things about what they think about sexual pleasure and its place in the world.
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Absolutely excellent post; thank you. One point that always gets left out of these discussions is that having the goal of abstinence before marriage leads women to marry too young and to the wrong person. Those sexual urges are strong, and can mess with your mind and even convince you that you've found the right person to marry.
I speak from experience. I was brought up in a very strict catholic family, and I really wanted to remain a virgin until marriage. I didn't make it, but I ended up marrying the first guy I had sex with. Since I married him, no harm done, right? Well, I should have been less in a rush. I married way too early, woke up around 30, had several affairs because I felt I had lost out on youth, and now am getting divorced (way too late) at 40.
This is definitely NOT the path I want my kids to follow. I actually want them to have sex with several partners before they settle down. Abstinence leads to unhappiness in the long run, plain and simple.
Poor Bristol Palin! Doesn't she have a voice of her own? She talks about saving other girls heartache, but she won't elaborate how. She isn't really using the events of her life to change anythin; she's not willing to discuss them openly.
My thoughts: http://heatherleila3.blogspot.com/2009/05/bristol-palin-why-i-feel-for-her.html
I think a lot of these conservative people want the young girls to get pregnant if they have sex, as a life long punishment. Back to the days of the scarlet letter. Things haven't changed in hundreds of years. Sex is evil, sex is dirty, you must be punished for it, and if you are a girl, you should never enjoy it. Sara Palin's family is a great example of these "perfect" people.
I find this to be the same reason many people are against abortion. It's not that they care about the girl or the baby involved - it's that they think there should be punishment for any girl who dares to enjoy her sexuality. You have to wonder what it is they are afraid of. Why do other people's sexuality scare some so much. I think sometimes it's because they don't have any of their own.
Since when did virginity and abstinence become bad things? Just because you hear a lot of press about the two ideals being taught improperly or without balance (much emphasis placed on girls, not much on boys where it should be also and equally), it doesn't mean that there is not value in the concepts or the practices. EVERYONE can benefit by waiting to have sex, if not until married, which I realize is not realistic for many, at least until they are mature enough to deal with the emotional entanglements sex brings. No 13-, 14-, or 15- year old is mature enough to put sex in its proper perspective (as a part of human life, not the reason for living), and they certainly aren't mature enough to deal with the unintended consequences of irresponsible, unsafe sex. Heck, most grown folks aren't. Nobody who is actually practicing abstinence gets pregnant or contracts a sexually transmitted disease through actual sexual contact because there is none, so the practice does actually have merits - it simply works. However, it is unrealistic to believe that every teenager who is not married will practice abstinence. So you teach safe and responsible behavior for those who choose not to remain virgins or live abstinently. Isn't deciding to not have sex just as empowering to a woman as deciding to have sex? Or is sexual restraint - for whatever reason that a woman feels she wants to do it - not feminist enough?
"EVERYONE can benefit by waiting to have sex, if not until married, which I realize is not realistic for many, at least until they are mature enough to deal with the emotional entanglements sex brings. "
Right. EVERYONE can benefit by waiting to have sex until they are 89 years old.
No much talk about boys? Have you been out in the community and witnessed any of the presentations being given at middle schools and high schools geared to both sexes? Did not think so. Your whole argument is complete hogwash. I have been speaking to /teaching middle/hgh school BOYS and GIRLS for 14 years about all the behaviors and the consequences, including everything, not just abstinence. Get yourself and any female offspring you may have a chastity belt with an expensive lock. Unbelievably ignorant.
Why your focus on a woman's sexuality and virginity. Isn't a man's sexual restraint masculine enough? You didn't ask that question!
I disagree. Sure, teens are not mature enough to have sex, and since boys mature later then girls shouldn't the "virginity movement" be more geared towards boys?
Sexual restraint on the other hand = sexual repression which is never a good thing. What are the supposed benefits of waiting to have sex [always protected] until marriage? If anything the effects could be negative: putting undue expectation on an act that while being important in sharing intimacy is also just a biological release, marrying for the wrong reasons, future marriage problems due to incompatible intimacy approaches, developing fear of intimacy. It leads exactly to the illusion that purity/righteousness is linked to virginity.
Feminism is about choice. But no choice is "good" or "bad", it is simply what fits the individual best. The ADULT that delays sex until marriage deserves neither commendation nor condemnation.
To go a step further, no matter what the choice, even teens should be encouraged to masturbate. I suspect it is a MUCH better way to delay teens from having sex. I say this with respect mostly to girls [most women have their first orgasm between 25-30] who need to view their sexuality as something natural and have it be vilified.
New twist on the good old technical virgin nonsense. Some things never change.
Why are Americans obsessed with virginity? Because it is a simplistic binary notion -- like so many others -- that gives them permission not to think in a real world that is exceedingly complex and nuanced.
The solution to this is easy get rid of all religion. Superstition ruins lives.
I could swear that the original idea of virginity and purity was to make sure that when a woman got married, her hymen was still intact, and her husband would know that he was the father of their children.
However, as times change, so to do those ideas. At this point in time, there's much less worry about who the actual parents of a baby are. Plus, now you can get DNA testing to make sure who the baby belongs to.
Throw out the double standard. If men can be wh ores, so to can women. Enjoying sex is nothing to be ashamed of.
Amen.
All that young girls have to do to protect their honor is to choose a good role model. An excellent one would be Mary, Jesus' mother. She would never have...oh, right. Never mind.
LOL
I believe that in the land of the free, anyone who tries to control someone else's sex life is out of line. I personally find it creepy the amount of concern some guys have about their sister's or daughter's sexuality.
How about somebody controlling his/her own?
I find it irresponsible that parents allow their underage teenage children (of either gender) to have sex. Children do have to be protected and not just be allowed to run around going wild and having sex with others. Sex education- yes. Sexual freedom-no.
No, I'm not a purity ball type, but I think children need to be supervised and protected, not running wild. Once they turn 18, it's up to them, but until then, I will be a parent and be responsible. Be in bed on time, get an education, no drinking, no smoking, no drugs and no sex (of any type).
If you think that's too controlling, sorry, but that's part of what parents do. Yes, you love your child, but that doesn't mean letting them do whatever they feel like. You set limits because you love them and you don't want them to be a pregnant uneducated drug addict.
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT. Bwahahahahahahaha roflmao Talk about DENIAL.
It's easy to be the perfect parent before you have children. Just wait. If you think you are going to know where your 16 year old is and what they are doing every minute of every day you are in for a very rude awakening. Most people I know drank, did drugs, and had sex before the age of 18 without their parent's ever knowing what they were doing. Heck - I knew kids having sex in the back of the catechism bus on the way to our church skate parties. Thanks for the hilarious post.
Because it still goes along with loving the eat the body and blood of Christ. You eat the body and blood of Christ and then think about having sex with a holy virgin. It all goes together.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
Two thoughts:
1. I don't think sex has anything to do with morality. The question of whether I'm a good scrupulous person with integrity or not has nothing at all to do with who I choose to sleep with and what I do in the privacy of my own bedroom. I think there are ethics to sex, but morality is mutually exclusive.
2. I think the value placed on virginity is an outlier from the days when marriage was all about transfer of property rights. Men wanted to marry virgins so that when there were children, a man wouldn't be transferring his home and land to some male child he didn't actually father. White men wanted to keep their assets within their family lines, so the only way to assure that was to make a big honkin' deal about virginity. This proves that his heirs are HIS heirs and that his property doesn't fall into the hands of, say, his rival in the next county (because his wife was foolin' around while he was off fighting the wars).
Either morality exists or it doesn't. How can it exist outside the bedroom, but not in?
How can there be no morality involved in an act that can bring an entirely new human person into the world, in an act that brings you as close to another human being as you can get, in an act that, when done in certain manners, is considered criminal, can put you behind bars for a very long time, and cause extreme mental and emotional (not to mention physical) pain (r ape)?
No, either morality exists in all of our interactions, or it exists in none of them.
Of course morality has to exist in the bedroom, as well as out of it! But the only immoral thing that can be done in a bedroom is the forcing of a sexual act (and deceving one of the partners in order to gain access counts as a forcing).
As far as I'm concerned, everything else goes.
Why Is America So Obsessed with Virginity?
Because HYPOCRISY is an AMERICAN VALUE.
In what possible sense could "America" be said to be "obsessed" with virginity? More like obsessed with losing it, and with making sexuality strictly a matter inherent to the individual, not the committed couple--and making anybody feel like a complete idiot and/or loser who wants to wait for the person with whom they'll spend the rest of their life. There is hardly an aspect of popular culture that doesn't reinforce this message constantly.
Now I'll just wait for the rant from "progressives" who'll call me "prudish" and "probably a closet sicko" for even the merest suggestion that anybody would want to make his/her sexuality an exclusive and private gift between two people committed for life. God, how awful, that anybody would even think this would be a good thing.
Yes, I know women have been oppressed, that there's been a double standard, that religionists have treated sexuality as if it were something dirty and awful, etc. I am not suggesting for a second that anybody shouldn't have the "right" to do whatever they want, given adulthood, consent, and noninjury. In fact, without that freedom, the personal decision to have sex exclusively with a life partner means nothing. Hell, I think life-committed people ought to bang each other silly.
I _am_ saying that the position many (most?) progressives take on this issue debases sex just as much as any fundamentalist, and is often a reactionary position that is propped up by smokescreens about gender, race, etc.
Incidentally, I absolutely agree with Valenti that it's laughably hypocritical to call oneself a "virgin" after getting busy orally, manually, whatever. That's exactly the kind of thing that happens with a legalistic, superficial approach to morality.
I also think these "purity balls" are about as creepy as Valenti does.
Having said that, some of the stuff she says is about as poorly researched and nondisconfirmably attributional as just about everything else you see in grad school socio-speculation--all Valenti's stuff about how gays and women of color are automatically assumed (by whom?) to be out of the purity loop, I guess, or something like that, and also how anybody who believes at least some version of "purity" (I hate that term too) really is just "afraid of the sexuality of young women." In other words, if you don't buy into my ethic, you're backwards, oppressive, and stupid. Whatever.
wonderfully stated.
i think the other failure in our culture in general is not encouraging and teaching young women to masturbate. finding sexual pleasure on your own is one of the fundamental paths to independence. i think "abstinence" is a great plan of health for women of all ages if it includes masturbation. it is great for queer women as well as straight women of every age. i think it's time for leftists and feminists to redefine abstinence on our terms and help all women become more educated about their health all around and feel empowered to find the right sexual partners and relationships. next time you hear a purity advocate say they believe in abstinence, say "i do do too, if we teach girls how to masturbate"...watch their horror.
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