The Purity Myth (32 page)

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  the Purity myth
  

  We should also be on the lookout for positive legislation that impacts women, like VAWA, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, or the Equity in Pre- scription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage Act. This is about more than stopping the laws that hurt us—we must also fight for the ones that level the playing field!
  

  s u P P o r t l o c a l o r g a n i Z i n g
  

  I’m a big believer in the idea that the most radical and cutting-edge organiz- ing happens on a local level, and through smaller, lesser-known organiza- tions and activists. Unfortunately, these are the people who don’t get nearly enough media attention or funding. By focusing on supporting local groups and the actions in our community, we can help dismantle the purity myth from the ground up.
  

  Reproductive-rights and health issues are a great example of where to start. Legislating sexuality and purity is wrong—whether it involves limiting women’s access to abortion, telling them they
  can’t
  have chil- dren, or enforcing traditional gender roles through policy. Women know what’s best for themselves and their families, and our laws must demon- strate trust in them. The anti-choice movement—which doesn’t just want to end access to abortion, but also seeks to stop women from obtaining birth control, from having children when and how they want to, and be- lieves all premarital sex is wrong—is strong in numbers, funding, and po- litical connections.
  

  So we must support the organizations that are doing the important work of protecting women’s reproductive health and enforcing justice. Yes, we should support organizations like the ones we know—Planned Parent- hood and NARAL. But it’s also crucial that we don’t overlook the community
  

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  organizing going on in our back yards, like the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, or National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
  

  Countless local women’s shelters and health clinics are barely surviving. Find out who’s serving women in your community, and help them do their incredibly important work.
  

  g e t P r o a c t i v e l y i n f o r m e d
  

  A lot of the issues surrounding the purity myth are contentious, so make sure to become as informed as you can. Don’t just wait for news to come across your desk; go and find out what the latest is on issues affecting the virginity movement.
  

  For example, it’s no secret that a tremendous amount of tension exists in the feminist community surrounding pornography. For some feminists, there’s no such thing as woman-friendly porn; for others, the issue is more complex. No matter what your position on porn is, the key to changing the mainstream porn culture that denigrates women is to look to feminists in- volved in sex work and porn for guidance—feminists like Susie Bright and Tristan Taormino and Annie Sprinkle; feminists whose vision of sexuality and porn is diverse and thoughtful, like
  SMUT,
  a Toronto-based, queer, sex- positive magazine, or
  $PREAD,
  a magazine by and for sex workers.
  

  And while feminists like Robert Jensen—whose work, discussed in Chapter 4, I respect deeply—would probably disagree with a lot of what these women have to say, I like to listen to
  all
  of them, because I think the answer is more conversation and more critique—not simple denunciation.
  

  The purity myth is based on the idea that women are only as important as their ability to be chaste, and feminist porn turns that notion on its head. It lends subtlety and nuance to a narrative that the virginity movement and
  

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  the mainstream porn industry alike posit as cut and dried. The most radical thing we can do to confront women’s objectification and humiliation in some porn is to engage with it in a critical way. The same can be said of any issue surrounding the purity myth: We have to be proactively involved in educat- ing ourselves before we take action on behalf of others.
  

  d o n ’ t g i v e u P !
  

  f i n d c o m m u n i t y , g e t s u P P o r t
  

  When you’re fighting against forces as powerful as the virginity movement, sexism, and misogyny, it’s easy to get disheartened. That’s why it’s so impor- tant to find community and support wherever you can. And it’s easier to find than you may think!
  

  Groups like Drinking Liberally—which holds get-togethers at local bars for people interested in progressive politics—have chapters all over the country. The same goes for many feminist organizations, like NOW and the Younger Women’s Task Force. And great websites like MeetUp
  7
  make finding a group near you that discusses the issues you care about as simple as typing in your zip code and area of interest.
  

  And as I’ve written before (and will surely write again!), you shouldn’t underestimate the wonderful communities available to you online. Wheth- er it’s on a blog, website, or forum, you can find people to share your stories with—your disappointments and your victories. A lot of women out there are interested in making change. Go find them!
  

  Battling the myth of sexual purity and its consequences isn’t just about trying to reverse the damage done to young women—we also need to move forward with a positive vision. That’s why I chose a bell hooks quote to introduce this final chapter: We
  must
  believe in people’s capacity to be
  

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  transformed as we forge ahead, not only because hope is necessary, but also because it will allow us to do this hard work with open hearts and minds that will make our job easier. People
  will
  recognize that we’re coming from a place of compassion and understanding. (Perhaps that’s the optimist in me talking, but is there any other way to be when the cards are stacked so high against you?)
  

  I wrote this book for the same reason that people around the coun- try are doing this work: because we know that young women deserve bet- ter, and because we want a better life for our daughters. Too often, when a feminist—or anyone, really—asserts that American culture should have a more nuanced vision of women’s sexuality, the virginity movement’s knee- jerk reaction is to make the accusation that we actually want girls to be pro- miscuous, or that we think it’s fine for children to have sex. It’s a standard conservative talking point.
  

  In fact, before this book was even published, I posted its cover image on Feministing.com and prompted an online backlash of sorts: Conserva- tive blogs quite literally judged the book by its cover. A blogger for the Right Wing News wrote, “For them, it’s not enough to say that, ‘I’m not a virgin’ or ‘I like to sleep with a lot of guys,’ they have to come up with some kind of justification for why it’s the best way to live.”
  8
  The Network of Enlight- ened Women, an antifeminist college organization, wrote on its blog that this book represents the alliance of the feminist movement “with the sexual liberation movement, although it wasn’t necessary.”
  9
  The House of Eratos- thenes wrote, “Feminism, somehow, has come to be about everyone who can be a slut, being one.”
  10
  Cassy Fiano posted that I must have an “obses- sion with sluttiness,” and that the book’s goal is to turn “teenage girls into raging whores.”
  11
  Another woman, Ericka Andersen, even claimed to have
  

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  read the book (despite the fact that it wasn’t to be released for months!) and wrote that “the real purity myth is what Jessica is telling women: that sexual consequences be damned as long as you feel good.”
  12
  

  Now, of course, the book cover says nothing about sex, promiscuity, or “consequences be damned”—these writers made that jump. Why? Be- cause for those who buy into the virginity movement, the only alternative to being a virgin is being a whore. There’s no in-between for them; there are no shades of gray when it comes to sexuality, so they assume that if our intention is to attack the purity myth, our goal is to push young women toward promiscuity.*
  

  So here’s my challenge to the organizations and individuals who are working so hard to enforce the purity myth, and to roll back women’s rights as part of that work: Be honest about what your goals are. Sure, you may think that traditional gender roles are what’s best for society, but be up-front about the fact that those roles require women to be restricted in ways that men aren’t in most regards. And please be honest about what this book, and work like it, are actually saying and doing. Don’t fall back on hackneyed talking points about feminists’ wanting girls to be slutty. Instead, try actually responding to the points we’re making.
  

  I have a similar challenge for those of us who are trying to dismantle the purity myth: Let us continue to tell the truth about what this myth means for young women, and to address our opponents not with derision and hate, but with understanding. Because for every person I’ve met who believes fully in
  

  

• 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.
  

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the purity myth, I’ve met another who simply needed to hear the truth, com- passionately and without their being judged, in order to break free from it.

And the fact is, we do have truth on our side: the truth that young wom- en are suffering under this unrealistic model of sexuality and morals. And the truth that we are so much more than our ability to not have—or have— sex. We’re more than virgins and whores. We’re students, we’re activists, we’re parents, we’re workers, we’re people who care about the world around us.

We’re women like Sandy Shin, a program coordinator at Breakthrough USA, an international human-rights organization that “uses media, educa- tion, and pop culture to promote values of dignity, equality, and justice.” Shin was the legal advocate project director of the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and has long been involved with community-driven social movements.

We’re women like Megan Kocher and Heather Ites, who own and help run Amazon Bookstore Cooperative in Minneapolis, the oldest independent feminist bookstore in North America.

We’re women like Avideh Moussavian, the director of immigration pol- icy and advocacy at the New York Immigration Coalition.

We’re women like Jessica Yee, a youth activist who works on Native women’s issues; or Deidra, who started the blog Black and Missing but not Forgotten, dedicated to all the missing black women, children, and men in America
13
; or Texas-based Noemi Martinez, who created the zine
Hermana Resist,
and who works by day as the human trafficking outreach coordinator at Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid.

These are the kinds of women who make up America—diverse, engaged, smart, interesting,
moral
agents of change. Take a look at the work these young women and others are doing. Now tell me it matters whether they’re virgins

or not (it doesn’t), or that their contributions to society have anything to do with their sexuality (they don’t). So let’s use these examples of amazing young women to remind ourselves why we’re fighting to end the purity myth—a myth that denies our value as whole human beings—and move forward with their work in mind. And let’s spread this message about
all
young women across the country: that we’re more than the sum of our sexual parts, that our ability to be moral and good people has to do with our kindness, compassion, and social engagement—not our bodies—and that we won’t accept any less for any longer.

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purit y my th f acts

at a g l ance

• There is no working medical definition for “virginity.”
  

• “Vaginal rejuvenation”—in which a woman’s labia is trimmed and her
  vagina tightened, or her hymen is completely replaced (a “re- virginization”)—is the fastest-growing form of plastic surgery in the U.S.
  

• Over 1,400 federally funded Purity Balls, where young girls pledge their
  virginity to their fathers in a promlike event, were held in 2006 across the United States.
  

• Violence against women is going down, unless you’re not white. Between
  

  2003 and 2004, the incidents of intimate partner violence among black
  

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  females increased from 3.8 to 6.6 victimizations per 1,000 women. And the average annual rate of intimate partner violence from 1993 to 2004 was highest for American Indian and Alaskan Native women—18.2 vic- timizations per 1,000 women.
  

• A 2007 report from the American Psychological Association found that
  nearly every form of media studied provided “ample evidence of the sexualization of women,” and that most of that sexualization focused on young women.
  

• Over 80 percent of abstinence programs contain false or misleading
  information about sex and reproductive health, including retro gender stereotypes like: “A woman is far more attracted by a man’s personality while a man is stimulated by sight. A man is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is physically attracted.”
  

• Abstinence-only education programs, which cannot mention contracep
  - tion unless to talk about failure rates, have received over $1.3 billion dollars since 1996, despite the fact that 82 percent of Americans support programs that teach students about different forms of contraception.
  

• Students who take virginity pledges are more likely to have oral and
  

  anal sex.
  

• Between 1995 and 2007, states enacted 557 anti-choice measures—43 in
  2007 alone. Since President George W. Bush took office, state legislatures have considered more than 3700 anti-choice measures in total.