Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I suppose the fact that this book left me wanting more can be both a positive and negative thing. Overall, this book offers a fresh perspective on why the virginity/chastity/purity movement is harmful to young women. Jessica drives home the point that young women are more than whether or not they've had premarital sex and society/media has done a poor job of acknowledging that, as the stories we hear about women and sexuality often reinforce the virgin/whore dichotomy.

Too often young women are depicted as tainted, unlovable and dirty unless they adhere to a strict model of what the Christian Right deems acceptable sexuality. The book discusses at great length abstinence only sex education classes where girls are being taught that they are like a "used lollipop" if they have sex before marriage, and worse for young women (and men) the book offers evidence that some educators are flat out lying to students. (e.g. exaggerating the failure rates of condoms and discounting or even denying their effectiveness in preventing STDs)

One thing Jessica points out that I never really thought about before is that "...young women who are sexually exploited are often young women of color from low-income communities who are perceived as inherently loose, unredeemable and hopeless." If you think about it this is true, because you have to be a "certain" type of girl to be thought of as a victim of sexual crime in the media (young, pretty, usually white - definitely a virgin). Otherwise, the woman is thought to be complicit in her attack. (she's on the streets anyways, she likes it, she's a slut already...etc).

Many many good things about this book, but what I would've liked to see more of is discussion on how the purity movement affects friendships between young women and they way we treat each other as women. As someone who grew up religious and was guilty of "slut shaming" others for something as innocuous as "making out", I was part of this movement and indoctrinated with thinking that sex before marriage = slut and was thus very concerned with my perceived purity/lack of "sluttiness."

I'm sure there will be many people on the right who will accuse the author (and pretty much all feminists) of promoting promiscuity but that's not what this is about at all. This book is about presenting a radical idea that sex and sexuality is more complex and nuanced than "pure" vs. impure", "virgin" vs. "whore." It's about being honest and breaking the cycle of judgment and ridiculous standards that most people don't adhere to here.

I'm actually surprised I haven't seen more reviews on this book, but I hope I do because as someone who has been on both sides of this movement I'm interested in hearing more discussion from both sides. But like Jessica, I'm tired of hearing the "feminists want girls to be slutty" argument. Overall, this is a really good book. So good that I just changed my review from 4 to 5 stars (I didn't want to seem like a gushing fangirl... but whatev, maybe I am. Sue me). But hey, at least I read the whole book before posting a review on it... :)

As the daughter of an Evangelical Christian minister (I often tell people that I cut my teeth on a Scofield Reference Bible) I should be on the defensive about this book. But actually, I found it worthwhile to read.

I grew up believing that virginity was a good thing, but I noticed that most of the burden of being a "virgin" was put on the girl and not on the guy. While many preachers and Bible teachers gave some lip-service to young men to abstain until marriage, I got the impression that pre-marital sex didn't seem to "damage" them us much as it supposedly "damaged" a woman. And the older I got, the more I thought, "If I am not to be 'damaged goods,' then I certainly don't want to marry a 'goods damager.'" You don't even have to be a feminist to know that a woman is not a man's possession. and these chastity and purity rituals that some young women are going through (BTW -- these were not happening when I was a teenager) make my jaw drop.

It seems to me that young women are faulted both for having sex and not having it. If we are having it, we are trashy, and if we aren't having it we are treated like ignorant little girls who knew nothing. Or we get called gay. (Yes, people try to throw that at women and girls, too!)

I also agreed greatly with the author when she decried the difficulty women have in getting a rape conviction if the woman in question was not a virgin when she was raped. To me, that's the same mentality as not prosecuting someone for stealing merchandise that was already stolen!

Perhaps my biggest problem is with the book is that I am still uncomfortable with the abortion issue. It's not a cut/dried matter, and I think that both sides of the issue over simplify things. However, this does not mean that the writer doesn't make some extremely good points about the double standard, and her points are well-taken.

Thankfully, there are a lot of good, rational men out there who reject the double standard. One of them, happily, is my husband, who approves this message!

for Jessica Valenti's books to get any more incredible. Valenti is talented beyond compare and with her brilliance shows her readers the importance of a revolutionary school of thought. The Purity Myth starts off with a perfect framework, setting the stage for the disgusting and oppressive tactics that arise as a result of forced virginity. With purity pledges and double standards, young women are taught that their morality means nothing, and that their sexuality defines them. With candor, Valenti dares to speak out, and thank goodness she does.

Valenti delves into more specific effects of the need for control over women's bodies creates. All the while, she gives strong statistics that only further enhance a well thought out argument. While the focus on virginity remains certain, The Purity Myth also branches off into the acceptance of "rape culture", abstinence only education, and violence against women. Together, the cocktail proves detrimental to the young women of America. Conservatives would have the masses believe that virginity keeps girls 'good' and 'clean' for the men that will own them in the future. Instead of accepting the norm, Valenti proves that women should be known as 'good' for their morals, not for their sexuality. She also offers knowledge into victim blaming, the appeal of abstinence, and "manliness".

The Purity Myth examines all the stereotypes and creepy practices of the politics of virginity, and its focus on girls rather than boys. The misogyny that still exists in regards to the sexuality of young women is imperceptible; with the help of Valenti and her extensive knowledge and solutions for the future, change will surely come.

I wanted to read this book, because I am a mother to two pre-teen girls, and want them to grow up with healthy attitudes toward their sexuality as they fight their way through adolescence.

This book addresses many feminist topics, not all of which have to do with the issue of purity (no matter how hard the author tried to make them related). It was interesting enough stuff, although it reads like a lot of blog posts strung together into a book. There is sometimes no connection between chapters, and much of it strays far away from virginity and hops on over into women's rights as a whole. Again: informative, but has very little to do with what the book was supposed to be about.

This book makes no attempt to be fair or unbiased. The author doesn't promote promiscuity, but neither does she acknowledge there could be anything positive in virginity. I agree that purity balls are big-time creepy, but that doesn't mean waiting to have sex is a bad thing for a 13-year-old girl either. While sexual conservatism is thoroughly bashed throughout this book, there is no counter-balancing positive commentary about girls' developing sexuality, leaving me confused as to what the actual message of this book is supposed to be.

In reading a book about how the "virginity myth is hurting young women," I was bummed to find no positive solutions presented, merely an overall tone of "Our society is moving in a terrible direction that's undermining feminism! This must be stopped!" Whether that's true or not, there are plenty of other books I could have read for that message. This one, however, was supposed to be about our girls. What about encouraging mothers to be open and honest about sex and sexuality with their daughters? What are some ways we can do that? Exactly how do we debunk the virginity myth within our own homes and families? These questions and more remain unasked, and unanswered.

My only other minor complaint is that the author's style was quippy to the point of irritation; about every other page had a footnote that linked down to a joke or smirky aside by the author, instead of expanding on a source or leading to further info. I found this extremely distracting, and wish she would've either included the comments in the body of the text, or left them out altogether.

Overall, the book is worth reading for the array of (biased) information presented if nothing else, as long as you can handle the author's cynicism and aren't looking for any real-life application suggestions.

This book is a necessary, even vital, statement in today's culture. I 100% agree with her primary thesis: "Our daughters deserve a model of morality that's based on ethics, not on their bodies."

In other words, it's fine to abstain, but having sex doesn't make you a bad person. Having or not having sex is irrelevant to a person's morality, worth as a human being, desirability as a friend or partner.

I think this message needs to be shouted from the rooftops.

I do, however, wish that this book had been better organized and that it had been written in such a way to preach less to the choir and more to everyone in our culture, including conservatives, non-feminists, men, EVERYONE. Because it's a message that everyone needs to hear.

It's also important to note that there is a BIG middle ground between being a virgin and being promiscuous, and it's a middle ground into which, quite frankly, most adults fall. The virgin/whore thing is not a dichotomy and never has been.

"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."

Ms. Valenti does a great job of unpacking the virgin/whore dichotomy that is so pervasive in American culture. It's a call for a more open, honest and nuanced dialogue about sexuality.

And, for the record, she is not building a case against chastity, rather the book shows the damage these common stereotypes about female sexuality can do to young women.

"The Purity Myth" is a fantastic book- well-researched, well-written, and well-thought-out, making a perfectly logical case that America is far too focused on virginity, and it's costing women.

I won't go too much into detail, but the book is definitely worth a read, by anybody, men and women both, virgins (hey, what IS a virgin, anyways?) and non-virgins alike, feminists and those who might not consider themselves so. This is not a radical book by any means- unless your definition of "radical" includes women being strong, smart, and independent.

The book DOES get repetitive at times, but covers enough topics (masculinity, abortion rights, etc., etc.) that it stays fairly varied. It's an easy read, not dry or scholarly academic at all.

There is only one quibble I had- part of me feels like the book's premise- that the virginity movement (as a whole and especially certain sects of it) has ulterior goals of traditional gender roles and silencing women- while spot-on, leaves behind and does not address those who are part of the virginity movement and who actually ARE feminist (in the modern sense of the term). Pointing out hypocrisy and antifeminists posing as feminists is wonderful, but what about the true believers in virginity? I came to this book after reading Wendy Shalit's "Girls Gone Mild", and I felt that Shalit had both valid points and a strong sense of feminism, so it was kind of sad to me to see less engagement on Valenti's part against the feminist wings of the purity movement.

But that's my only criticism; other than that, it's a fantastic, much-needed commentary on a society that uses words like "damaged goods" and "sloppy seconds".

As the daughter of an Evangelical Christian minister (I often tell people that I cut my teeth on a Scofield Reference Bible) I should be on the defensive about this book. But I found it worthwhile to read.

I grew up believing that virginity was a good thing, but I noticed that most of the burden of being a "virgin" was put on the girl, not the guy. While many preachers and Bible teachers gave some lip-service to young men to abstain until marriage, I got the impression that pre-marital sex didn't seem to "damage" guys us much as it supposedly "damaged" girls. The older I got, the more I thought, "If I am not to be 'damaged goods,' then I certainly don't want to marry a "goods damager.'" These chastity and purity rituals that some young women are going through make my jaw drop. (BTW -- these were not happening when I was a teenager) You don't even need to be a feminist to know that a woman is not a man's posession, whether the man be her father or husband.

I agreed with Ms. Valenti greatly when she decried the difficulty women have in getting a rape conviction if the woman in question was not a virgin when she was raped. To me, that's the same mentality as not prosecuting someone for stealing something since the merchandise in question was previously stolen!

However, I am still uncomfortable with the abortion issue as it's not a cut/dried matter. And because it is the woman, bot the man, who gets pregnant, there is a certain carefulness a woman needs to have that many men don't understand. Perhaps the pregnancy issue is the real origin of the "double standard." However, I still don't think that it excuses the double standard.

We can begin by teaching girls to develop their entire personhood -- not the sexual side only. And let's teach them to look for rational men. Culture and mass media notwithstanding, there are a lot of good, rational men out there who reject the double standard and respect women. One of them, happily, is my husband, who approves this review!

This 263 page softcover book presents a lot of interesting information about the idea of purity and how it effects women. The book covers a variety of topics including Purity Balls, how masculine identity is connected to a woman, pornography in our society, how the media blames women for violence against them, rape in our society, and a lot of other different topics. Not all of the topics relate to the theme of the book which is slightly frustrating.

I was disappointed by how little this book really had to do with purity. The first half of the book was really focused on the idea of virginity and purity, but the second half of the book became a lot more focused on the general idea of women's rights. It even started in about how rape affects a woman's sexuality or how laws are trying to keep women from being able to make their own decisions. I felt like the main topic (which was purity) was really lost after about the first half of the book.

I unfortunately ended up feeling like the information was pretty slanted. The author runs a popular feminist blog and that feminism comes out big time in the book. I felt like most of the book was spent disputing the pro-purity's side while it didn't give much in terms of facts or neutral information. I was always told that, when writing a good argumentative paper, you have to examine your own side's weaknesses. This entire book focused on how the opposite side was wrong. It didn't give much in terms of neutral information or information about their own side.

I ended up really enjoying the author's footnotes on most of the pages. She had a nice sarcastic smile that made me smile when I'd read it. It wasn't said in the most "polite" way, but all of the sarcastic points she made usually were completely accurate about the problem at hand.

If you want information about women's virginity and women's purity, this book is worth reading as long as you can tolerate the extreme feminist slant. It has some good comebacks to the idea of Purity in our society, and I learned some new information like about Purity Balls. If you have the two hours it will take to read this book, it's worth reading about (and thinking about) how we can change this problem in our society.'

Jessica Valenti's The Purity Myth examines America's Puritanical views on female purity in an attempt to reveal the negative consequences of an unbalanced and unrealistic sexual culture. Valenti draws on policy, popular culture, and the materials presented by the Conservative movement for virginity in order to demonstrate the extent to which young people (and the public at large) are outright lied to under the guise of abstinence-only sex education, and presents compelling evidence as to how the push for female virginity and "purity" actually undermines the rights and liberties of young women.

As a whole I found Valenti's book to be enlightening and informative - and sometimes terrifying. While her propensity for snarky footnotes ultimately keeps the text from being what I would consider "academic", The Purity Myth is intended for a large public audience, and Valenti's style of writing adds entertainment value to the information she presents. Given my own negative experiences with self-labeled feminists in academia (for example, a graduate professor recoiling in horror when she discovered I was expecting my first child) I am often hesitant to read "feminist" material. However, I found Valenti to be fairly even-keel, and many of her ideals match my own (equality of the sexes vs. "men are evil"). As with any politically involved author, it is obvious that Valenti has a specific agenda and that she is writing to that agenda, but I do not believe her conviction works to the detriment of the text. I cannot remember which of my fellow LibraryThingers recommended the book, but I am grateful that it was brought to my attention and would certainly recommend it.