Jessica Valenti and The Purity Myth
On Tuesday I heard Jessica Valenti speak at New York City’s The Tank about her new book, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women. The event was hosted by Paradigm Shift. Following are 10 things I left thinking about:
1. Five months before the book was released, anti-feminist conservatives used words like “slut” and “whore” to describe it. These critics had only seen the title and the innocuous cover, but as Valenti said, for them, “the only alternative to being a virgin is being a whore.”
2. Relatedly, it is much easier to commit acts of violence against “sluts” and “whores” than “women” or “girls,” because these derogatory terms dehumanize them.
3. When reports come out about young people and promiscuity, the concern isn’t about young people having sex, it is about young women having sex. There is rarely concern about young men having sex.
4. The FDA held up Plan B and the HPV vaccine because of fears that it would encourage young women to have sex (FDA documents include the phrase “teen sex cults”). Bill Maher likened this to fearing that those who received tetanus shots would run out and jam rusty nails into their legs.
