Another video version of Not Oprah.
Check out Jess' book, RH Reality Check, and Shelby Knox's work.
Transcript after the jump.
NOBC, coming to you on Wednesday this week because Jessica and I switched days. In any case, I just finished Jessica's new book, The Purity Myth, last night and so I decided not to review it--so to speak--but to react to it here on video for y'all today. I'm guessing a lot of you have checked it out by now as well and have a lot to contribute as far as thoughts and reactions.
If you haven't, essentially Jess is arguing that there is a moral panic over women's virginity that isn't good for anybody. She writes, "It's high time to do away with outdated--and dangerous--notions of virginity. If young women's only ethical gauge is based on whether they're chaste, we're ensuring that they will continue to define themselves by their sexuality."
So here is that thing that initially blew my mind: that virginity doesn't actually exist. Okay, I'd thought about that a little, but it really hadn't sunk in. Reading this part of Jess' book sort of felt like when I was in South Africa studying abroad in college and finally encountered the truth that race, technically, doesn't exist. Both things--virginity and race--play a massive role in the way our lives are shaped, but scientifically speaking, both are mostly bogus.
But the trouble with this kind of knowing is what to do about it, right? I mean knowing race doesn't technically exist doesn't mean you can start acting like Stephen Colbert and pretending to be color blind. Likewise we can act like our societal value on purity isn't affecting girls just cause it's bullshit. So I came up with a few things we can personally do in reaction to the learning that virginity doesn't exist:
1. Language matters. Stop talking about the first time you "lost your virginity" and start just referring to it as sex--especially when you're interacting with younger women.
2. Tell people far and wide about the fact that there is no scientific defn. of virginity.
3. Get involved in the movement to make sex ed comprehensive far and wide! Check out RH Reality Check, Shelby Knox's work, and other great blogs for the best way to do that.
And don't miss Jess on the Today Show tomorrow morning, with none other than Kathie Lee Gifford. Can't wait. Break a leg, Jess.
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The sound seems to be a little off on my comp, so hopefully that's not too annoying for everybody. Sorry.
It's ok, I read the transcript because the video isn't available in school.
Thanks for that list of tips! I started reading this book on the floor at Barnes and Noble... Love it!
A note on linguistics: I've recently been thinking about how many women will say that they "lost their virginity TO x-guy," rather than saying "lost their virginity WITH x-guy." Saying "with" at least implies that having sex for the first time was an experience that you shared equally with a partner (whether or not it was also their first time). Saying you lost it "to" someone seems to say that you've passively allowed someone to take something important away from you, and now they hold a piece of your identity because they "took" your virginity. As you say, the "losing it" language should be done away with all together, but I think this construction of it is particularly pernicious.
I definitely agree with your explanation.
I would like to offer another explanation. When saying "I lost it to such guy" vs saying "I lost it with such guy" the second feels like we both lost our virginity together, to each other. For example "I went to coffee with so and so" implies the other person went to coffee too. So if I was the only "virgin" when I lost it I would hypothetically say that I lost it to him.
I understand what you're saying and I can see how saying "with" rather than "to" would seem to only apply to situations where the partners were both virgins. However, you might talk about when you, say, "went sky diving for the first time with so-and-so," whether or not it was their first time too. Obviously what this difference in terminology exposes is how "losing one's virginity" is a concept we think of and treat a lot differently than when we do other things for the first time -- and how this is all tied into the purity ideology discussed in Jessica's book.
Tiny but important typo: in Likewise we can act like our societal value on purity isn't affecting girls just cause it's bullshit, I think you mean can't, not can.
Great post!
Courtney (and everyone else), if you liked Jessica's book, you'll also like Hanne Blank's "Virgin: an Untouched History" which is all about the social construction of virginity in Western history up through the present.
Also, will you be posting a video of Jessica on the Today Show? I won't be able to catch it on TV, but of course I would love to see it!
I read Jessica's book in one sitting :)
I posted a brief response.
I like the suggestion of challenging people's conventional use of the term "virginity" versus all-out boycotting it, which could turn into a form of linguistic censorship.
Social constructs ftw.
Courtney-this is Claire from TCU. I'm glad you reviewed this book because I just finished it recently too.
For my love and sex in the biblical world class, I actually used The Purity Myth as a resource for a class project. We did a presentation on the importance of female virginity before marriage in the bible and the effects it still has in today's world.
I even did a couple sex-ed activities that I went through in junior high (of course in my conservative small town it was abstinence only). We chewed up a piece of chocolate, spit it out, passed it to the person to our right and were told to eat that piece of chocolate--symbolizing that sex is good for the first time and should only be had with your husband. We had some great dialogue after that.
I'm so glad I read this book! Along with Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, it is one of my new faves, and I just bought Full Frontal Feminism for some good summer reading :)
I hope you were telling the boys that they should save their "chocolate" for their wives too!
FYI: the labia and vaginal canal are actually more hygienic than the human mouth. The sex-ed example is distressing because it reinforces the idea that womyn's sexuality/womyn's bodies/the act of intercourse is dirty and that a womyn who has "lost" her "virginity" is "ruined" like your mangled, saliva-covered chocolate. Don't you think these ideas rather play into the construction of purity?
Eww...that chocolate thing is gross. They didn't actually make you eat it, did they? That's worse than the flower petal comparison.
I don't understand demonstrations like that. The vagina doesn't deteriorate from repeated penetration, and tape, chocolate, and flowers are nothing like vaginas (or penises, for that matter).
I remember my middle school teacher once comparing people who had sex before marriage to used tissues - which was especially gross in retrospect, once I found out that boys masturbated into tissues, since it implied that we would just be used semen receptacles. She actually said it to the boys, too, so I guess she was just trying to make us all feel equally ashamed. Whatever. It was just messed up.
YEAH! So good to hear from you Claire. I hope the blog is flourishing and all you radical TCU feminists are stirring things up.
Kind of a long post about this topic:
I'm what society would call a virgin (never had any form of sexual intercourse), and I was really glad to read that virginity doesn't exist in Jessica's book. Although much is made on this site about how society demonizes girls who are not virgins, I feel like it's just as painful to be on the other side of the virgin/whore dichotomy if you're not self-righteous about your virginity.
I don't like to see myself as a "virgin" because of what it implies. It implies that, because I haven't had sex, I'm grouped in with the abstinence-pledgers, and separated from women who have had sex. I think I have way more in common with the latter, in that I've fully accepted & embraced my sexuality, believe sex is something that not only is acceptable to do, but should be done before marriage, and I'm a supporter of women's rights and choice. However, the presence of a hymen says I'm automatically closer to the former, who think their sexuality is something shameful and hideous and believe that they are responsible for anything sexual that pervy men force on them. And that frustrates me.
On the same note, I hate seeing myself as "pure" and "chaste." It implies that just because I have not had sex yet, I'm somehow still a little girl who knows nothing of the big, scary world. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I don't want people to see me as naive and sheltered. Yet, the fact that I'm still a "virgin" automatically assigns me that label.
Thirdly, once people figure out that my "virginity" is not a result of a religious pledge, the assumption is that I "can't get any" or I'm being "too picky." If you're like me - overweight, extremely opinionated/sarcastic, not a social butterfly, & not interested in wearing a ton of make-up and putting together a stellar outfit every day - society considers you "unattractive" and you're supposed to take whatever you can get. Skinny, young white blondes are considered "strong" if they're "virginal," but for the rest of us, being a "virgin" just means no man wants us. It reminds me of the Family Guy episode where Meg takes an abstinence pledge, and Peter's first reaction is that she can't do that because she has a duty to be a "practice girl" for guys. If you're not conventionally-attractive, you have no right to make your own choices about who to fuck. You should be grateful to any guy who "takes pity on" you. I simply refuse to see myself as "less than" because I don't fit society's rigid label of what is "attractive," and refuse to lower my standards. They aren't ridiculously high, and they're flexible, but they're based around things that are important to me. I don't have any "duty" to men to take whomever I can get; I have the right to choose :)
Anyways, that's my thought on "virginity" and why I'm grateful to Jessica pointing out the lack of a medical definition in her book. I no longer consider myself or anyone a "virgin" (or, for that matter, a "nonvirgin"). I think these terms are harmful no matter what your level of sexual activity.
I really appreciated your comment, because I am in the same situation. I'm a "virgin" because I've never had sex (with another person), but I have a very sexual sense of humor and think about sex pretty often. I don't feel like I have much in common with people who pledged abstinence because for me, it's more of a lack of opportunity or desire.
I fully support the idea of changing our languge to eliminate the ideas of losing/giving it up and virgin vs nonvirgin, since it seems a little strange to define yourself based on what you have or haven't done sexually. I'm thrilled to see that other people have the same idea.
I'm in the same boat too - or rather, a highly similar one.
I haven't had sex yet, which apparently makes me a virgin. But more to the point, I am not planning on *ever* having sex (because I don't want to). I know this could change but I think it's rather highly unlikely. As a result, I find it utterly ridiculous to define myself by not having participated in an action that has absolutely no interest for me. It makes about as much sense to me as making the fact that I've never eaten crab a major part of my identity would.
I'm frustrated by the whole purity and innocence issue, frustrated by the fact that virgin = pledger idea in many people's minds, frustrated by the idea that virginity must be a temporary state, and very frustrated by the "religious nut"/"couldn't get any"/"strong (but only if you look right!)"/"repressed or somehow traumatised" (I get that one a lot) explanations people have. Yeah, there's other reasons not to have sex than being religious, okay, and as you very rightly point out there's no reason to lower your standards. And as far as "strong" goes... abstinence-pushers construct it as a matter of self-control, but quite apart from the point that I don't see much reason for self-control simply for its own sake, in my case *having* sex would actually be what would require self-control. Not having sex is the easiest thing in the world. Strangely enough, I've never had an abstinence-pusher tell me I should have sex in order to show that I'm strong, although I'd consider it the logical consequence of the self-control argument!
I'm not sure I'd say we have it just as bad as the people who land on the whore side of the dichotomy, but it's extremely frustrating because some of these attitudes ("religous" and "repressed or traumatised" in particular) come out in sex-pos, pro-choice, etc. environments which don't do slut-shaming. I feel as if some people who are on "my side" go "we don't want you here, you should be over with the pledge people" which is incredibly frustrating.
Thanks for that post. It doesn't matter if you have it "just as bad" as the women who are judged to be on the whore side of the dichotomy - the fact that the dichotomy exists at all in the cultural consciousness is damaging for all of us (yeah, okay, I'll say it - the patriarchy hurts everyone).
Does Jess talk about oral sex etc in the book too?
Because I think what really did it for me---thinking about how virginity doesn't exist--is that penis-in-vagina isn't the only thing that is considered sex.
I think breaking down that barrier will really help destorying the concept of sex is only penis penetration.
I actually wrote a paper about Virginity and Sexuality, and a coming of terms between both states. I state that virginity ought to be defined by a virgin, and note it's moral connotations. Now that I've read Jessica's book, I'm going to revise and expand on some areas, giving her full credit of course.
I've only read the first chapter of the Purity Myth in the bookstore and it blew my mind away - in a good way. :P Someday I'll read it entirely. Normally I don't spend more than 20 dollars on a book but that might change after I move. Maybe I can find it in a library too... Will it be released in paperback?
I totally hear and get the point about the absurdness of the purity approach from various circles. And people are going to crazy levels to say that they're still a "virgin" because they haven't had vaginal intercourse ... done everything else but that. Ludicrous.
We're also talking about cultural values or maybe sub-culture values. And I think there's still a place if certain sub-cultures value reserving sexual intimacy with another person for marriage. I totally agree that if it doesn't apply for men as well as women then it is misogynistic and a double standard.
My wife and I both chose (and continue) to limit our sexuality to our marriage relationship.
And beyond that we will encourage our children to make similar choices. We, realize that this is a decision that they will have to make - you can't force that on them. It's a value for us and one that hopefully will get passed on.
I hear your point about the abuse of purity approaches and concur that plenty of them are pretty psycho ... but that doesn't mean that there isn't a different approach and not one that emphasizes virginity ... but one that does say that for some of us marriage is the best context for sexuality intimacy with another person.