Feministing‘s Jessica Valenti was on the Today show this morning to discuss her new book, The Purity Myth, and the issue of virginity and young women with Lakita Garth, an abstinence-only sex ed proponent. (You can watch the clip here.) In her book, Valenti argues that the myth of sexual purity and virginity is damaging to young women because it teaches them “that their ability to be moral actors is absolutely dependent on their sexuality.” Women, Valenti argues, are taught that they can only exist in the virgin/whore paradigm and that they are taught through our culture that they can only live as sexually pure angels or hypersexualized vixens who have “gone wild” by showing their boobs to douche-y cameramen while partying during spring break.

I have to agree with Valenti that a woman’s moral compass is often seen as revolving around her sexuality. How often have we heard girls called “slut” and “whore” just because someone doesn’t like them? I can’t count the number of times in high school when a girl was deemed a “slut” by her classmates for something as simple as never returning a phone call. On the other side, once girl reaches a certain age and admits that she is still a virgin, she is often mocked for being socially inept, unattractive and/or a lesbian (which is a whole other thing as well, but let’s not get into that in this post). Girls are often given a choice in our culture: if you want boys to like you then you should sleep around, but if you want boys to like you enough to marry you, you should stay a virgin. What? The message can be confusing to young women who are just learning how to come to terms with their hormones and sexuality. So you can either be “in touch” with your sexuality by sleeping around or you can be “good” by staying chaste? No wonder it is so rough growing up as a girl, our society’s idea of female sexuality is completely bizarre.

In the clip above, Valenti and Garth (and Kathie Lee and Hoda) agree that there is a huge double standard out there concerning women’s sexuality and that women are only offered two ideas of sexuality: be the virgin or be the whore. However, Garth and Valenti start disagreeing when Garth says that abstinence-only education is the right way to go. Valenti says that this mode of sexual education just reinforces the simplistic sexuality view that Garth had just previously acknowledged. Personally, I view abstinence-only education as being created around the idea of female purity (since we are the ones who can get pregnant and , in all honesty, no one gives a shit if a dude remains a virgin until he’s married) which is damaging to a young woman’s idea of her body and her moral self. I was lucky enough to live in a state where sex ed teachers were required by law to teach about birth control. However, my teacher was extremely religious and a huge proponent of abstinence. During a “girl’s only” sex ed session, she made us bring gift wrapped boxes (our “gift,” ugh) to class and would then have each girl stand in front of the class and tear off a piece of the wrapping if we had been kissed and throw away the box if we had done anything beyond a hand job. It is a pretty terrible way to think about your sexuality and your self-worth if you are an awkward and easily impressionable young girl.

Do you think that the idea of sexual purity is harmful to young women or do you see it as being necessary to avoid teen pregnancies? Do you see our hypersexualized society as promoting the purity myth or destroying it? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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