One of the issues I was glad to see Jessica raise in The Purity Myth was the problem of socioeconomic class. It struck me many times when researching my own book on virginity--and many more when reading Jessica's--just how tightly tied to classism the contemporary virginity movement really is. (I note as well, and without conflating the two, that this classism is also profoundly racist.)

Jessica repeatedly makes the very useful point that the idealized virgin of the virginity movement is white, thin, conventionally pretty, young, middle class, and at least in theory both sexually inexperienced and sexually available. Women of color, disabled women, poor women, and, frankly, women who are simply considered unattractive from a mainstream perspective really need not apply to join the virgin club, except insofar as they'd like to avoid being labeled as sluts (not, as Leora Tanenbaum notes, that it necessarily helps).

Read more »

Seven U.S. Congressmen are in Havana and met with Cuban President Raul Castro among other leading Cuban politicians.

What I found most interesting in the Associated Press report on their trip was a comment made by Representative Mel Watt about something he had read of Fidel Castro's.

Read more »

The Purity Myth convincingly and rather disturbingly details out how much momentum you can get behind a social movement by invoking people's fear and loathing of female sexuality, particularly young women's sexuality. What's interesting about this movement is that two different arguments have developed from anti-feminists on what specifically makes female sexuality so dangerous, and why it needs to be controlled. I'm going to quickly describe them with the caveat that many conservatives switch seamlessly between these two arguments, depending on their own perceptions of what the audience needs to hear right then. These arguments work together for the final goal of bringing state power to the task of controlling women and punishing independent sexual choices, and aren't really in competition with each other on a functional level.

Read more »

Thanks for inviting me to take part in this discussion and thanks to Jessica for writing the book on which it is based: The Purity Myth.

As Jessica notes in the book, purity of women is a very old ideal which may have its roots in the exchange value of young women in traditional societies. It is also part of the three important traditional ethical rules for women: purity, chastity and obedience. That at least two of these three are about sex is noteworthy. That all of these are still operative rules in some contemporary cultures is equally noteworthy. Just think of honor killings, say.

Read more »

Hello everyone, I wrote a book about girls labeled "sluts" by their peers in junior high and high school, called Slut! Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation. I did the research in the mid- to late-1990s; the book was originally published in 1999. I continue to meet and speak with girls and women who are currently experiencing slut-bashing or who have experienced it in the past. A few quick observations:

Read more »

First of all, I just want to thank TPMCafe for hosting this discussion and the participants for agreeing to join in on the fun...

The Purity Myth is a book that I've been thinking about for a long time; the sexual double standard has irked me since I was a teenager and the framing of sexually active women as "dirty" has fascinated me for just as long. But it was really the work I do on Feministing that led me to write this book. I started to notice a trend emerging in the stories we were covering - whether it was pop culture or policy, there seemed to be an obsessive focus on young women's sexuality. Not exactly news, I know. But this focus went beyond your run-of-the-mill objectification. Hundreds of moral panic articles about "girls gone wild" and spring break madness were popping up around the same time books about "modesty" and the dangers of "hooking up" were all the rage.

On the policy end of things, the FDA was holding up emergency contraception and conservatives were driving themselves into a frenzy over the HPV vaccine - all because of fears that young women would become promiscuous. And that's how The Purity Myth was born. I wanted to look at how the conservative movement uses the fear of young women's sexuality to promote a regressive agenda for women, and how cultural messages about chastity and virginity influence the way young women are perceived (by themselves and society).

Read more »

Feministing.com founder and editor Jessica Valenti joins us this week to discuss her new book, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women. In it, Valenti dissects America's obsession with "purity" in young girls and relays how damaging the myth is to adolescent development. She deconstructs the "virginity movement" and demonstrates the danger in how young women are overwhelmed with conflicting messages everyday: abstinence-only education at school, and "Girls Gone Wild" TV commercials at home.

From a recent interview with Valenti:

The purity myth is the lie that virginity or sexual abstinence has some bearing on who we are as people, as good people, women in particular. More specifically, what the book talks about is how that lie and how that myth is really a driving force in a lot of the conservative moves to regress women's rights and to reinforce traditional gender roles. So, how they're using this myth of sexual purity, this fear of young women's sexuality, to promote their agenda for women.

Joining the discussion this week are an impressive host of women whose accomplishments and publications are too numerous to list (but we'll try to hit the highlights): Hanne Blank, author of Virgin: The Untouched History; Katha Pollitt, essayist and author of Virginity or Death!: And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time; Emily Bazelon, senior editor at Slate and research fellow at Yale Law School; Amanda Marcotte, blogger and author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments; J. Goodrich, the voice behind political blog Echidne of the Snakes and contributor to The American Prospect; Jennifer Baumgardner, most recently author of Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism; and Leora Tanenbaum, author of Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality, among other books.

Join us.

Just because I lost a big chunk of my total retirement savings over the last year doesn't mean I should be upset that 25 hedge-fund managers reaped a total of $11.6 billion during the same interval, according to Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine -- including $2.5 billion for James Simons of Renaissance Technologies and $2 billion for John Paulson. (To be included on the list, you had to take home more than $75 million.)

I do admit to being irked that some of what these guys earn is taxed at a 15 percent rate because the earnings are treated as capital gains, while I'm just about to be walloped by the Internal Revenue Service come April 15.

Read more »

Tim Geithner said on Sunday's Face the Nation that the Treasury might fire the heads of big banks that depend on financing from the federal government, just as it summarily deposed Rick Wagoner, the former CEO of General Motors -- and before Wagoner, the heads of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. "Where that requires a change in management and the board, then we will do that," said Geithner.

I suppose it's comforting to know our government stands ready to fire corporate executives and directors whenever taxpayer money is on the line. But I suspect Geithner's new tough line is mostly designed to reassure a public that's lost all faith in the wisdom of bailing out Wall Street.

Read more »

Richard Poplawski, the Pittsburgh Cop killer had been worried for weeks. He had abandoned his own attempts at talk show fame (an Internet talk show) because nobody called in. But still the fears he heard on Right Wing talk radio must have haunted him.

Poplawski's friends at the scene described him as a young man who thought the Obama administration would ban guns. One friend, Edward Perkovic, said Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon."

Read more »

Paul Krugman likes to dress up as a cowboy.

Michael Moore has never been to a baseball game.

Ana Marie Cox has a Twitter staff.

Josh Marshall requires his employees to do calesthenics each morning.

Arianna Huffington speaks unaccented English; she cultivates an accent for professional reasons.

Dean Baker is heavily invested in Goldman Sachs.

Brad DeLong has a huge collection of Cliff's Notes.

Ezra Klein is 14 and has to be in bed by 9:30.

Tyler Cowen gorges on Kraft's Macaroni and Cheese.

Read more »