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.