The Purity Myth

The Purity Myth

I’ve just finished reading Jessica Valenti’s book “The Purity Myth” and I am gratified to see she also sees the same problem I do with the equating of sexual activity with impurity and degradation of women. I expected as much from the title of the book.

She details the weirdness and darkness of virginity balls, where fathers dress up in tuxes, their young daughters dress in white formal dresses and they dance together on the ballroom floor as if they were at the Prom. The girls commit their chastity to their father, and he commits to protecting her virginity until marriage. 

Besides the issue of the father owning the daughter until he gives her away in marriage, there is an aura of incestuousness floating around here that is really scary. To me it brings up an image of Wolverton Mt. and Clifton Clowers--a jealous father standing on the front porch, shotgun in hand, to keep boys from trespassing on his property--his daughter.

At the present time, it brings to mind the Canadian father who drowned his three teen daughters and their mother because they were not dressing to his Muslim standards and seeing boyfriends against his will.

She also writes about the abstinence only education movement that is funded by the government, and its attempts to prevent young people from becoming sexually active by keeping them ignorant of the options of birth control methods and protection from sexually transmitted infections.  

She relates the legislative battles to prevent women from obtaining birth control, abortions, or even vaccine protection from cancer causing HPV, all with the intent to punish women for having sex, or at least from enjoying it.

The goal seems to be to force women to bear unwanted children. There is no compassion at all for a woman, only condemnation and punishment. 

The inclusion of bans on the Plan B “morning after” pill in the agenda of the religious right has clarified the real intent of their crusade against abortion. To put it bluntly, on the day after a woman has been defiled by sex, willingly or by rape, she is less deserving of compassion or consideration than a fertilized egg that is sliding down her Fallopian tube with no brain, nervous system or heart.  Her value was all in her purity--her virginity--and once that’s gone, she has no value. She is deemed worthless-- worth less than a single insensate cell inside her.

Nearly two thousand years after the story of the woman in the Gospel of John 8, the religious leaders of the world haven’t changed their stance on “fallen” women even a little. They’d stone them today if they could. They still do in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other Middle Eastern countries.

In Afghanistan this week a wife was strangled to death by her husband for producing a second daughter instead of the son he wanted. I’m philosophically opposed to the death penalty, but I could enjoy whacking for a long time on his testicles with a ball peen hammer! 

Jessica Valenti deplores the regression back to the Fifties, where women had no real options, other than to put on the apron and stand before the stove making meals and baking cookies and cakes for their men and boys to consume, and teaching their girls to be just as subservient as they had to be. 

But I found one jarring note--a little contradiction, I think, in who the enemies are. 

She lumps Playboy magazine in with raw and abusive pornography which denigrates and objectifies women and only sees women as things to be used (and abused, or discarded?), rather than as humans to be loved as equal partners.

On the other hand, she gives full credit to Playboy for starting the Sexual Revolution in the Sixties, which liberated women from the restrictive rules that preceded that era. 

I can personally attest to the effect that reading Playboy magazine had on my awakening to the terrible results of the equation of virginity with purity. My education in the concept of sexual pleasure for both men and women, without the guilt and shame for women alone, was directly attributable to Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine, plus the distinguished list of writers published in those pages.

Crediting Playboy with starting the Sexual Revolution and thereby liberating women; and at the same time equating Playboy with anti-feminine pornography is cognitive dissonance of the highest order.

To be sure, Hugh Hefner did not burst onto the scene as a perfect prophet of sexual liberation. As the son of a preacher, he had a lot of his own hangups to grow aware of and discard as he grew older and wiser. His paternalistic rules forbidding the original Playboy Club Bunnies from dating customers after hours comes to mind. He also had to change with the times.

But the credit is still his for making sexual pleasure for both men and women a fundamental right of human existence. I will forever owe him a lifetime of fulfillment and happiness far beyond what I could have hoped for in my constrictive Christian upbringing.

The fact that the word pornography is used in a pejorative sense is testimony to the success the religious leaders have achieved in making sexual pleasure a terrible sin.

The word pornography comes from two Greek root words: porno, which refers to prostitutes, and in modern English, has come to mean sexual arousal; and graphy, which of course refers to graphics, meaning pictures or writing. So pornography literally means writing or pictures which sexually arouse a person.

Is there something wrong with that? This would be a pretty drab world if sexual arousal is considered a bad thing. At the proper time and place with the proper person, sexual arousal is considered essential. Note the constant TV ads for Viagra, Levitra, Cialis and other chemical arousal agents. Is chemical arousal preferable to graphic arousal?

I think Jessica Valenti may have made the same mistake that many right wing religious people do. She criticized Playboy magazine without having read one. It is not just glossy photos of beautiful women posed provocatively. Yeah, there’s that, but the magazine has always had articles and interviews with the leading thinkers of the day.

Hugh Hefner, the editor, wrote a series of articles in the Sixties--the Playboy Philosophy--that explored the Puritan and Victorian roots of modern prudery, and strongly advocated for a new paradigm of sexual equality and freedom for all to enjoy sexual pleasure without guilt or shame.

I admit to being one of those who actually read the articles--also. In 1987 I defended Playboy from an attack by Sharron Angle, who was on a local crusade to rid the town of Winnemucca from porn. She was a fellow square dancer and friend, but she either had never read a Playboy magazine, or she didn’t care for the pictures. 

My wife and I both wrote letters to the local newspaper editor objecting to the attempt at censorship by Sharron Angle and at least one church in the area. I call it a draw. Playboy stayed on the shelves, but with the cover covered.

But I digress.

I see that my review of Jessica Valenti’s book “The Purity Myth” has taken a turn to a defense of fifty year old Playboy magazines. Let’s get back to the original subject.

On the whole, I think her book highlights many of the ways that the religious right has worked to deny and restrict the rights of women to control their own bodies and access their own health care options. The last quarter of the book lists many organizations, groups, and other resources for women to find other women who share their dedication to continuing the struggle for freedom for women.

Today the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation announced they are removing all funding to Planned Parenhood for breast cancer screenings and other related health care. I am happy to see that they are being bombarded with emails and letters, 74% of which are against that move. Planned Parenthood has also received a flood of donations from people taking their donations from Susan G. Komen and sending it directly to Planned Parenthood instead.

I have real hope that the three quarters of the population that believes in the right of women to make their own health choices will awaken to the growing campaign by a small minority of religious fanatics to take them back to the dark ages again.

I recommend reading Ms. Valenti’s book “The Purity Myth’. There is a lot of valuable information here. I learned some things I had not known before. It’s OK to wince a little when she gets into discussing Playboy around page 84.

Don Rogers 2/1/2012