The Purity Myth

by Jessica Valenti

  We need to start, though, by finding those woman-friendly sex industry workers! In a culture where all things commercial and porned come with an appropriated feminist “empowered” label (think the Pussycat Dolls), it’s difficult to parse what’s woman-friendly and what’s being marketed as such.

  Take the popular company Suicide Girls—porn that features “alternative” women.au For a long time, the company enjoyed a high-profile reputation as female controlled and operated. John d’Addario, editor of the porn blog Fleshbot, noted that “the perception that women had an important/equal role in the administration of the site probably made it more attractive to some people who might not have visited a porn site otherwise.” But in 2005, a group of ex-Suicide Girls starting bashing the company, saying that the female-empowerment front was a farce. About thirty models quit, claiming that Suicide Girls is actually controlled by a man, cofounder Sean Suhl, whom they accused of treating the workers poorly and underpaying them.

  Mainstream porn establishments masquerading as feminist bastions aside, there is a long history of “pro-sex feminists,”av like Ellen Willis, Nina Hartley, Susie Bright, Annie Sprinkle, Betty Dodson, Audacia Ray, and Tristan Taormino, who do the hard work of talking about porn in a nuanced, multifaceted way.

  And with the advent of the Internet, feminist women—many of whom make a distinction between mainstream pornography and all pornography—are talking progressively about porn more and more. Take blogger Andrea Rubenstein (a.k.a. tekanji), who wrote, “I am pro in its most basic form (material that arouses), but anti-mainstream . . . anti-industry, and anti-porn culture. . . . The difference between me and anti-porn feminists is that I believe that, while hard, it is not impossible to have pornography in this culture that doesn’t objectify/degrade the participants.”28

  In her book, Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration, Audacia Ray wrote that “women over the last decade or so have stared to remake, question, challenge, and enjoy the adult industry in a way that perhaps is only possible with the assistance of increasingly user-friendly and inexpensive technology.”29

  Ray points out that while mainstream porn is run and created primarily by men, women “with the entrepreneurial and nudie spirit” are increasingly creating their own sites—something that wouldn’t be possible without online advancements.

  This isn’t to say that I believe the Internet will be the answer to misogyny in porn—it’s clear that online porn is a tremendous part of the problem. But women talking about it, and taking control of the industry, is definitely a first step.

  The second step, of course, is to start ignoring the virginity movement’s badly intentioned and even more poorly executed actions surrounding porn. We need to take back the idea of “morality” and sexuality. Why? Because the virginity movement has a stronghold on it and is using it to actively hurt women. And not just by ignoring the real problems; the movement is creating new ones. If we continue to allow it to use pornography as a way to make extreme ideas about women, chastity, and sexuality mainstream, we’re supporting a system that devalues women even more than some of the worst porn does.

  CHAPTER 5

  classroom chastity

  “Each time a sexually active person gives that most personal part of himself or herself away, that person can lose a sense of personal value and worth. It all comes down to self-respect.” from the abstinence-only teachers’ guide

  CHOOSING THE BEST PATH1

  PAM STENZEL HAS A ROOMFUL of teenagers laughing up a storm. In her educational video Sex Has a Price Tag, Stenzel cracks jokes while being engaging, authoritative, and convincing. Amidst her quips about sex and annoying parents, she tells the students—packed into what looks like a school auditorium—that birth control could kill them and that abortion can lead to anorexia and suicide. She follows with another joke, and the teens laugh some more.

  For schools that can’t afford Stenzel’s $5,000 speaking fee, this video is the perfect substitute—part of an abstinence arsenal of dozens of DVDs, books, and brochures available on ShopPamStenzel.com. Stenzel is just one of hundreds of abstinence educators who speak in schools, churches, community groups—even government agencies—nationwide.

  Another one of these educators is Christian comedian Keith Deltano, who performs his abstinence routine at Virginia high schools. His shtick involves tying up a male volunteer from the audience and dangling a cinder block precariously over his genital area to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of condoms against HIV/AIDS.2aw Alabama-based speaker Janice Turner, who founded Power of Purity classes, explained her classroom philosophy to a reporter recently by saying, “Girls give in to sex not because they want sex—it’s like a hug. If they can get that from their fathers, they won’t need it from a boyfriend.”ax

  These are the virginity movement’s front-liners, spreading the purity message in force.

  Abstinence-only education—which includes sex education curricula, speakers like Stenzel and friends, peer educators, and various kinds of abstinence events#—is arguably the virginity movement’s most successful venture to date. It’s widespread, well funded, and becoming more and more mainstream—but not without consequences. The pervasiveness of abstinence-only programs ensures that a generation of young Americans has been indoctrinated not only with messages about how wrong, dirty, and immoral premarital sex is, but also with subjective—and often false—information: that contraception is ineffective (and sometimes dangerous), abortion is wrong, and any sexual activity outside of marriage is likely to make them diseased, poor, depressed, and suicidal.

  THE ANATOMY OF ABSTINENCE

  In Jeniann’s ninth-grade sex ed class in Virginia Beach, Virginia, her teacher told her and her fellow students that it was against the law to have premarital sex.

  “She told us if we did it and were caught, we could face fines, probation, and possibly jail time,” Jeniann, now sixteen, emailed me.

  “She said it had to be illegal because premarital sex undermines the family, which is a necessary thing in society.”

  Morgan Dickens, a twenty-two-year-old woman I met while visiting Cornell University in upstate New York, told me that at her San Antonio, Texas, high school, teachers weren’t even allowed to mention words that related to anything but abstinence.

  “Our biology teacher told us she couldn’t say anything about birth control when a girl asked how it worked.” Dickens also recalled that a student in her health class was actually kicked out of the room and asked to sit outside because he mentioned something about STIs and using a condom.

  Many of the young people I’ve spoken to—whether via email, through Feministing.com, or on college campuses—have told me how abstinence programs use fear- and shame-based tactics to spread their misinformation. Katelyn Bradley of Florida, for example, wrote me an email detailing her middle school health class’s exercise on abstinence: “They asked for several volunteers, and the woman leading the discussing held a wrapped gift. We weren’t supposed to give away this gift until after marriage. If we had sex before marriage, our special present (sexuality) would be ruined. They literally demonstrated this notion in front of the class by passing it along the line of volunteers, with each person stomping on the wrapped gift.” I suppose if this educator thinks having premarital sex is akin to being stomped on, I can’t really hold her abstinence leanings against her.

  Cassandra Tapia, a twenty-one-year-old from Dallas, emailed me about her seventh-grade abstinence-class teacher, who started one of her lessons by yelling, “Sex feels good!”

  “She also made us say it,” Tapia told me. “Then she told us a story about ‘Ken’ and ‘Barbie,’ using Velcro gloves as visuals. She talked about how Ken and Barbie dated and hung out, and then—with a dramatic slamming of the Velcroed hands together—had sex. Then she showed us how it was possible to separate her hands, but it was difficult and made a painful ripping noise.”

  Sadly, these young women’s experiences aren’t anomalous.
It’s not only oddball teachers who are lying to and intimidating students; these tactics are written into schools’ curricula. A 2004 report from Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) indicated that over 80 percent of federally funded abstinence programs contain false or misleading information about sex and reproductive health.3

  The report found that all of the curricula studied failed to provide information on how to select a birth control method and use it properly; that it greatly exaggerated the failure rate of condoms in pregnancy prevention; and that it flat-out propagated inaccuracies by discounting (or even outright denying) condoms’ effectiveness in preventing STD and HIV transmission. According to the report:One curriculum draws an analogy between the HIV virus and a penny and compares it to a sperm cell (“Speedy the Sperm”), which on the same scale would be almost 19 feet long. The curriculum asks, “If the condom has a failure rate of 14% in preventing ‘Speedy’ from getting through to create a new life, what happens if this guy (penny) gets through? You have a death: your own .”4

  Other curricula provided false information about pregnancy risks in sexual activity outside of intercourse—one text even states that merely touching another person’s genitals can cause pregnancy. The bad science and misleading statistics go on and on: One program teaches that HIV can be transmitted through tears, while another falsely links abortion with sterility, mental retardation, and premature births in future pregnancies.5

  Martha Kempner, vice president of information and communications at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), a New York-based organization that advocates for accurate and comprehensive education on sex and reproductive health, told me that this type of misinformation is just the tip of the abstinence iceberg. “They’re attacking a way of living, and their brand of sex ed has very little to do with sex—it’s a social message.”

  SIECUS has been keeping track of abstinence-only education programs and dissecting their curricula for years, and some of the teachings the organization has found aren’t just wrong—they’re terrifying. One commonly used book says, “Relying on condoms is like playing Russian roulette.”6 Another reads, “AIDS can be transmitted by skin-to-skin contact.”7

  These programs aren’t just spreading medical and scientific misinformation, either—they’re also sending social and values-based messages. A popular abstinence text, “Sex Respect,” warns students of the dire consequences of premarital sex: “[I]f you eat spoiled food, you will get sick. If you jump from a tall building, you will be hurt or killed. If you spend more money than you make, your enslavement to debt affects you and those whom you love. If you have sex outside of marriage, there are consequences for you, your partner, and society.”8

  “This is a social agenda masquerading as teen pregnancy prevention,” Kempner said. “They’re going so far backwards on the messages they’re giving women—that purity is the most important thing and what you should be striving for is a wedding. Saying that the most important thing you can do is get married and have children isn’t the most empowering message.”

  Empowerment is indeed not the goal of abstinence-only curricula, which are built on outdated notions of gender norms and sexist stereotypes about sexuality and relationships, and ultimately seek a return to traditional gender norms. The virginity movement has a captive audience in middle school and high school classes, and it’s planning on using that to its full advantage—why stop at condom-failure rates when you can fit a whole ideology in there?

  The social messages of abstinence-only education are nothing if not old school. Women are often described as weak, intellectually inferior, and needing men’s financial and physical protection.

  In Waxman’s report, one text was said to have listed “financial support” as one of the “5 Major Needs of Women,” and “domestic support” as one of the “5 Major Needs of Men.”9 Another describes how girls don’t “ focus” as well as boys: “Generally, guys are able to focus better on one activity at a time and may not connect feelings with actions. Girls access both sides of the brain at once, so they often experience feelings and emotions as part of every situation.”10

  The pivotal moment for me—the moment when I realized how little abstinence proponents value women’s intellect—was when I came across a pink glitter-decorated girls’ T-shirt on an abstinence website, decorated with the message SEX CAUSES BABIES in a fun font.11 Just in case you weren’t aware.

  Some teachings don’t even bother to hide the degree to which extremely antiquated notions—like viewing women as property—are being pushed. Why kNOw, an abstinence-only textbook, outlines this instruction to abstinence teachers: “Tell the class that the Bride price is actually an honor to the bride. It says she is valuable to the groom and he is willing to give something valuable for her.”12 The same book also notes, “The father gives the bride to the groom because he is the one man who has had the responsibility of protecting her throughout her life. He is now giving his daughter to the only other man who will take over this protective role.”13

  Another popular notion in abstinence curricula is that women don’t like sex (and if they do, something must be amissay). Because women aren’t as prone to what these texts describe as “practical enslavement to one’s sexual drive” as men are, it’s the girls’ job to keep the boys at bay.

  A workbook from Sex Respect states, “Because they generally become aroused less easily, females are in a good position to help young men learn balance in relationships by keeping intimacy in perspective.” Another notes, “Girls need to be aware they may be able to tell when a kiss is leading to something else. The girl may need to put the brakes on first in order to help the boy.”14 Because, according to the virginity movement, men have no self-control when it comes to anything sexual. Yet another abstinence book claims, “A woman is far more attracted by a man’s personality, while a man is stimulated by sight. A man is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is physically attracted.”15 And no, these textbooks are not from the 1950s.

  When women are accorded a sex drive, it’s generally attributed to the increased sexualization of pop culture interfering with their natural disdain for intercourse: “[A] young man’s natural desire for sex is already strong due to testosterone. . . . Females are becoming culturally conditioned to fantasize about sex as well.”

  Making women the sexual gatekeepers and telling men they just can’t help themselves not only drives home the point that women’s sexuality is unnatural, but also sets up a disturbing dynamic in which women are expected to be responsible for men’s sexual behavior.

  A passage in Sex Respect reads, “A guy who wants to respect girls is distracted by sexy clothes and remembers her for one thing. Is it fair that guys are turned on by their senses and women by their hearts?” Another classroom activity I learned about through SIECUS involved the story of Stephanie and Drew, a couple trying to save sex until marriage. Stephanie is too affectionate and wears tight clothing: “Drew likes her a lot, but lately keeping his hands off her has been a real job!” Stephanie has made it clear that she doesn’t want to have sex; “her actions, however, are not matching her words.”16

  Sounds a bit like “no means yes,” “ look what she was wearing,” and various other rape-apologist excuses. When abstinence curricula contain information about sexual abuse or assault (though they often don’t), the message is similar: The onus of preventing sexual assault is on girls—not on men.

  SIECUS’s “No More Money for Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs” project notes that classes portray abstinence as a choice—which, considering the high rates of rape and sexual assault among young people,az it often just isn’t.

  Federal guidelines for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs associate sexual abstinence with all things virtuous and sexual activity with a life doomed to failure. Not only is this untrue, but it serves to inflict greater harm upon those who have survived coerced sexual behavior. Such messages are likely to cause further feelings of hur
t, shame, anger, and embarrassment in these already victimized young people .18

  In addition to shaming sexual-assault victims, positioning abstinence as women’s domain further promotes the notion that it’s women’s morality that’s on the line when it comes to sex—men just can’t help themselves, so their ethics are safe from criticism.

  Other young people suffering under these discriminatory teachings are LGBTQ youth, who are outright ignored or ostracized. Queer sexuality is not discussed at all; in fact, federal guidelines for abstinence-only programs make even mentioning gay sex near impossible.

  In 2006, the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF) created new guidelines for organizations applying for grants to support abstinence-only education programs. These rules mandated that curricula were to define sexual abstinence very specifically, as “voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage . . . sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse.”19 Educators were also required to define the term “marriage” as only “a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife,” and the word “spouse” as only “a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.” Since, according to the virginity movement, only married people are “allowed” to have sex, queer students are essentially taught that sexual intimacy is something they can never experience.ba20 For students who may have gay friends or family members, the message is similar: Their loved ones don’t exist.

  And, of course, for heterosexual teens who are already sexually active, the only information available to them is all false statistics meant to shame them.