The Purity Myth

by Jessica Valenti

  9 Montgomery. “Push for fetal safety.”

  10 January W. Payne. “Forever Pregnant,” Washington Post, May 16, 2006.

  11 Ann Friedman. “Over-the-Counter Insurgency,” Mother Jones, August 1, 2006.

  12 U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Meeting transcript, December 16, 2004, www.fdagov/ohrms/dockets.

  13 Gina Kolata. “A Contraceptive Clears a Hurdle to Wider Access,” The New York Times, December 17, 2003.

  14 David Hager. Stress and the Woman’s Body (Ada, MI: Revell, 1998).

  15 Kristina Shaw. “Protecting women’s reproductive rights on college campuses,” Minnesota Daily, July 27, 2005. Blog for Choice. “BC availability on campus ‘outrages’ Wisconsin lawmaker,” March 18, 2005, www.blogforchoice.com.

  16 Marc Kaufman. “9 Arrested Protesting Morning-After Pill Plan,” Washington Post, January 8, 2005; Government Accountability Office. “Decision Process to Deny Initial Application for Over-the-Counter Marketing of the Emergency Contraceptive Drug Plan B Was Unusual,” November 14, 2005, www.gao.gov/new.items/d06109.pdf.

  17 Rachel Benson Gold and Elizabeth Nash. “State Abortion Counseling Policies and the Fundamental Principles of Informed Consent,” Guttmacher Policy Review 10, no. 4 (2007).

  18 South Dakota Legislature. South Dakota Codified Laws, http://legis.state.sd.us/statutes.

  19 Sarah Blustain. “Consenting Adults,” American Prospect, April 13, 2007.

  20 The Guttmacher Institute. State policies in brief, October 2008.

  21 Eric Kleefeld. “Brownback Would Require Women To Get An Ultrasound Before An Abortion,” TPM Election Central, September 20, 2007.

  22 Chinué Turner Richardson and Elizabeth Nash. “Misinformed Consent: The Medical Accuracy of State-Developed Abortion Counseling Materials,” Guttmacher Policy Review 9, no. 4 (2006).

  23 At Center Network. Libertyville abortion demonstration video, www.atcenternet work. com/?p=64.

  24 John Solomon. “Huckabee Would Criminalize Abortion Providers,” The Trail, Washington Post, December 30, 2007.

  25 NARAL Pro-Choice Arizona. “NARAL Pro-Choice Arizona asks K-mart to take action against pharmacist manager who counseled lying about availability of birth control,” April 26, 2005.

  26 Rob Stein. “‘Pro-Life’ Drugstores Market Beliefs,” Washington Post, June 16, 2008.

  27 Mike Hixenbaugh. “Abortion law would give fathers a say State legislators propose change,” Record-Courier, July 30, 2007.

  28 George W. Bush. “Marriage Protection Week, 2003: A Proclamation,” October 3, 2003, www.whitehouse.gov/news.

  29 Jessica Valenti. “A Good Job Is Hard to Find,” AlterNet, April 5, 2006.

  30 Rutgers Center for American Woman and Politics. Fast Facts: Levels of Office, www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/levels_of_offic.

  31 Lynn M. Paltrow and TomPaine.com. “Coercive Medicine,” National Advocates for Pregnant Women, March 21, 2004, http://advocatesforpregnant women.org/main/publications.

  32 Center for Reproductive Rights. “The NYT Criticizes ‘Partial-Birth ’ Strategy,” Reproductive Freedom News VII, no. 5 (1998).

  33 Daily Kos. “VA Legislative Sentry: Have a Miscarriage, Go to JAIL?” January 6, 2005, www.dailykos.com.

  34 Feministing.com. “A loser legislator makes his big comeback,” March 18, 2008, www.feministing.com/archives/008815.html.

  CHAPTER 7 public punishments

  1 Claire Luna. “3 Guilty of Sexual Assault in O.C. Gang-Rape Retrial,” Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2005.

  2 Aya Mueller. “GW sued for negligence, malpractice,” GW Hatchet, October 4, 2007.

  3 Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN).

  4 The Happy Feminist. “Maryland’s Court Interpretation of Rape Law Is Predicated on the Notion of Women as Chattel,” October 31, 2006, http://happyfeminist.typepad.com.

  5 Larry Celona. “Beautiful Co-ed Found Murdered—Body Dumped Near B’klyn Highway,” New York Post, February 27, 2006.

  6 Veronika Belenkaya and Alison Gendar. “City Beauty Slain by Beast. Tortured & dumped by road,” New York Daily News, February 28, 2006.

  7 Lauren Elkies. “Slain Student Left Bar Alone After 4 a.m.,” New York Sun, March 2, 2006; Donovan Slack. “Fearless in the City. Some Women Still Party as If Invulnerable,” Boston Globe, March 9, 2006.

  8 NBC News. Transcripts, April 5, 2006.

  9 CBS News. Transcripts, March 9, 2006.

  10 Jessica Heslam. “WRKO radio host defends talk of victim ‘asking for trouble,’” Boston Herald, March 2, 2006.

  11 Naomi Schaefer Riley. “Ladies, You Should Know Better,” Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2006.

  12 Katie Roiphe. The Morning After: Fear, Sex, and Feminism (New York: Back Bay Books, 1994).

  13 Ibid.

  14 Melissa McEwan. “Dear Ladies: Please Stop Getting Yourselves Raped,” January 3, 2007, Shakesville, http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com.

  15 Feministing.com. “Joe Francis with yet another sex charge,” April 26, 2007, www.feministing.com/archives/006931.html; The Smoking Gun. www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0419043gg w1.html ; Feministing.com. “Girls Gone Wild founder gets community service,” December 14, 2006, www.feministing.com/archives/006211.html.

  16 Anything & Everything. “‘Girls Gone Wild’Cameraman Accused of Raping Minor in Ohio,” October 26, 2006, http://ballyblog.wordpress.com.

  17 Kieran Crowley. “‘Wild’ LI Sex Attack—Video Man Busted,” New York Post, August 7, 2008.

  18 Bob Dyer. “Witness says crew was wild before,” Akron Beacon Journal, October 26, 2006.

  19 Claire Hoffman. “‘Baby, Give Me a Kiss,’” Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2006.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Deidra J. Fleming. “Out, damned error out, I say!” Army Lawyer, May 2005, http://find-articles.com/p/articles/mi_m6052.

  22 CBS. “Tables Turned On Alleged Rape Victim,” August 28, 2007, www.cbsnews.com.

  23 Feministing.com. “ABC News on Duke: The ‘Lacrosstitute’ Factor,” April 17, 2006, www.feministing.com/archives/004868.html ; Liz Cox Barrett. “Of Duke, and Princeton, and Jocks, and Sluts,” Columbia Journalism Review, April 19, 2006, www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/of_duke_and_princeton_and_jock.php.

  24 LAist. “OC Cop Gets Off in Court after Masturbating on Stripper During Questionable Traffic Stop,” February 10, 2007, www.laist.com.

  25 Jill Porter. “Hooker raped and robbed—by justice system?” Philadelphia Daily News, October 12, 2007.

  26 Feministing.com. “Kos: Getting harassed? Stop blogging.” April 12, 2007, www.feministing.com/archives/006858.html.

  27 Jill Filipovic. “Hi, I’m Jill, and scummy law school sleazebags have gone after me, too,” Feministe, March 7, 2007, www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007.

  28 The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. “A Portrait of ‘Generation Next,’” January 9, 2007, http://people-press.org/reports.

  29 Heather Mac Donald. “What campus rape crisis?” Los Angeles Times, February 24, 2008.

  30 Laura Sessions Stepp. “A New Kind of Date Rape,” Cosmopolitan, www.cosmopolitancom/sex-love/sex..

  31 Ibid.

  32 Beth Slovic. “Trial By Facebook,” Willamette Week , January 9, 2008.

  33 Ibid.

  34 Dahlia Lithwick. “Gag Order: A Nebraska judge bans the word rape from his court-room,” Slate, June 20, 2007, www.slate.com/id/2168758.

  35 Naomi Schaefer Riley. “Ladies, You Should Know Better,” Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2006.

  CHAPTER 8 beyond manliness

  1 Stephen J. Ducat. The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).

  2 Ibid., 5.

  3 Serano. Whipping Girl, 326.

  4 CNN. “Arizona criminals find jail too in ‘tents,’” July 27, 1999, www.cnn.com/US.

  5 Local6.com. “Report: Boy Forced To Wear Skirt As Punishment,” February 27, 2004, www.local6.com/money/; Dartmouth Review. “Week in Revie
w,” May 14, 2001, http://dartreview.com/archives/2001.

  6 Melissa Bruen. “My Spring Weekend Nightmare,” Daily Campus, May 2, 2008.

  7 Ibid.

  8 Matthew Fitzgerald. “Training Your Girlfriend,” Ask Men.com, www.askmen.com/dating/curtsmith.

  9 Peter Rubin. “Is it OK to Demand Anal Sex?” Details, July 9, 2007.

  10 Ibid.

  11 Michael Kimmel. Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

  12 Ibid., 169-70.

  13 Ibid., 219.

  14 Scott Jaschik. “Understanding ‘Guyland,’” Inside Higher Ed, August 21, 2008.

  15 James C. Dobson, PhD. “Radical Feminism Shortchanges Boys,” Focus on the Family, November 2004, www2.focusonthefamily.com/docstudy.

  16 James C. Dobson. Bringing Up Boys: Practical Advice and Encouragement for Those Shaping the Next Generation of Men (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2001), Chapter 5.

  17 National Review. “Hail the Male,” June 13, 2008.

  18 Janice Shaw Crouse. “Feminizing the Nation’s Boys,” Concerned Women for America, May 21, 2004.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Harvey C. Mansfield. Manliness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).

  21 Samuel Jacobs. “Mansfield Calls For ‘New Feminism,’” Harvard Crimson, October 19, 2005.

  22 Ibid.

  23 Douglas Rushkoff. “Picture Perfect,” in What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future, ed. Rebecca Walker (New York: Riverhead Books, 2004).

  24 Robert Jensen. “The high cost of manliness,” AlterNet, September 8, 2006, www.alternet.org/sex/41356.

  25 Ibid.

  CHAPTER 9 sex, morals, and trusting women

  1 Miriam Grossman. Sense & Sexuality: The College Girl’s Guide to Real Protection in a Hooked-Up World (Herndon, VA: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, 2008), 13.

  2 Ibid., 20.

  3 Katha Pollitt. “Virginit y or Death!,” Nation, May 12, 2005.

  4 Monitoring the Future. Monitoring the Future (1975-2005), www.monitoringthefuture.org.

  5 Michael Males. “Have ‘Girls Gone Wild’?” in Beating Up On Girls: Girls, Violence, Demonization and Denial (New York: New York Press, 2009 (at press)).

  6 The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. National pregnancy rates for teens, aged 15-19.

  7 J. S. Santelli et al. “Exploring recent declines in adolescent pregnancy in the United States: the contribution of abstinence and increased contraceptive use,” American Journal of Public Health 97 (2007): 150-56.

  8 Advocates for Youth. “Adolescent Protective Behaviors: Abstinence and Contraceptive Use,” www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications.

  9 Advocates for Youth. “Adolescent Pregnancy and Childbearing in the United States,” www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications.

  10 Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti. Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2009).

  11 Ibid., 38.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Advocates for Youth. “Adolescent Sexual Behavior. I: Demographics,” www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications .

  14 Levy. Female Chauvinist Pigs, 82.

  15 Kara Jesella. “Female Chauvinist Pigs,” AlterNet, October 3, 2005.

  16 Jennifer Baumgardner. “Feminism Is a Failure, and Other Myths,” AlterNet, November 17, 2005, www.alternet.org/rights/28237.

  17 Natalie Angier. Woman: An Intimate Geography (New York: Random House, 1999), 366.

  18 George Lakoff. “Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals in the Dust,” Social Research, summer 1995.

  CHAPTER 10 post-virgin world

  1 Technorati. “State of the Blogosphere,” 2008, http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere.

  2 Family and Youth Services Bureau. Discretionary Grant Awards: FY 2008, www.acf.hhsgov/programs/fysb/content/docs/08_discgrantawards.htm.

  3 Medical Institute. Mission statement, www.medinstitute.org.

  4 www.takeissuetakecharge.org; www.communityactionkit.org.

  5 www.mavaw.org.

  6 www.stopviolence.com.

  7 www.meetup.com.

  8 Right Wing News. “America Has An Obsession With Virginity? And It’s Hurting Young Women? Really?” October 6, 2008, www.rightwingnews.com.

  9 Network of enlightened Women. “New feminist book: The Purity Myth,” October 8, 2008, http://blog.enlightenedwomen.org.

  10 House of Eratosthenes. “Best Sentence XLII,” October 6, 2008, http://mkfreeberg. webloggin.com/best-sentence-xlii.

  11 Cassy Fiano. “Putting out is SO much better for girls than abstinence,” October 6, 2008, www.cassyfiano.com.

  12 Erika Anderson. “Is Purity a Myth?” http://culture11.com/blogs/lady blog/2008/10/09/is-purity-a-myth.

  13 http://blackandmissing.blogspot.com.

  resources

  THE FOLLOWING LIST OF RESOURCES CAN

  ALSO BE FOUND AT WWW.PURITYMYTH.COM.

  organizations

  ABORTION ACCESS PROJECT

  The Abortion Access Project advocates access to safe abortion for all women in the United States; looks for gaps in abortion access that no one else is addressing, and seeks to create and support innovative responses to these gaps; and works with local partners to achieve locally driven, locally relevant goals, then introduces these projects to national organizations also interested in expanding access. (www.abortionaccess.org)

  AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN

  This national organization promotes women’s educational equality. Not only does AAUW do terrific advocacy work, it also provides comprehensive research materials on young women and education. (www.aauw.org)

  BLACK WOMEN’S HEALTH IMPERATIVE

  The Black Women’s Health Imperative is the only organization devoted solely to advancing the health and wellness of America’s black women and girls through advocacy, community health and wellness education, and leadership development. (www.blackwomenshealth.org)

  CENTER FOR AMERICAN WOMEN AND POLITICS

  Housed at Rutgers University in New Jersey, CAWP is the leading source of scholarly research and current data about American women’s political participation. (www.cawp.rutgers.edu)

  CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

  A nonprofit legal-advocacy organization dedicated to promoting and defending women’s reproductive rights worldwide. The center works on Capitol Hill and in the courts; its website features information on national legislation affecting women’s reproductive health and rights. (www.reproductiverights.org )

  CENTER FOR WOMEN POLICY STUDIES

  The Center for Women Policy Studies was founded in 1972 as the first feminist-policy analysis and research institution in the United States. Its mission is to shape public policy to improve women’s lives and preserve their human rights. (www.centerwomenpolicy.org)

  CHOICE USA

  This youth-led organization supports emerging leaders in the reproductive-justice movement; it’s an amazing resource and group for younger women. (www.choiceusa.org)

  FAIR FUND, INC.

  FAIR works globally to engage youth, especially young women, in civil society. It heightens awareness of human trafficking and domestic violence, informs young people about sexual-assault prevention, and promotes the development of youth capacity-building programs. (www.fairfund.org)

  FAMILY VIOLENCE PREVENTION FUND

  This antiviolence organization works both organizationally and in direct service. FVPF also helped to develop the Violence Against Women Act, passed by Congress in 1994. Its website is a good place to look for statistics and resources on intimate-partner violence and rape. (http://endabuse.org)

  GIRLS, INC.

  This organization for girls and young women promotes self-esteem, confidence, and independence through programs that address math and science education, pregnancy and drug abuse prevention, media literacy, economic literacy, adolescent health, violence prevention, a
nd sports participation. The group and its website are also great resources for people doing research about girls. (www.girlsinc.org)

  GUTTMACHER INSTITUTE

  The Guttmacher Institute advances sexual and reproductive health worldwide through an interrelated program of social science research, public education, and policy analysis. This is the go-to organization to consult about women’s reproductive health. (www.guttmacher.org)

  INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN’S POLICY RESEARCH

  IWPR researches poverty and welfare, employment and earnings, work and family issues, health and safety, and women’s civic and political participation. (www.iwpr.org)

  NARAL PRO-CHOICE AMERICA

  For more than 30 years, NARAL Pro-Choice America has been the nation’s leading advocate for privacy and a woman’s right to choose. With more than one million members and supporters, NARAL is fighting to protect the pro-choice values of freedom and privacy. (www.prochoiceamerica.org)

  NATIONAL ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN WOMEN’S FORUM

  NAPAWF is the only national, multi-issue organization dealing with Asian Pacific American women’s issues in the United States. The organization’s mission is to build a movement to advance social justice and human rights for APA women and girls. (www.napawf.org)

  NATIONAL COALITION OF WOMEN AND GIRLS IN EDUCATION

  This nonprofit organization is dedicated to improving educational opportunities for girls and women. The group also addresses the implementation of Title IX. (www.ncwge.org)

  NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

  This national organization working to end violence against women not only lobbies for efforts opposing domestic violence, but also offers financial education programs for women and houses the only direct-service program that offers reconstructive surgery to domestic-violence survivors. (www.ncadv.org)