The Purity Myth (30 page)

In this mess of chastity expectations, objectification, and control of women, we have lost a very fundamental truth: Sex is amazing, and there’s nothing wrong or dirty or shameful or sinful about it. The virginity move- ment isn’t the only faction that pathologizes sex; a mainstream culture that upholds the virgin/whore dichotomy and shames (or exalts) young women for their sexuality and little else has damaged sexuality just as much.

* I can already see the opposition taking this declaration and running with it, giddy that a feminist said she thinks teen sex is okay. Of everything I’ve written, this statement will get the most play. So let me be clear: I don’t think that having sex is something that’s “okay” for every teen (especially younger teens), nor do I think it’s something that some adults are prepared for. I just believe that the decision to have sex has less to do with age than it does with being informed. I think that a sixteen-year-old who has had comprehensive sex education and who’s been taught to have a healthy perspective on the emotional and physical responsibilities that come with sex is a lot more prepared for a sexual relationship than a twenty-one-year-old who has known only shame-based abstinence-only educa- tion and virginity pledges.

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Teaching sex as a moral, responsible act—not to be taken lightly, but also not to be used as fodder for criticism—has the potential to create real change in young women’s lives. By doing so, we’d be giving young women much needed space to take responsibility for their sexuality. For example, think of the common excuse that young people use when they’ve had unpro- tected sex: “It just happened.” In these instances, sex is framed not as a delib- erate choice, but rather as something that just occurred, thus freeing young people—especially young women—from the judgment that’s heaped upon those who actively choose sex. The lack of protection, in fact, “proves” that the encounter wasn’t premeditated; this allows the participants to absolve them- selves of guilt. But if having sex is a morally neutral—or positive—act, young women will start making better and healthier decisions, because they’ll feel justified in making them.

As it stands now, sexuality is still mired in the woman-as-gatekeeper model (discussed in Chapter 8), in which women are seen as, and expected to be, passive in terms of sex. This viewpoint not only negates women’s active moral participation in sex, but also furthers a dangerous paradigm of men’s feeling that they need to “get” sex from women.

Thomas Macaulay Millar, in the anthology
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Fe- male Sexual Power & a World Without Rape,*
asserts that sexuality in the Unit- ed States currently follows a commodity model: “Sex is like a ticket; women have it and men try to get it.”
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The commodity model assumes that when a woman has sex, she loses some- thing of value. If she engages in too much sex, she will be lef t with nothing

• Full disclosure: I’m the coeditor of the anthology, along with writer and activist Jaclyn Friedman.
  

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  the Purity myth
  

  of value. It further assumes that sex earlier in her history is more valuable than sex later. If she has a lot of sex early on, what she has lef t will not be something people will esteem highly.
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  Millar suggests that we should strive to achieve a “performance” model of sex, which will not only rid our culture of the current model, which has done so much damage, but also promote a more woman-friendly ideal of sex- uality, involving a moral and mutual decision-making process in which no one loses any “value.”
  

  Because it centers on collaboration, a performance model better fits the con-
  

  ventional feminist wisdom that consent is not the absence of “no,” but affirma- tive participation. Who picks up a guitar and jams with a bassist who just
  

  stands there? Who dances with a partner who is just standing and staring? In the absence of affirmative participation, there is no collaboration.
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  Millar’s proposition is an incredibly important step in reframing the way we talk about sexuality—especially when it comes to young women. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of young people found that 47 percent of teens who had experienced some form of sexual intimacy said they’d felt pressure to do something they didn’t want to do—and young women were more likely to have had this experience than young men.
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  While I believe wholeheartedly in young women’s agency and ability to consent to sexual activity, there’s no getting around the fact that society’s cur- rent version of sexuality makes it difficult for young women to have a healthy sexual outlook that centers on their desires.
  

  But unlike what purity proponents would have us do—push abstinence
  

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  as the only appropriate option, and shame young women who choose otherwise—I believe that we should arm young women with the knowledge that sex should be a collaborative, pleasurable experience that has no bearing on whether they are ethical people.
  

  Instead, the fact that sex is supposed to be pleasurable is often omitted from sex talks with teen girls.* Teenage girls’ authentic desire—as opposed to the manufactured sexuality that’s integral to Girls Gone Wild or to playing it up for guys—is a touchy subject for most. Young women’s sexuality has be- come so disassociated from
  actual
  young women that it’s tough to know how to begin reconnecting them with it.
  

  We’re living in a time when simply talking about women’s pleasure is taboo in itself and is considered dangerous by the virginity movement, since that kind of discussion frees women’s sexuality from its restrictive only-for- procreation, only-when-married, only-when-straight boundaries.
  

  But when women’s pleasure is being pathologized, it’s imperative that we teach young women that there is nothing wrong with having sex because it feels good, that their desires and pleasure are important, and that sexuality should be—as Millar says—the presence of a “yes,” not the absence of a “no.”
  

  I also believe in giving young women the room to explore sexually, and even make mistakes, without being judged. It’s part of the learning process, and most of us have been through it.
  

  A feminist backlash of sorts has taken place recently against the hypersexu- alized culture I’ve discussed in previous chapters—naturally, it’s not just the vir- ginity movement that takes issue with sexualizing girls and the mainstreaming of porn. Feminists, who have been speaking out against the sexual objectifica- tion of women since the ’60s, have also been publicly debating this issue.
  

  

• Women’s pleasure doesn’t matter much. It’s their “value” that counts.
  

Leading the charge against what she calls raunch culture is Ariel Levy, author of
Female Chauvinist Pigs.
Levy contends that young women partici- pating in raunch culture do so by using “empowerment” as their excuse. They believe they’re doing something feminist if they flash their breasts or have a faux-lesbian make-out session for a boy’s benefit. Feminist Susan Brown- miller, author of the seminal book on rape
Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape,
said in Levy’s book, “You think you’re being brave, you think you’re being sexy, you think you’re
transcending
feminism. But that’s bullshit.”
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Levy’s book is dead-on in many cases—when she discusses how raunch culture promotes inauthentic, performance-based female sexual- ity, for example—but she fails in that she seems to have little sympathy for the women she interviews, who she assumes are fooling themselves into thinking they’re happy with what raunch culture has given them. And I’m sure in many cases, Levy is right. But I think we should give women a little more credit.

As reporter Kara Jesella wrote in 2005, “Participating in raunch culture may not always be a feminist act, but that doesn’t make those engaging in it antifeminists—or deluded.” She continues, “Levy rails against a culture in which ‘the only alternative to enjoying
Playboy
is being ‘uncomfortable’ with or ‘embarrassed’ about your sexuality. But I know lots of women for whom there is a middle ground between rabid antiporn Dworkinizing and Girls Gone Wild vapidity.”
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We should be giving young women some space to work out that middle ground—it’s one way many young women come of age. Noted feminist Jenni- fer Baumgardner took on Levy’s book in an article that asserted that though the new porned culture that further sexualizes women is a problem, telling young women they’re being taken advantage of isn’t necessarily the best way

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to effect change. A better approach, in Baumgardner’s opinion, would be to own up to the fact that many women find their sexual footing through trial and error—and that there’s nothing wrong with that.

If pressed, I’ d venture that at least half of my sexual experiences make me cringe when I think about them today. Taking top honors [are] the many

times I made out with female friends in bars when I was in my early 20s. . . . I’m embarrassed about the kiss-around-the-circles, but if I didn’ t have those moments, I’m not sure I ever would have found my way to the real long-term relationship I have today. If all my sexual behavior had to be evolved and

reciprocal and totally revolutionary before I had it, I’ d never have had sex.
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Trusting women means also trusting them to find their way. This isn’t to say, of course, that I think women’s sexual choices are intrinsically “em- powered” or “feminist.” I just believe that in a world that values women so little, and so specifically for their sexuality, we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because in this kind of hostile culture, trusting women is a radical act.

a P e r f e c t w o r l d

Making sex moral and doing away with the myth of sexual purity are about more than trusting young women’s sexual choices. They’re about trusting women, period. Because if you can’t trust women with sex, then you can’t trust them with choices about family, about relationships, about anything. In a perfect world, our moral choices would not be seen through a filter that always includes sexuality.

I
m a g In e a w o r l d w h e r e

w o m e n
’
s s e x u a l It y w a s s e e n a s n at u r a l a n d m o r a l
.

Natalie Angier, a science writer for
The New York Times,
wrote a wonder- ful book called
Woman: An Intimate Geography,
in which she discusses the myth that women are innately less sexual than men—a myth that the virginity movement often uses to its advantage: “Women are said to have lower sex drives than men, yet they are universally punished if they display evidence to the contrary—if they disobey their ‘natural’ inclina- tion towards a stif led libido.”
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Women’s sexuality and desire are natural, and we need to frame these concepts as morally sound if we want to free our daughters from the confines imposed on them now. As Angier writes, “How can we know what is ‘natural’ for us when we are treated as un- natural for wanting our lust, our freedom, the music of our bodies?” In a perfect world, women would be allowed to seek, and would be celebrated for seeking, that music.