I don’t do very many book reviews. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve done any since starting this blog several years ago (although I have posted ripped” results of several over the years), but I finished a book the other day that I’d really like to tell you about. It’s called The Purity Myth: How America’s Obcession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti.
First, and hear this well, this is not a book for those of you who are easily upset by “liberals” who “have no values or standards” (she isn’t one of them – she has values and standards, but if you’re that kind of a person, you will find her frustrating). She panders too much to her target audience. Her snippy comments and biting judgments are often overly harsh and she doesn’t distinguish well (or at all, in most cases) between Christians (as a whole) and the Evangelical sub-culture she attacks.
Having said that, if you can get past her constantly playing to her own corner, this is a book you need to read. I have long been frustrated by my colleagues and friends who attempt (usually unintentionally) to hang young women’s worth on their “purity” and to (as Valenti puts it) “obsess” over virginity, sex, abstinence, and abstinence only education. No one’s worth should be defined by their decision to (or not to) do a particular act (regardless of what that act is). I don’t believe (as Valenti argues) that virginity is a made-up concept, but I do fully agree with her that by over-focusing on it, many corners of Christianity have done women and society a powerful disservice.
She discusses purity pledges, purity balls, the ownership culture (i.e. where fathers, and then husbands “own” their wives), rape, pornography, our society’s unhealthy obsession with young women and a variety of related topics in a clear, straight-forward way that, although it would make most – if not all of the readers of this blog uncomfortable – recognizes the innate creepiness of much of it and the outright harm it does. She also footnotes her writing extensively in case you wonder where she’s getting some of the stuff she says (although many of the footnotes are online resources – some of which are more believable than others).
If you read my blog regularly, you will likely declare Valenti “off the deep end.” I don’t care. Read this book anyhow. Seriously. If you know me at all, you know that I never believe the ends justify the means – she clarifies, with precision, just exactly how the “means” used by many Christians have been problematic even if the “ends” they seek occasionally make sense.
Grace and Peace,
`tim
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