Reviewed Elsewhere [Vol. 2, #33]
BOOKS AND CULTURE reviews several
Recent Books on Chastity and Culture
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/columns/bookoftheweek/howtoreframetheconvochastity.html
Lies. Jessica Valenti talks about a lot of them in The Purity Myth: lies about statistics, lies about women, lies about sex. In fact, she talks so much about deception that the main truth she wants to advance gets pushed to the closing and opening pages of the book. That truth is that women are “more than the sum of our sexual parts,” a message she desperately wants her readers to take to heart, rejecting the far more common claim that “a woman’s worth lies in her ability—or her refusal—to be sexual.”
How exactly does one instill a healthier sense of worth? Valenti thinks it’s by taking away the shame in sex and “arm[ing] young women with the knowledge that sex should be a collaborative, pleasurable experience that has no bearing on whether they are ethical people.” Except, of course, that “collaborative” and “pleasurable” are obviously deemed good, as opposed to competitive and unpleasant, selfish and painful—modes of experience that would presumably be unethical. And indeed, she’s against both violent and unwanted sex, which is for her defined not just by “no” but the absence of “yes.” Sex isn’t really amoral, then. No, her problem is that sexual morality or the lack thereof still has such bearing on (women’s) worth.
…
Read the full review:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/columns/bookoftheweek/howtoreframetheconvochastity.html
The Purity Myth:
How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women
Jessica Valenti.
Hardback: Seal Press, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]
A Wild Constraint: The Case for Chastity.
Jenny Taylor.
Paperback: Continuum, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]
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