I read Wendy Shalit’s Good Girl Revolution a couple of months ago, and it was pretty interesting in terms of framing the ways in which society has been so eager to give women power over their sexuality that it’s taken away . . . power over our sexuality. I attempted to speak to a couple of left-leaning women about it, and they murmured things about how female sexuality has been “turned into a commodity,” which is of course part of it–but not all.
The problem, of course, is that we all have such different experiences about sex, and in particular about sex education. So the issue of where and how, exactly, the human race has gone astray regarding sex relations is not an easy one to answer at all.
My niece asked me to read The Purity Myth, so now I’m seeing these issues through young Jessica Valenti’s eyes. Within the first few chapters it occurred to me that there were ideas that she and Shalit probably agree on, and in fact their goals are probably similar: helping girls and women to get beyond the obsession with female sexuality, from either direction.
Yet discourse has become so fragmented that such a dialogue would sem to be unlikely.
I have to admit that Valenti’s viewpoint seems startling to me, at certain times: I find myself wondering whether she grew up in a terribly conservative household, or perhaps got transplanted here from another century. One suspects that she’s had a higher wheat-to-chaff experience in terms of her encounters with young men, because looking back on it all I’m mostly concerned with all that damned time I lost to bad sex. I suspect and hope that Ms. Valenti got luckier when she got lucky–and that’s all to the good.
And still . . . there has to be an way to a middle ground, beyond simply avoiding the Commodifiers of Young Female Sexuality that we all know will lead us astray. One would think that we’re not fated to play out the Madonna vs. Whore syndrome for the rest of our lives–that we may occasionally find other roles to enjoy that take us beyond the realm of the sexual. And beyond the projection of what it means to be sexual.
I do believe that finding a way not to be consumed by these issues is really critical for girls and women–for most of our lives, our important relationships will be with God, with the world of ideas, and with our friends. Sex is, ultimately, a very small part of all this.
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I don’t think younger woman worry about this anywhere near as much as the aging hipsters of all political leanings do.
A lot of thoughts:
*I read some of “The Purity Myth” before just giving up. What struck me was that 14-year-old Jessica Valenti had said that no moral significance attached to losing her virginity – it was five minutes of whatever, and then done. To me, that just seems sad.
*By her own accounts, Jessica grew up in a very liberal household. I’ve always thought she was arguing against straw men and has no real idea of how conservatives think.
*You might be right about the wheat-to-chaff ratio (I’ve met an exceptional number of jerks, which is some of the reason I’m so conservative now); or you might have gotten it entirely backwards. One of the semi-sarcastic remarks that I make to some women who mock me for having been dumped for not putting out is: in order to be dumped for not putting out, you have to actually… not put out. So it’s very likely that Jessica didn’t notice that she was being used….
*While there may be some happy middle ground – or happy ground that applies to a lot of women – regarding sexuality, you’re always stuck with the problem of how sexuality relates to other people. Although it’s a deeply personal thing, it’s also a relational thing – i.e. involving another person. For the vast majority of women, that “other person” is a man. What bothers me about the way that Valenti et. al approach sexuality is that they pretend that men think exactly like women think, and that both parties think like Jessica Valenti. For those of us who don’t want to spread our legs at the tender age of 14, that’s a non-starter.
*It would be nice if we could teach young men this, too. They think that any woman who doesn’t think like they do is repressed and has “hang-ups”. (Want to know how long it took me to get that phraseology from echoing around in my skull?)
Some of it is very confused and self-contradictory. And some, as you pointed out, is a bit sad–the assertion that sex is not meaningless enough!
But I said I’d read it, so get through it I shall. I think.
Try reading “Full Frontal Feminism”. She’s clearly not a deep thinker, and I’m not sure if she has the intelligence to become one, if only someone would hold her to higher standards. A lot of it’s really confused.
I do sometimes wonder how much of this is the periodic moral panics – older women doing their thang while they’re young, and then freaking out at how it looks from the outside. (Didn’t “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” have a somewhat catty take on it, where women start freaking out about their sexual exploits – or lack thereof – when they reach menopause only because they’re not going to get any anymore?)
The other young women I know just seem to have sex or not as they see fit. I honestly don’t see the Madonna-Whore dichotomy being played out. Although, as some older, drooping feminists and the newly pure older women have snarled at me, that’s because I’m essentially suffering from false consciousness.
“I do believe that finding a way not to be consumed by these issues is really critical for girls and women–for most of our lives, our important relationships will be with God, with the world of ideas, and with our friends. Sex is, ultimately, a very small part of all this.”
I absolutely agree. One of the benefits I’ve experienced from getting married very young was that it changed the way I interacted with men. I stopped flirting and stopped evaluating myself so much by their standards. I had more confidence and suffered far less “drama” nonsense than my contemporaries. Sex really can be a distraction.
One thing we can draw from God’s law on sexuality is that sex is not a purely physical act. It has a spiritual component, and cannot be experienced without that spiritual dimension except by damaging our own spiritual natures.