Jeannie Lee Nghiem Professor Anthony Borrero ENGL 1101-101 11 April 2013 Reflective Memo on C.A.P.

Project If I had an extra 24 hours to complete this project I would improve the flow of the paper more by trying to make the paragraphs more concise. The topic of women and purity can branch off into many subjects and it was difficult to stay on topic since I am passionate about this particular womens issue. I chose to write it in the form of a magazine because magazines are a popular media outlet for women. It is also easier to make an issue approachable and relatable when you are writing it for a magazine. At times, an author of a magazine article can be very informal and less intimidating than that of an academic journal or newspaper. I would have tried to make the tone of my essay more informal and more relatable. It was difficult to try and find a balance of sounding relevant and current but also sounding intelligent and credible. This is a topic that I was thoroughly invested in and wanted to educate more women about and I believe the essay comes off as too dry and boring. Before reading this article, it is important that the reader know that the research for how the purity movement affects women is very limited. There were many first person accounts but very little studies, facts, and figures. However, there were two major studies of how abstinence based sex education is not effective in public schools. I read many articles and watched two major documentaries on the purity myth, purity balls, and the overall push from society for women to remain as virginal as possible. Although there were many articles on purity balls and the purity movement, many of the arguments are either of my own conjecture or arguments that were repeatedly being expressed in my sources.

I would like the focus to be on how effective my arguments are in trying to change the minds of women who believe in many of the myths that I present. My purpose was to reach out to women and convince them that many of the moral standards that we judge other women by are conventions made to control and patronize women. I myself went into this essay with many of the prejudices that I explore and by the end the standards that I judged myself and other women had changed.

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Purity Lies
By: Jeannie Nghiem

uman beings are innately social and consequently sexual beings. Over the course of millions of years, humans have thrived by reproducing as frequently as possible. Only recently have humans ascribed different meanings to sex and no longer is it solely a biological function to produce progeny. Sex is demonized, glorified, and commodified. It has moved far beyond a simple biological human function into an act that can have many different meanings and consequences. Currently, media is awash with hyper-sexualized images of women. In response to this over -sexualization and objectification of women in the media, there is an equally disturbing trend where a womans value is still contingent on her body and still sexualizes her in a more clandestine way: the purity movement. The emphasis on women to stay pure and be virginal has devastating consequences. The latest call for women to stay abstinent regresses any advancement made in recent years in the name of womens health. It continues to objectify women under the guise of returning power to women when in actuality it aims to take away power and control from women. It bashes feminism, tinges of misogyny and prizes submissiveness in women. One of the more disturbing problems is that, most often, women do this to other women. It is critical that we reexamine what traits we value in women and what we should really extol in women beyond their physical qualities. The latest purity movement is a construct of an evangelical pastor from Colorado named Randy Wilson. Together with his wife, he held the first purity ball in 2008. Purity balls are formal dances where young girls and young women pledge their purity to their father (Baumgardner). The purity movement claims to free girls from being seen as solely sexual objects and that, ...they should expect to be treated with incredible dignity(Virgin Daughters) but the movement achieves the complete opposite. By promising their virginity to their fathers, it sends the message that women cannot be trusted to know what to do with their own bodies and that, Its up to men to control young womens sexuality (Oppenheimer). Repeatedly, the fathers claim that their daughters are too impressionable and too susceptible to the temptations of the world. Frequently, the young girls are also sheltered from the outside world and popular culture. Fathers and even consenting mothers are wrestling control from their young daughters hands and claiming that it is for their own good. This claim is dangerous because it says women cannot make their own decisions when it comes to our own bodies.

For women especially, virginity

has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you've never had sex, you're a "good" (i.e. "moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise.
-Jessica Valenti, author of The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women

men make the decisions in terms of womens health. It is to the benefit of mainly socially conservative politicians that they continue to glorify and praise sexual abstinence for women because then backsliding on womens issues like rape, abortion, and contraception is easy. Although it may seem that only a handful of these politicians exist, their actions have been felt by every woman in America.

More recently, Plan B has been ruled legal to be sold over the counter in pharmacies across America. However it took three years before Plan B could be made available without a prescription. Conservatives claimed that the pill was dangerous to womens health even after the majority of scientists said it was safe for the Federal Drug Administration to make it accessible to women without a prescription. The FDAs Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs sounds objective and scientific enough that they would listen to rational and empirical arguments about womens health however that was not the case under Dr. David Hager who was appointed under President George Bush. He claimed that Plan B would reward promiscuous and irresponsible women and he has also claimed that prayer and scripture readings were adept solutions to rid women of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) (Purity Myth). Another argument against making Plan B widely available came from FDA official Janet Woodcock that worried that Plan B would cause, extreme Nowhere is this sentiment more widely expressed than promiscuous behavior and, would lead adolescents to in the marbled halls of Congress. In 2011, 80% of Congress was form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B. Keep in mind that the FDA is supposed to protect and promote your made up of males (Rutgers). In 2012, only 17% of the government was made up of women. It is an undeniable fact that mostly health which means objectively looking at drugs and deciding on

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One of the largest providers of affordable basic healthcare for poor women, Planned Parenthood, is seen as a bastion of debauchery and a danger for women because they perform 330,000 abortions a year (Valenti 56). It does not matter that an estimated number of 204,000 abortions have been averted because Planned Parenthood provided contraceptive services in the first place or that 486,000 unwanted pregnancies have been avoided. It also does not matter that abortions only make up 3% of the services that Planned Parenthood provides (Planned Parenthood). Social conservatives and hawkers of purity for women have succeeded in limiting Planned Parenthoods government funding and caused Susan G. Komen, a foundation for breast cancer research, to pull their funding from the healthcare provider. This is a huge defeat not just for women but for college students and the children of the families that cannot afford healthcare. Congress condemnation of Planned Parenthood says that 78% of the women that go to Planned Parenthood to prevent unwanted pregnancies are not aware enough of what they are doing and worse are participating in, child abuse (Purity Myth) One of the more ubiquitous and inescapable effects of the purity movement in government is abstinence-based sexual education. Presently, abstinence-based sexual education is the most prevalent and sometimes the only form of sexual education that youth in America will ever receive. This form of sexual education stresses the failure rates of conventional contraception and emphasizes that abstinence is the only 100% effective method of prevention against sexually transmitted diseases (STD), sexually transmitted infections (STI), and pregnancy (Trenholm). As a young girl, raised in North Carolina, I got to witness firsthand abstinence-based sexual education. The class did not teach how to correctly use contraception instead we were repeatedly told that these options will inevitably fail. We were also given a myriad of evidence on the dangers of having sex and made to feel that sex was something unclean and dangerous. In hindsight, it was not an effective method of teaching young people about sex. Finally the government is catching up to the incompetence of abstinence-based sex education. A report prepared for Congressmen Henry Waxman showed that 80% of federally funded abstinence based sex programs contained false information and about sex and reproduction (Stepps). American tax-payers are paying for their children, future leaders and workforce to believe that condoms fail 31% of the time and that 10% of women that have abortions will become sterile (US HOR). Congress commissioned a study funded by the Center for Disease Control that found teens that took abstinence based sexual education and pledged to remain virgins were more likely to engage in highrisk sexual behaviors (Wire). The purity movement claims to not sexualize women and in fact argue that they strive for their daughters not to be seen as sexual objects when in fact the movement has stripped women down to only their bodies and their sexuality. Purveyors of

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Young girls participating at a purity ball in 2002 at Colorado Springs.

abstinence continue to sexualize women in order to promote a cause that is supposed to free women from being seen as solely sexual beings and that is supposed to value women beyond their sexuality. Abstinence Clearinghouse is an affiliation network that is one of these purveyors. A few clicks on their website makes it clear that they are serious about promoting abstinence in any way they can even if that includes making underwear and t-shirts with slogans like, No Trespassing on This Property, My Father is Watching. In one t-shirt the purity movement manages to contain all the reasons why the purity movement is harmful to women. One, it promotes the idea that a womans body is property. Two, not only is her body property but the woman cannot be responsible for it so her father is going to watch it for her. The intertwinement of a womans moral value and her body threatens womens autonomy and sense of self-worth beyond her physicality. A womans sexual activity should not have any bearing on the way society views her in terms of her moral worth. The value that we assign to purity and virginity needs to be reexamined because if we did not venerate the construct of purity so much than there would be no need to hold women to an unrealistic, unattainable, and marginalizing concept. What is deeply unsettling is that women frequently evaluate other womens worth based on their sexuality. Women are the ones that thoughtlessly label each other prude, slut and whore at a glance based on manner of dress, public persona or a few facts that may or may not be true. It is tempting to use such a simple criteria to determine a persons or rather a womens worth. If a girl sleeps around then she is a slut and does not respect herself and is not worth of my respect. This concepts inherent simplicity is the reason it is so dangerous. It reinforces a sexual double standard between men and women and it degrades women. Degradation is made even more powerful and even more effective by the fact that it said by a woman to another woman. If women are constantly demeaning and shaming each other than we will not have the time to help each other become more equal, respected and dignified. If we continue to berate each other based on an antiquated ideal than we will not have time to work

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The purity movement has demonized feminism and conservatives claim that, Feminism is not what people think it is. It has nothing to do with equality for women, and it has nothing to do with making women more independent. (Purity Myth) That quote came from the lips of Suzanne Venker Fox New reporter and author of The War on Men. She asserts that feminism is the downfall of women not the purity movement and not the urging of a patriarchal society to stay pure. Feminism is defined by Merriam-Webster as, the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. Feminists strive for equality not for submissiveness like the purity movement. The feminist movement aims to give women a voice not take it away or stifle it. The purity movement thrives on women viewing themselves as merely vessels of their own virginity and on ranking themselves and gaining worth based on whether or not they are a virgin. Virginity is a term that the medical community does not even have a working definition for. It is time that women stop basing their worth on their bodies. Human bodies are ephemeral and bad indicators of what should truly be valued. Character traits like altruism, kindness, compassion, intelligence and honesty are less tangible attributes but infinitely more desirable than a dolt with a socially constructed ideal of beauty. Qualities like those aforementioned should be more highly esteemed by the media but it begins with real-world women. Once we begin to focus on internal aspects for our self-worth rather than superficially than women will really begin to make strides toward gender equality. If we make a conscious effort to assess women on a deeper level than their bodily qualities than women will be able to take back the control that is constantly being taken away.

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Works Cited

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Banerjee, Neela. "Fathers and Daughters Dance the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose." The New York Times. The New York Times, 19 May 2008. Web. 15 Mar. 2013. Baumgardner, Jennifer. "Would You Pledge Your Virginity to Your Father?" Glamour. Glamour, 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 15 Mar. 2013. THE CONTENT OF FEDERALLY FUNDED ABSTINENCE-ONLY EDUCATION PROGRAMS. Rep. N.p.: UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM MINORITY STAFF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS DIVISION, 2004. Print. "Facts on Women in Congress 2011." Congress_Current. Rutgers University, n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. Oppenheimer, Mark. "BELIEFS; 'Purity Balls' Get Attention, but Might Not Be All They Claim." The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 July 2012. Web. 17 Mar. 2013. "Planned Parenthood at a Glance." Planned Parenthood at a Glance. Planned Parenthood, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2013. Purity Balls Are So 2002. 2002. Photograph. Colorado Springs. Web. The Purity Myth. Dir. Jeremy Earp. Perf. Jessica Valenti. Media Education, 2012. DVD. Stepps, Laura S. "Study Casts Doubt on Abstinence-Only Programs." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 14 Apr. 2007. Web. 22 Mar. 2013. Trenholm, Christopher, Barbara Devaney, Ken Fortson, Lisa Quay, Justin Wheeler, and Melissa Clark. Impacts of Four Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education Programs. Rep. no. 8549-1100. Princeton: Mathematica Policy Research, 2007. Print. Valenti, Jessica. The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women. Berkeley, CA: Seal, 2009. Print. The Virgin Daughters. Dir. Jane Treays. Cutting Edge, 2008. DVD. Wire, Sarah D. "U.S. Funding of Abstinence-only Programs Debated." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 24 Apr. 2008. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. "Women in Parliaments: World Classification." Women in Parliaments: World Classification. N.p., 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 25 Mar. 2013