…that this is great.

*Whoops — I originally thought this was Jessica Valenti that wrote this. Thanks for pointing out my error.

Feministing, Broadsheet, Jezebel, and a schlew of other liberal feminist blogs are up in arms about—what else?—a girls’ playhouse. Hasbro’s Sweet Lily Castle comes with a play stove and oven, and separate accessories like a washing machine, mini table, baby crib and play doll, and a frog that you can “kiss.”

There are a lot of complaints about the marketing for this thing, which encourages girls to attend to their make-believe home and embrace traditional feminine values (God forbid). The frog seems to be a particular point of contention. Lynn Harris: “You know, [it’s] for kissing purposes. Get out the Purell.” Jessica Valenti: “…the frigging castle even comes with a frog to kiss. I think I need to go to bed early tonight.”

Full stop: since when has the guy of your dreams been a bad idea? What sort of self-hating broad DOESN’T want a prince charming to come and sweep her off her feet? I fully buy into the idea of the Darcy complex, but in general, the idea happily ever after reflects the actual desires of women and girls and is nothing to be ashamed of. Little girls acting out the life of a happy homemaker in a plastic playhouse is normal and—surprise surprise—girls actually like it! (Check out the comments in that last link). Funny when human nature takes over.

My favorite take comes from Feministing’s first commenters, “gemski”:

This reminds me of my recent trip to Toys R Us to find a present for my 7 yr old cousin. i was appalled, but not really surprised to find small model kitchens and cleaning sets (brooms, vacuums, dusters, and irons)…along the lines of ‘now you can be an amiable little housewife with no other aspirations other than to cook and clean for your husband…

I’m sure that in gemski’s netherworld of a happy home life, women wouldn’t dream of doing a thing for their husbands, and every mother who didn’t work a 60-hour-a-week job would be burned at the stake. I’ll take the Sweet Lily Castle, thanks.

The extended conversation about sexual ethics here at Ladyblog (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) seems to have converged on a single point of disagreement: either someone’s code of sexual conduct should be entirely external (i.e. what does the Catholic Church decree?) or entirely internal (i.e. how much sex am I personally comfortable with?). If we decide to leave everyone to his or her own internal standard, we’re going to be confronted by a world in which lots of people make sexual decisions that strike us as lax, creepy, or unsettling. On the other hand, if we go with an external standard, we’re going to get a lot of young people looking through the store window at behaviors that would make them (and everyone else involved) very happy but are inexplicably forbidden. Elizabeth Nolan Brown puts this dilemma in plain English:

I’m not saying that sleeping with three people in a week really seems like a good idea (complicated, at the least), or that it is desirable behavior, or anything like that. Just that…it seems weird to pick this arbitrary number (three, but is two okay? one? what if it’s one per week, but a different person every week? is three per month okay? three per year?) and say ‘That is objectively wrong.’ That is not a coherent moral philosophy; that’s cherry-picking moral standards based on what makes you squeamish.

The ace in the hole that gets us out of this dilemma is Jarvis Cocker, but I’ll try to phrase this in a non-Britpop way before I get to him. I am an occasional cheerleader for chastity myself, but, even if I weren’t, I think I’d still be on the side of picking an external standard. Men and women can’t be trusted to decided the rules of their sex lives for themselves.

Let’s consider the “everyone decides for himself” option, as articulated by commenter X. Trapnel:

Sometimes having friends with benefits is a good idea. Sometimes hooking up without commitment can indeed help one’s self worth. Were I a parent, I’d like to think I’d be honest enough to tell my daughter that. The bottom line isn’t just that the lines that PM-ideology draws (married v. other) aren’t helpful ones in separating good, healthy sex from bad; it’s that it gets in the way of the really complicated, individualized, and quite context-sensitive work of figuring out which the right lines are.

But there’s a fundamental problem with this “individualized and context-sensitive work of figuring out which the right lines are”: the process of figuring out one’s own sexual boundaries is (forgive me) just so much fumbling in the dark, given the nature of sex. Our individual moral intuitions about sex are particularly unreliable for the simple reason that we don’t know much about other peoples’ sex lives, what they will and won’t do when. It’s not like we have much personal instinct to go on, either. Consequently, we get stories of girls “going all the way” on the assumption that all the other girls are doing it, only to find that, really, they aren’t. (”I came to Casablanca for the waters. I was misinformed.”) Saying that the the morality of a given sexual encounter depends on the answer to “Am I comfortable with this?” ignores the fact that most people just don’t have enough data to answer that question. A woman’s sexual moral compass simply can’t be developed the way her other moral compasses are.

I realize that this is the part of this post where Valenti and other feminists will be most inclined to call me a patriarchal prude and leave it at that, but, if I can forestall that moment for a couple sentences, I’d ask them to give serious consideration to how a woman’s moral conscience develops. Most of the time, it’s a matter of finding people whose moral instincts we trust and asking ourselves what they would do in a given situation. It certainly isn’t just self-reflection. In the case of something like sex, we don’t know how our moral heroes would behave; in the absence of that data, the only thing we’re left to go on is how women on TV and in movies deal with their sex lives.

Enter Pulp. The song “This is Hardcore” details (and I mean details) what sexual encounters end up looking like when people start modeling them after movies. You know what? It looks like hell. And, apart from whether or not you personally find it appealing, it certainly isn’t authentic or liberating.

It’s tempting to say that, given the suffering that repression has caused, men and women should be left to determine their own sexual comfort zones. Unfortunately, that depends on the existence of a reliable individual moral compass in sexual matters, and, given the facts on the ground, that’s not an authority I’m inclined to trust.

[There’s another argument I could make that sounds like “Relying on individual guilt doesn’t work when guilt has been psychologized (i.e. reduced to an unfortunate hangover from the days of repression),” but I’ve gone on long enough. Maybe later.]

A reader snapped me out of a destructive thought pattern yesterday. In response to my posts on the Purity Myth, Ethan said:

…if you mean that no one should feel guilt over sexual conduct, then that seems like an awfully difficult position to defend.

After being bombarded with the crowd from Feministing.com, I attempted to moderate my position on a few things to level with some angry posters. But I wound up in a gray area where morality as a measure exists only for personal exploration. Guilt exists for a reason and sometimes, it’s justified. Sex is a complicated and personal issue but when we start eliminating morality from the conversation, there’s a problem. Individuals should feel guilt over certain decisions. But instead of dwelling on this guilt, they should recognize it for what it is, and move on to making better decisions in the future. That’s what I wrote in my post that addressed the Feministing crowd:

“There are certain bits of inherent morality that produce an aversion to certain types of behavior — like sleeping with three different people in one week or cheating on your spouse. I realize those two examples are on very different levels but MOST people aren’t okay with either. Participating in either activity should not determine one’s worth as a person, though, and I admit there are people who disagree.”

Ethan shot back:

This seems kind of cowardly to me. So we’re unwilling to say that those behaviors are objectively disordered?

“Cowardly” struck a nerve because that’s exactly what I was when I wrote that. When we are unwilling to classify certain behaviors as right and wrong, where does it stop? Commitment and responsibility and discipline and respect are all important to shaping a good society, a strong and valuable culture. Defense and anger rise to the forefront when people are told they are wrong— but such reactions can are also reveal guilt.

Lastly, Ethan said:

But if you’re instead using phrase that is a euphemism to say that we shouldn’t judge the morality of those who participate in such things, then I can’t agree.

The idea of “judgment” is one worth talking about. Most people I know believe in God and conclude that “God will judge.” I’m of the same mentality but judging someone as a whole person is different than judging their morality. If someone chose to steal credit card numbers or vandalize a home, can I judge their morality without judging them? Yes. The same goes for other issues in the moral arena.

I think this is what initially bothered me about the ideas presented on Feministing.com (and the premise it SEEMS like The Purity Myth will follow according to the site): morality becomes obsolete when it comes to sex. That’s just not something I’m willing to accept.

I have not read Jessica Valenti’s book “The Purity Myth.” It doesn’t come out for five months, if you haven’t heard. However, the idea of this purity myth is talked about a lot over on Jessica’s website, Feministing.com. Jessica’s initial reaction to conservative blogs hating on the book’s idea was to say: “…for conservatives and purity pushers, the only alternative to being a virgin is being whore.There’s no in-between for them, there’s no complexity or nuance when it comes to sexuality. And that’s why I wanted to write this book.”

For me, that’s simply not true. I’ve grappled with this issue my whole life, having grown up in an environment that discouraged pre-marital sex. Virgin or whore? There’s a lot of space in between those two words. As a fellow ladyblogger wrote, that is the false dichotomy of “purity vs. slutiness.” While Jessica’s right that people quickly jump to conclusions based on the book’s title and subtitle (”how America’s obsession with virginity is hurting young women”), her own post (referenced above) makes similarly shallow conclusions about “conservatives and purity pushers.”

Jessica isn’t against virginity or purity but she doesn’t want young women to be told sex is wrong in any context. She writes:

I believe that a young woman’s sexual choices - no matter what they be - shouldn’t have a bearing on how they’re seen as moral actors. I also believe that slut-shaming and fetishizing virginity is not just about only valuing women for their sexuality (or lack thereof)…

For many people, sex is very much in the “moral” arena and that is okay. But, Jessica and the Feministing crowd don’t accept this line of thinking. I agree with her, though, when she says that “slut-shaming and fetishizing virginity” are bad. Both of those things are wrong and falsely conclude at woman’s value lies in her sexuality or lack thereof, as Jessica said. There is a healthy way to approach a promotion of purity that doesn’t result in this end.

I also heard from women who’ve had bad experiences in churches, where they were made to feel guilty or shamed for having sex. I believe there are many churches that go about things the wrong way when it comes to sex. In fact, I stopped reading Christian themed books about the topic. There is a stereotype in this regard but I’m here to clarify that not all Christians, conservatives or “purity pushers” are like this.

I agree with Jessica that women shouldn’t be made to feel bad about sex. But having a moral compass in regards to one’s sexuality isn’t a bad thing. That doesn’t mean no sex till marriage for everyone (though for some it does) — it means finding a level of comfort for yourself. There are certain bits of inherent morality that produce an aversion to certain types of behavior — like sleeping with three different people in one week or cheating on your spouse. I realize those two examples are on very different levels but MOST people aren’t okay with either. Participating in either activity should not determine one’s worth as a person, though, and I admit there are people who disagree.

I’m really glad that Elizabeth posted this, because I thought some of the same things when I read Ericka’s post. I’ve also been reading Femisting for a long time now, and think I have a pretty good idea of what Jessica Valenti is saying. I disagree with her on most of her priorities and policy prescriptions, but I do think that she’s honestly interested in making life better for young women. But here’s the rub: most people who advocate sexual purity are also trying to make life better for young women. It’s incredibly disappointing when disagreements begin with assumptions that the other side is heartless, idiotic, misogynistic, self-loathing, etc, which is unfortunately something you see a lot of on Feministing.

My experience with sexual pressure include some of what Jessica is talking about, and some of what Ericka is talking about. Jessica focuses on the extremes of the purity culture to make her point, while Ericka focuses on the extremes of our cultural looseness to make hers. Both of these things exist, to varying degrees, in different cultural spaces.

During my freshman year at my very Catholic high school, we were given an abstinence talk during lunch that used roses to show the ill effects of losing your virginity. The rose with all the petals still intact represented the girl who saved herself for marriage. The rose with a few petals gone represented the girl who dabbled in sexual activity before marriage. The rose with all the petals stripped away represented the girl who slept around. Then they asked the question: If you were a guy, which rose would you rather have?

I also experienced the opposite message in college. The only reason a person would possibly be a virgin is if they were so unattractive that they couldn’t have sex, or totally religious and weird. Sexual availability without discretion was presented as the norm, while chastity was the realm of people with strange “hang-ups.” One problematic off-shoot of this attitude is that women who ended up feeling emotionally hurt after participating in the hook-up culture didn’t feel that they had a right to express the pain they were feeling. After all, why should they be hurt by something so normal?

Neither of these attitudes is particularly healthy. I don’t believe that a woman’s worth in marriage or relationships is tied to how many sexual partners she’s had. Having none doesn’t make her strange, and having many doesn’t make her damaged.

But I don’t think the proper response is to say that sex contains no moral element other than coercion, which is what Jessica seems to be saying. There is a good argument to be made against the hook-up culture. It’s not that a woman is only as complete as her hymen, or even that most women are hurt by it. I object to the hook-up culture on the grounds that it teaches a profoundly selfish view of other people. It teaches men and women both to look at each other as vehicles for sexual satisfaction rather than as other people with the same thoughts, feelings and worth as themselves. The attitude which develops in the hook-up culture deadens the soul and impedes empathy, whether your hook-ups add to your feelings of self-worth or not.

So this is the problem with taking a casual glimpse at a Web site or blog and then assuming you know everything the author is about. Both Cassy Fiano (on her blog) and Ericka Anderson (here) have taken a handful of out-of-context quotes from Feministing.com’s Jessica Valenti and used them to make the case that Valenti is anti-abstinence, anti-virginity and pro-Girls-Gone-Wild, and that her upcoming book, The Purity Myth, encourages America’s teenagers to become “raging whores.”

I’ve been reading Feministing since 2005. I’ve read Valenti’s first book, Full Frontal Feminism, and am interested to read the The Purity Myth—which, I should point out, doesn’t come out until April 2009. So far, the only thing Valenti has posted about the book was a picture of the cover—a lovely cover, to be sure, but that there was enough in it for Fiano to be able to gage the entire value of the book and formulate a lengthy diatribe against it—well, she must have powers of discernment greater than I.

That’s not to say that were Fiano to actually read the book, she would suddenly come around to it. She almost certainly wouldn’t. And it is true that Valenti has written at length on the blog about the same issues that the book is concerned with, so that does provide some context for how the book will be. A brief distillation:

Valenti tends to rail against the fetishization of virginity—the abstinence programs that compare having sex with a girl who’s already had sex to chewing everyone else in the classes’ used gum, the purity balls that make girls promise their daddies will be the “keepers” of their “purity” until they give it as a “gift” to their husbands. She has written that these things make girls feel shame about having sex, deemphasize women’s agency be reducing their “greatest gift” to what’s between their legs, putting undue emphasis on the girl being transferred from father to husband, and make sex seem like something women “give” to men and couldn’t possibly enjoy themselves. Her general belief (and, of course, I’m completely paraphrasing here) is that, ultimately, these things are bad for young women because they don’t encourage a healthy view of sex, within or without of the context of marriage, and could possibly be dangerous because they may reduce girls’ ability to assert themselves in sexual matters, to have adequate information about or confidence in the use of condoms, birth control, etc.

Now you can agree with all that or not. Many of you here probably don’t. I’m on board with much of what Valenti espouses, though of course I have my disagreements. There’s a lot of room for discussion, for sharing of experiences, for gradients, here. Ericka says that in her experience of growing up Christian she was “never told women don’t like sex as much as men or that we were supposed to use it to get husbands” and that “women and men were both encouraged to be disciplined in their sexual urges.” That’s interesting. I’d like to hear more about that. Perhaps Valenti would like to hear more about that, too.

What will not be conducive to that, or any other discussion taking place between liberal feminists and conservative feminists, between secular and very Christian women, however, is to reject a viewpoint so completely based entirely on a book jacket and a few carefully chosen lines, and to not stop there, not stop at the rejection, but to try and use that to portray the writer as desirous of turning teen girls into whores, of saying all teenagers should be having sex, of saying Girls Gone Wild is good for women, etc.

[On the same note, it doesn’t help, either, to come here and pile on the comments about how Ericka is stupid and a liar instead of addressing anything about the book or the ideas; for the record, Ericka never wrote that she read the book, she said she read a post about the book and that made her check it out, which I understand to mean ‘look into the book and the author’].

Anyway, I think commenter ‘x. trapnel’ on Ericka’s post is worth quoting:

Look, obviously, chastity can sometimes be a healthy reflection of agency and expressive of worthwhile commitments. (And sometimes, so can pornography.) But one can still engage of cultural criticism of the ideology and the social movement that promotes it, because they do so in a way damaging to women’s sense of sense, their sexuality, and ultimately their health.

Sometimes having friends with benefits is a good idea. Sometimes hooking up without commitment can indeed help one’s self worth. Were I a parent, I’d like to think I’d be honest enough to tell my daughter that. The bottom line isn’t just that the lines that PM-ideology draws (married v. other) aren’t helpful ones in separating good, healthy sex from bad; it’s that it gets in the way of the really complicated, individualized, and quite context-sensitive work of figuring out which the right lines are.

Update: Okay, and here are Valenti’s actual words about all this:

So for the record: I think virginity is fine, just as I think having sex is fine. I don’t really care what women do sexually, and neither should you. In fact, that’s the point. I believe that a young woman’s sexual choices - no matter what they be - shouldn’t have a bearing on how they’re seen as moral actors. I also believe that slut-shaming and fetishizing virginity is not just about only valuing women for their sexuality (or lack thereof), but that it’s also part of a larger agenda that seeks to regress women’s rights and return to traditional gender roles. But if you want to know more about that, you’ll have to read the book.