As if standards for 'purity' in today's society weren't strict enough certain social conservatives, like blogger and educator Dr. Albert Mohler are pushing for a new movement, a "counter-revolution " (against healthy sexual expression?) called "The Virgin Lips Movement."

Full disclosure: this article caught my attention because it went after Jessica Valenti's Purity Myth (I really need to stop writing about this book and yet, like the outraged conservatives, I can't seem to stop bringing it up!) In his blog post Mohler states:

In The Purity Myth:  How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women, Valenti presses her case, suggesting that when young women aim for virginity and fail, they suffer a loss of self-esteem.  Valenti's argument is all the evidence any sane person should need to see that the world has gone crazy when it comes to sex.

Mohler proves my point (it was Valenti's point first) here in framing loss of virginity as a failure. The truth is that young women in society DO sometimes feel badly about losing their virginity, but NOT because of any failure on their point. The highly romanticised and pressure-filled concept of virginity that the abstinence only movement pushes, combined with the idea of virginity as the sole source of a woman's worth and value... of course she's going to feel bad when she is no longer seen as a virgin, societial values are structured to make her feel badly for having sex. 

This article simply takes these current cultrual values further - but why? It seems to me that pushing the standards for purity even further will only help abstinence-only proponents with their true goal: bringing back the staunch gender roles that force women into subservient, secondary roles.

This testimony really says it all for me:

"The 22-year-old woman, who was married at Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in Brentwood, admits to being nervous and a bit self-conscious about having her first kiss in front of 200 people," Pinto reported.  "I wasn't sure what to do," said the bride, "I thought I would mess up."

Mohler doesn't even bother to include any flowery romantic descriptions of the "connection" that delaying their kiss created - the only notable concequence in this, the description that he choose to feature, is the bride's nervousness and self-conciousness which is framed, somehow, as a good thing. (This seems like a good time to point out that every "Virgin Lip" practicioner quoted in this piece was a woman -  men, it seems are not damaged enough by kissing to warrant the protection of this movement.)


This piece really gets to the heart of the abstinence movement, which isn't about  protecting teens from the actual dangers of unsafe sex or reducing the number of abortions*, but about bringing women back to a level of subserivence that is acceptable to these social conservatives.

If the condescending treatment of women in this post isn't enough to convince, lets ask some key questions, like:

Why would these abstinence crusaders be in support of laws that treat women as children? For instance, the Ultrasound Informed Consent Law (2007) which forces women to view an ultrasound image of their child before their abortion in order to "cause a deeper reflection on the humanity of unborn children." (Senator Brownback of Kansas, quoted in The Purity Myth pg. 133) This law, by nature, implies that women need some form of moral guidance to help them with their decisions - they cannot understand the nature of an abortion, the fact that it is exterminating something that would have most likely survived to be a human being, on their own. 

Laws like this reveal the true nature of this movement: a movement that doesn't believe young women are capable of making smart decisions about sex (or, arguably, the rest of their lives) alone - this is why we need laws to protect these women, moral movements to dictate their sexuality, purity balls to charge their fathers with making sure they stick to those moral codes, and so on...

I'll leave you with this:

"[The Virgin Lip Movement] sets the ultimate bar." [says Minister Alec Court] Well, perhaps not an ultimate bar, but a recognizably significant bar.

I wonder what comes next, what would the ultimate bar be? Hug virgins? Hand-holding virgins? Dance virgins? Conversation virgins?

I mean, should we even be letting young women meet men before marriage considering how easily sullied we seem to be?

Where does it end, Dr. Mohler, where does it end?

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* If it was, then EDUCATION would be their top concern as proper sex-ed leads to teens having safe sex when they choose to have sex which then reduces the number of unwanted prgnancies and STIs.