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The Cult Of Virginity Analysis

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Jessica Valenti in the essay, “The Cult of Virginity”, published in 2009, addresses the highly controversial idea of virginity, and with this the power and reality of its meaning. Given the insightful and hopeful language used in the essay, Valenti is writing to a diverse audience in that she wants a wide range of people to change the attitude they have towards women and their sexuality. Valenti’s purpose is to ultimately addresses how the social construct of virginity is a problem in our society, in that it serves to suppress women and keep them subordinate to men. The author begins her essay by elaborating on her own experiences as a sexually active teenager. She tells us, “…before I graduated high school, my mother found an empty condom wrapper in my bag and remarked that if I kept having sex, no one would want to marry me”(181). This experience shows how she was judged by family and friends for being sexually active and with this introduces the mystery of virginity. She states that there is no standard of virginity, since it is a socially constructed phenomenon; however, women continue to define themselves by their …show more content…
Society puts so much importance on female virginity, making all their accomplishments, what they stand for, and their good moral character illegitimate if they do not chose to abstain from sex. She ultimately argues for “an end to the idea of virginity”(182), in that it should not be seen as an integral part of female identity and women should not be defined by their sexuality. Today, absistance education, conservative propaganda, and media reinforce the idea of the purity myth on young women by shaming them for being sexual and epitomizing the ideal of the desirable virgin. All in all, she emphasizes the affect virginity, which she claims does not actually exist, has on a woman’s

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