7. William Pollack, Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood (New York: Owl Books, 1999).
1. Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women (Berkeley: Seal Press, 2009), Lynn M. Phillips, referred to later in this chapter, calls this virgin icon “the pleasing woman discourse.” The pleasing woman is “pleasant, feminine, and subordinate to men,” and she lacks sexual desire herself. Her entire being is based on pleasing and being in service to others, especially men.
2. Hannah Bruckner and Peter S. Bearman, “After the Promise: The STD Consequences of Adolescent Virginity Pledges,” Journal of Adolescent Health 36 (2005): 271–278.
3. Emily White, Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and The Myth of the Slut (New York: Scribner, 2002).
7. Lynn M. Phillips, Flirting with Danger: Young Women’s Reflections on Sexuality and Domination (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
8. Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (New York: Free Press, 2005).
9. Laura Sessions Stepp, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both (New York: Riverhead Books, 2007).
11. Find the Jezebel.com blog post I refer to at Moe Tkacik, “Is ‘Sex Addict’ Memoirist Kerry Cohen Even a Slut?” April 22, 2008, jezebel.com/382609/is-sex-addict-memoirist-kerry-cohen-even-actually-a-slut. The blog post is intact, but almost all the original comments were deleted. Why? Less than a month after the posting, Jezebel ran into problems because their readers and bloggers were often deeply cruel and nasty. You can read about that at Lauren Lipton, “Not on Our Blog You Won’t,” New York Times, May 4, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/fashion/04jezebel-1.html. It seemed to me that most of the blog posts and comments that were truly mean were ones about women who had achieved success—and this at a blog created for “smart” women.
