Whorism

(BUMPED; UPDATES BELOW.) Cassy Fiano has this video of Feministing's Jessica Valenti promoting her new book, The Purity Myth, on the "Today" show last week:

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Why does Jessica Valenti derogate virginity? An excerpt from her book explains it all:

I was once that teenage girl struggling with the meaning behind my sexuality . . . I was the cruelly labeled slut . . .

Which is to say, It's about her. Remember my rant about Bill Maher, who seems stuck in a phase of eighth-grade rebellion? Jessica Valenti is his distaff analog.

Valenti's mislabeled "pro-sex feminism," like Maher's childish atheism, is merely an unresolved adolescent emotional issue carried forward into adulthood by immature personalities. Unable to accept and adjust to their own failures to live up to traditional ideals, they manufacture their own counter-ideals, which naturally compel them to scoff and sneer at tradition.

Yet, as Cassy Fiano points out, the consequences of anti-traditionalism are disastrous: Despite all the prophylactic propaganda, diseases like herpes, chlamydia and HPV are pandemic, and despite the easy availability of contraception, we have more than a million abortions a year in the United States, in addition to a record level of bastardy.

Given the self-evident wrongness of Valenti's whorism -- we cannot call it "feminism," since it has nothing to do with equality of political or economic rights -- why would anyone endorse it? Why would the producers of NBC's "Today" show give publicity to an author advocating moral nihilism and (at least tacitly) endorsing teen promsicuity?

Valenti's book carries the absurdly misguided subtitle, "How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women." Is it not rather the case that an obsession with sex is the source of the problem? Were it not for the sexualization of popular culture, virginity -- the default condition of youth, whose abandonment requires willful action -- would be taken for granted. It is only because fornication has become a high-school ritual (the median age of first intercourse is 16 or 17, according to various studies) that it is now "conservative" to think that teenagers can or should be chaste.

So we see that NBC has a political excuse to promote Valenti's whorism. By making adolescent fornication a political issue, liberals can now demand that "both sides of the issue" get a hearing. And yet this is not enough for them. Cassy Fiano points out that Valenti's readers are complaining that abstinence advocate Lakita Garth got equal time on the "Today" show. Just as with the same-sex marriage controversy -- where opposition to the gay-radical agenda has become stigmatized as "hate" -- soon it will be considered a species of bigotry merely to disagree with Valenti.

Valenti's perverse ideology makes sense only if you ignore everything we know about human nature. Liberals erupted in outrage at my assertion that selling Plan B over the counter to 17-year-olds would serve only to make teenage girls more vulnerable to male predation. But who has more insight into the habits and attitudes of the typical 17-year-old boy? Me or Andrew Sullivan? (Who, by his own admission, was never typical.)

Common-sense observations about human nature are now politicized as "conservative," so that every knocked-up 15-year-old can be said to be engaged in liberal activism and her baby-daddy is a "community organizer" of sorts. One imagines that nowadays the high-school Lothario, encountering resistance as he tries to get to second base with his would-be conquest, chides his prey: "What are you? Some kind of Republican?"

UPDATE: With cross-posting privleges hither and yon, some of my observations are nowadays promiscuously scattered abroad. At Hot Air's Green Room:

Let’s face it, if Valenti’s ideology is embraced by liberals, this will certainly make matters simple for horny teenage boys looking for an easy score. How can you tell which girls put out? They’re the ones whose moms have Obama stickers on their minivan bumpers.

Ba-da-boom! And at Taki's Magazine:

Back in the late Sixties, some distaff radical declared, "Feminism is the theory. Lesbianism is the practice," which is at least teleologically coherent. . . . Valenti can be said to postulate a corollary to the original syllogism: "Feminism is the theory. Whorism is the practice."

Dishonest writers like Valenti seek mainstream acceptance of their ideology by expressing it in mild language that won't offend the soccer moms. The critic who distills their argument to its radical essence -- as is my wont -- will naturally be denounced as an extremist. Which I suppose is true in the sense that it takes one to know one. But one cannot be moderate in the discussion of virtue, which allows no compromise.

One is virtuous or one is not, and while I have never claimed to be a paragon of virtue, I can at least distinguish between virtue and vice. And must, lest I incur the ancient curse:

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil . . .
-- Isaiah 5:20 KJV

A perverse non-judgmentalism, that refuses to praise virtue or condemn vice, is moral nihilism. Valenti goes beyond this, to celebrate whoredom and condemn chastity.

UPDATE II: Over at Right Wing News, I illustrate a quote with this neoclassical artwork:

Of course, Phryne was the 4th-century Greek prostitute whose acquittal by the Aeropagus might be construed as evidence of the decadence of paganism in the Hellenistic age. In our own decadent age, we have seen the divine grace of Jesus toward the woman caught in adultery perverted into an imbecile non-judgmentalism, forgetting entirely Christ's parting commandment to the woman who owed him her life:

"Go, and sin no more."
-- John 8:11 KJV

Christ offered mercy to sinners, but never pretended that sin was not sin, as do today's acolytes in the temple of non-judgmentalism.

UPDATE III: Over at my friend Russ Smith's Splice Today, Zach Kaufmann numbers me among the "fascist womanizing prigs." This is rather an oxymoronic appellation. Can a womanizer also be a prig? Does my long marriage not at least exempt me from the accusation of womanizing? Since I am self-evidently not priggish -- frank discussion of sexuality does not shock me in the least -- what exactly does Kauffman intend to denote? And how does fascism figure into this, except as a simple-minded slur?

Really, Russ: We're in a buyer's market for content providers. Can you not afford better help than these impudent young liberal idiots? And as for Kaufmann's title -- "Hey, Robert, Is Your Daughter Single?" -- the answer is: Single, lovely, redheaded, 19, and so far out of your league it ain't even the same game, punk.

UPDATE IV: Note how Pandagon accuses Mark Regnerus of attempting to relegate women to "chattel" status, merely for advocating marriage. (Via Memeorandum.) The Left well knows that its perverse "Progress" requires the annihilation of all traditions, even the tradition of young love. I'll have more to say about Regnerus later, but now must attempt some actual paying work.

UPDATE V: Linked at Conservative Grapevine. Thanks. Please also see "Amanda Marcotte: Feminism as Paranoia."