Documentary Screening: The Purity Myth

Docu­men­ta­ry Scree­ning: The Puri­ty Myth: The Vir­gini­ty Movement’s War Against Women

March 8, 2023, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm, CEU, Quel­len­stra­ße 51 (room: D‑002), 1100 Wien
Orga­nis­ed by the Poli­ti­cal, Legal, and Moral Phi­lo­so­phy rese­arch group (POLEMO) and the South/South Move­ment, in coope­ra­ti­on with CEU Com­mu­ni­ty Enga­ge­ment Office and the Depart­ment of Gen­der Stu­dies at Cen­tral Euro­pean University

“The Puri­ty Myth” is a 2011 video adapt­a­ti­on of “The Vir­gini­ty Move­ment,” a best­sel­ling book by Jes­si­ca Valen­ti. The femi­nist blog­ger shows how a move­ment of evan­ge­li­cal Chris­ti­ans, con­ser­va­ti­ve thin­kers and right-wing poli­ti­ci­ans aims to redu­ce women’s worth to whe­ther they are sexu­al­ly acti­ve or not and exploits fears about fema­le sexua­li­ty to work towards a retrench­ment of women’s rights. Valen­ti sta­tes in the docu­men­ta­ry, „women are still led to belie­ve that our moral com­pass lies some­whe­re bet­ween our legs, literally.“

Lan­guage: English