Over at TalkingPointsMemo, the TPMCafe Book Club features a fabulous book discussion about Jessica Valenti’s The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women. I was thrilled to see the dialogue–and the book–at TPM. Jessica at TPM satisfies my political news junkie and my feminist blog junkie all at once. Posts from diverse thinkers advance the dialogue: Women as Goalies…Sending a Message, Doing it Better…Bristol Palin and Two Kinds of Virginity…America’s obsession with Women’s Sexuality: Prescription for Change?

But Jessica’s latest commentary, Wanna Know Where the Purity Myth Is: Start with TPM Readers, should not be missed: She does a pithy close reading of comments that were left on the page: Here’s an example of a comment and Jessica’s analysis.

“Shooter242, for example, believes that the virgin ideal is in place because of ‘the simple idea that guys want to marry women they can trust’ and that a virgin has ‘the discipline and foresight to retain something she considers valuable.’ Shooter actually proves my point – why is it that a woman who has sex is someone not to be trusted? Or that in this day and age, someone can still talk about ‘retaining’ virginity and chastity as ‘valuable’ as if it was a commodity.”

For pure pleasure, read the whole thing.

–Virginia Rutter