A little bit back I read Dianna E. Anderson’s Damaged Goods, about purity culture in the US. Purity culture is an evangelical movement which promotes sexual abstinence till marriage; sex outside of marriage is seen as sinful, and women who have sex before marriage defile their relationship with God. Purity culture is a subcultural phenomenon, located specifically within evangelical circles. But it’s linked to broader mainstream ideas about women as virgin/whores, who have (or should have) no sexual feelings themselves but are still, somehow, responsible when men desire them. Women are both vapid victims and monstrous seducers, blank slates and inimical destroyers.

The 2007 rape/revenge comedy Teeth cheerfully sends up all those ideas, complete with more castration scenes than you can shake…well, maybe best not to complete that metaphor. The film features Dawn (Jess Wexler), a purity culture devotee, who gives speeches about saving yourself from marriage and wears shirts saying, “Sex Changes Everything!” Nonetheless, she is attracted to new kid Tobey (Hale Appleman) and almost goes all the way with him. When she pulls back, though, Tobey tries to rape her. Which is when she discovers she has teeth in her vagina, and inadvertently chops off his dick.

Dawn is at first traumatized, not least, perhaps, because the rape/revenge so directly encapsulates her own purity culture dogma. Toby was tempted by her and destroyed; misogynist meme fulfilled. As Dawn reads up on vagina dentata, she learns that she’s a dark force to be conquered by some hero; her sexuality isn’t her story, but some other dudes. And sure enough, another guy shows up volunteering to do that conquering. He seduces her with a vibrator and lots of candles, and they have some lovely sex…until he reveals that he bet his buddy he could sleep with her. He tells her this while they’re in flagrante, she gets pissed…and yep, sure enough, off with his dick. Dawn isn’t even horrified at that point, just exasperated. “Some hero,” she mutters as she stomps out, leaving the whimpering, bleeding castrati behind.

Dawn isn’t upset with herself for chopping off this guy’s penis because she realizes it’s not her fault. He’s the idiot who took advantage of her, not the other way around. Rather than a paradigm where she has to resist and resist, and then is culpable if someone forces her, she moves to an ethic of consent. And consent, as that second guy learns, cna be withdrawn any time; when she wants to stop, you better stop. Or else.

Dawn goes on to deliberately seduce and kill her skeevy abusive step-brother, and another random older jerk. Rather than being the thing to be conquered in someone else’s story, she ends up the one doing the conquering, with the guys just a plot point in her self-actualization. You could see this as dehumanizing in some sense; “castrating vagine dentata” isn’t exactly the usual version of a wholesome, healthy career choice or lifestyle. But on the other member, one of the things the movie suggests is that the wholesome, healthy romantic teen comedy narrative is in a lot of ways gross and misogynist. Would you rather be in a John Hughes film where the harassing dipshit who shows off your underwear is seen as haplessly cute? Or is it better to be the heroine of a rape/revenge narrative where you get to cut off that assholes’ balls? Empowerment isn’t the be-all and end-all, but it certainly has its pleasures, not to mention its teeth.