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I’ll go against the grain here and suggest that it isn’t all that bad. Protecting a daughters virtue against the untrusty worthy nature of a young mans lust is a fatherly duty in just about every culture. Freudian slips notwithstanding. This is just formalizes it. I’ll take a ceremony this over, say, arranged marriages or fathers who never show up at all or any number of other common arrangements.
I don’t think the point is really whether it ensures actual virginity. It probably doesn’t. But ritual and pageant are the glue of culture. I wouldn’t endorse this particular tradition but I recognize that groups need to affirm their solidarity in different ways. If I was going to pick a fight, this wouldnt’ be it.
I’ll go against the grain here and suggest that it isn’t all that bad. Protecting a daughters virtue against the untrusty worthy nature of a young mans lust is a fatherly duty in just about every culture. Freudian slips notwithstanding. This is just formalizes it. I’ll take a ceremony this over, say, arranged marriages or fathers who never show up at all or any number of other common arrangements.
I don’t think the point is really whether it ensures actual virginity. It probably doesn’t. But ritual and pageant are the glue of culture. I wouldn’t endorse this particular tradition but I recognize that groups need to affirm their solidarity in different ways. If I was going to pick a fight, this wouldnt’ be it.
Are you sure that you’re not creating a fairness bias in your theistic support? I find it hard to believe this doesn’t creep you out. There are so many iatrogenic things about this that I don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with this one; at the cognitive developmental state of these young girls, sexual discovery and awareness is very important. This ritual does nothing but confuse and lead to future guilt, shame, anxiety, and depression over age-appropriate physiological responses to their bodies. Maladaptive emotions and behaviors will inevitably follow. There is a decent case for abuse over this.
What is this, the New New Celibacy Movement? Not your typical father-daughter dance, eh? I’m not against celibacy until the person, place and time is right [I like the illustrated commercial on TV: “I wanna wait!”], but this kind of ritualism is creepy for sure. Based on the photo, there probably are a whole lot of young men who will now have to compete not only with father-fixated young women, but with a paired association of Jesus as an erotic image ... and a bevy of cross-shaped-handled dildoes. I wanna see the mothers try to handle their teenage boys so closely ... er, ritualistically.
I’ll go against the grain here and suggest that it isn’t all that bad. Protecting a daughters virtue against the untrusty worthy nature of a young mans lust is a fatherly duty in just about every culture. Freudian slips notwithstanding. This is just formalizes it. I’ll take a ceremony this over, say, arranged marriages or fathers who never show up at all or any number of other common arrangements.
I don’t think the point is really whether it ensures actual virginity. It probably doesn’t. But ritual and pageant are the glue of culture. I wouldn’t endorse this particular tradition but I recognize that groups need to affirm their solidarity in different ways. If I was going to pick a fight, this wouldnt’ be it.
I’ve seen another documentary/news report (sorry—can’t remember where or I’d find a link) on these things, and I’ve read about them. So my reaction predates this thread.
Sorry Brick, but these things are creepy. The rampant phallic symbolism (at some of these balls, the fathers carry swords) and the clear links to patriarchal, pre-feminist traditions aside, I have a real problem with not only with fathers dating their daughters at an event in which the focus is on the young girls’ vagina. I’m sorry—there’s no other way to say it. They call these “purity” balls, but how exactly do they define “purity”? And is “purity” a worthwhile or realistic goal? Keeping something/someone “pure” generally means keeping them sealed off from “contamination”. That’s not a healthy way to look at the world and your fellow humans.
... That’s not a healthy way to look at the world and your fellow humans.
Not to mention sex.
No kidding.
But hey, that’s the lesson here—you can be a mean, selfish, lying, manipulative, money-grubbing little shit, but as long as you’ve never allowed a penis into your vagina, you’re “pure” and your future husband can be sure that he has complete ownership of—I’m sorry, I mean “complete trust in”—you.
Saddlebacking - the term for the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities. Named after Saddleback Churh, home of the Reverend Rick Warren, who is a proponent of abstinence education, the “sex ed” that has convinced so many Christian girls and boys that buttfucking isn’t actually sex.
Saddlebacking - After attending the Purity Ball, Heather and Bill saddlebacked all night because she’s saving herself for marriage.
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