Tuesday, March 27, 2007

This just creeps me out

This is an old post from February that I never put up on my blog.

A purity ball.

At which, young women pledge their virginity to their fathers. And fathers pledge to protect their daughter's purity. This is a copy of the father's pledge:


The Pledge
I, (DAUGHTER'S NAME)'S FATHER, CHOOSE BEFORE GOD TO COVER MY DAUGHTER AS HER AUTHORITY AND PROTECTION IN THE AREA OF PURITY. I WILL BE PURE IN MY OWN LIFE AS A MAN, HUSBAND AND FATHER. I WILL BE A MAN OF INTEGRITY AND ACCOUNTABLITY AS I LEAD, GUIDE AND PRAY OVER MY DAUGHTER AND MY FAMILY AS THE HIGH PRIEST IN MY HOME. THIS COVERING WILL BE USED BY GOD TO INFLUENCE GENERATIONS TO COME.



Is anyone else creeped out by this? Let's forget about the fact that their don't appear to be any mother/son purity balls. Or father/son ones. So I guess boys don't have to be pure.

I part ways with many feminists when it comes to teenage sexual freedom. While I understand teenage sexual experimentation is normal, I've seen the dark side of it. Kids who think that sex will equal a relationship. Kids who are forced to grow up too fast. Kids who because they are sexually active are ready victims for adult abusers. And of course, disease and pregnancy. I work in an inner city school district, but not as a teacher. I'm a computer technician, yet I still see these young girls who get pregnant just to have someone to love them. In fact, when we went to an electronic record keeping program, we had to contact their support for a patch. Seems you couldn't have a student be a parent of a kindergarten age child. Unfortunately, we have quite a few of them in our district.

But pledging you virginity to your father? It's like he owns the girl's body and wants to keep his property valuable (sort of like people who buy toys and keep them in the box, hoping they will increase in value? Ok, I just completely grossed myself out comparing children to commodities, but that's what it sounds like to me.) until the new owner, husband, is ready to take possession. What kind of person does this to their child? What kind of father puts value on their child this way?

Of course, this entire thing is sponsored by creepy Christians. And not just creepy Christians, but illiterate creepy Christians who can't spell "Accountability".

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw the same (or a similar) article and it gave me the creeps, too. I started to write about it but there was so much to say that I couldn't organize my thoughts enough. Tangents included the concept of asking a woman's father's permission to marry her, the notion of virginity as the most important aspect of a woman's character, and the devaluation of women based on the presence or lack thereof of a certain piece of fragile flesh. Oh, it just makes me skin crawl, all of it.

Anonymous said...

Apalling, truly apalling. It was just this kind of brain-washing by members of my local parish that made me choose to value virginity to such an extent that I chose to marry rather than sin. Ha! What a joke that was. After having two babies (Birth control was also a sin.) and living in an abusive relationship for three years, this same church turned its back on me for divorcing the guy.

I learned a lot. Virginity is nothing more than a state of mind. To have sex it is important to be responsible and caring. To run away as fast as possible from the kind of sick brain washing that goes on in some of our churches.

To think that I am talking about something that happened almost fifty years ago and to realize this same crappy thinking is around. . . that really freaks me out.

BARON.VON.TRUBE said...

You are not alone. That is creepy. Is that sill practiced in some places?

battynurse said...

So just randomly wandering blog land tonight but you so have that right. Creepy! Big time.