Chastity Balls - the real issue I have with them

[LynneSin]

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/No_sex_please_we_re_daddy_s_little__03222007.html

No sex please, we're daddy's little girls
Published: Thursday March 22, 2007



It has all the ingredients of a wedding. The proud tuxedo-clad father, the frosted white cake, the limousines and an exchange of vows.

But there is no groom and the girl in the long gown is no bride. She's daddy's little girl, there to take a vow of chastity.

In what is becoming a trend among conservative Christians in the United States, girls as young as nine are pledging to their fathers to remain virgins until they wed, in elaborate ceremonies dubbed "Purity Balls."

The gala affairs are intended to celebrate the father-daughter relationship.

The highlight is when the fathers and daughters exchange vows, with dad signing a covenant to protect his daughter's chastity by living an unblemished life and the daughter promising not to have sex until marriage.

Many fathers at the ceremonies also slip "purity rings" around the finger of their misty-eyed daughters or offer them "chastity bracelets" and other jewelry that the girls can entrust to their husbands on their wedding night.

"The father makes a pledge that he is going to keep his mind pure and be faithful to her mother and there is also a time when there is a conversation about putting the right kinds of things in your mind, such as the father not using pornography," Leslee Unruh, founder of Abstinence Clearinghouse, a leader in the so-called purity movement, told AFP in describing the balls

I have a major problem with this and no, it's not about the hypocrisy that most of these pledges are probably broken before marriage or circuvented by practice other kinds of non-vaginal sex - hey if this makes them happy with these balls then have them.

But what pisses me off is the concept of the Ball - Father & Daughter. What the hell is that all about? I mean, not everyone has a father, so if you're raised by a single mother then what - hey go for it, mom doesn't care about your chastity. Or what about someone who had a childhood like I did - my father passed away when I was a kid. So does that mean girls like us are just shit-out-of-luck?

Seriously!

[northzax]

1. raised by a single mother?

you will probably be a slut just like she is.

single mother, hrmph. *walks away shaking head sadly* what will they think of next?

[LynneSin]

2. My mother was not that!!!

:cry:

How dare you be mean about my mom!!

Yeah, but I was a bit nuts but hey - it was the late 80s

[idgiehkt]

3. this is putrid

It almost sounds like they are sexualizing the relationship of father/daughter by talking about it so damn much. There is something twisted and incestuous about it. Actually when I read the title I immediately thought 'testicles', like these are some kind of fundie neuticles for christian guys to carry around as a vow of chastity.

The whole thing is just completely and utter gross. It wouldn't surprise me if half these dudes molest their daughters and tell them as long as it's Daddy it doesn't count.

[flvegan]

4. "...father makes a pledge...to be faithful to her mother..."

Uh, didn't he do that once, like, when they got married?

I think that this would make a great SNL skit scenario. Well, maybe with one of the former casts from long ago.

[ScreamingMeemie]

5. Gross. I think the whole thing is horrid and sets a child up for self esteem

issues at a later date. Kids being kids and urges being what they are, I really don't think this sort of stigma should be placed on sex. I see it as a stigma anyway.

[asthmaticeog]

6. Even a fatherless girl can elect to remain chaste.

[LynneSin]

7. But if you're fatherless how can you have one of these balls

:shrug:

[dolo amber]

9. More to the point, if you're a girl how can you have one of these balls?

I kill myself... :rofl:

[asthmaticeog]

13. There are all kinds of things I'd be more worried about if I had no father.

Yeah, father/son picnics and shit were goodtimes, but I think they'd be the last thing I'd miss if my father had died when I was still a kid.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to tell you what you should or shouldn't care about. I can be a bastard, I know this, but that'd be going too far even for me. I guess what I mean is I just don't get the perspective that would privelege chastity balls over and above all the other misfortunes that can stem from losing a parent when one is still young. :shrug:

[slj0101]

8. The whole thing just reeks of Electra complex.

Saw a thing about it on ABC news the other week. Oh, and some get govt. money for being "faith-based" organizations. :mad:

[idgiehkt]

11. I wonder though

because what Freud found initially was that many of his patients had been molested by parents and he got so much flack from his peers he contrived these theories to explain their experiences and then reversed himself by saying their confessions to him were fantasies and figments of their imagination. It's so weird we have labels for those but we need some kind of high-falutin Greek archetypal label for the lust parents can feel for their children...this whole Daddy guarding the chastity thing seems like a sick public extension of that. It's so repressed for these people they don't realized how sick it seems to those of us in the 'real world'.

[slj0101]

12. Without a bit of cynicism in me,

I found it really creepy. Really creepy.

[mainegreen]

10. Chastity Balls? What, is that like the male equivalent of a chastity belt?

Sounds painful.

:silly:

[LynneSin]

14. Technically they're 'Purity Ball' but that doesn't make it any better

:D

[RedStateShame]

15. What kind of gown do you wear for a chastity ball? Sackcloth?

[idgiehkt]

16. man the more I think about this the sicker it gets

"The gala affairs are intended to celebrate the father-daughter relationship."

Ick. Why are they talking about sex then...

And why isn't there a 'father/son' chastity ball...that would seem a whole lot more appropriate. And where is the 'mother/son' chastity ball...

[slj0101]

17. Motherboy XXX

[Initech]

18. OMG!!!

I fucking love that episode, that's exactly what these things remind me of! :rofl:

[Initech]

19. I cant put my finger on it, but there's something really wrong with the phrase "purity balls"

[gmoney]

20. Actually met someone whose college roommates...

Actually met someone whose college roommates were "saving themselves for marriage" by "only" doing oral and anal sex. As this person said "anal sex IS sex."

Crazy stuff... not sure if I wish I was a high-schooler again, or glad I'm not.

[LynneSin]

27. I've seen it on the talk shows

Since there isn't a hymen back there (or in the mouth) they can get away with it. And then they wonder why the rate of STDs are rampent in these so-called 'virgins'

[NC_Nurse]

21. It's sounds like "emotional incest" to me.

Not a good thing for a child. Downright creepy.

It amazes me that more of these folks don't look at the products of their overzealous suppression and twisting of sexuality i.e. Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart and all the Chester Molester types
affiliated with churches and get a clue.

[Aristus]

22. Well, the Chastity Ball is the front-end of a pledge of "sexual purity."

The back-end is an "honor killing"; coming soon to a neighborhood near you... :scared:

[idgiehkt]

28. holee shite

:spray:

[xmas74]

23. Yep, you and my kid both are SOL.

(I'm a single mother. The "sperm donor" has had no real contact w/ us since I was about 4 months pregnant, except to threaten to kill me on occasion.)

After hearing about these purity balls a couple of years ago from a coworker (and almost retching in a corner afterward), my best friend and I made the joke about how we're holding a kegger for when our daughters lose their virginity. They each get the live band of their choice if they choose to lose it to a woman (bonus points just to rub it in.).

I'm sure we'll see some of the same girls at our kegger that we'd see at the chastity ball.

(on edit-just wanted to let you know that when we have the big honkin' kegger I'll send you an invite. Just don't hold your breath right now-my daughter and my best friend's daughter are 6 and 7 respectfully.)

[LynneSin]

26. I almost guarentee your daughter is gonna hold on to her chastity more than this 'purity' girls

When families are open and honest about sex, girls are gonna make wiser choices. I've watched Montel/Dr.Phil/Oprah type shows where so called 'saving themselves for marriage' where major sluts getting around the vow by using enterances OTHER than normal intercourse. And there have been many studies (including one in the article) about how there is an increase of STDs in these kids because let's face it - you don't have to pop a cherry to necessarily pass an STD.

It sounds like your daughter (and neighbor daughter) will be educated about sex and learn to respect it instead it and make wise choices (like condoms - geez, they won't burn the peepee off). And perhaps they'll, by choice, opt to wait longer until they find the right person because of that healthy respect and understand about sex instead of misconceived purity balls

[xmas74]

30. That's what I've always thought.

I plan on giving her the information she needs at each stage of her development so she knows what she needs to know to make an informed choice. Do I think she'll remain a virgin until she marries? I've never married and I don't think she'll wait either. But she can make wise choices about her sexual life-I hope that with the info she is given she will feel prepared enough to make a good choice and to understand the consequences.

But the invite to the big kegger will be in the mail sometime during her teen years. Keep an eye out.


(And yep, I'll invite matcom too. Can't have a "I'm a blonde hair, blued eyed teenager who just lost her virginity" kegger without him.)

[skygazer]

24. Well, a lot more than that pisses me off

Why is it the father's job to ensure chastity in his daughter? Where's the mother fit in all this? It would seem to me that another woman would be more in touch with what a young girl goes through than her father would be.

No, these things give me the creeps and the idea of a 9 year old pledging to abstain from sex until marriage is ridiculous - why the hell are you putting the idea of sex in a 9 year old's head to begin with? When I was 9, I wanted a pony, not a boyfriend.

[El Fuego]

25. There are definitely undercurrents of INCEST.

A mock marriage with the father?? Sick sick sick.

[idgiehkt]

29. yah.

this is a pedophile's wet dream.

:puke:

You can tell because these ceremonies already regard these children as sexual beings and are projecting sexual desire onto them at an age where they are way too young to understand that that means. It almost makes me think the good old days of never talking about sex were better.

[trackfan]

31. Are those the things guys in the South hang from their license plate?

:+