Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 1:37:02 PM
It is quite telling to see the reactions some people have to purity balls. These events are formal events where fathers pledge to protect their daughters and daughters affirm the importance of their own purity, in a setting where girls can enjoy dressing up and being treated like a lady and spending time with her father. Because our culture has devalued sex, encouraged the sexualization of children, and worked to undermine the importance of fathers as well as general parental authority, some people find the very idea of a purity ball creepy.
I’ve already dealt extensively with this topic in a previous blog entry that you can read by clicking here.
But today I wanted to respond to something I found on another blog.
The first upsetting thing about this is that a bunch of teenage girls are being brain-washed with a destructve mystification of their sexuality that will probably lead them to form unhealthy views of themselves.
Do you see that? This person thinks it is unhealthy for girls to strive to save sex for marriage and thereby give her husband a wonderful gift, increase her chances of having a lasting and happy marriage, decrease her chances of being abused, avoid STDs, avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and avoid one way of bonding with someone who isn’t right for her.
No, supposedly it is “healthy” for a girl to let many men casually play with what she’ll use to conceive and deliver her children.
The second upsetting thing about this is the bizarre, pagan overtones of the above photograph, which looks like some sort of Roman fertility-sex rite, and shows how Christianity was actually a back-slide into the paganism that the Jewish religion had moved beyond.
I have a hunch this blogger wouldn’t approve of any symbolism or outward demonstration of making a commitment in this case.
The third upsetting thing is this picture and the bluntly incestuous overtones of the father-daughter pair. I mean, look at this. It looks like this girl is in some sort of sexual rapture brought on by some sort of perverse Freudian co-mingling of incest and religious frenzy. In fact I think all religious madness is just misplaced (wasted) sexual energy, the foul smoke of curdled desire.
Project much? Perhaps people with this kind of reaction are betraying their own Freudian obsessions – everyone is a sex object to them, and all close relationships are really about sex – so, fathers and daughters should be distant from each other.
Are there any people who think the way expressed in the third objection who don’t fall into at least one of the following categories:
1) Was not raised with a father in the home.
2) Had an abusive, overly permissive, or otherwise lousy father/father figure.
3) Had an unhealthy feelings about/interaction with a parental figure?
I know there are many people who either weren't raised with a father in their home, or had a lousy father, and so they can't relate to these girls. They think it is impossible for a father to have a loving and appropriate relationship with his daughter without something creepy going on. But some fathers ARE decent men who want their daughters to see that they care about them and their well-being.
I have to wonder if people who publicly bash purity balls have ever publicly noted the strangeness of some aspects of "gay pride" parades and events, which also deal with sexuality? Probably not. After all, how can we say men keeping other men on leashes in front of toddlers is strange when girls are - gasp - dressed up in formal gowns at a ball with their own father?