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Some Balls are Held for Charity, and Some for Fancy Dress
By Jeff Fecke | July 23, 2008
You can officially add the name Nancy Gibbs to the list of out-and-out misogynists. When she popped up earlier to slut-shame the Gloucester “pregnancy” “ring,” even after said ring’s very existence had been debunked, I thought it barely possible that maybe she was just a typical tone-deaf journalist, the kind that puts her head down and argues the conventional wisdom side of whatever issue happens to be the topic du jour – though frankly, her endorsement of crisis pregnancy centers in the same article made me doubt it. But with her ringing endorsement of purity balls, there can be no doubt: Gibbs hates women, and hates the very idea that women should have the right to sexual freedom. You should expect her to write an article supporting pharmacist “conscience clauses” by November.
As for this article, many others have already taken a whack at it, but I feel like I have to say something, because this has been bugging me for a long time, and frankly, people need to understand this: I do not want ownership of my daughter’s sexuality. And I am flabbergasted that anyone thinks I’m supposed to.
Quite frankly, if I never have to think about my daughter’s sexuality ever, I’ll be quite happy. And yet every few weeks, I read about yet another locale where girls are pledging their troth to their fathers. And frankly, that’s revolting, no matter what spin someone takes on it.
Like this kind of spin:
There are some mothers and some uncles among the 150 people in the ballroom of the Broadmoor hotel, but the night belongs to fathers and daughters. The girls generally range in age from college down to the tiny 4-year-old dressed all in purple [!!! -j.f.] who has climbed up into her father’s arms to be carried. Some are in their first high heels–you can tell by the way they walk, like uncertain baby giraffes. Randy Wilson, co-inventor of the Father-Daughter Purity Ball, offers a blessing: he calls on the men to be good and loving listeners, tender, gracious and truthful. And he prays that the girls might “step into the world with strength and passion, to lead this generation.”
As long as by “leading this generation,” they “do what their fathers tell them to do, until their husbands take over.” Really, is it any less possible that this process will lead to strong, passionate, independent women?
And four? Four!!?!?!? You have to be kidding me. I’ve given my daughter age-appropriate information on reproductive health (though less than I probably should have, because I’m an American, and the shame of even discussing such a thing runs deep), but I know for a fact that she would have no idea what she was pledging if I asked her to promise to be chaste until marriage. Probably she’d simply remind me that she’s already decided she isn’t getting married, though she does want a kid, but she wants to adopt so she doesn’t have to have a baby in her tummy, because that doesn’t look fun. (My daughter is a smart kid.) To which I’d say fine, whatever makes you happy, like I usually do, and then we’d go to the zoo.
Kylie Miraldi has come from California to celebrate her 18th birthday tonight. She’ll be going to San Jose State on a volleyball scholarship next year. Her father, who looks a little like Superman, [...]
Wait. Wait a sec. Did she really just say…
Her father, who looks a little like Superman
No. There must be some other explanation. I must be reading this wrong. I mean, she can’t have possibly written…
Her father, ⇉who looks a little like Superman⇇
Her father looks a little like Superman? But which one? I mean, I sort of resemble the George Reeves Superman, what with the gut I’ve got, not to mention the suicidal depression. But seriously, what the fuck is that about?
This is everything that is wrong with the “purity” movement in a nutshell: it’s incestuous. And not incestuous in that a small number of people seem to run the whole movement — though that is part of it — but incestuous in that it actively encourages incest. It gives fathers an inappropriate level of control of their daughter’s sexuality. Like, way inappropriate. Like, I can’t imagine being that concerned about who my daughter is dating. I can’t imagine being that concerned about who a hypothetical spouse would be dating.
It’s not charming. It’s not cute. It’s sick. It’s wrong. And I want nothing do do with it. And though I could probably stop there, there’s so much more wrongness to fisk.
[Superman] is on the dance floor with one of her sisters; he turns out to be Dean Miraldi, a former offensive lineman with the Philadelphia Eagles. When Kylie was 13, her parents took her on a hike in Lake Tahoe, Calif. “We discussed what it means to be a teenager in today’s world,” she says. They gave her a charm for her bracelet–a lock in the shape of a heart. Her father has the key. “On my wedding day, he’ll give it to my husband,” she explains. “It’s a symbol of my father giving up the covering of my heart, protecting me, since it means my husband is now the protector. He becomes like the shield to my heart, to love me as I’m supposed to be loved.”
On her wedding day, her father will be giving a key — a phallic symbol, mind you, that fits inside a lock — to her husband. Not her. She doesn’t own her vagina. Her father does.
Somewhere in Austria, Sigmund Freud just woke up and realized he was totally wrong about the Electra complex.
Kylie talks with an unblinking confidence about a promise that she says is spiritual, mental and physical. “It’s something I’m very proud of. I plan to keep pure until marriage. It’s a promise I made to myself–not pressure from my parents,” she says. She speaks plainly about what she wants in her life, what she thinks she has the power to control and what she doesn’t. “I’m very much at peace about this,” she says, and looks out across the twirling room. “I don’t feel like I need to seek a man. I will be found.”
And if I believed for one millisecond that Kylie was telling the truth to Gibbs, her family, or herself, I’d say that was great. Nobody has to have sex before they’re ready. For some people, that means a solid relationship. For some, it means marriage. For some, it means a guy you meet who has a nice ass. It’s all a personal decision, and I think it’s great if someone sets their own boundaries on sexuality and sticks to them.
But that’s not what’s happening here. This isn’t a girl who sat down, weighed the pros and cons, what’s important to her, what her family has said, what the experiences of her peers have been, and then decided that waiting for marriage was right for her. This is a woman who’s celebrating her 18th birthday, not with friends, but with her dad, at a place where she’s going to pledge to him that she won’t give a boy no huggin’, no kissing ’til she gets a wedding ring — and giving her father symbolic control of her hymen. This isn’t a woman in control of her sexuality; this is a woman whose sexuality is being controlled.
Randy and his wife Lisa Wilson believe in celebrating God’s design and life’s little growth spurts. But the origin of the purity-ball movement was not so much about their five daughters; it was about the fathers Randy saw who, he says, didn’t know what their place was in the lives of their daughters. “The idea was to model what the relationship can be as a daughter grows from a child to an adult,” Randy says. “You come in closer, become available to answer whatever questions she has.”
You know what? Shame on them. I know what my place in my daughter’s life is. I read to her, take her swimming, watch PBS documentaries on meteors, play with dogs, tease her, get teased by her, take her to the zoo, kick a soccer ball around, and generally, you know, act like her father.
Will we be spending as much time together when she’s 13? 16? 23? Of course not. And that’s okay — that’s what happens as you get older, you need your parents less (hopefully). But will I still be able to engage with my daughter without taking possession of her reproductive organs? Heck, I think I’ll be able to engage better if I don’t. Because my role as her father is not as owner of her fertile land, it’s as her father. My role is to love and support her. She doesn’t need to pledge me anything to get that love and support.
So he and Lisa came up with a ceremony; they wrote a vow for fathers to recite, a promise “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the areas of purity,” to practice fidelity, shun pornography and walk with honor through a “culture of chaos” and by so doing guide their daughters as well. That was in 1998, the year the President was charged with lying about his sex life, Viagra became the fastest-selling new drug in history, and movies, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, reflected “a surge in the worldwide relaxation of sexual taboos.”
You know, at some point, can we stop blaming Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, and the Horrible Blow-Job of Doom for all that ails our society? People were having sex — even outside the bonds of marriage! — long before Bill Clinton was born, and they’ll be having sex long after Monica Lewinsky shuffles off this mortal coil.
Word of the event spread fast: soon the camera crews came, and so did Tyra Banks and Dr. Phil. The Abstinence Clearinghouse estimates there were more than 4,000 purity events across the country last year, with programs aimed at boys now growing even faster.
Maybe, but the programs aimed at boys have nothing to do with purity. They’re called integrity balls, and tellingly, the boys do not pledge to be sexually abstinent, because…well, they’re boys. We all know boys are going to have sex. Just, hopefully, not with good Christian girls, or each other.
And inevitably the criticism arrived as well, dressed up in social science and scholarly glee at the semiotics of girls kneeling beneath raised swords to affirm their purity. The events have been called odd, creepy, oppressive of a girl’s “sexual self-agency,” as one USA Today columnist put it.
Amanda caught that this use of quotes is not subtle; “sexual self-agency” is quoted not for accuracy, but to demean the very idea. I mean, who would think an 18-year-old adult woman should have the right to determine what happens with her vagina? Clearly not Nancy Gibbs.
Father-daughter bonding is great, the critics agree–but wouldn’t a cooking class or a soccer game be emotionally healthier than a ceremony freighted with rings and roses and vows?
Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes! To put it bluntly, I do not want my daughter to associate sex with me, and if she does, I have done a terrible, terrible job as a parent. If my daughter’s best memory of me is the day she turned her uterus over to me for safekeeping, I have failed her utterly.
Some academic skeptics make a practical objection: The majority of kids who make a virginity pledge, they argue, will still have sex before marriage but are less likely than other kids to use contraception, since that would involve planning ahead for something they have promised not to do. This puts them at risk for sexually transmitted diseases.
But Nancy Gibbs is one step ahead!
To which defenders say: Teen pledgers typically do postpone having sex, have fewer partners, get pregnant less often and if they make it through high school as virgins, are twice as likely to graduate from college–so where’s the downside?
The downside is — well, first off, you’re using stats from the Abstinence Clearinghouse, so you’re wrong. But even if you were right, so what? The item on the list I do care about — being twice as likely to graduate from college — is almost comically complex (if the pledgers make it through high school as virgins, which on average they do at equal rates to normal kids, then they’re twice as likely to graduate from college. And what of non-pledgers who get through high school as virgins? Um…pass?)
The rest of the stuff on the list is of more or less importance. I’d rather kids waited for college to have sex, but roughly half of them won’t, and if they use contraception it’s unlikely to destroy their lives. Whereas if they end up pledging to honor and obey their fathers, that might.
The purity balls have thus become a proxy in the wider war over means and ends. It is being fought in Congress, where lawmakers debate whether to keep funding abstinence-only education in the face of studies showing it doesn’t work;
Well, that’s silly! I mean, Nancy, I thought you just said abstinence pledges were teh roxor! Surely, the Abstinence Clearinghouse wouldn’t lie about statistics, except that one time, when they lied directly to my face about them.
[I]n the culture, as Lindsay and Britney and Miley march in single file off a cliff;
Okay, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears have some issues, although both are adults at this point, and Britney was, one recalls, spending her entire teenage years pledging to the nation that she was abstinent. And that turned out great for her. Miley Cyrus uh…took one photo that was slightly risque…and…um…well, that’s it. (Okay, the one she took with her dad was creepy, and could be used as a poster for Purity Balls nationwide.) This is “marching off a cliff?”
[A]t school-board meetings, where members argue over the signal sent by including condoms in the prom bag;
Folks, the expression “off like a prom dress” didn’t wink into being because kids spent their after-prom time staring at the stars and saying, “Gee whiz, Kevin! I sure am not going to have sex with you tonight!” And nobody in the history of forever has picked up a condom and said, “You know, Sally, I was totally not going to have sex with you tonight, but now, let’s hump like there’s no tomorrow!” The condoms in the prom bag are not a bad idea, especially given the number of girls unable to go to their parents to get the pill, because they already ceded contol of their fallopian tubes to their father.
[At] the dinner table, where parents try to transmit values to children, knowing full well that swarms of other messages are landing by text and Twitter. “The culture is everywhere,” says Randy’s daughter Khrystian, 20. “You can’t get away from it.” But maybe, the new Puritans suggest, there’s a way to boost girls’ immunity.
Just, please, kill me now.
You know how you get your message through to your kids? First, you don’t wait until your kids are texting to start talking about relationships. I’m not talking sex here, I’m talking about talking about love. Respect. How you should treat people you like. How they should treat you. That it’s okay to be in a relationship, and okay not to be in one. That you have to be comfortable with yourself, and willing to stand up for yourself, and willing to be yourself no matter what.
When the time comes to add sex to the mix, you add it like anything else — you tell them that sex is a part of human relationships, one that is both pleasurable and potentially dangerous, one that carries a tremendous emotional charge, one that should not be engaged with until one is certain one is ready. You give them guidelines to when you think that usually is — I’m going to suggest college, which is about when I think my ex will suggest, but there are a variety of reasonable suggestions, from “a steady relationship” to “engaged” to “21″ to “married.”
More than anything, I’m going to try to impress upon my daughter that no matter what anyone says — me, her mom, her friends, her significant other — nobody can decide for her when she’s ready. Only she can. She will have to sit down, weigh the pros and cons, what’s important to her, what her family has said, what the experiences of her peers have been, and then decide what is right for her.
And you know what that will provide? Complete and utter inocculation against the messages society gives? Not at all. But it will provide her with a reason for making the decision she makes, one better thought-out than “my dad will kill me.” Because I won’t kill her. Even if she makes a decision I really disapprove of, I’m going to love and help her, and the father who would act differently toward his daughter is undeserving of the title.
But that’s the message given in purity ceremonies — that a father’s love is conditional, and that a daughter’s ability to stay chaste is the most important thing to keep that love.
It was an elbow in the ribs from his wife that drove Ken Lane to his first purity ball with their daughter Hannah, now 11. Tonight is their fourth, and they are sitting in the gold-and-white Broadmoor ballroom, picking at the chicken Florentine and trying to explain what they’re doing here. “My kids are on loan to me for a season; it’s important how I use that time,” Ken is saying as a string quartet plays softly. “There’s a lot for us to talk through–the decisions she’ll have to make are more complex. I want to be close enough to her that she can come talk to me. That’s what my wife understood. I didn’t understand the role dads can play to set her up for success.”
And that’s all rational-sounding, save for the fact that he’s telling her at each ball that she can’t come to him, not really. If his daughter decides at age 17 that she’s met the boy she really loves, and she really wants to have sex with him, but she wants to get contraception first, wants to do things safe and smart…will she be able to go to her father with that? Of course not. She’ll know right away that it will not only make her dad mad, get her a lecture, but it will be breaking vows she’s made four times.
Will that keep her from having sex? Of course not. Will that keep her from using contraception? Possibly. If the relationship gets out of control, if her boyfriend’s abusive, or worse, will she go to her dad then? Of course not — because she already broke her vow. And her father’s love was conditional. She agreed to that condition, and broke it.
In the face of the hook-up culture of casual sexual experimentation, he explains, with its potential physical and emotional risks, he wants to model an alternative. Even with older teenagers, many of these families don’t believe in random dating but rather intentional dating, which typically begins with a young man’s asking a father for permission to get to know his daughter. Lane was so stymied by how exactly that conversation would go that he even asked Randy Wilson if he could sit at a nearby table and listen in one day when Wilson met one of Khrystian’s potential suitors at a local Starbucks. “We’re trying to be realistic,” Lane says. “I’m not ready to be like India–have arranged marriages. But there is some wisdom there, in that at least the parents are involved.”
And there we go. Arranged marriages — the elimination of which is one of the great achievements of western society — should be brought back. Because parents know what’s best for their daughters.
I don’t want my daughter’s boyfriends (or girlfriends) asking my permission to date her. I want them asking her. Oh, I want them to come by, say hello, be willing to chat. I would like the chance to get to know them, and if they seem like a soulless creep, I probably will let my daughter know that. But ultimately, it’s not my love they’re seeking, it’s hers. And hers alone.
(I really don’t want to be asked for my daughter’s hand in marriage. It’s not mine to give. If she says yes, then I trust her judgment.)
This, of course, is the kind of conversation that makes critics howl. What about a young woman’s right to date whomever she pleases, make her own mistakes, learn from the experience, find out who she is and what matters to her? To which the Wilsons and their allies reply: If you still think this is just about sex, you are missing the whole point.
Right. The point is about a young woman being the property of her father, and women being locked into a second-class, subservient role from birth to death. It’s not just about sex. It’s about enforcing the patriarchy.
The message, they say, is about integrity, being whole people, heart and soul and body. Wilson himself has said virginity pledges have a downside: “It heaps guilt upon them. If they fail, you’ve made it worse for them,” he said. “Who is perfect in this world? One mistake doesn’t mean it’s all over.” Everyone here has a story, and very few are in black and white. One man is dancing with his younger daughter, wishing his older girl had come as well. She used to wear a purity ring, he says, until a boy she knew assaulted her; she took it off–felt too dirty. Her parents gave her a new one, a bigger one; it took many months and much therapy, her father goes on, before she was able to put a ring on again. “That was part of a healing process,” he says, “with the message that you’re valuable no matter what someone did to you.”
A reporter who wasn’t in the tank for purity balls would have written that paragraph and realized that she had all the ammunition she needed to tear these apart, forever. A reporter who cared about the truth would look at the experience of a woman, whose rape was made worse by her pledge of purity, and know that nothing that takes a horrific experience and exacerbates it is a good idea. A reporter who cared about outcomes would realize that in a world that is drawn in shades of gray, forcing a girl into a pledge that is black-and-white as can be is not a way to help her learn about anything, other than the fact that she is her father’s to do with as he pleases.
But Nancy Gibbs is none of those things. She’s a misogynist hack.
After dinner comes the ballet performance, when seven tiny ballerinas in white tulle float in; then seven older dancers carry in a large, heavy wooden cross, which they drape in white, with a crown of thorns. Four of the five Wilson daughters are among the dancers, and they offer a special dance to their father, to the music of Natalie Grant: Your faith, your love And all that you believe Have come to be the strongest part of me And I will always be your baby …
First, have you seen the movie Drop Dead Gorgeous? If not, you really should — it’s truly phenomenal, a great satire of small-town life, beauty pageants, and Minnesota. And it’s got a truly great moment, during the talent segment of the beauty pageant, when Denise Richards’ evil Becky sings “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You” tunelessly while dancing with a Jesus-on-a-Cross-on-wheels. That’s all this paragraph makes me think of. Well, that, and I don’t want my daughter to always be my baby. Some day, I want her to be a grown-up.
Then Randy and his friend Kevin Moore stand in front of the cross, holding up two large swords, points crossed. Fathers and daughters process beneath the swords to kneel; the girls place a white rose at the base of the cross while the fathers offer a quiet blessing. Splayed on the floor all around them are half a dozen photographers looking for the right angle and a camera crew from the BBC, in a syncopation of private praise and clicking shutters.
And thus, western society was saved, and purity reigned for women.
So what, exactly, does all this ceremony achieve? Leave aside for a moment the critics who recoil at the symbols, the patriarchy, the very use of the term purity, with its shadow of stains and stigma. Whatever guests came looking for, they are likely to come away with something unexpected. The goal seems less about making judgments than about making memories.
Again, I don’t want my daughter’s lasting memories of me to be of her pledging to me that she won’t have sex. If I can’t find a way to be a memorable figure in my daughter’s life other than as gatekeeper of her ovaries, I’m just a bad father and should probably quit. Sort of like this guy:
Out on the terrace under an almost moon, the black swans have vanished into the lake. David Diefenderfer has slipped outside for a cigarette; he’s a leathery South Dakotan in a big black cowboy hat, and he hands over his card. HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL: BREEDER SERVICE, it says, with a picture of a syringe. He’s in the cattle-reproduction business. He’s also the father of nine children by seven women.
Purity, bitchez! Oh, wait — sorry, he’s a guy. Guys be fuckin’. Everyone knows that.
Three of his daughters are with him tonight, including 10-year-old Taylor. I asked what purity means to her. “I don’t really know,” she says, and she’s shy about talking about all this. “But it means you make a promise to your dad to be a virgin until you are married and not have a lot of boyfriends.”
And maybe, just maybe, stay away from guys like your dad, or if you don’t want to, at least get on good birth control.
That’s what her oldest half sister Juliet was taught as well; she remembers hearing how her mother got pregnant the very first time she had sex. Juliet is now 37 and has come from Reno, Nev., where she works for Microsoft Licensing. She has watched the evening unfold with some skepticism. “I think I’m finding I’m more of a feminist than I thought,” she says with a sly smile. “I had a hard time there hearing about ‘rescuing’ our girls. I was brought up to be a strong woman. Why would I need rescuing?” It’s the boys who she thinks need help these days. “It’s great for girls to have a Cinderella night with Dad, but families still need a good strong father role model,” she says. The role-model question is tender for her. “I didn’t have that–no offense, Dad,” she says, and then she looks hard at him. “But my siblings do. He really stepped up to the plate. He’s a great dad now. I say that with a tinge of jealousy. I’m not afraid to admit it.”
Well, at least there’s one sane person here. And lo and behold, she didn’t get her sanity by pledging to have sex with nobody without her father’s consent.
Her father hopes his kids will learn from his mistakes. “I never planned to have nine children by seven women,” he says. “I believe it’s necessary to instill a set of values, give them tools to make good decisions.” But he won’t be there to help. Juliet explains when he goes back inside the ballroom to catch up to the younger girls: “We’re sort of here on borrowed time,” she says. David Diefenderfer has Stage 4 inoperable lung cancer; they figure tonight is something of a gift. “He won’t be at their wedding,” Juliet says, looking into the glowing room, “but they can look back and remember the dance they had tonight.”
So when the younger girls get older, and have sex before they’re married, they’ll also get the guilt of knowing they broke a vow to their dead father. Awesome.
If you listen long enough, you wonder whether there is really such a profound disagreement about what parents want for their children. Culture war by its nature pours salt in wounds, finds division where there could be common purpose. Purity is certainly a loaded word–but is there anyone who thinks it’s a good idea for 12-year-olds to have sex? Or a bad idea for fathers to be engaged in the lives of their daughters and promise to practice what they preach? Parents won’t necessarily say this out loud, but isn’t it better to set the bar high and miss than not even try?
It’s great to set the bar high for your children. But yes, I have serious disagreements with how these people are raising their children, and I’ll be cheerfully damned eternally before I raise my child this way. I don’t want my daughter having sex at age 12, but the way to accomplish that goal is not to tell her that I’m having her fit for a chastity belt. It’s to raise her to be a confident, self-possessed girl. The vast majority of kids are not having sex at 12. Most aren’t having sex at 15. About half still aren’t having sex at 18. And contrary to Gibbs’ blithe assertion, the kids who are waiting are as apt to be the children of secularists as not.
Maybe mixed messages aren’t just inevitable; they’re valuable.
Maybe Nancy Gibbs isn’t just dumb, she’s Jonah-Goldberg-level-dumb.
On the one hand, for all the conservative outcry, there is no evidence that giving kids complete and accurate information about sex and contraception encourages promiscuity. On the other, a purity pledge basically says sex is serious. That it’s not to be entered into recklessly. To deny kids information, whether about contraception or chastity, is irresponsible; to mock or dismiss as unrealistic the goal of personal responsibility in all its forms may suit the culture, but it gives kids too little power, too little control over their decisions, as though they’re incapable of making good ones. The research suggests they may be more capable of high standards than parents are. “It’s always tempting as a parent to say, Do as I say, not as I do,” says a father who’s here for the first time. “But it’s more valuable to make the commitment yourself. Children can spot hypocrisy very quickly.”
Oh, PZ Myers’ non-holy cracker, what have I done to deserve this? Look, you want to tell your kids that sex is serious? That it’s not to be entered into recklessly? You sit them down and say, “Little Joey/Janie, sex is serious. Don’t enter into it recklessly.” You don’t hold a ball at which you tell them that you’re taking their gentialia and you’ll give them back when they meet a good Christian boy.
Look, I think there is some unreality about telling your kids to wait for marriage, given that upwards of 98 percent of people don’t. But you know what I’m going to tell my daughter when the time comes for me to talk about the morality of sex? I’m going to tell her that she can wait for it, that she can wait through high school, through college, ’til marriage, ’til death, if she wants to. Because it’s her decision to make, and I’m not going to preemptively declare that she’s wrong to set her ideal where she wants to.
But here’s the other thing: if my daughter sits down, thinks carefully, and writes down the number 17, am I going to believe she’s failed to reach for a high standard? Given that the median age at which American girls lose their virginity is 17.4, no, I’m not. If she writes down 19, will I be more proud? Nope. If she writes down “my wedding night,” will I do a happy dance? Not at all.
It’s her decision. Like many things in life, my job is to prepare my daughter to make that decision, and do a good job in making it. I should support her, counsel her, lobby and cajole her — but in the end, it’s her decision. And it always was, really — even if I demanded tomorrow that my daughter pledge herself to chastity, now and forever, she’d still have sex when she wanted to. She’d just do it more rashly, do it without thinking, without knowing what the experience meant to her.
Gibbs closes with, I think, an unintentionally telling metaphor:
The dancing goes on past midnight, when Randy Wilson finally has to shoo people out. Many of the girls are still light-footed, merry; it’s their dads who are fading, and you wonder who will be leaning on whom as they head out into the cool mountain night.
Do you, now? I don’t. The fathers are leaning on their daughters, basing their own masculinity on their ability to control their daughters’ femininity. The men are using their daughters as crutches, as objects, as props. The girls are there to make their dads feel good, feel needed, feel honored.
I don’t lean on my daughter. I support her. When she wanders out into the cool mountain air of her own life, my identity is not going to be defined by hers, and she has no responsibility to make sure my manly ability to rule is honored. My daughter has only a responsibility to herself, to make sure that she is pleased with the decisions she makes; to her partner, should she choose to be with one; and to any children she acquires, whether through birth or adoption or marriage, to support them as her mother and I supported her. It’s her life. Only she can live it. I want to help her live that life to its fullest extent. And I can only do that, ultimately, by letting her live it for her.
Topics: Feminism, My Best Stuff, Purity Balls, The Abstinence Movement | 19 Comments »
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:30 am
Good post, Jeff.
A couple things that jumped out at me when I first saw this article: one, two dudes standing there making an arch with crossed freaking swords, for the fathers and daughters to kneel under? Yeah, that’s not fucked up at all. (There doesn’t appear to be a photo of it in the Time story, but there was a similar story in the Times recently, which does. Giant freaking swords. Guys, couldn’t you have just joined the SCA or something?
Second, note the repeated use (in the Time article and the Times one) of the phrase “the culture”. I’ve generally had trouble articulating well what exactly it is about this that disturbs me, but even though it’s written in lowercase, you get the impression that when these people say the phrase, it’s with capital letters; “The Culture,” i.e. American pop culture, i.e. what they are trying vainly to deny they’re part of, is a monolithic, pervasive, evil influence, and must be resisted and shunned. Fellow liberals have disagreed with me on this, but I don’t think it’s actually all that big a stretch to draw connections between purity balls and this idea of “The Culture,” Christian Contemporary music, Becky Fischer’s “Kids on Fire” camp, and dangerous, abusive, separatist cults like the FLDS and the Branch Davidians.
Actually, there’s a third thing, now I think of it, which is that this obsession with “purity” as an overridingly important virtue is deeply, deeply creepy, and invokes a range of images from General Jack D. Ripper to KKK rallies. “Purity” is stasis, separation, segregation, inertness, the opposite of life.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Jeff, what a brilliant, wonderful post. Thank you! And may I say, your daughter has a great father!
July 24th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
[...] give my balls to charity July 24, 2008 Posted by casualt in Religion. trackback Or: Fisking the Fecker. I’m not including everything here. I’m not even including the text that Jeff is [...]
July 25th, 2008 at 3:08 am
I agree, this is a movement so sick I wish there was something I could do to stop it. This is just another pathetic tactic in a long line of male obsession to control female sexuality, and it’s incestuous to boot. But what can I do? How can people interfere with intra-family relationships and promises? It would be like the equivalent of being an anti-abortion protester, trying to control other people’s reproductive choices, and I can’t condone that. However, if anyone ever thinks of some lawful way to combat this on moral grounds, I would join that movement.
July 25th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Jeff: Thank you for being a father.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Very good post. My daughter is 17, and dating someone seriously. It is hard to let go, a lot harder than I thought, but you give them all you have and let them fly.
As for this movement – I was raised very strict Baptist, so sounds familiar. They are too over the top and will lose a majority of their followers. No one in my immediate family attends a Christian church because of our strict upbringing. Not one out of five.
July 25th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I wish that my teenage daughters were as fortunate as yours to have such a loving, empowering father as yourself.
All I can offer them is a loving, empowering mother and all the knowledge they can soak up and pray that I succeed. Your article inspired me.
July 25th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Thank you for writing this. There are many things about the religious right that are so utterly appalling that I’m left furiously speechless; a “Purity ball” is one of them. Were I able to find the words, they would match yours.
July 27th, 2008 at 12:18 am
Fantastic post. Your daughter is very, very lucky.
I’m glad my father never dragged me to a purity ball. Instead, he taught me how to cook breakfast, how to change oil, how to hang drywall, and more about NCAA basketball than my boyfriend will ever know. He respects my decisions, and I respect his advice.
July 27th, 2008 at 12:43 am
This article is fantastically written; thank you. It was a great read–I am a 17 year old girl and you really just put into perspective how lucky I am to have been raised by such good parents that would never dream of asking me to make such a ridiculous vow. They taught me instead to be fiercely independent, strong, and capable of making my own decisions, which is what it sounds like your daughter will grow up to be like as well. Congratulations on having such a wise view on your responsibilities as a father; your daughter will certainly thank you for it someday.
July 27th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I completely agree with your take on the whole “purity” concept. Nancy Gibbs’ article was so smarmy that I feel the need to take a very long, hot shower! I am sad for the girls who feel they must take part in that nonsense.
July 27th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I’m another 17-yr-old girl who completely agrees with everything you have written here. Purity balls are creepy, patriarchal, and aren’t necessary for good memories at all. My father built our “special memories” by participating in my life and hobbies, attending school performances, and supporting all of my choices even when he didn’t agree. Unconditional love and time is the best thing a father can give his daughter, not some bogus “protection” of her sex organs and ownership until her wedding. Based on this article, your daughter will grow up to be a strong, self-reliant woman, and will have you to thank for helping her to get there.
July 29th, 2008 at 8:28 am
I’m an eighteen year old who did not have a guiding fugure of any kind, shape or gender in regards to sex. I’ve had to find everything out on my own, with the help of our oh so wonderful society and a few too many mistakes. It is for that reason that i think that these balls are just a horrible thing to do to girls. when ur brought up catholic/ christian you already have programed into your head that sex is a bad thing that you shouldnt have until sometime in the future when you put on a big white dress and give yourself away.
The fact that it’s called “giving yourself away” always made me uncomfortable, i cant even find myself yet and i’m suppose to give it away.
if i would have had someone like you in my life maybe i wouldnt be losing nights of sleep because of my sexual history…mayb i would have waited a little longer than 15.
you truly have one hell of a lucky daughter who will surely become a wonderful woman.
July 30th, 2008 at 6:28 am
I didn’t read the title until I had finished the article, and now I am laughing at the horrible, horrible mental image it gave me of the Daddy-Daughter ball. Well played, sir.
Anecdotally – I was raised in the deep, deep South, but by transplant Hippy parents. While the other girls were out getting promise rings, I was the only one in the class with an extremely thorough sex education from home. Hell, I think I got my first “where did I come from?” book at five. I ended up being the one they would come to to find out “No, you can’t get pregnant if a boy goes in a pool and you go swimming in it.” and “No, toilet paper won’t catch all the semen if you stuff it up there.” (not making those examples up!)
My school – a public school, mind you – even sponsored an abstinence event where the girls were invited to sign promise cards, at which point they were given ribbons to wear that let them take off ten minutes of every class that day. Too bad for the boys, no ribbons for them.
Fortunately *my* father raised me to be proud and respect myself, so rather than join the crowd, I just watched and laughed at how stupid the whole thing was.
Ironically, nearly all of them had sex before leaving high school and three of them got pregnant and kept it. Meanwhile I ended up waiting until 21 to have sex, and the only partner I’ve ever had is now my husband.
Some of the best gifts a father can give his daughter is strength, self respect, and independence. She won’t learn those things if he teaches her that she must utterly follow her father until she can be given away to an appropriate male replacement, who she must then follow just as devoutly.
July 30th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Thanks for the inspiration – thankfully, my parents have always been very straight with me and as long as I’m happy they don’t mind who I date etc. I hope if they didn’t like my boyfriend that they would tell me so.
Thank you for your post – very well written! – and I hope that you and your daughter will always have as happy a relationship as you do now. She is a lucky girl.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Kudos for this article! It’s wonderfully thought out. I’m 17 and I’m still a virgin. I have never taken a chastity vow, though when I was younger many of my friends had chastity rings and I thought “Hey waiting til marriage sounds cool” but then I got to high school and thought “Hmm…you know, that really isn’t a realistic expectation” seeing as more than half of my friends had already broken their vows by junior year. But I’ll know when I know, and I’ll make sure to regard all the risks involved.
Thank you very much for shedding light on a hopeless and sick ritual.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I agreed with basically everything you said, and laughed a lot too.
Your daughter is so lucky to have a father as smart, aware, honest, respectful of women’s autonomy, encouraging, and genuinely there for her as you are. The world needs more men like you.
I love my father to death, and he has given me more than I can put into words, but the knowledge that he trusts me to make my own sexual decisions was not one of them.
December 21st, 2008 at 11:33 pm
First of all, great post. Second of all, as a very passionate feminist it is really hard for me to stumble around on the internet. Everywhere I go I find online misogyny.
Thank you SO much for being a real human-being. You give me hope that my future husband (if it happens)will think like you.
Thanks for providing a safe place, even for a few minutes.
May 4th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Wow…Thats all kinds of messed up!
I wish I had you as a dad instead of the ass I got lumped with, I might not have ended up so shy and reclusive!