Sex and the Purity Balls

Now, I don't know about you or anyone else but have you ever heard of Purity Balls? This whole purity balls things is suppose to be a get together between a father and his daughter, where they attend a ball-prom like party, where the girls (dress up like a princess) will swear her virginity to their father until she get married where the father would than give away his daughter virginity to her husband.

There is this whole ceremony where the father and the daughter would walk down the aisle (like a wedding ceremony) to her father and then swear to her father and the minister (or whoever the religious leader is, but mostly fundamentalist Christians) that she will be a virgin until marriage and then exchanges rings with the father or something like that.

It is suppose to be this revolutionary thing started by the fundamentalist, who cried that woman especially young girls had been demoralize and oversex to a point where they no longer felt sexually pure or felt that sex is a beautiful gift from god, meant only to be between man and wife. Of course, there is no boys swearing their virginity to their mother at all, it is mainly focus on girls and father.

When I first heard this, I thought that it sounds very incestual and backward. Women were consider a property of man, she belonged first to her father and than her husband and if she isn't married but had fortunes left to her, her property belongs to a male relatives.

The whole father giving away his daughter virginity to the husband thing reminds me of the old patriarchal ideals that women are a property of men, thus the daughter virginity belong to her father and then it belong to her husband when she get married.

Second, it sound very incestual because a young girl promising her virginity to her father in a wedding like ceremony in front of a minister and other young girls as if she is marrying her father, gross. I understand that young girls tend to have a better life if the fathers were involved in her life, but this is going too far.

It sounds so disgusting and gross, like as if the girl is sleeping with the father herself. I would be able to understand if there was a purity ball for the mother and son or if the girl swears to herself that she would keep herself virginal or if she swears to both her parents at the sometime but to her father only?

What if the girl is a lesbian? Will she be discouraged from engaging in a lesbian relationship and will her virginity still belong to her father if she is a lesbian?

I see this as the old, women is the property of the man issue. These kind of patriarchal belief systems still exist for example, a school in Maryland had made the decision that they will inform the parents of their daughter pregnancy if their daughter fail to do so herself.

It angers me because the girl parents will be informing of her pregnancy but there is absolutely no informing of the girl's pregnancy to the father's parents. Here is how it works:

A revised regulation that directs Howard County school officials to notify parents when students reveal they are pregnant has drawn criticism from health experts who say it violates a young woman’s right to privacy and jeopardizes health care.

Howard’s policy “really pushes the issue of informing the parents, when state law says minors have the right to make decisions independent of the parents,” said Deborah Chilcoat, an education and training specialist for Planned Parenthood of Maryland and co-chair of a county coalition on adolescent sexuality and reproductive health. “It’s not going to be in the best interests of young people in Howard County,” she said.

Maryland’s minor consent law, which applies to those younger than 18, says teenagers do not have to inform parents to receive health services, including pregnancy testing, contraceptives and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.

“We wanted to make it clear: If the student does not tell the parents, the school system will advise the parents,” Aquino said. “Parents have a right to that information.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/02/AR200802...

It is as if the daughter is shame into continuing her pregnancy by the school informing her parents of her pregnancy but they don't tell the father's parents that he had impregnate a girl. It is as if the girl is the property of the parents and are held to a double standard but the whole clinches of Boys will be Boys still exist that is why the father's parents is not informed.

You know, I personally believe that if the fathers (in the purity balls) should just talk to their daughter about the truth about sex, what boys want from them, contraceptives, teach their sons how to respect women, and be a role model by loving their mothers to death. Instead of having this big ceremony, just talk to your daughter about sex and of course loving their mother to death.

For the second one, I think that if you want the school to informed you of your daughter pregnancy because she didn't reveal to you that she is pregnant, than you the parents had an obligation to reexamined your relationship with your daughter instead of bothering the school board.

What kind of parents would need a school to tell them that their daughter is pregnant? These parents need to seriously reexamine their relationships with their daughter if they need to school to tell them of their daughter pregnancy.

Instead spending your times trying to impress other people about how morally perfect your life is or protesting at women clinics about the immorality of premarital sexs maybe you should spend more time with your daughter. Great parents don't need laws to tell them that their daughter is pregnant because the daughter would have told them herself.

It is not the role of government to legislate parenting skill, it is up to the individual parents to do so and it is completely one sided and patriarchal because of the double standard for girls and boys.