"Pretty is Dying"

[turquoise]

He also defined it as innocence plus beauty. I am unusual, I think, in that I don't think that the act of sex is moral or immoral. A person can have hundreds of lovers and still be a kind, compassionate person while another can be a virgin and be a horrible, nasty jerk. There are many moral issues surrounding sexual activity like honesty and respecting others. If you take a vow to be faithful, you should be faithful and you shouldn't lie or trick someone into sleeping with you.

This, a thousand times. Having sex doesn't somehow make a person bad. Abstaining from sex doesn't make someone a good person. How you treat other people is the issue.

[turquoise]

Seriously, there were no displaced homemakers before the 1970's?

And all marriages were happy back then too, right? When it was harder to get a divorce, an older woman might have been less likely become a displaced homemaker. But if her husband was cheating on her or otherwise treating her badly, she usually didn't have a choice to leave. She had to stay in a bad situation because she had no other options.

[MonkeyMomma]

I am not a pretty girl. That's not what I do.

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[louisa05]

Oh, god.... :violin: so her parents have her convinced that, sex after marriage makes her impure?

Couldn't she wear it on her right hand to prove she is still pure and sleeps only with her husband?

Her parents deserve a good kicking, and a certain amount of public ridicule.

No wonder we have so many (old maids- :popcorn: ) eternally pure daughters--they are horrified of becoming defiled.

It was not her parents as much as the church culture around her. Her father had actually refused her request that he help her have a courtship instead of dating. He had told her that a healthy dating relationship was a way to develop the kind of emotional intimacy necessary for making a commitment to marriage. After some angst, she ended up dating because she had to "honor" her father's wishes. Her mother was a little more inclined toward the purity culture, but I never sensed that either of her parents would have been anything less than appalled had she confessed these thoughts and feelings to them. However, she had been fed a steady diet of "virgins are pure and special and beautiful and non-virgins are the opposite" at her church from junior high through her late 20s when she married. It doesn't take much of that for young women trying to follow all the rules to internalize that even sex in marriage takes something away from them.

After she got married, had problems with infertility, and the church she grew up in split, she and her husband and her parents all ended up as liberal Methodists. She has since said, without details, that a lot of what she was taught growing up made her marriage difficult and nearly derailed it in the beginning. I have my guesses about what that means.

[HeckBound]

And I should care what Pat Archbold thinks about my looks because why? (Snark directed at Archbold's dumbcluckitude, not at debrand fo sharing it, of course.)

I am going to use "dumbcluckitude" at least once a day.

[Salamander]

I am 46 and I would much rather my daughters grow up in a world where there aren't 'good' girls and 'bad' girls. No, we do not want to go back to those times. My mother used to give me the 'Don't buy the cow when you get the mil free." spiel. It was very dehumanizing and soul crushing to hear that my value to half of society involved something as stupid as my innocence/hymen.

8-) My favorite response to the bolded has always been, why buy the pig when all you want is a little sausage? :banana-rock: :animals-pig:

[RosyDaisy]

An oldie but goodie applies here: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". What one person finds ugly, another finds pretty and vice versa.

[nolongerIFBx]

This stuff messes with young women on so many levels. I have known more than one fundy-lite woman who was vaguely upset about getting married because of being fed so much crap about being special for being "pure" and about purity making women more beautiful...getting married meant having sex which meant losing some of this beauty and specialness. One of them was also upset about giving up her purity ring because it was a nice ring with a gemstone that she loved but having sex on her honeymoon meant she was never allowed to wear it again. My question "Why not? It's just a sapphire ring." But of course I didn't understand the deep meaning. Needless to say, brides having feelings like this does not lend itself to a newlywed couple establishing a healthy and fulfilling sex life at all.

This is totally a spoof, but it makes your point: http://www.larknews.com/archives/217 "Christian couple maintains abstinence through first two years of marriage".

And if you look up causes for vaginismus you will find "Strict upbringing where sex was never discussed, or unhelpful messages leading to feelings of guilt and shame can be another cause of vaginismus. Inadequate sex education, being told sex is painful or sexual desire is wrong can cause fear and anxiety of sex leading to vaginismus." http://2womenshealth.com/Vaginismus.htm

[Peppercorn]

8-) My favorite response to the bolded has always been, why buy the pig when all you want is a little sausage? :banana-rock: :animals-pig:

Excellent! I like that better than mine: Why buy the steer when the meat is free?