Oh...my...Balls. Purity Balls

[Guest Anonymous]

I'm pretty sure my 10 year old daughter knows very little about what virginity means, what sex is..etc. I asked her once not to long ago what she thought sex was just out of curiousity and she said it's when you wear "nightgowns and stuff". I think maybe she was thinking sexy instead of sex. Anyway, I plan on having "the talk" with her soon when she turns 11. I just don't know how far I will go into explaining if you get my drift. Maybe I will just stick to things like why she will get her period and stuff. Save the other stuff for when she is a bit older.

The whole purity ball thing is weird to me. Why do they have to flaunt it? What's wrong with keeping this between just the family? weird.

[joe_mulcahy]

The BBC covered this in a documentary entitled "Virgin Daughters." If you think you've got a strong enough stomach, it's been uploaded to Youtube.

Enjoy....the acute sense of nausea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03GizVZCPvQ

[Kitty]

How can you hold up a strapless dress without at least some semblance of boobage? :think:

It has to be tight, and double-sided tape helps. I don't think any of the strapless dresses were intended for the littler girls though, but for the older ones. I think they're very hard to find.

(I'm an A-cup and wore a strapless dress to senior prom. I will never wear a strapless dress again, since I don't look good in them.)

[EllieCee]

The BBC covered this in a documentary entitled "Virgin Daughters." If you think you've got a strong enough stomach, it's been uploaded to Youtube.

Enjoy....the acute sense of nausea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03GizVZCPvQ

Oh geez. I have SO MANY things to say about this...I don't even know where to begin.

[MissNomer]

This was the worst for me:

"What if dad is no longer in my life?

How about grandpa, your favorite uncle, godfather or a special male family friend? A surrogate dad is allowed for this event! He can honor you as a princess."

So, pledging your virginity to your dad is creepy enough...but pledging it to your grandfather??! uncle??! family friend?????! THAT is creepy and weird. And of course the fact that it HAS to be a male...what about your mom? It's really better to do this with a family friend than with your MOTHER? So bizarre... Ugh. Just ugh.

[Linnea]

Ya know, I think girls are more likely to delay sexual activity when they feel that their skills and ideas and personalities are valuable and important. This event does nothing to convey that message.

And yeah, the idea that your father is in charge of your sexuality is uber-creepy.

[mstee]

I remember seeing a special about purity balls (maybe it was the link posted...my computer is being too slow for me to watch it), but there was a young woman who had a father really into going to these things, and both of her parents were very conservative, and she ended up having sex before marriage and having a child. And pretty much lost the relationship with her parents, because of the shame they felt.

These kinds of thing gross me out, and I feel like they set these girls up for failure. Instead of a father telling his daughter that she is loved, beautiful, and nothing will ever change that, these fathers are saying that they are loved and beautiful, with the condition that they don't have sex before marriage. My dad and I never talked sex or any girly stuff, and still don't. I understand dads that say they would like for their daughters to wait for sex until marriage (even though it's not my viewpoint and my dad would never say that in a million years). But to me, these dads are doing it in an intimidating way, by making it so public and a condition of their love and pride.

[Vex]

I saw that BBC documentary last year on TV. VERY skeevy. My dad would have been moritified if he'd had to talk to me about sex when I was a pre-teen/teenager. It makes me wonder what kind of man would not just consent to participating in this ritual, but actually take it seriouslycomplete with signed promises, swords, speeches and copious tears.

[jenny_islander]

Oh yeah. My husband, who isn't interested in this stuff, stumbled across a link to an article about Purity Balls and started reading it to me going "What the hell is this and do they seriously mean that the dads--" And I said, "Yep, and they also--" And after about twenty seconds he was all :shock: "Do not tell me, DO. NOT. WANT."

I get to give The Talk to our daughters. He gets to handle it with our son. Because the thought of talking even tangentially about penises with his little girls makes him want to climb out of his skin and run away.

[Bellatrix]

Paging Dr. Freud, report to the ballroom, STAT!

Exactly my thoughts, cindyluvs24, when I first saw the BBC documentary about these purity pledge balls. :D It's the execution of Freud's most fascinating fantasy: the indefinite delay of the end of the Oedipus phase. Mothers, move over... The Fathers have arrived and they're going to be your daughters' ideal compagnon. However, because of obvious incest issues, they will merely act as such until they pick her a hubby and every single person invited to the wedding will know when her little cherry flower will be picked.

There is something very wrong when you sexually connect a child and their parent in such a manner. It is not about communication or about being able to come to them if ever you have a problem and need an answer. It's turning sexuality into a family-knit contract: pledge to me you'll only unlock your hymen when you've been religiously wed. Talk about severe perversion... :shock:

Edited to avoid a Grammar Police fine.

[formergothardite]

The way those fathers are looking at their daughters just makes me uncomfortable. I couldn't even stay at the site that long. It was just making me feel like I was looking at something inappropriate. I've seen plenty of wedding photos of Father/Daughter dances with the dad gazing at the daughter, but the look is totally different then in the photos. In the wedding photos it is more "Time goes by so fast, it seems like yesterday you were born and here you are all grown up." But in those pictures it is more like "You aren't grown up but I'm thinking about you having sex." Ick.

[bananacat]

Speaking of the sexualization of young girls, I found this gem under the "Why" tab:

This is hilarious. Do they really think that teens never had premarital sex before the current era? Do they really think teenagers only have sex because of peer pressure and not because, you know, they're horny?

It's almost as if they think teens would never even consider having sex unless someone explicitly tells them to.

[MrsYoungie]

Pretty much guaranteeing that these girls will remain virgins - - - right up until they have unprotected sex and get knocked up. What rubbish.

[Elle]

Borrowing a line from The 40-Year-Old Virgin, these people are "putting the pussy on a pedestal." These balls focus on these girls' vaginas, and that is sickening. And then the girls vow ownership of their vaginas to their fathers, or even family friends. Some of those father-daughter gazes are so intimate that it made me uncomfortable. That military man holding his very young daughter and crying over her virginity? FFS, if it's an amazing thing to him that she's still a virgin at her age...

How comfortable does this girl look? Her face looks like plastic. Where is the look of enjoyment?

And this dad looks like someone I'd expect to see in a mugshot on the news for doing bad thing to kids:

http://www.goldenislespurityball.com/images/stories/left/pic9.jpg

I have a problem with fundies calling virginity "purity." You're pure until you have sex, and after that, even if it's your wedding night and everyone knows when you're awkwardly trying to figure out how it all works and worrying if it's going to hurt, but you have to do it because everyone expects a baby in nine months, well, you're tainted, impure, and dirty. This emphasis on PURITY, that word, is focused on girls. Once we have sex, we're unclean. Men? What about them? It seems like another way to oppress women.

I don't get squicked out when dad and daughters, or mothers and sons, talk frankly to their kids about sex. Mine did, and I'm very well-adjusted for it and had no problem asking my parents when I wanted birth control. Sex wasn't a shameful dirty thing that needed to be kept hush-hush around one or both parents. This is how we'll be raising our child. But there's no way in hell we're going to tell her she's beautiful as long as she gives ownership of her vagina to her father until he picks the penis that will pop her cherry. Parents shouldn't even be thinking like that. The thought of anyone thinking about our little girl like that makes me want to lash out in violence to protect her from the perverts.

[amie]

..........

[CynicMom]

If it was really about the little girls then several of them would be wearing fairy wings. And have magic wands.

[notsocommon]

The page is now hacked. I miss all the fun!

[Kitty]

Well... damn. I'll edit the post then.

[dormouse]

I remember being at the restaurant with my dad when I was 15, and he said, in an embarrassed tone, after I had casually mentioned a crush or boyfriend in the conversation: "You know, if you start doing... things... with boys... talk to your mother... she'll have to make you see a doctor... who will give you something... so you don't have babies..."

As awkward as it was, his reaction was pretty normal. He was concerned for me, but didn't know the words, and told me to talk to my mom. Dads shouldn't as involved with their daughter's sexuality as the Purity Ball dads are. A young girl should go to her mother (or mother-figure such as step-mom or godmother if her mother is no longer there) when she has her first questions about sexuality.

10 years after that awkward 'conversation' with my dad, and after 7 years of me hiding that Evil Ex was raping me daily because I "didn't want to be a burden to my family" and "he had the right, I was his girlfriend after all", I finally couldn't take it anymore and told my dad what was going on. He went and kicked my ex out to the curb himself. It could have been done sooner, my mother already knew but couldn't do much, but simply because I was afraid to say the word "rape" to my father, the only one who had enough authority to make it stop, I pretty much lost my 20s. So I think it's all a matter of finding a middle-ground when it comes to fathers and daughters discussing sex. Too much, like the Purity Ballers, is creepy and reeks of incest. But not enough could put the daughter in danger if she is being abused and too shy to talk.

[Kitty]

Edited post.

Back on topic, I've always wondered what people actually do at these things. I imagine at a lot of them there's little to no dancing...

[dormouse]

Our community has an annual "Daddy-Daughter" dance that my husband and daughter have gone to a few times.

Usually it is a bunch of little girls getting dressed up and then going to play hokey-pokey and limbo and "hit the balloons around the room while screaming" with their friends while the fathers sit at the tables and talk awkwardly to each other about sports.

I'm just fine with this. Having it be about my daughter's future sexuality? HELL NO.

Thanks for the precision, I saw pictures of a friend's daughter going to a daddy-daughter dance on Facebook, and I got a bit worried. Especially that my friend is an ex-fundie, still very conservative socially and politically. Her daughter is 7, so it was probably the kind of "dance" you just described.

[Kitty]

Thanks for the precision, I saw pictures of a friend's daughter going to a daddy-daughter dance on Facebook, and I got a bit worried. Especially that my friend is an ex-fundie, still very conservative socially and politically. Her daughter is 7, so it was probably the kind of "dance" you just described.

The whole thing would be cute if it weren't all about sex.

[AnnoDomini]

Please edit the post quoting the post with the link in it--I clicked it and it gave my computer a virus.

[bananacat]

I remember being at the restaurant with my dad when I was 15, and he said, in an embarrassed tone, after I had casually mentioned a crush or boyfriend in the conversation: "You know, if you start doing... things... with boys... talk to your mother... she'll have to make you see a doctor... who will give you something... so you don't have babies..."

As awkward as it was, his reaction was pretty normal. He was concerned for me, but didn't know the words, and told me to talk to my mom. Dads shouldn't as involved with their daughter's sexuality as the Purity Ball dads are. A young girl should go to her mother (or mother-figure such as step-mom or godmother if her mother is no longer there) when she has her first questions about sexuality.

10 years after that awkward 'conversation' with my dad, and after 7 years of me hiding that Evil Ex was raping me daily because I "didn't want to be a burden to my family" and "he had the right, I was his girlfriend after all", I finally couldn't take it anymore and told my dad what was going on. He went and kicked my ex out to the curb himself. It could have been done sooner, my mother already knew but couldn't do much, but simply because I was afraid to say the word "rape" to my father, the only one who had enough authority to kick my ex out, I pretty much lost my 20s. So I think it's all a matter of finding a middle-ground when it comes to fathers and daughters discussing sex. Too much, like the Purity Ballers, is creepy and reeks of incest. But not enough could put the daughter in danger if she is being abused and too shy to talk.

I am so sorry to hear that this happened to you, but I'm glad you finally realized that it's still rape even if you're his girlfriend. I think public schools should have comprehensive sex ed, and in addition to learn about safety from STDs and pregnancy, we should also teach kids about consent. We, as a society, need to teach both men and women that rape isn't just about that shady stranger lurking in the bushes and acquaintance rape is sadly common. It's great that your dad was there for you when you needed him. I think purity baller dads would have reacted differently and disowned or shamed their non-pure daughters, or if the daughter had been married they would have told her to just keep submitting and putting up with the rape and would have disowned her if she tried to get a divorce. Both fathers and mothers should be involved in their children's lives and care about violence happening to them. Rape is about violence more than sex, so dads don't have to be some creepy hymen control freak to care about it. Your dad sounds like a great man.

[gracelesstraitor]

A couple of years ago I was visiting my parents when my mother read about a purity ball in the local newspaper and facetiously said to my father, "Look! You could take the girls!" (My sister and I were both adults at the time.)

He didn't miss a beat or even look up from his magazine-just dryly said "Pretty sure that ship sailed awhile ago."

Every time I hear about a purity ball I remember that and snicker a little.