tikistitch

I think they made a mistake to start by calling them "purity balls." I mean, you plant the seed of thought in a young girl that testes are pure, and what can you expect?

...but in all seriousness, yeah these things are pretty lame. Instead of just saying, "don't have sex," I think each parent should start educating their kids, at a VERY VERY young age, about not only the facts of sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and birth, but also to tie it in to human relationships and responsibility. Kids (both boys and girls) need to know that sexual activeness doesn't come without cost... not just the possibility of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, but exposing themselves to deeper attachments and desires for commitment when they aren't yet ready for relationships like that yet.

If kids knew from early on that the act is difficult to separate from the emotions that come with it, and that the emotions can betray them, they might not be so cheap with it.

OK I'm getting too philosophical here.

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Okya, it may be just me but "The proud tuxedo-clad father, the frosted white cake, the limousines and an exchange of vows....the girl in the long gown is no bride. She's daddy's little girl, there to take a vow of chastity." makes me think of one thing: she savin' it up for incest with daddy. Seriously, that's what it sounds like.

Man what is it with these ultra-conservative religous groups and their wholly unhealthy obsession with girls sexuality. Sounds like another group we know of...say like maybe the Taliban? And why is it they do these shindigs for girls but not for boys? Duh? Guys don't pregnant.

And you know why these same girls once they have sex they are more reckless than their non-pledging peers? First, they haven't been taught the more practical things like contraception and protection. Second, since they've been taught to place a ridiculously high value on "chastity", now that they've "lost it" before marriage they're fallen, so the walllow in it out because it's forbidden fruit along side the sense that they deserve what happens for sinning.

You know, just teaching them about sex and consquences - and birth control - makes so much more sense and doesn't mess them up nearly so much. Oh, but I forgot. That would give them a license to do it, or so those same yahoos believe. And we can't have them making they're own informed choices. It's not like people have been having sex for centuries without being educated about it.

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annlarimer.livejournal.com

I'm trying to imagine a ball where a boy pledges his virginity to his Mom...yeah, that'd go over really well.

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Worked for Oedipus.

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lilblueunicorn.livejournal.com

"Okya, it may be just me but "The proud tuxedo-clad father, the frosted white cake, the limousines and an exchange of vows....the girl in the long gown is no bride. She's daddy's little girl, there to take a vow of chastity." makes me think of one thing: she savin' it up for incest with daddy. Seriously, that's what it sounds like."

EXACTLY!

-§parky

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girlontheleft.livejournal.com

I didn't realize it was an "exchange" of vows.

Considering how common divorce is, even among conservative Christians, tying the Daughter's chastity to Dad's marital vows seems like a sucker's bet to me.

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primalrage.livejournal.com

My disgust levels have reached a new time high.

And I can vouch for the second part of your post.
I had a friend who's parents were SUPER conservative. She was phillapeno(sp) and went to visit her family one summer to find out that she had been betrothed to someone and was supposed to wed this complete stranger. She rebelled 30 fold when she went crazy and started sleeping around like a mad woman. By the end of the year her little black book of conquests had close to 30 different men.

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Mr. Tiki had not one but two college classmates who went back to India for arranged marriages. It seems like both of them are doing really well in their marriages (as well as us guys who arrange our own) but it's so bizarre that that practice still goes on in the 21st century!!

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There's nothing wrong with arranged marriages. There are many parts of the world where that still happens (the Philippines, as you mentioned, but also big in India and I believe still in Japan, for example). Not everyone in the world shares the American view of romantic love. And to be quite frank, we (Americans) have a pretty piss-poor record of how well marriage (or kids) through "just" romantic love works, no?

There ARE some arranged marriages that are very misogynistic, where much older men get to the pick of a preteen or a very young teen girl. But for many of these arranged marriages, there's discussion beforehand by the parents... who know their kids well. In some places like Japan, there is an official "introducer" (onakohdo) who tries to find a good match based on personality and background. Some people argue this actually works better because your potential mate is prescreened for you for compatibility.

The main difference? You don't "love" your spouse when you marry them. You grow to love them IN the marriage. I realize that's a really odd concept, and it gets kind of icky if it turns out your spouse is a total loser... but you DO at least get to say yes or no during the vetting process and keep looking until they find a good match for you.

When done this way there's generally more respect for the family structure and there isn't this notion that marriages should dissolve automatically if the couple "falls out of love" since the marriage was not BASED on love to begin with.

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I'd be pissed if I had an arranged marriage (because I've never been real big into the marriage-and-kids thing in the first place), but I totally agree that the concept of growing in love IN a relationship is really lacking promotion in American/related culture. That first blush of frenzied romantic love FADES! One cannot be giddy for the rest of one's life -- it has to grow into something more solid.

I do think a lot of people in this recent wave of... hmmm, hip domesticity? tend to be mindful of that. My partner and I, watching our mothers get divorced and remarried over and over again, kind of figured that out, and pledged -- not to omg luv u 4eva -- but to remember to keep working on and growing in the relationship. It sounds like blasphemy to the notion of eternal-love-at-first-sight, though.

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I agree with Mr. Tiki's take on it: "Arranged marriage? I wouldn't trust my folks to pick me out a sweater."

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I'm with Mr. Tiki on that!

On the other hand, I wouldn't object too much to the Japanese version in that a lot of single men and women contact a onakohdo directly - no parently intervention involved - for find potential spouses. There's an arranged "meeting" date, and the couple themselves decide yea or nay. If you think about it, it's not much different from, say, TrueHarmony.com or other dating service.

That said, I swear off marriage for myself.

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primalrage.livejournal.com

I don't have anything against arranged marriages, if it works for some cultures that's great. Definitly don't need to tell me that 'romantic' marriages don't work either. I was merely stating a case of a friend I knew who completely rebelled over the strictness of her parents and the lashing out that followed.

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sinderellah.livejournal.com

He said his three daughters have looked forward to attending the balls and have no qualms about pledging to remain virgins until marriage.

"They are just all for it, they think it's the greatest thing," said Parcha, 43, who is a college math teacher.

Yeah, at 9 I'd be all for it too if I was getting jewlery out of the deal!

Parcha's oldest daughter Christy, who recently graduated from high school, is now working on a fictional book about "the emotional purity of a young girl as she grows up."
Fictional indeed.

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Yeah, at 9 I'd be all for it too if I was getting jewlery out of the deal!

Hahahaha! True that!!

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lilblueunicorn.livejournal.com

Yeah I saw that article in Glamour awhile back. That freaked me out. O_o;; The sad thing is that half the girls don't realize what they're doing at the time because they're so young.

-§parky

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blukat.livejournal.com

I'm sorry, but when I saw the words "Purity Balls" my first thought was a guy who cleaned himself up. Yup, shows you where my mind is at :)

for balance, I give you the following post, a father who is more than supportive of his little girl getting it on. somewhere in the world, there has to be a happy medium to all of this....just where, I don't know

http://www.wwtdd.com/post.phtml?pk=2077

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That gets "11" on the creepy meter.

But wasn't it Mena Suvari, not Thora Birch, who had the topless scene in American Beauty?

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blukat.livejournal.com

I don't remember if Thora got it on with the guy with the video camera or not. I have the original script if I ever feel like taking a look at it. Might have been cut out of the movie.

But it was Mena who was the "sex" object...which is creepy enough.

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'Tis been a loooooong time since I saw that movie. I just remember Mena because they had her in a somewhat similar role (pan-sexual object of desire) in Six Feet Under.

Ha! I'm reading IMDB on Thora's mom--she quit doing pr0n to raise her kids. That must have made for some "interesting" PTA meetings: "Hey, don't I recognize you from somewhere? Oh. Nevermind...."

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At least she's not a teacher, and therefore fired once someone recognizes her! :/

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Mena Suvari married a man 18 years her senior (they divorced a couple of years ago).

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avalonjones.livejournal.com

There's just something really, really wrong about the phrase "Purity Balls."

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Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

(WHEN will our culture at large accept that abstinence-based sexual education ONLY MAKES THINGS WORSE???)

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Ya know, I don't have a problem with sex education that includes abstinence as a form of birth control. What I don't like is that, at least the way I understand it, a lot of abstinence-based education is "just say no" and they don't provide any other information.

Kind of reminds you of drug abstinence education. In fact, the two are actually quite similar. If the government-funded schools tell me ALL drugs are bad, but then I see rampant use of alcohol and cigarettes, and I see my parents taking a lot of prescription drugs, and a lot of my classmates are on prescription drugs, what does that teach me? That the teachers are hypocrites.

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Yeaaaaaaaaaah, but I've actually sat in on some of those programs. It's not "and this is also an option," so much as "CONDOMS BREAK ALL THE TIME AND ARE WORTHLESS, SO JUST DON'T HAVE SEX." (Seriously -- oh, I was furious. Even when I was freaking 14 I knew more about sexual health. One of the programs I sat in on threw around old testing standards for latex gloves as the psuedo-scientific "facts" they had that condoms could not prevent HIV. I waltzed in the next day with some Clinton-era CDC reports and was "Uh no, you guys are full of crap.")

So what happens when kids are told condoms don't work, but don't have sex because Jesus loves you? When the kids DO end up having sex, they don't use condoms, because they don't work anyway, right? My town had ridiculous teen pregnancy and HIV rates. It's getting better now (population growth = more diverse and less stupid opinions) but.

Even barring everything else, whoever thought programs based on STRICT SELF CONTROL IN THE FACE OF TEMPTATION were good ideas for TEENAGERS? I mean, I was a teenager, very recently! THAT'S JUST DUMB!

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blythou.livejournal.com

EWWWWW indeed. This is so sick. It reeks of incest, blind conservatism, hardcore religious fanaticism... All the things I adore.

We don't have that sort of things in France yet. But I'm seeing more and more 9-year old Muslim girls with veils. And it saddens me all the same.

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We don't have that sort of things in France yet. But I'm seeing more and more 9-year old Muslim girls with veils. And it saddens me all the same.

Me too. I've actually heard some thoughtful, well-spoken Muslim women defend hijab. I'm sorry, but my cultural relativism just doesn't reach that far, especially when it's underaged girls.

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I think this might end up being a dividing issue for feminism/human rights -- I find that hijab is really pushing my sense of what is morally "okay" in terms of an individual's religious/self-expression rights. I've heard the thoughtful arguments, but at the end of the day, I'm just too Western-thought based to be convinced. If we value logic and freedom above all else, how is it okay to teach girls to cover themselves? It just feels inherently incompatible with everything I morally value.

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To relate this to a more American situation, if you're a grownup woman, and you've decided you wanna adopt the Quiverfull lifestyle (here's Wikipedia's take on them, basically, they don't use birth control at all & try to have as many kiddies as they can possibly stay pregnant), then, well, that's your choice. But if you brainwash little bitty girls that they have to pump out babies or God will damn them eternally, then that kind of goes over my limit.

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*snorts* Alas, I'm already familiar with that movement. My favoritest charity of all time is the "Broken Arrow" ministries, or somesuch, that collects money for poor poor men who want to reverse their vasectomies because they previously had them but now they're omg Quiverfull! Just makes me want to donate millions!

Hmmm. You know, I think I may have a problem with all of these things, because I don't really think children are able to give consent -- to RELIGION, period. Which goes against pretty much all religions' aims of marketing to children, but yanno.

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