I am not joking. This blog post contains that sentence. Okay, it’s not what it sounds like.
I spent a lot of time in the Christian Right, before being damaged by it almost beyond redemption. I think the Purity Balls are symptomatic of a pie-in-the-sky perspective that permeates much of Christian education about sex.
Do I think teenagers should be having sex? No. Do I think sex should be a do-it-if-it-feels-good free-for-all? No. Do I think teens should be encouraged to postpone sex? Yes. Do I think the Purity Ball is a good way of doing it? Not at all.
Does an 11-year-old girl even understand the “purity” that she’s being pledged to? Or is she being sexualized in a way beyond her understanding, and made to relate her sexual identity to “daddy”?
Read the whole post. There’s a subtext there that sounds so, so creepy. Take this quote from the last paragraph:
Do it with your daughter. Encourage her to join with you on that special night. She’ll thank you for it and respect your gentle guidance in the years to come. So will her future husband.
The post talks about treating daughters as princesses, preserving their purity for dad’s “successor” and teaching her to “save herself for a real loving man just like her strong daddy.”
What we should do instead is teach our young girls that they are queens. Princesses are rescued. Queens rule. Princesses need to be protected or rescued from dragons. Queens can banish someone from their presence.
The truth is, you can’t stand over your daughter night and day and protect her “purity” for her entire life. Sure, you could lock her up in the house until she’s 21. But sooner or later, she’ll go off to college, get a job, live in her own apartment. Sure, you could marry her off at 17 to some guy of your choosing. Chances are very good that she’ll find herself divorced, alone, needing help and lonely.
Also, no mention of young men. Let’s talk about young men. Young men are the ones who are trying to talk your daughters into doing things you don’t want them to do. Too many girls, still in this more liberated age, do it “for them.” How many young girls do you think would be having sex outside of marriage if all the young men were persuaded that they needed to save themselves for “the one”?
I would hope that if I someday have a daughter I could teach her to avoid the heartache and hurt that comes from premarital sex, but I would do something different than my parents and my church did. I’d give her the resources to believe in herself, her choices, her strength and her worthiness. I don’t want her to struggle with her self-worth, like I did. I wouldn’t want her to believe her self-worth comes from men at all. I want her to have skills, dreams, friends and accomplishments. Those are the things that eventually got me to the point, at age 33, where I was ready to meet my husband.
Finally, let me note that the blogger, like most of the right-wing “family values” types, tries to confuse the issue by portraying his opponents as abortion-happy nutcases who would love nothing more than to have weekly orgies in the high school gym. But most of “the enemy” are simply people who are being realistic.
I have worked with teen mothers and seen the conditions their children live in. Two mothers I worked with were hauled off to prison when their little girls were less than a year old. Others lived in desolate poverty. If a few condoms can keep a few kids from having to grow up in these conditions, so much the better. Nobody is trying to encourage kids to have sex, but nothing is served by denying that they are having sex and refusing to help them avoid bring a child into their chaotic world.
3 Comments
August 16, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Just don’t tell that to our young boys! In that context queens do not rule at all.
Although I get your meaning, female queens are typically mature women, while princesses are more likely to be teenage or younger. The point is that they are precious and should not be conditioned to think of themselves as discardable sex objects.
August 16, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I agree that girls should not think of themselves as discardable sex objects. But I don’t agree that they shouldn’t think of themselves as Queens in relation to young men. They need to have power — specifically the power to say “no” to a young man. Both of us are speaking metaphorically since neither queens or princesses exist in our democracy. So yes, a young girl can be a Queen.
Anyway, I appreciate your response. I was pretty rough on you, and I think you were very kind and Christlike in your reply.
I’m still seeing in your response the tendency to lay all of the burden of “purity” on the shoulders of young women. I want to teach my son to treat a woman like a queen — with the same honor and respect that I hope that I will have earned from him by that time.
August 16, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Thanks for posting this. I think, in the context of the article, the quote did not sound quite as bad as I first read in your post. Though it still was poorly thought out at best, creepy at worst. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with what they are doing but I do wonder if it’s a little 1950-ish? Truth doesn’t change but we do need to teach it in a way that is relevent to the culture. I do strongly beleive that a daughter’s appropriate relationship with her father is very important in all of this.
And I agree about the error in laying the responsability on the girls. I would say that the majority of the of girls that become active do so to keep from running off the young boy. It’s the boys we need to teach about love and respect. Thanks again for posting.