I recently saw a bit of a blurb on TLC (otherwise known to me as PEC or the People's Exploitation Channel because of their documentaries) about a lil' something-something called purity balls.
My first thought was "Weird."
Once I heard what it was about, my second thought was "Disgusting."
So basically a young girl signs her virginity off to her daddy so that he can protect it. Protection...cool, right?! Actually, I find it pretty disgusting. After hearing things like "How great it would be for her to say 'I've kissed but one man in my life'?" Sure, it'd be nice, but that's quite farfetched. It isn't unnatural to pick a random person off the street (wait, it is...) and interview them about their love life only to find that they've had more than one partner over a lifetime depending on their age.
There are quite a few--and I use this word lightly--problems that I have with this particular practice.
- The ages involved are not, at all, regulated in any way. Not in any rational way at least. Upon reading numerous articles about purity balls (and even on the website of the founders, Randy and Lisa Wilson, in an article posted on the site) there are girls ranging in age from four to twenty-something. Nothing disgusts me more than taking personal choice from a girl who hasn't even lived a decade, not to mention probably has absolutely no idea what virginity is since her parents wish to keep her pure.
- What the f**k is this s***t?!? Regarding the age issue and how little these children actually know about their reproductive systems, how they work and will work, what they can do with them, and what may happen to them if they don't take good care, here's a little quote from one of the 10-year-olds gettin' purified...
Three of his daughters are with him tonight, including 10-year-old Taylor. I
asked what purity means to her. "I don't really know," she says, and she's shy
about talking about all this. "But it means you make a promise to your dad to be
a virgin until you are married and not have a lot of boyfriends."
- But what about the boys?! The boys have their own ceremony. Except it doesn't put them down and tell them that they're vulnerable--apparently he's blessing people with his shade and influence.
"Boys become men by watching men, by standing close to men. Manhood is a ritual passed from generation to generation with precious few spoken instructions. Passing the torch of manhood is a fragile, tedious task. If the rite
of passage is successfully completed, the boy-become-man is like an oak
of hard-wood character. His shade and influence will bless those who are
fortunate enough to lean on him and rest under his canopy." -Preston Gillham
- Where are your mothers? Nowhere actively in this kind of ceremony. Not even in the manhood ceremony since manhood can only be passed from man to man. I'll give them that. You certainly can't have a dainty female who needs to be protected passing years of her non-wisdom to her son since carrying his whole body within her disgusting reproductive bits.
- There's that stigma again...and it's that stigma about sex and women. Not just how they should be the ones protecting their virginity (which I hate to talk about in noun form, just take a look at some of the questions on Scarleteen about how to know if a virginity is still there) but also how they're not strong enough to protect themselves and there needs to be a manly-man around to help such a poor, poor soul.
I admit, this was a bit of a rant, and it will lead to a post about abstinence-only education fo' sho'. For now, just think about what you want to do for yourself, and if you really want to bond with your dad...just take some cooking classes, please.
