Purity balls: creepy patriarchal fad or CREEPIEST patriarchal fad?

Random aside: I just spilled chicken salad all over the tank top I've been wearing since yesterday. I am a classy lady. No doubt about that.

Lesbian princess orgies totally don't break chastity vows, right?

If you see these words written, stay away: "culture war," "hook-up culture," "personal responsibility," "purity," etc.

But anyway, purity balls.* If you haven't heard about them yet, then you can go ahead and thank The Sexy Gay Jesus for sparing you thus far. But I am not as merciful as SGJesus. Because they are gross. And they need to stop. People write these articles in mainstream magazines and newspapers about these creepy, sex-obsessed patriarchs and try not to be all "judge-y," when really we should all be totally judge-y all the time about men who think they own their daughters' reproductive organs so literally that they have the ability and the "God-given" right to give their little girls' pussies away to another man on their wedding day. Ew. So these guys dress up in suits and take their daughters (some of whom are far too young to even understand what a chastity pledge really means) to an anti-sex prom, vowing to "protect" the girls' purity, and we're supposed to believe that when the girls promise to abstain until marriage, they're really making a free and fully-informed choice. Right.

And can I just say something? I always thought the idea of "daddy-daughter dates" was kind of creepy. Sure, I like(d) doing stuff with my dad, but can we keep explicitly romantic concepts away from said stuff? I'm really glad my family wasn't into the "your first date will be with your dad when you turn 16" shit like some other Mormon families I knew. And guess what? I didn't turn into a big whore (until later, obvs). I didn't really date until college, and barely even kissed a boy until a month into that relationship. I was nineteen. And a half. I know the Mormon/sex/fear thing had something to do with my reluctance to date before that, but most of it was due to the fact that the opportunity never presented itself and I was having way too much fun hanging out with my girl friends to ever start feeling that frustrated about not having a boyfriend. Of course, I am a big trashy whore now. As you know. So we should probably go ahead and blame my dad for not properly guarding my 24 year-old uterus from teh evil unmarried penis. And also, I need to take a shower now that certain words (guess which ones) were used in the same sentence.

Jeff Fecke, the father of a daughter, points out what should be an obvious red flag:

This is everything that is wrong with the “purity” movement in a nutshell: it’s incestuous. And not incestuous in that a small number of people seem to run the whole movement — though that is part of it — but incestuous in that it actively encourages incest. It gives fathers an inappropriate level of control of their daughter’s sexuality. Like, way inappropriate.

Uh, yeah.

Also, in a description of the ceremony itself: "Then Randy and his friend Kevin Moore stand in front of the cross, holding up two large swords, points crossed." I feel like there's something... I don't know, meaningful about that type of imagery. Can't quite put my finger on it. But if I did put my finger on it, I'd have to give back my chintzy chastity ring. Ha! Haha! Hahaha! Gross. And the word "purity," when applied to human beings, smacks of eugenics or something. It should only be used when discussing chocolate, precious metals, and/or snobby musical choices.

TBogg, another non-creepy dad, calls out these purity freaks for making sex into this scary thing that is totally going to RUIN YOUR LIFE blah blah blah bad parenting, because most of these girls are going to have premarital sex anyway, but they'll be too afraid to even look into contraception:

And if you think a vow of chastity made by a twelve year-old during a farcical virgin pageant in a Holiday Inn ballroom is going to hold up against the tidal wave of teenage hormones to come, well, you're a bigger fucking idiot than even your kids think you are.

Pretty much.



*"The Pursuit of Teen Girl Purity"?! Ehhhhh.