To think the concept of pledging your virginity to your father is creepy as hell?

[Sigyn]

Purity balls and the quiverfull movement so beloved of the Christian fundamentalist right in America.

Its obviously regressive as hell. Your sexuality is yours to control. It has nothing to do with your dad in any way shape or form.

But even aside from that-just...eeew. Sorry.

Can anyone explain to me how the concept of pledging your sexuality to your father for safekeeping is not just icky?

I'm with you on this - deeply deeply creepy and a pretty revolting concept all in all :(
Why your father should have fuck all to do with your virginity, or lack thereof escapes me.
Strange idea anyway, as though lack of a hymen somehow makes you less 'pure'. That said I am in no way religious so have no experience of how that might influence someone's thinking on this.

As a woman, your sexuality is just another part of you that must be owned by one man and passed on (or sold) to another man when you get married.

Oh and fwiw, I've been aware of the purity movement for quite some time. I'm currently homeschooling and know several families who, to a greater or lesser extent, subscribe to these ideas. (just to be clear this is an absolutely minority of home edding families-its not the norm at all).

But what triggered this post was watching

YANBU! It's weird as fuck.

Well, no premarital sex was a common rule in mainstream society until pretty recently.
But this thing is creepy, i agree.

I would be genuinely interested in hearing from someone-ideally a grown woman- for whom pledging their virginity to someone else to control was a positive experience. Interesting it seems to be hard to find such voices

It's a load of bollocks. It doesn't even work and leads to girls missing the safe sex message when they do have sex

The whole thing is creepy as hell, girls (and boys) wear 'purity rings' given to them by their fathers which is exchanged for a wedding ring on their wedding day. The lad who played Freddie in iCarly wears one!
The whole courting business seems really old fashioned, they're never left without a chaperone, watching an episode of the Duggars I think the latest one to get married only allowed him to kiss her cheek on their engagement.
It's the fact that the father 'owns' the child's virginity though, makes me shudder.

I hate these things.

I find the whole idea of fathers owning their daughters sexuality, deciding when they have sex and who with is disturbing.

Even on a lesser scale things like "8 simple rules for dating my daughter". Still you will not have sex with my daughter regardless of what she wants, until I decide if I think you are the right person and when I decide she is ready.

The idea that a girl does not have the right to decide what she does with her own vagina is wrong.

Usually they have very different ideas about their sons. And it does seem to be more prevalent in the US.

Fathers just intimidating their daughters boyfriends to be nice to them i don't agree with, but I understand, and I could see situations you would feel driven too it.

At a guess somewhere like the Rapture Ready forums might be a place to start if you want a first hand idea. I had a look after it was mentioned in a Tony Robinson documentary, page after page of deeply weird stuff.

Purity balls. Hee hee.. that name.

Yeah, I'm American and I don't get it either. We just heard about it today. It's a underground movement at best, not a common thing. Fundies do weird things over here. One group took a bunch of students on a youth trip, had some people pretend to be terrorist who took guns and pointed them at their heads to see if they would denounce Christ on pain of death. We just sort of cringe and let them be (and arrest them when we need to).

When me and DH saw the article we were like she's pledging her virginity to her father? WTAF?!

The whole thing is incredibly creepy and weird (also, as a father wouldn't you be equally creeped out by the thought of your daughter pledging her virginity to you?!)

The really worrying thing is that they kinda trick girls into making this pledge when they're too young to understand the implications - making it all about having a pretty dress and a ball when they're literally just hitting puberty and at a time when they're very influenceable - particularly by the expectations of family.

Then when they "change their mind" (or, you know, actually give the matter some actual thought for the first time) a few years later they not only have to contend with trying to work out their feelings about sex, they also feel guilty about wanting to "betray" their father / break their promise.

It's just another way to try to subjugate women and make sex into a dirty thing rather than a way of finding pleasure.

Sigyn interesting link. Brittany Spears?

Oh, I should clarify, abstinence until marriage is very commonly encouraged here. Purity rings are pretty common too in certain high schools.

But purity balls with all the fanfare like that is not something I've heard of before.

We all know these kids are all going to slut it up in college

And what about children who are sexually abused and this pledge acts as a gag to alert anyone to what's happening.

They make me want to vomit, fucked up weirdos obsessed with controlling their daughter's sexuality.

States with abstinence programs have the highest incidence of STDs.

Out of curiosity I had to have a look at the Rapture Ready forums. The part that made me laugh the most was the 'Ladies Forum'. It consists of three section... women's discussions, homeschooling and... recipes.

I also liked the 'Fun, Jokes and Clean Light Humour' section

Sooo creepy. My friend did this although I'm not sure there was a daddy-daughter wedding type ceremony. Just a mass thing at a christian camp, with a ring as a reminder. Was in America obvs. So creepy!

Ah yeah, watching that vid now. It was the Silver Ring Thing my friend did.

I think in certain geographical areas of the US this is not that 'underground', actually - that brand of conservative Christianity which is completely fascinated by what goes on the pants of its adherents, particularly the female ones, is pretty mainstream. And it meshes eerily with a version of fatherhood which sees it as normal that fathers police their daughters' sexuality, come over all FBI on anyone who dates them, and hand them on, 'unspotted', to their husband.

There's a lot of funding for bone-headed sexual abstinence programmes (when there is ample research to show that they do not work) and nonsense like the Silver Ring Thing and Promise Keepers where Jesus only loves you if you keep your knickers on - it's all linked. The flipside being that there's little or no sex education - because why teach teenagers about something they're not allowed to do because Jesus and Daddy said not to? - so you have a lot of confused, ill-informed children risking STDs, unplanned pregnancies etc etc.

I was so fascinated by it I signed up for a while! (didn't tell them I'm a fully fledged Pagan). The sports section was pretty good actually but very male dominated. Helpful posters at Superbowl time though.
However most of it is scary, racist xenophobic creepiness.

princessbabycat- "We all know these kids are all going to slut it up in college"

In all seriousness, yes. As canthisonebeused said- Britney Spears, totally.

Because the flip side to this is that these girls are not going to be getting decent sex education. They are not going to learn that sex is a good thing, an enjoyable thing, and above all, that you are the one and only judge of whether sex is right for you or not.

I think sexual exploration-as long as that is hand in hand with a very good level of self respect and knowledge- is a really good thing, and I think college is a good environment for that really. I don't think it is or should be for everyone but I think its good to go through a period of intensely exploring your own sexuality. What I'd worry about is that these girls would be doing that without the self respect, the knowledge, to make sure that they were treated well, that they were treating others well, and that they were taking proper precautions and absolutely demanding that their partners did too.

OTOH, a key idea in the quiverfull/purity movement, I believe, is that college isn't a great idea for girls because it will just distract them from the more important work of raising a family.

Isn't there a mother-son purity vow? How very sexist.

I do find the idea that a woman's "value" plummets when she is no longer a virgin utterly weird. Many religions and cultures have this though so it must be a fundamental male issue/concern (as men tend to make the rules)

This I found interesting.

homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/christian-homeschool-dads-lust-after-17-year-old-girl-get-her-kicked-out-of-prom/

The kid who recently was kicked out of her prom for wearing a short dress (her dress was "fingertip length" and she was about 17, iirc).

She talks about the dads theoretically in charge of guarding purity, but basically standing on a balcony above all these teenage girls on the dance floor, oogling.

I hate all the 'I'll scare the bejaysus out of my daughter's boyfriends' attitude.

I like this father's approach, 'Dear Daughter I Hope You Have Awesome Sex'.

'I won’t tell you sex is bad, or that you’re bad for wanting it, or that other people are bad for wanting it from you if you’re willing to give it. I refuse to perpetuate, even through the plausible deniability of humor, the idea that the people my daughter is attracted to are my enemy.'