People are funny creatures. At a time when the right wing is warning us that we need to keep vigilant lest we find ourselves wearing burqas here in the good ol’ U.S. of A, it is apparently failing to take a peek at itself in the mirror. It just might find a teenage girl who has embraced the “modesty” movement and has officially “devoted her virginity” to her father before God and her peers.
During the Cold War, the United States inserted “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance. The idea was that we wanted to show the world that it was our national spirit, not our bombs, that made us an invincible nation. A godly nation. We needed to prove to the Soviet Union that our people had superior moral and spiritual fortitude, that our hearts and minds were united and pure. We wanted to look, feel and behave differently, to make a moral case for ourselves in our quest to come out as the government truly by the people, for the people. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, was doing basically the exact same thing.
Since our focus has shifted to the Middle East, we hear daily reports of human rights abuses in the Muslim world. Young girls being murdered by their brothers, uncles and fathers in honor killings. Women being tortured and killed for allegedly not wearing their burqas correctly, or for being in the presence of an unrelated male. Even in India we hear about bride killings, where a new wife dies in a mysterious house fire, leaving the husband free to remarry and obtain a second dowry. And anywhere male sons are prized (because they are their parents’ retirement plan, whereas daughters are a financial and social liability), female infanticide and abortions of female fetuses remain a tragic human rights failure. The World Health Organization estimates that about three million girls, mainly in Africa and the Middle East, are subjected to genital mutilation each year. There is one cultural tenet that unites all of these practices: women’s bodies are not their own. They are property.
Now there is a new and growing trend in America. Christian teenage girls and their fathers are attending “Purity Dances,” which look and sound a lot like wedding ceremonies. Father and daughter walk down an aisle, daughter vows to remain chaste until marriage and father vows to “protect” his daughter’s virginity. Father gives daughter a ring. Daughter gives father a key (the key to her vagina, apparently), and father keeps the key until daughter’s wedding day, when he hands it over to the groom. According to the Chicago Tribune, one in six teen girls are signing virginity pledges. Also according to the Tribune, 88% of them will wind up having premarital sex.
American Christians are also embracing a move toward more modest dress. This I can truly get behind, as long as it is voluntary and falls into the parameters of what I would consider reasonable. Butt cracks and exposed pierced navels just aren’t what I’d consider to be attractive, and I think that women and girls (and men, for that matter) who don’t leave a single thing to the imagination are doing themselves a disservice. However, the advertising can go the other way. Girls are now announcing their chastity, with t-shirts that read “Abstinence Ave. Exit When Married,” and, even more creepy, underwear that states, “Notice: No trespassing on this property. My father is watching.” Whose property is it? The daughter’s or the father’s?
The idea of a father “owning” his daughter’s virginity is fraught with problems. What does this say about the relationship in terms of sexuality? What happens when daughters break their vows (as, apparently, 88% of them do)? Do they tell their fathers and face the possibility of being disowned? Or do they feel guilty and ashamed, in silent anguish when their fathers fork over their virginity key to their new husband, who is not their first lover? Do they feel they betrayed God and their fathers when, at as young an age as ten, they were asked to promise to remain virgins until their wedding night? Is this a fair thing to ask of such young girls? Would we even dream of asking boys to do the same?
Back to my original thoughts. We are told we have a new enemy now, an enemy that doesn’t treat its women so well. An enemy that holds double (and triple) standards, where girls are property but boys will be boys (with girls held responsible for their irresistibility). An enemy that condemns our fast and easy western lifestyle, yet when the cat’s away will often attempt to emulate it with a singular fervor.
So the Christians are buckling down and waging their reactionary cultural war. They are dressing more modestly, covering themselves up more, if you will. They are advertising their virginity with as much zeal as a prostitute advertises her lack thereof. They are conducting ceremonies wherein daughters embrace their status as sexual property in a patriarchal religious system. They are beginning to exhibit a similar world view to the very people they feel most threatened by, and they are too myopic to even realize it. Different war, same old human nature.
Three Taboos 
[…] friend over at Three Tabooswrote an article about purity dances. For those who are not aware of what purity dances are they are […]
Nice try but of course you have it all backwards. What is it that truly offends you about this ritual that has you literally attack Christianity from both a cold war era change to the pledge of allegiance to a silly comparison to honor killings.
You seem to resent that fathers take some sort of interest in their daughters virginity while your you perceive that their interest in their sons is just the opposite. While there is some truth to the “boys will be boys” attitude that many have I will propose that this is largely one that is not held in practicing Christian households.
Regardless of such attitudes towards sons it is a fact that a pregnancy out of wedlock affects the girl and her family much more than that of the boy who just happened to do the deed and run. You don’t have to be Christian to understand this point. There is both a personal and societal reason to want your daughter to save herself for marriage.
As far a buckling down and waging a reactionary cultural war you have it partially right; it is reactionary. Unfortunately though you again miss the point about who is waging war on whom. It is the other way around as evidenced easily in you article above. The cultural war is against religion and those that practice their faith in the ever more threatening pledges to their God.
Form the perspective of equating purity dances to creepy father daughter like weddings that breach the abyss of leading to Muslim style honor killings; WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!
First of all there is no comparison. Christianity is not violent in this day and age. It has evolved, did you notice? Putting purity dances in the same light as honor killings is typical for the left but as yet is an unfounded scare tactic based on prejudicial views of religion. What’s next honor killings?? “Those damn God fearing religious folk, next thing ya know they will be killing them girls if they look at a boy the wrong way!!!” Please. Do we really need to go there?
This isn’t about property. It is about educating our children. Bringing them to up to have respect for themselves and making promises to both themselves and their family. Rather than being scared for these poor girls and viewing the pledge as a proprietary lock box perhaps you could open your mind up a bit and see it for what it is.
You don’t have to be religious to understand the disastrous impact the free sex 60’s and 70’s has had on the nation. Shit, I’m not even religious myself but I understand what these families are doing; I respect that rather than fear it. More power to them if it works.
Perhaps a little more open minded analysis on your part would allow you to see that your perception of the myopic ritualistic purity dance is really a short sighted attempt to skewer those which you have no desire to understand.
BTW – The change in the pledge of allegiance was much more than a sign of unity. It was an explicit contrast to communism which promotes atheism. What that has to do with purity dances I will never know.
Wow. That is really hostile. I would think that people who consider themselves (er, did?) friends would at least attempt to engage in respectful discourse. I guess not.
Um. I don’t know what the “it” is that I have backwards, but I guess I can just point out a few things in terms of where I was coming from.
1. I did not attack Christianity. Not at all. I expressed concern that a growing number of Christians are, in my opinion, engaging in practices that encourage viewing women as property.
2. I absolutely do not resent fathers for taking an interest in their daughters’ virginity. I just find it concerning that girls (not boys) are being asked to place the symbolic ownership of their virginity in their fathers’ hands until they are married. People are getting married later and later these days, and a woman who is independent, living on her own and over the age of 18 should, in my opinion, be free to live by her own moral compass and not by a pledge of chastity that she made when she was ten years old. Hopefully the values of her family gave her a good moral foundation; hopefully her father is still a positive influence in her life to advise and help her as she navigates the complicated adult world.
3. Just because it is easier for a boy to “do the deed and run” is not an excuse for the double standards of society. The double standard is biological in origin, and will likely not change soon, but in the meantime parents can and do make boys take responsibility for their actions. Parents can and do hold the same expectations for their sons and daughters.
4. There was no equation with the execution of honor killings and wearing underwear announcing that one’s private parts are property. Jodi at Webloggin understood that very clearly. I argued that the horrific cultural practices in certain areas of the world have in common a viewpoint that women’s bodies are property. I think it is clear, with the symbolic possession of the chastity key (or whatever it’s called), that participants in these ceremonies likewise view women’s virginity as property. The debate can branch off into endless points of argument. It can be about just about anything. Since it was my argument, though, and I framed it, it IS about women being viewed as property.
5. Be careful when you say I have no desire to understand things, because I could easily say, right back atcha, buddy. The way you twisted my argument is testament to the fact that you didn’t even attempt to understand where I was coming from. You decided right off that I was wrong, based on arguments and accusations I didn’t make, and pounded out an angry thrashing. Be especially careful when you accuse me of not attempting to understand the fundamental Christian mindset, because I lived amongst it for many years of my life, and am still trying to understand.
6. That’s exactly what I was saying (about the Pledge). It has to do with how enemies interact and react to one another, how what is going on now from this standpoint is nothing new.
7. This is my blog. Bullies and mean spirits can easily find bigger fish to “skewer.” Honest debate is civilized and respectful (see my about page). I do not want my blog to exist in an atmosphere of hostility and knee jerk insults. You have your own blog to engage in that, if you so choose.