Letters to the Editor
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Bleh
All this will do is ensure that no man will ever be good enough for them.
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Creepy!
Yeah, there is something very creepy here -- an incestuous quality of wanting to make your daughter "Daddy's Little Girl" and not in a healthy way.
I guess human beings struggled for millennia with various methods of trying to control the sexuality of their daughters, with mixed results. This isn't anymore likely to work than any of the other methods.
After all, girls manage to have sex, even in Islamic countries where the punishment is stoning or being set on fire. If that doesn't stop you, I guess nothing will.
I notice that there is no similarly creepy/bizarre ceremony designed for mothers and sons, to ensure that the boys will stay virgins under the tutelage of their "high priestess moms" (gee, what strange branch of Christianity teaches this stuff about High Priests and so on?).
When oh when are people going to put together the facts that teaching your daughters to stay virgins is entirely undermined when your teach your sons to experiment, sow their wild oats, and screw around? One thing basically cancells out the other, and I guess we all can see the results.
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Anyone think of Motherboy XXX from "Arrested Development"?
Yeah, kind of creepy. But here's hoping the dads' giant white hearts are in the right place... I'd take well-meaning moral inculcation over My Super Sweet 16 any day. That said, I couldn't date a woman who'd had either.
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Fascinating language.....
Please tell me I'm not the only person creeped out by the repeated use of the word "cover" -- by dad, in reference to his daughter's virgnity? Quick -- it's time for the Gospel According To Sigmund! As for "High Priests" upholding the virginity of young females, since when is THAT a Christian concept? Sounds more like a Roman temple. What this DOES sound like, of course, is scene one of a porn flick. Nice.
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I idolize my father...
...but if he had ever said words like that in my presence, I would have cracked up laughing at him, when *I* was eleven.
Of course, part of the reason my father is worth idolizing is that he would never, ever participate in anything this idiotic, and in fact would probably have been the first person to mock the entire ceremony.
I seem to recall feeling like a princess when I was four because my grandfather said I was "dazzling", but honestly, I got a lot more of a feeling of closeness to my male relatives when they did things like take me mountain climbing or show me how to collect coins or write a program in BASIC. Women don't need fathers "covering their purity" when they are eleven if the fathers really want the girls to stay pure; they need fathers who teach them that they can get positive male attention by using their brains and not their booty. Given that I was in grad school when I finally lost it, my dad could not have been more successful at getting me to "keep myself pure" as a teen if he'd *tried*. And the reason is, I thought men who would validate me only for being attractive and not for being smart were a total waste of my time, because that was what my dad taught me to expect from men, by respecting my mind and personality.
These poor girls have dads who respect them only for being pretty pure princesses on a pedestal. Some boy comes along when they're fifteen who convinces them that he'll put them on a pedestal too, and they'll be easy meat.
You can't teach your daughter to respect herself if you don't respect her, and you can't keep her from being prey for some sweet-talking guy if she doesn't respect herself. (If she does, she may still *choose* to have sex younger than you'd like, but it will be by free choice, not because she feels like she's got to to keep a boy's attention. She won't be prey, she'll be actively making choices, and they will likely be informed ones.) If any of these girls stay virgins until they marry it'll probably be in spite of the dads rather than because of them.
And... yeah. Where are the moms or the sons in this? Admittedly the concept of mothers pledging to keep their sons pure is even creepier than fathers doing it to their daughters (probably because, since it's not a societal norm, women who do do it usually come across as mentally ill), but couldn't mothers pledge to teach their sons respect for women and eleven-year-old boys pledge to honor their future wives as they honor their mothers, or something? (I am not saying I think this is a good idea, mind, but it *should* be a natural outgrowth of the same mindset that's behind this whole father-daughter purity thing.)
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the purity is the problem
In my humble experience, my girlfriends who were raised in strict religious households
a. had sex early in high school (most often without contraception)
b. got pregnant from said encounters and either had abortions or were sent away to have the kid and give it up for adoption
c. have a difficult time enjoying sex even after they are married
I mean, if you are taught that sex is unpure (until that magical ceremony of marriage), how do you make such a shift in thinking from literally one moment to the next, "sex is bad....sex is now good."???
If you are taught that those feelings you get are bad and dirty, how are you ever going to express them in a healthy way once you have a ring on your finger? I mean, women's first sexual experiences with men are sometimes painful, that can't help.
And was I the only one reading through the pledge/promise/convenant whatever for loopholes on lesbian relationships? I mean, can another girl make one of these girls impure?
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This is as bad as Promise Keepers
I am a father of a tiny, amazing 21-month old daughter, and she is the astonishing, delightful, wacko, Elmo-worshipping light of my life. Because of that, I would NEVER do something this sad and strange. Look, if you have to take a pledge to love your daughter and protect her, and you have to take her out to a weirdo cotillion to make her feel like you think she's special and beautiful, then you're not much of a father to begin with. It's just like that nutso Promise Keepers Christian group. If you have to take a pledge to do something you should be doing anyway, like be a good husband and an honorable man, you're neither.
I will let my daughter know she's wonderful by proving it to her through my actions--by being attentive and goofy and listening to what she has to say, even now when I can't understand 90% of it. Doesn't matter. It's what she has to say and it's music. And I'll raise her so that when she's 12, she's smart and forthright and self-assured enough to make strong, wise decisions, as much as a 12-year-old can. When she screws up, I'll help her understand why. I'll teach her about sex so that she knows why I'm sitting in the living room with a shotgun across my knees when she's on a date (just kidding). I'll help her become a marvelous young adult and then step away and trust her.
Dads? Husbands? Shut up. Talk is cheap. Just do it.