Letters to the Editor
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Finally some insight!
LeCastor, you could have stopped at your subject title.
12-year-old girls cannot decide what's best for them, most of them just want to fit in with their peers. If that is by being slutty, then slutty they shall be (without other values instilled by parents that is). And they will continue to "decide" to date jerks and let themselves be abused once they grow up and become women, all because they are searching for something they crave but missed out on earlier. And yes, lack of fatherly "covering" and being absent has an equally bad effect on boys, but since men and women are different these things will manifest in different ways. Boys may become violent and act out, join gangs, do badly in school, et cetera. Girls are far more emotionally vulnerable at that age to specifically SEXUALLY self-destructive behavior. Ever heard of that feminist favorite Reviving Ophelia?
There's nothing misogynist about a father controlling/guiding his daughter's sexuality until age 18, or when she leaves the house --- just as it's not misogynist for him to control her allowance, her choice of clothing, or her access to the family car keys. When she is 18 she can do whatever she wants. By the way, all the religious Christians I know are equally concerned about their sons dating and have similiar restrictions. Men remaining virgins until marriage is definitely talked about, which is one of the reasons many of them support early marriage! It isn't a one-sided issue for either girls or boys. Hopefully the father did the gentle guidance thing without being tyrannical ---- liberals can't imagine religious fathers being loving and nice instead of mean and abusive, which is quite the stereotype.
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Daddy's little virgin
Even as an agnostic, I think the idea of encouraging protectiveness in fathers is good. Maybe the fear of a shotgun wedding will goad some people into using contraception.
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No need to write a book on it
Chill, Glimmering. I didn't say I endorsed the phrase, I was just explaining why they were saying it. They are using it as a METAPHOR for the role of the husband in the home. Some people seemed to think it was a pagan or Roman reference, which is what I was trying to correct.
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To TheGlimmering
Where in the King James Version of the Bible is it reported that Sarah slept with men to the financial benefit of Abraham or that Joseph solicited a prostitute? Please provide the specific scripture.
Jesus is referred to as a high priest in the new testiment book of Hebrews.
Fornication, or sex outside of marriage, is condemned in the Bible. If not, why was a woman brought to Jesus to be stoned for fornication?
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Exactly HOW is conservative America any different from the Islamic World?
Will someone please remind me?
What's next? Honor killings?
Life under the Talibush....
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well, this makes me feel differently about that Brownie Father-Daughter dance
My husband is taking our 9 year old to the annual father-daughter dance tomorrow night. I have to say that the 9 year old loves this, and I (her mother) am really glad I dont have to be there--I prefer bonding that is less "girly". My daughter enjoys having daddy to herself for the evening. And there's probaly something subtly oepidal about that, but it's displaced in this pre-adolescent stage of her life.
But having read this creepy account of "covering" and "high priests of the home" I feel so much better about the Brownies. Brownies seems much more normal to my tomboy self than whatever that weirdness is.
I remember when our 9 year old was a toddler. Her father remarked to me that he didn't really think she'd ever need to have sex. I laughed at him. He's never been anybody's daughter, but I have. Before he had one of his own, it was about getting in the pants of other men's daughters. Well, the shoe's on the other foot now, buddy. As our girls grow older,I'm going to try to be sympathetic to his feelings, but I'm also going to try to keep my husband from chasing all potential suitors away from our 3 girls.
I have a friend who is actively rooting for his daughter to be a lesbian, he says, "because he knows what teenage boys are like."
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When I was 11...
I'm sure this would have sounded like a great idea. Boys were still icky to me at that point. Fast forward 4 years and I couldn't see any reason to wait for marriage for sex (especially as I wasn't planning to ever GET married) although I very much understood the importance of contraceptives. Had I been approached at 15 for such a ball, I might have gone (to keep up the front that I was what my parents liked to believe that I was), but wouldn't have taken it seriously.
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Does Ed McMahon Still Come to Your House With a Check?
Abstinence Clearinghouse?
This is a joke right? Please, God, tell me this is a joke.
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Welcome to the modern world, where your sexuality is your own and no one else's
Finally some insight!
LeCastor, you could have stopped at your subject title.
Yes, my subject title was about women, not girls.
12-year-old girls cannot decide what's best for them, most of them just want to fit in with their peers.If that is by being slutty, then slutty they shall be (without other values instilled by parents that is). And they will continue to "decide" to date jerks and let themselves be abused once they grow up and become women, all because they are searching for something they crave but missed out on earlier. And yes, lack of fatherly "covering" and being absent has an equally bad effect on boys, but since men and women are different these things will manifest in different ways. Boys may become violent and act out, join gangs, do badly in school, et cetera. Girls are far more emotionally vulnerable at that age to specifically SEXUALLY self-destructive behavior. Ever heard of that feminist favorite Reviving Ophelia?
So i asked you why girls need more protecting than boys, and you seem to imply that girls are more vunerable to sexually destructive behavior. Can i ask you, who are these girls doing this sexually descructive behavior, with other girls or themselves? With boys, right? where do these boys come from, thin air? So why doesn't this Christian Purity Party encourage boys to not engage in such behavior? If you want girls to be "pure" you should be teaching boys AND girls to be "pure" instead of putting all of the responsibility on girls. Unless of course you believe that "boys will be boys" and they are beyond talking to, whereas girls aren't. Which is a misandrist attitude. Yes, there is some talk of boys being pure, but it's not nearly as loud and prevalent as for girls. There is no purity party for boys.
There's nothing misogynist about a father controlling/guiding his daughter's sexuality until age 18, or when she leaves the house --- just as it's not misogynist for him to control her allowance, her choice of clothing, or her access to the family car keys.
Well, all of those are material external things. Her sexuality is her own body and is emotional as well as material. if you want commodify women's sexuality as someone else's possession, fine, but don't expect me to say that's okay. Moreover, do you think it would be okay, then, for a father to burst into his 17-year-old daughter's room while she's masturbating and tell her to stop? To forbid masturbation? And, you and the purity party people seem to be implying not that the girl gets her sexuality when she's 18, but that the father gives it to her husband when she gets married, so a woman is not in charge of her own sexuality at any point. what a charming and saudi arabian idea :)
It isn't a one-sided issue for either girls or boys.
Well, these purity parties are for girls. What about the boys, you don't really talk about them in the same terms. For some reason, you've fixated on the father's possession of a girl's sexuality, not any of the other permutations, like the mother's possession of a boy's sexuality.
Hopefully the father did the gentle guidance thing without being tyrannical ---- liberals can't imagine religious fathers being loving and nice instead of mean and abusive, which is quite the stereotype.
it's not black or white here, eric, but this particular instance seems extreme and i'm stunned you're not only defending it, but going even further.