I wonder how many of the girls who made the pledge did so having already “done the deed”, as it were?
If my father were the type of father who would take me to one of these events, there’s no way I’d have been honest and open with him if I’d already had sex.
Bet there were a few guilty post-pledge tears shed later that night. 
I’m sorry, but if it’s *not * about preserving the hymen, then I’m going to need someone to explain to me why there are no boys there, and why there are no big fancy parties where children of both genders and their parents publicly declare their familial commitment to spiritual purity of *other * sorts.
When is the Father/Daughter (or Mother/Son) Poverty Ball? The Honesty Ball? The Humility Ball? Hell, I’d settle for the Say No To Drugs Ball.
Johanna as far as controlling the impregnation of daughters is concerned I agree that it’s about economics, but I don’t think it’s about property specifically.
Male human instinct is attuned to passing on genes. This involves two strategies (a) impregnating women and (b) doing what can be done to best ensure that your children survive in good shape, hopefully to have children of their own and so on.
When it comes to daughters, strategy (a) is not a factor since you are not going to impregnate them. Indeed, you need to ensure that other males do impregnate your daughters, because your genes go nowhere (at least through your daughters) if they die old maids.
However, the sexual fate of your daughters is important to strategy (b).
In furtherance of (b) basic male human instinct is to prevent one’s daughters from being impregnated:
1/ too young (ie early teens) because firstly that makes the daughter and her child (who carries only 25% of the head male’s genes) a burden at a time when the daughter might otherwise be at an age very handy for helping to raise siblings (ie thereby maximising the survival chances of the father’s 50% gene carriers, his other children) and because secondly that may be too early for your overly young daughter to do a good job of raising your grandkids; and
2/ by stray males in casual circumstances because if the impregnator doesn’t stick around to help with providing for the daughter and child, that is a burden that will then fall on you and your daughter’s mother, which again puts a strain on your resources, raising someone who at best carries 25% of your genes when you could be expending those resources on your own children.
Males don’t generally mind (indeed are quite in favour of) their daughters getting pregnant by well connected, stable, able bodied (ie good provider) males who are going to stick around, because that means the daughter’s children will survive (and they are 25% head male gene carriers, after all) and won’t be a burden.
This is only relevant to wives and not daughters. The only danger here is that your wife’s sons are not your own. Your daughters have nothing to do with it.
Again this makes sense for wives but not daughters. Your daughters are always impregnated by external DNA. Indeed, there is a higher probability, all else being equal, that your wife’s daughter’s child carries your DNA than that your wife’s son’s wife’s child carries your DNA, because the latter involves two (rather than one) chances that your genes are not involved despite what you may have been lead to believe.
I think that your focus is too narrow. Property is just a subset of the real thing that needs to be controlled: child rearing resources.
This is an illustration of my point. The resource poor Beduin control their daughters because child rearing resources are scarce.
I think it’s ironic that fundamentalists who may be those least likely to believe in natural selection as a major source of human motivation do the best job of illustrating how it controls our tendencies.
There are a lot of things more complaintworthy than this… but this is still… ick.
Who makes a pledge (fathers, daughters, or both) seems to vary from one Purity Ball to the next. Here’s one where both do:
I don’t see what’s wrong with having a 11 year old making an oath she/he doesn’t understand. I can say that it’s very, very unlikely that none of the 11 year olds did it against their will–sure, they might not want to waste an evening, but they won’t disagree with the contents of the promise. 11 year olds are brainwashed by one influence or another at that point. What about the Pledge of Allegiance, National Honor Society, or Boy Scouts? All cases of little kids, in all probablity encouraged by their parents, making commitments they don’t necessary understand.
I agree 110%. I’m talking about entering a sexual relationship based on the premise that you two love each other, only to find out he never loved any other part of you and he was perfectly willing to screw any girl that would give him a second look, relationship or no relationship. I think my then-commitment to waiting till marriage saved me from that kind of hurt. Being cheated on hurts enough without the thought that you became just another of his sluts.
I’m speaking from experience. I went to college for 6 years in male-dominated environments, I was VERY popular as being one of the very few semi-attractive females, and got to see a progression from 18 to 25 up close. I’ve also dated 3 men in their 30s. 18 year olds are the most boring dates in the world–they’re always looking for a chance to be alone, and they always try to sneak a feel or get closer or get really close in hugs, and they have this weird “greedy glaze” in their eyes near perpetually–something everyone does, but really boring on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week basis. If there’s evidence that guys that age have more than one thing on their mind, I haven’t seen it.
Ok, fine, you see sexuality outside of marriage as a sin. I disagree, but I understand your point. I see a problem with it, though, and saw it in a couple much like the one described here:
The couple I saw didn’t really know how to have a loving relationship. All they knew was how not to fall into sin. Their relationship was defined by what they weren’t, rather than what they were together. They were confused, anxious and very tentative toward each other.
By putting so much emphasis on controlling sexuality before marriage at the expense of discussing how and why marriages work, you unneccesarily place a huge elephant in the room, around which the couple has to negotiate on top of everything else. Married couples spend far more time with the mundane business of living a common life than they do having sex. If more emphasis was placed early in life on building and maintaining a relationship and sex discussed in that context, there would be much less need for a purity pledge. Sexuality could be tied to the concept of a long-term, committed, loving relationship that existed well before and that will last long after the ceremony, instead of tied to that ceremony that suddenly makes sexuality ok. As long as the ceremony itself makes sexuality ok for no other reason than “ceremony = sex is ok now”, then you will need a purity pledge to prevent unmarried couples in a marriage relationship from fully participating in the relationship. Otherwise, couples will get married so that they can have sinless sex, instead of getting married because of a loving relationship.
So, which is worse: marriage for sinless sex, or marriage for love that may include pre-marital sex?
Vlad/Igor
Right after ballrooms start accepting food stamps.
They don’t believe in advertising because so much of it is not honest.
You won’t hear much about them, they prefer not to toot their own horns.
Enjoy,
Steven
They think it’ll make them go blind.
First of all, of course an 11 year old won’t disagree with the premise. She’s 11. She thinks sex is icky, and doesn’t understand why anyone would *ever * want to do that. That also still doesn’t address how her virtue belongs to her father to guard. I’m frankly unfamiliar with the NHS or Boy Scout’s pledges, but for the record, I object to having young children recite the Pledge of Allegiance for the exact same reason. They don’t *understand * it, and that renders it meaningless.
Being cheated on doesn’t make you a slut, it makes him a slut. IMO, internalizing all of that “good girls don’t” stuff seems to have seriously skewed your perspective on relationship ethics.
I’m guessing that most of the women (and many of the men) also have experience in dating 18 year olds. I do. And yes, they’re horny, but that’s not *all * they are. You’re either working from a really bad sample, or perhaps this “all boys want is one thing” is a self-fullfilling prophecy for you.
Seeing as many of them were around 11-12, I bloody well hope not!
It sounds like you made the right decision for you, then. Personally, I’ve never regretted having sex when I was 16.
I disagree with your premise that “boys under a certain age” are incapable of love. I had two loving relationships while I was in high school. The first lasted for a year and four months, the second lasted for just over two years (and continued from high school into college). Now, they were not always mature or healthy relationships, but we were - both - very much in love. Of course, as I got older and less stupid, my relationships and emotions changed; my love for my current boyfriend is different in some ways from the love I felt for my high school boyfriends, but that doesn’t change the fact that I did love them. I think - I would hope, at least - that boys experience a similar emotional maturation as they become men.
An oath isn’t just something you can break whenever you want. An oath is a promise, and i’m sure you’d agree that the subject of sex before marriage is a very important one. Are you really fine with someone making a promise on such an important issue when they don’t even understand it?
Most likely. As others have pointed out, girls at 11 are more likely to think of sex (and boys) as icky rather than potential boyfriend material.
You’re correct. But two wrongs don’t make a right; just because they’re being coerced into making promises they don’t understand on other subjects, doesn’t mean it’s right to continue that.
As DianaG said, him sleeping around makes him a slut, not you. You’d be a victim, not a co-conspirator.
Well, a lot of guys suck. And a lot of guys don’t. As a teenage male myself, i’m pretty insulted by this, actually. If I were to go into a thread and say “all girls are sluts”, i’d be attacked so quickly my head’d spin. Of course some guys are bastards; I know a good few that are myself. But not all. And while I understand where you’re coming from on this, i’d very much appreciate it if you would take back your sexist remarks.
It reminds me more of Blackstone’s English common law, where a married woman’s identity was “covered” or subsumed by that of her husband. It’s a very odd choice phrasing on the pledger’s part, and I wonder if the echo is intentional.
I always get that creepy-incest vibe when a father is this obsessed with his daughter’s virginity, and it’s that much worse when she’s a pre-teen. There have been a bunch of quality responses to thirdwarning, so I’ll just concur that this ceremony is ridiculous. There’s no point in this kind of promising beyond showing other parents how great a parent you are, and perhaps making your kid feel like a liar later on.
I know guys in their 20s and 30s who are worse than any 18-year-old. And while I’ve never been a fan of teenage guys (my youngest brother is just beginning his teen years), their lecherousness is sometimes overstated. Overstated by whom? In large part, I would guess it’s by the kinds of mothers and fathers who makes their elementary-school aged daughters pledge to remain chaste.
And they all laughed at Bill Clinton… :dubious:
We’re talking about the mores of the society as a whole. Having these rules in place gives you an ally (your father-in-law) for assuring that your children are in fact yours.
Especially in the context of an adult-style, courtship-themed entertainment such as a formal ball, where the girls are wearing makeup and jewelry and fancy floor-length gowns (which, like tuxes, are actually not Miss-Manners-approved garb for the under-18 set, btw) that in many cases are designed to look quite alluring and revealing. Even many pro-virginity Christians don’t have a problem with 16-year-olds at a Purity Ball wearing spaghetti-strap or strapless dresses that show some cleavage, apparently.
And the fact that young girls are presenting themselves in this sexually attractive manner in the sole company of their fathers, and moreover doing couples dances like the foxtrot and the waltz with their fathers (and perhaps their friends’ fathers? do the participating couples exchange dances at Purity Balls?), is Skeeve City as far as I’m concerned. I tend to feel that even the conventional father-daughter dance at weddings, where everybody involved is an adult and there’s no explicit discussion of who’s “covering” whom, has a slightly skeevy feel to it. Sorta “my last chance to pretend I’m the most important man in the life of this nubile beauty before that horny young goat she just wedded gets into her lingerie”. Ew.
But it can’t compare to the skeeve factor of a tux-clad father mimicking a romantic evening with his alluringly dressed adolescent daughter and explicitly talking about her virginity. Yuckity yuckity ick ick ick, can I get some brain bleach here please? If you must have some kind of father-daughter “Purity Event” that’s explicitly about sexual abstinence, can’t you make it a father-daughter softball game or car wash or barbecue or something else that isn’t quite such a cringe-inducingly obvious imitation of sexual courtship?
A car wash would be good. With the girls wearing white T-shirts to symbolize their purity. 
<d&r>
Actually, I know some of my conservative Christian friends have found websites that sell “modest” formal wear, with higher necks and cap sleeves. Personally, some of them just look like the same, boring prom wear-I think you’d be better off designing something that was MEANT to have sleeves, rather than altering an existing formal. Some of them are pretty, though.
Wet, no bra, yeah, that would be the equivalent of a “ball” with very young girls dressed in revealing gowns. (Why do I flash on poor Jon-Benet Ramsey as I write this?)