Evangelical Sexualization of Pre-Teens

One of the joys of my life has been watching my babies become toddlers become preteens become teens become adults (with some (in (((Girl)))’s case) some stopoffs in ‘bitch’).  At every stage, there were difficulties, there were challenges, and there was growth.

And the toughest part about growth was trusting.  I trust myself.  I trust (((Wife))).  Trusting (((Boy))) and (((Girl))) to make the right decision when needed can be a little trying at times.  All (((Wife))) and I can could do is teach them, help them recognize what destructive decisions can do, and, most of all, understand cause and effect relationships.  It has made for a rather roller-coaster ride but, for the most part, the kids have made pretty damn good decisions.

(((Wife))) and I did not lock them up in a convent (though it was (on occasion) tempting (though I’m not sure a Unitarian convent would have had the desired effect).  We did not fill their heads with fairy tails about birth control or the risk of disease.  We did not subject (((Girl))) to a Purity Ball.

What is a purity ball, you may ask (as I did when I first ran across the term)?  A purity ball is (and this is from PurityBall.com so you know it cannot be biased):

The Christian Center is once again thrilled to host the Father-Daughter Purity Ball. It is our pleasure to hold high the banner of purity in the midst of a culture that destroys it.

We hope you will join us as we encourage young women to commit to moral purity and help them understand the beautiful and righteous life God offers them.

The Bible lays the responsibility of protecting daughters at the feet of their fathers. We desire to charge men to take up this mantle of responsibility!

God thinks the protection of a woman’s purity should be extravagant and so do we! We look forward to this formal evening and hope you will join us.

and, if that isn’t enough (from Generations of Light):

As all the dads stood to read the covenant over their daughters, I felt the power of those words sink right into my heart. My father promised to lead a life of integrity and purity for me. He signed his name and I signed as a witness to his words. And as he escorted me to the dance floor I felt empowered by his promise to war for my heart through his life of purity, and I knew my life would never be the same again.

Ah, can’t you just feel the Christian narrow-mindedness love just coursing through the dance hall?

So they encourage Dad to take his daughter to the ball and, as he stands there in his tuxedo and she in her evening gown (or, as in the photo above, tutus), she pledges her virginity to her father. The father sees her as a valuable possession which he can not allow to be tarnished.  His property.  His possession.  His honour which might be sullied by the grubby hands of a teenage boy doing exactly the same things he most likely did as a teen.

The Progressive Puppy has an excellent take on it, including quotes from 

Glamour Magazine:  … the balls are all part of the evangelical Christian movement, and they embody one of its key doctrines:  abstinence until marriage…  The majority of the girls here are, as purity ball guidelines suggest, just old enough to have begun menstruating…

Oddly, the fascination with purity and the attempted de-sexualization of pre-pubescent and pubescent girls has the opposite effect — by emphasizing sexual purity, the father is emphasizing sex.  And by emphasizing the solemn agreement between father and daughter (not, by any stretch of the imagination, an equal relationship), it emphasizes the father’s ownership of the daughter’s sexuality.  It has the effect of sexualizing the child.

One of the most memorable highlights of the ball is when the fathers stand in the middle of the ballroom and form a circle around their daughters standing all aglow in their lovely ball gowns. The fathers place their hands on their daughters, and together we pray for purity of mind, body, and soul for generations to come. (from Generations of Light, my emphasis)

And I think that we all know just how effective substituting authoritarian jingoism for an actual human to human relationship, right? (from the Washington Post):

data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a “virginity pledge,” but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.”Taking a pledge doesn’t seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior,” said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. “But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking.”

This whole Purity Ball strikes me as yet another way to avoid treating children like actual human beings.  It avoids the development of a real relationship between father and daughter.  And it virtually guarantees that, when a decision needs to be made based upon rational and critical thinking, no rational or critical thinking will be used.  Will she knuckle under to the next authoritarian figure who thinks he owns her sexuality?  Or will she make a decision based upon what is best for her future?

(I also suspect that, had I ever tried  to take (((Girl))) to a ball, I would, most likely, have had them kicked into my, well, you get the picture.)