Judith Warner's moral madness

But there is nonetheless a kind of horror to their obsession with their daughters' sexuality

It seems that there is a certain level of moral obtuseness (obtuseity? Hmmm) required to scribble for the Times.

There are consequences involved with this activity apart from any religious aspect. I suspect that even in the more religious of households there are practical concerns.

Do we know if Judith has daughters?

I'll be frank. The purity ball creeps me out. That doesn't mean I'm ready to label it abusive.

Similarly, the hymen reconstructions strike me as bizarre, as do some tattoos and body piercings. That doesn't mean I'm ready to claim they are an offense against reason and dignity and every single person who follows the religion that inspires hymen reconstruction is barbaric. I see the choice as a personal one.

But it's not a matter of degree. It's a matter of crossing lines. Dancing with your daughter is one thing, fathering children by her is quite another category. We don't all draw lines in the same place, and some people see everything on a continuum, but I adhere to some absolutes. Is my thinking too simple?

Price of Freedom, synonyms don't necessarily imply different meanings. Most scholars think there's no real import behind the different Greek words used in the passage you discuss (although preachers with too much zeal and too little Greek have often made too much hay of them).

There are millions of us who know the Bible in Greek and Hebrew and the few parts in Aramaic, and we debate these things. But when it comes to sexuality texts in the NT, the passages have generally been rightly understood throughout history. Most people who advocate overthrowing conventional sexual morality will concede this; they argue instead that the Bible simply doesn't matter anymore on these issues.

As far as Ms Warner's ravings...I think it'd obvious to all people of good will that she's an idiot. Now, chastity balls freak me out a little, even as conservative as I am. But being concerned for a daughter's virtue is not a sign of some Freudian illness. In the context of our home and family, I'll raise my daughters to treasure their virginity and give it to their husband someday. And anyone who messes with my daughter by teaching them otherwise or threatening their honor is in for a good old fashioned ass-kicking, delivered in person.

It has been a long-held belief, particularly in Christian circles that the closer a girl is to her father, the longer she'll wait to become sexually active. I believe Christian pop-psychologist Kevin Leman wrote about this, but for the life of me I can't find a citing.

I think there is some truth to that. It does seem that the poorer girls who grew up without fathers simply tend to repeat the cycle of becoming sexually active and having children out of wedlock. Although it could be that "Daddy's Little Girl" isn't allowed to bring shame on the family, so has an abortion. But I suspect that it is simply a matter of looking for love. We all want to be accepted. And I'd be real surprised if Paris Hilton's dad was around much when she was growing up either.

Anyhow, Chastity Balls (unfortunate choice of names, sounds like a James Bond vixen) simply started as a way for fathers to show their daughters that they supported the daughter's choice not to become a statistic. To try (we are all grown up enough to realize that not everyone succeeds) to remain abstinate in today's culture. It is not as creepy as everyone makes it out to be, although I'll bet a Mom, not a Dad came up with the idea.

I do find it interesting that there is no equivalent for young men. Once again, they are being given a pass and all the responsibility falls on the young ladies. I don't think I'll suggest it though. The church committee thought I was heretical for suggesting a mother/son banquet to actually show boys how to use a napkin and pull out a lady's chair for her.

I do not agree that the traditional reading of religious texts cannot be debated. In Hebrew, Aramaic, and New Testament Greek, there have been major texts discovered in recent history and there is a much greater understanding of these languages today than in the past. For New Testament Greek, the main text I use is "An Introductory New Testament Greek Course" by Francis T. Gignac. Gignac also compiled "A Grammar Of The Greek Papyri Of The Roman And Byzantine Periods" in 2 volumes. These texts , among others, have vastly increased our knowledge of New Testament Greek. I am not arguing that we don't know the traditional readings or that there is anything wrong with accepting the traditional readings, but to suggest that the debate on ancient texts has been settled once and for all is not correct. As Gignac correctly says on page 18 of his Introductory Text: "There is rarely a one-to-one correspondence between Greek and English words...The precise meaning of a word must be always be determined from its context". We have quite a bit of new knowledge today which can influence the meaning and context of these texts. Again, I am not advocating people give up their beliefs, only asking that the new readings be given a fair and decent hearing.

Hmmm. Interesting post.

I, too, have the sense that purity balls are a bit creepy, so naturally I read a bit more about them to figure out why.

As with so many things that dot the Evangelical Christian landscape, I think purity balls may have started out as a not-terrible idea but morphed into something strange and unpleasant.

The ideas behind it are somewhat sound ones: girls often become promiscuous in households where fathers are either absent or emotionally abusive in some way (distant, hypercritical of daughters but not sons, etc.). And men in today's culture don't always reflect the best examples of chastity--so the idea to have a father promise to his daughter, as some pledges word it, that he will personally avoid any conduct which devalues women isn't such a terrible thing.

However, when this became combined with chastity pledges made publicly and made specifically to a girl's father is when I think things took on the "creepy" hue. Quite frankly, in a more mannerly age no Christian father would dream of discussing his daughter's chastity in public; there ought, in his mind, to be no question that she is chaste and will remain so until marriage, as he has raised her to share his values in this and all other things--and he should believe exactly the same thing about his sons, whom he has presumably taught to respect women.

Further, should it become evident that either a daughter or a son has failed in this area, the father is then called upon to model the loving forgiveness of the Heavenly Father.

That said, it's a huge leap to jump from the notion of purity balls, however unsound they may be in practice, to Muslim women seeking surgical reconstruction of "virginity" or of the terrible man in Austria. Girls and women are more harmed by promiscuous behavior than by parents who raise them to value chastity and to see sex as properly belonging to marriage. Sex outside of marriage is nearly always a much riskier proposition for a woman than it is for her male partner(s). Feminism and the post-sexual-revolution culture may have changed the cultural acceptability of female promiscuity, but the toll this behavior takes on women is still, and will almost always be, harmful to them in the long run.

I haven't investigated the concept of the "purity ball" in any depth, but I think it is odd that so many of the commenters on this thread are "creeped out" by the idea. I particularly disagree with Alicia's assertion that the mindset behind the "purity ball" idea is the same as what underlies things like female genital mutilation. This shows that Alicia, like Ms Warner, does not understand the Christian notion of "sexual purity" at all.

The virtue of chastity (to give the notion its right name), like all of the virtues, is incumbent upon all people -- not just women and girls and not just singles, but men and women, single and married. To be chaste is to live out one's sexuality in accord with its natural and spiritual purposes. And this in turn can be accomplished only by living in conformity with the revealed will of God as it pertains to sexual behavior. Chastity understood in this way is not, and can never be, a "commodity" as Alicia describes it. The "mindset" that leads Christian fathers to want to teach the virtue of chastity to their children (sons and daughters alike) has nothing to do with the mindset that leads to such things as genital mutilation.

Entirely unrelated, but NBC is reporting that Tim Russert died of a heart attack today. May God rest his soul. I rather liked the man--many cuts above the preening O'Reillys and Olbermanns.

I read the Judith Warner piece this morning too. Ridiculous. It reminded me of Katha Pollit's column in The Nation last year in which she critiqued the movie "Knocked Up" for not portraying abortion as the proper response to an unwanted pregnancy. The movie's protagonists chose to have their baby instead, which Pollit seemed to regard as a bad thing.

Encouraging daughters to remain--er--chaste is one thing. Making the mistake of trying to threaten the boyfriend can get you killed if he is carrying a gun (like I did when I was young).

(Actually what really scared him was not so much the gun as the silencer that went with it. I'll never forget the look on that poor man's face!)

There are much better ways to encourage your children to chose chastity.

Even when I was most evangelical-fundie these "Purity Balls" gave me the creeps They often mimic the marriage ceremony with daddy standing in for the groom. The american church has become an ossified bastion for pedophiles from the Jehovahs Witnesses, and Catholosism, to the Southern Baptists conventions recent refusal to track known sex offending pastors and employees.

I think "Purity Balls" at their roots cast girls in the same light in the common culture, it's sex. They package little girls up as baby 'ho's or little housewives, whatever suits the fancy of the marketer.

Young men are held to no such standard, but thats probably better suited to a different blog post

Some Christian girls buy into the 'ideal' of the loving patriarchy, the male headship, etc, as if it can exist on earth, then they actually make life decisions based on the ideology, and the woman wakes up one day and discovers she is not married to a loving patriarch, but a controlling abusive loser. It some church circles it's very easy for some men to conceal bad character behind conservative-sounding theology. Watch out, girls.

I think it's interesting that even some commenters who are more conservative than me think Purity Balls are at least slightly icky. Doesn't this suggest anything to you, Rod? Maybe you should listen to them.

I am uncomfortable by the idea of Purity Balls, and wouldn't participate in them. But to say that there's any connection between fathers who participate in them, and fathers who imprison, rape and impregnate their daughters, is berserk. Maybe you should think about that.

I really liked the comment below that was posted at Warner's (over-the-top) blog by a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - the point being well-made that in a community that upholds a high moral standard and supports its members in living out that standard, things like "purity balls" are unnecessary to protect their children - I may not agree with the LDS doctrines, but there we have something important to learn from some of the ways they use community to promote moral living:

40.June 13th,
2008
6:04 am I was a virgin until my marriage, largely because of my religious community (LDS, not evangelical). Frankly, I’m grateful I had a culture around me that encouraged waiting to have sex until I had a husband (or “committed partner,” if you prefer). Secular culture is just as pushy in its opinion about what is “good” for us, and I don’t think that casual or premarital sex is good for girls OR boys.

Perhaps that distinguishes LDS culture — we don’t have purity balls, and we teach the value of abstinence until marriage just as much with the boys as we do with the girls.

While Warner may think some fathers are pushing protection and chastity too much, it’s equally “sick” in my opinion how the larger culture teaches that we are victims of our bodies’ needs and that sex can and should be enjoyed without a long-term emotional attachment.

— Posted by thompson

I'll agree that Warner is over the top in her rhetoric. However, I have to agree with Zoetius's and Michael's comments above, regarding the attitudes that underlie "purity balls".

Also, let's be honest here, another problem with purity balls is the fact that they are utterly vulgar and declasse, as one would expect, given the people who would participate in such activities. The extent to which cultural prole drift in America and the mainstreaming of conservative Evangelical Protestant culture have coincided with one another is no accident.

Mark in Houston, I don't whether that comment was honest, but it sure was rude.

Well, Arthur, when one thinks of purity balls, or the conservative Evangelical megachurch crowd in general, words like "tasteful", "cultured" or "elegant" don't usually come to mind. In fact, one often hears people from that crowd revel proudly in the fact that such words aren't usually used to describe them, usually in the guise of some sort of "we're just folks and proud of it" populist pose. Sorry if pointing that out offends you, but facts are stubborn things.

Mark in Houston,

Discriminations on such matters as "vulgarity" and "elegance" are wholly subjective and therefore cannot be facts. It isn't factual that you yourself are more vulgar and more lacking in elegance and a a certain sort of culture than most conservative evangelicals are. It's simply a matter of opinion, one with no more weight than your own, except that I would wager that more people would take a dimmer view of you than you yourself take of those who are different from you in certain ways. Even if one takes on the whole a negative view of purity balls and the lot it is not hard to take an even more negative view of someone like you. Based on how you have comported yourself on this thread, you just seem like an exceedingly petty, uninteresting, and uncultivated little person to me -- an assessment with which many must agree, given your rather sad need to plump yourself up by bullying others in the relative safety of cyberspace.

Maybe Mark in Huston is a speech writer for Obama.

"Based on how you have comported yourself on this thread, you just seem like an exceedingly petty, uninteresting, and uncultivated little person to me -- an assessment with which many must agree, given your rather sad need to plump yourself up by bullying others in the relative safety of cyberspace."

Actually, all I did in this thread was make a few general cultural observations that you disagreed with and I didn't single out any particular person in my comments (which is what bullies generally do), other than in my response to you after you came after me. Also, you haven't been able to disprove anything I said other than to say "it's all a matter of opinion", which is a banal observation and generally a cop-out in any serious discussion of cultural matters.

In any case, I haven't bullied anyone, unless you think that anyone who states their views clearly and without resorting to PC euphemisms is a bully. If that is the way you look at the world, all I can say is that you are the one with the problems relating to self-confidence, and trust me, if I wanted to play the role of bully, my language would be much harsher than anything I've said on this thread. But I'm really sorry if all this frank discussion has offended you, Arthur. Maybe you should take a nap with a cold compress on your forehead to get your heart rate down.

Matt, sorry I spelled your city's name wrong! I won't try to pretend that I was making a sly and meaningful allusion to Wise Blood the movie, directed by John Huston. That would have been a smart thing to do, probably, but the truth is that my wedding ring is too tight and I often drop my o's when typing. (Hah)
I wasn't exactly offended by what you said about evangelicals. I was just surprised and a little amused that somebody talking about good taste (or the lack of it) spoke in a way that would make everybody shudder at a martini party. However, I bet you're a lot nicer in person. Computer screens make us all a little vulgar!

This seemed pertinent. From www.Magpie-girl.com a blog by Rachel Chapman

"Jon Stewart’s response to this and other parts of the abstinence only assessment reports was to say: “Of course, we all know that! Boys have a God Stick and girls have a shame cave.” Now obviously, this was a joke and Jon was employing exaggeration to make a comic point. But I’ve got to tell you, he’s not far off. This is the message many young women receive when they are taught that the only acceptable course of action is for them not to have sex until marriage. Even if they are in love. Even if they are mature. Even if their body is screaming otherwise. Even if they don’t marry until 25, or 35, or 45.

The rest is worth reading. It is a far balanced than Judith Warners hyperbolic missive.

First of all, the article is, indeed, extremely stupid, as it ignored the reason that Muslim women are doing it...the quite real threat to their life that having a broken hymen on their wedding night can present. There's absolutely no comparison to anything in Christianity...at least not any more.

However, I would like to point out that purity balls are still horrible and very unchristian. There is no such thing as 'pure' and 'unpure' women, or even any meaningful theological differences between virginal and unvirginal women (or men).

Presumably, if a woman is not a virgin, and has not been married, she has sinned at least once, but considering pretty much everyone's sinned at least once, and we've born with sin anyway, that's not a fairly useful distinction. We don't go around talking about someone is 'impure' because they shoplifted something once.

No, 'Purity balls' have nothing to do with Christianity, which doesn't even have the concept of being without sin except WRT to Christ, and everything to do with sexism. 'Purity' is sheer nonsense theologically and sexist tripe, trying to make sexual sin (Especially by women.) some sort of unrecoverable condition.

Mark in Houston,

I repeat: Discriminations like "class" (or the lack thereof) and "vulgarity" are wholly subjective. They consist of value judgements based on subjective suppositions, not of facts that can be appealed to in an objective way. For that reason, neither I nor any one else on this thread has felt the need to counter your assertions on the terms in which they've been couched -- terms completely lacking in validity.

To your charge that you haven't bullied anyone personally -- well, you most certainly have. Everyone conservative, every evangelical, and everyone who has ever attended a purity ball is a person, as are you. And you owe them the same consideration you would ask for for yourself from those around you.

You take me to task for responding to you on the same sort of terms which you yourself employed to denigrate those who disagree with you on the subjects of politics, religion, and sexuality -- and also presumably those who are of a different social or economic class from your own.

Yours seems to be a textbook case of dishing out what one is not prepared to take.

You seem to think that it is alright for you to speak "the inconvenient truth" about people with whom you fail to sympathize, but *not* alright for anyone else to speak the same sort of truth about *you* in your own turn.

As for *me* being hot under the collar, which seems more temperate to you: actively demeaning someone else's dignity, or sticking up for someone else by giving back as good to their bully as the bully's victims got?

Finally, let me add my accolades to the chorus of acclaim for what was truly a wonderful piece of imagistic writing. I'm now headed off to my room with no dessert. : )

"Yours seems to be a textbook case of dishing out what one is not prepared to take." Well, since you have decided to play pop psychoanalyst in your comments, Arthur (something I haven't done thus far with anyone on this thread), I will do so for a minute or two. It sounds to me like you are someone who is projecting their problems and mental tics on others, and in addition, you also sound like the type of sad little man who got stuffed in gym lockers and wedgied (ed -- is that a verb?) quite a bit during high school (both before and after whining to your teachers about something your classmates said or did), and never quite got over it. Gee, isn't it fun to play internet shrink?

Also, I wasn't taking you to task "for responding to you on the same sort of terms which you yourself employed to denigrate those who disagree with you", I was responding to Marian's point about my commentary and use of the PC phrase. In fact, I didn't respond to you at all in my last comment. I have no problem with people speaking firmly about their views. I'm an adult, and this is an opinion website where ideas are debated freely and without reservation, and people can and should discuss the underlying ideas without whining about people being mean, unless the comments are racist, sexist, etc., I'm fine with some standards being maintained. I was simply pointing out that such language is commonly used here to critique some groups on this blog, so my use of such language to critique conservative Evangelical culture shouldn't be off-limits. Also, under your logic, anyone who expresses an opinion that might offend someone else (like, Bill Clinton was a bad President and a sexual obsessive - oh, no, I've bullied the Clintonistas!) is a bully and demeaning the dignity of others. That's an absurd line of argument. In fact, it's a whine, not an argument.

One quick point on whether some cultural matters can be analyzed with some element of objectivity - while all cultural distinctions are human-created and therefore not subject to external proof (like, for example, the laws of physics), one can analyze certain activities as being vulgar or not within a culture. For example, while it may be acceptable to belch or break wind at the dinner table in some cultures (if memory serves, that was the case in ancient Cappadocia), doing so at a modern American dinner party would be considered to be vulgar - objectively vulgar. One can make distinctions within a general culture, unless one is a complete relativist and nihilist, which I certainly am not. And that's today's lesson in Cultural Analysis 101.

Oops--I meant Mark. Sigh. Sorry.

Oh, yeah. The actual topic of this thread...

Hymens can be weakened and broken by athletic activity and tampon use. More good reasons to keep them in the house, eh?

I like the idea of teaching calculus midway through Algebra I. Gotta catch that one-in-a-million person who will actually understand it and -- gasp! -- act on it.

It seems to me counter-intuitive that a father should be that specifically active in his daughter(s')'s sexual development. I'd have thought that he should trust his wife to handle that, seeing as how she not only has some valid claim to direct experience, but is in a better position to answer certain questions... of course, unless he and she were having sex before they were married, and even -- gasp!! -- not with each other! That would be a major conundrum, yes indeed.

No sarcs were injured in the construction of the above sarcasm.

"I must say, I too find that it is indeed irredeemably vulgar to put one's little girl up on stage and gloat over her virginity."

Sig, I find it exceedingly pleasant when I agree wholeheartedly with someone with whom I typically disagree. This is just such an occasion.

"At its core, a culture that has purity balls with fathers declaring to protect their daughters' purity is connected to a culture where women have their hymens reattached because of the insistence on virginity of brides. They both say something about how chastity is viewed, how women are viewed, and how women are controlled."

This is of course, er...ah...correct. (Damn, I need more coffee!)

Since I spend so much online I no longer have the attention span to read all of this thread. ;-) So this may have been mentioned already.

What kills me about the whole hymen reattachment thing is the idea that purity is entirely, or fundementally, physical. Regareless what one thinks of the "correctness" of purity, virginity, etc., if a woman has had 1000 lovers and has her self "fixed" in this way, she's not a virgin. She doesn't not become "innocent" of carnal knowledge so to speak.

To the degree that sin is involved (something not agreed to here of course) this surgical approach to purity is a modern form of Pelagianism. The purity balls probably fit that category as well. I don't know; I haven't had the stomach to actually "study" that phenomenon.

Thanks. Yep, I'm a dad with one son.

On that note, Happy Father's Day to all the dads.

(Seems appropriate for this thread.)

Ooohhhh...all this agreement is making my head hurt! ;-)

I'm feeling a lot of love here.

And as the father of a young daughter, I want to associate myself with this remark cited above: "Probably the strongest role, imo, for fathers with daughters would be one where the daughter becomes so completely accustomed to having her person/feminity respected that she would accept nothing less."

Happy father's day, all.

I leave ALL declarations of bullyhood to Sig. ;-)