Tag: Purity

  • They are agreeing to being spiritually married to their father

    A startling – yet all too easily understandable – item from Purity Culture. Lynn Beisner at AlterNet:

    My step-father began having problems getting erections when I was a senior in high school. How did I find out about this? He told me that he was using me to get an erection so that he could have sex with my mother.

    We were very religious people. We attended a Fundamentalist Baptist Church so sexually conservative I was not even allowed to wear jeans. But still, he would sit me down and discuss what he had been thinking on those nights when he pressed my body against his and stroked my hair, the curve of my hip and the area between my collar bone and breasts until his penis was hard against my thigh.

    In those incredibly awkward and galling conversations he reassured me repeatedly that he would never do anything to compromise my virginity.

    So using her to get a hard-on is perfectly fine. Purity is preserved.

    In a way it’s staggering in its callous absurdity, but in another way it’s just of course, the whole point of patriarchy is ownership of female sexuality, so naturally Mr Horndog rationalizes that it’s all cool as long as he doesn’t actually Break Her Hymen.

    But it’s worse than that.

    To better understand the role that Purity Culture played in my step-father’s abuse, I would ask that you bear with me while I explain a little about the beliefs and practices of that culture. I should distinguish first the difference between the emphasis placed on purity in mainline Christian circles, and the hardcore Purity Community. The latter is best known for their the icky tradition of Purity Balls.  At these annual events, daughters as young as five dress in elaborate white gowns and “gift” their virginities to their fathers for safekeeping.

    I will grant you that purity balls are indeed cringe-worthy. But it is important that we not stop our examination of the culture at that point because the Purity Culture is far more troubling, and the relationship between father and daughter becomes far more enmeshed and emotionally incestuous than most articles about purity culture expose.

    For starters, the balls are celebrations of the vow that these girls have made and the contract that they sign. They are agreeing to being spiritually married to their father and to God until such time as their father sees fit to give her to a husband. For their part, fathers pledge to protect their daughters’ virginity, which is the “most precious gift that she can offer her future husband.”

    Yeah you know that’s really not…

    …it’s not a thing, not Christianity only more so, not extra extra pure. Daughters “spiritually marrying” their fathers…that’s a twist.

    According to Vision Forum, one of the leaders in the Purity Culture, a father treats his daughter in such a way that is that he “woos her and wins her with a tenderness and affection unique to that relationship”

    My step-father couldn’t woo me using Purity Balls, because there were none at that point.  Back then, fathers were encouraged to woo their daughters on regular dates.  My step-father would bring me flowers, open doors for me and generally treat me like I was his much younger girlfriend.

    Ew!

    I did a post on the Ew back in September 2011, via a post of Libby Anne’s. Everyone who commented was equally horrified.

    And in practice…it turned out to be every bit as creepy as it looked.

    To me, these dates felt more like an excuse for my step-father to re-experience his youth. He got to be seen with a younger woman on his arm, and more importantly he got to spend an hour or two basking in the warmth and adoration of someone who was not allowed to challenge him.

    I am not being egotistical when I say that my step-father fell for me, developed a huge and creepy crush on me during those dates. Had we been allowed to have the normal step-father/daughter relationship where we ignore each other and occasionally snarl back and forth, I feel fairly sure he would never have developed that heartfelt affection and sexual attraction.

    But  the dates succeeded in one way: They taught me exactly what I should expect while dating men in that environment: abuse.

    And the other thing they taught her?

    The second lesson, however, is about more than just being your father’s servant. It is meant to teach young women to orient their entire lives around pleasing their fathers as practice for pleasing their husbands.  One of the more important ways that this shows up is in the requirement that  a woman dress and groom herself in a way which pleases her father.

    A prime example of this is a statement from Michelle Duggar, a star of the hit series “19 and Counting” She said that she styles her hair however Jim Bob prefers because “what he likes is what I want.”  The Botkin sisters, luminaries in the Purity Movement, talk about wearing  their father’s favorite colors, styles in dress and hair so that their father will enjoy seeing them.

    Girls are trained to be patriotropic.

    In the practical case of my step-father,  surrendering to his wishes about my appearance led to him treating me as his personal Barbie doll.  He bought my clothes had my hair styled as he wanted. Then under the guise of giving his stamp of approval to the outfits that I planned to wear, he would demand fashion shows. Although they were obviously for his titillation, he was doing nothing more than what Purity Culture encourages.

    It’s inevitable, when this is made so central. It’s funny about that, isn’t it – it’s not charity or compassion or making the world a better place that’s made central in these cults, it’s patriarchy – real patriarchy, literal patriarchy, not the sublimated watered down version that we secular weirdos have to navigate.

    Of course not every man in purity culture uses his daughter to treat his erection problems. But the attitudes and beliefs about women that encourage men to see daughters as apprentice wives and their sexuality as his make it very easy justify all manner of oppression and abuse just as my step-father justified his behavior.  The potential for abuse grows exponentially when you factor in the isolation that these families and religions generally practice which leave the fathers with no fear of reprisal and daughters without recourse.

    What does “apprentice wife” mean in this context? A girl who is being groomed for literal slavery. It’s a decorated, veiled, beribboned kind of slavery, but it is slavery.

  • The land of the pure

    That “God” person must be one crazy primate, given the twisted frantic obsessiveness with which its fans fret about Purity in the Female.

    Being in a room with a boy who’s not part of your family is considered damaging to the girl’s purity. Purity becomes a minefield and the only way to avoid it is, I’m sad to say this, staying at home. Inside your house. Seriously, don’t even take out the garbage because some boy might say hi and talk to you, and you would be flirting. And anyway, what if somebody saw you? They’d gossip their mouths fuzzy that you’re having a secret boyfriend and once that’s in people’s minds, you’re about as damaged as a vase somebody dropped out the 13th floor on the hard concrete sidewalk.

    And what about men? Well, men are so focused on sex even at a young age, you can’t really blame them for a slip here and there. A man who wastes his purity on, say, holding hands, will not be “as impure” as a woman doing it. And even worse: A man who admits his “sin” is considered strong, spiritually mature and godly. His purity is easy fixed in the minds of people. A woman admitting her “sin” is still damaged. The reputation of being impure will always follow her around.

    It’s all so…literal. You know? Boys expel, girls receive, so girls are always dirty and smutched while boys are always basically clean. A dirty girl can never get clean again.

    I couldn’t go out alone, or with girls only, or, much worse, with boys who weren’t related to me. Whenever I wanted to do something outside the house, I needed a male relative with me. Even at the supermarket I couldn’t move too far away from my mother (unless one of my smaller brothers went with me). My smaller brothers were trained to “protect” their sisters, us older ones as well as the younger ones. Age didn’t matter, gender did. A girl out alone, walking down the street to bring something to that nice old lady a living a quarter mile away? Can’t have that!

    But a Magic Male fixes everything, even if he’s 6 to her 15. That’s how magic is.

    Our lessons for school were different. We learned female things like cleaning, sewing, music and cooking, together with girls from like-minded families. There were meetings with other women from our community, old and young, teaching us different instruments and exchanging “secrets”. How do you get grass stains out of those jeans? What can you do when you overcooked potatoes? It was treated like secret, sacred knowledge. We were miles ahead of those secular feminists who couldn’t even boil water without burning down the house.

    We also had lessons on men. How to treat them, how to act around them, what they liked and didn’t like. Wise tips and tricks were given. Always have a glass of your husband’s or Dad’s favourite drink ready when he gets home. Don’t bother him with questions. Cheerfully eat the food you hate once a week if that’s his favourite food.

    And thank your lucky stars it will always be 1952 where you are.