Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Abstinence and sabers

I would like to talk about abstinence and the movement since it has been daggled by fate in my face for the last few weeks. First I read in a fashion mag Glamour about abstinence ball called purity balls. The imagery was cheesy, sleazy and sick in nouveau riche fundie style that is so popular in the Bible Belt. Image TExas poptart promising to love honor and obey daddy until singing boyfriend is given permission to pop It and that is a purity ball with ballerinas and pseudo-antebellum rituals like walking under swords to officiating witnesses, a nice Militaristic touch because when we are dealing with teenage hormones an imperialistic attitude is needed. I wonder if the term Emotional Incest was ever introduced to these people. They keep blathering on about how good a father's attention is. That girls with good relationships with their father do better in school, go to college and have high powered careers. What they do not say is that neither hell nor high water are they going allow little petunia to have a career. They will make sure to arrange a traditional marriage for the little flower. I do not think these people understand it is the quality of the attention that the daughter gets from father matters not the quantity nuerotic attention.

Patriarchal Father can be very attentive, unfortunately, to the children they have The Barretts of Wimpole street comes to mind. It is an attentiveness garners for the children large psychotherapy bills and for the unfortunate few time spent in battered womens shelters when becoming adults. It is very hard to watch a grown woman who has never been taught to think for herself and see religious organizations circling like vultures wanting to tell her what to think. The problem with the abstinence movement is that it goes against Human Nature most teenage girls do not want to have sex, they want a boy to love them and be affectionate. Their bodies are still getting used being fertile to really want or enjoy sex and procreation. BUT teenage boys are another subject, the truth is at the purity ball the wrong gender is promising to remain abstinent. WE really need boys promising their mothers that they will remain pure and not badger girls for sex at these balls. Then abstinent pledges will work and movement would have credibility. We will never see that because of the male eeck factor the imagery should evoke.

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