Purity Ball

Via Amanda, the creepiest thing I've come across in quite a while. The South Dakota alternative to the traditional "Father-Daughter Dance." The "Purity Ball:"

It is impossible to convey what I have seen in their sweet spirits, their delicate, forming souls, as their daddy takes them out for their first, big dance. Their whole being absorbs my loving attention, resulting in a radiant sense of self-worth and identity. Think of it from their perspective: My daddy thinks I'm beautiful in my own unique way. My daddy is treating me with respect and honor...My daddy really loves me!"

OK--I'm the father of a pre-teen girl. I can relate to that. Nothing wrong there (well, okay, not much), and I think we'd all agree that our society could use more men spending time with their kids.

But then there's the pledge. See, the whole point of the Purity Ball is that the little girls make a pledge. About sex. With their fathers. (The pledge--not the sex).

I pledge to remain sexually pure...until the day I give myself as a wedding gift to my husband. ... I know that God requires this of me... that he loves me, and that he will reward me for my faithfulness.

And Dad has his pledge, too:

[I] choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity....I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home.

Emphasis mine.

"High Priest" and "Wedding Gift” aside (because the patriarchy and women-as-property connotations are just too obvious to deserve comment), what this reminds me of a great deal is the traditional wedding ceremony, in which the father "gives" the woman to her new master husband.* Dad is the only person qualified to not only consent to her marriage, but also to vouch for her virginity. It's Dad's job to make sure that his merchandise isn't spoiled, or else he won't ever be able to unload it. Her virginity is not hers to safeguard, but his.

Ugh. Ick.

But if you're like me, your first reaction (Ugh. Ick.) may not be completely on target. Because my first idea was that it's just creepy for a man to be that, well, intimate with his daughter's budding sex life.

But if you think about it, it's really just the Religious Right version of Dad sitting down with his little gender-warrior and reading It's Perfectly Normal or Where Did I Come From, something I have done with both my kids. If we think that parents should talk with kids about sex early, then we can't really fault these South Dakota Dads for teaching their seven year-olds terms like "sexually pure." There's every reason that parents should be mentors in all areas of their children's lives. It may be abstinence-only, but at least seven year-olds are getting sex ed. That's more than I would expect from South Dakota.

But it's still real creepy.

So I thought about why. And here's what came to me:

Where are the Moms?

Why is it about the Dads? Why are these little (and not-so little) girls having this big sexual (or non-sexual) initiation rite with their Dads instead of their moms? Why is it that the equation that springs to my mind is [Dad + Daughter’s Sex Life] x Control = Patriarchy?

Well, for starters, think about the other possibilities that the good people of South Dakota could have chosen: Mother/Son purity balls, Father/Son Purity Hunting Trips, Mother/Daughter Purity Day-Spas.

That last one would make a good bit of sense. Kind of a Phyllis Schlafly-approved Red Tent. After all, it’s women who have traditionally mentored girls in their developing sexuality, and there are a lot of good reasons for that. But guess what—this kind of thing is not really about mentoring anybody about anything. Not at its traditional, social root. It’s about protecting the purity of the bloodline. We’ll come back to that word, “purity,” in a minute.

What about Mother/Son purity balls? Well, there are good reasons that Mother/Son balls--pure or impure--don't generally exist. To put it crudely, the boy would be "sissified." Can you imagine a budding patriarch pledging his virginity to his mother? I think not. Women are not allowed to have control over men’s sex lives.

So, what about the Father/Son Purity Hunting Trip? This one would also seem to make a fair amount of sense. If you’re into any kind of traditional gender roles, it makes sense for men to mentor their boys. At the very least, it would be nice to see men telling their son's that fucking is serious business, and not just a big homosocial competition.

But they don't exist. Why not?

A much older phenomenon may be illustrative. In the early Twentieth Century, most Southern white men could imagine no worse fate than if their white daughter had sex with a black man. This fear was used to break the back of the Populist movement—which mobilized Southern blacks and poor whites against the wealthy whites who were oppressing them both. The wealthy landowners, under the banner of White Supremacy, convinced the poor whites that unless the “Negroes” were politically disenfranchised, the poor whites would lose the one thing that every (white) man, no matter how poor, was entitled to—the purity of his patrilineage:

“You cannot seek the Negro vote without asking him to your home sooner or later. If you ask him to your house, he will break bread with you at last. And if you seat him at your table, he has the right to ask your daughter's hand in marriage.”

That's Thomas Dixon, the Harriet Beecher Stowe of White Supremacy. Shorter White Supremacist: "Let a Nigra vote, and he’ll fuck your daughter."

So, back to the word “purity,” for a moment, because it’s central to both phenomena. My first guess is that the Religious Right has chosen “purity” over “virginity” or “chastity” because the former is now a synonym for “nerd,” and the latter makes us think of Lancelot and Guinevere.

But what is “purity?” It doesn’t mean “virginity.” The second definition given (after the wholly useless "The quality or condition of being pure") is “A quantitative assessment of homogeneity or uniformity.” In other words, a girl who is “pure” is a girl who is untampered with. She has not had anything “mixed” in with her essential nature. Hence both the words “Adultery” (the condition of being adulterated) and “Miscegenation” (from the Latin miscre, to mix).

So, you’re starting to see the connection here— for a woman, unauthorized sex (whether it’s outside of an approved heteropatriarchal marriage or outside of her “race),” automatically renders her “impure”—that is, mixed or adulterated.** The only possible way to know that all your wife’s sons are yours is if you know that you are the only person fucking your wife. The only way to make sure that all of your daughter’s sons are your grandchildren (not to mention the only way to keep her marketable to other men) is to make sure that your daughter is "pure."

But not your son. No, sons don’t need to be pure. Now, I’m not saying that the Religious Right isn’t reaching out to young men to try to get them to keep their pants on till their wedding night. It’s just that I’m noticing a dearth of “Mother Son Purity Balls” and “Father Son Purity Hunting Trips,” and eight year-old boys taking "Purity Pledges."

No, sons don’t need to be pure, because sons can’t be made impure, in the original patriarchal sense of the word. You can't be made impure if you can’t get pregnant.

Look at it this way--if I have an ounce of gold and an ounce of lead, I can render the gold literally “impure” by mixing in a small amount of lead. The remaining .97 of an ounce of lead, however, will still be pure. Sex has, for Hecate knows how long, been associated with contamination on the part of the woman, but not on the man. He "gives" something of himself to her, she "receives," and is therefore--if his gift is unauthorized--tainted or contaminated. This, I assume, is because in the patrilineage-protecting view of sex, unauthorized sex leaves no trace upon the man, but it can quite clearly mark the woman as "impure." Until they can get pregnant, boys can’t get impure.

So, at least the Religious Right is being honest with it’s new buzzword. In the same way that abortion isn’t about the babies, “purity” isn’t about virginity, chastity, or sexual health. It’s about men exercising, dramatizing, ritualizing, and celebrating their control over women’s sexuality.

And the quote above about disenfranchising African-Americans wasn’t about the prevention of race-mixing. You notice there was no mention of “Your son breaking bread in a Negro’s house.” There was no threat made that racial equality would result in your son “asking a Negress’ hand in marriage.”

Because the very same men who were shooting, hanging, and burning African-American men on a regular basis over imagined (fantasized?) rapes of white women were visiting black prostitutes and raping black women on a regular basis. Having your patrilineage violated is a horror, outrage, and embarrassment. Fucking up someone else's patrilineage is a sport.
Which brings us, once again, back to the word purity, and definition number five:

“The degree to which a color is free from being mixed with other colors”



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*I'm not saying that any of this is going through anybody's mind at the time--just that it's the traditional meaning of the symbolism.

** For all you (female) adulterers out there (i.e., anyone having sex outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage), it might be worth noting that some of the other synonyms given for “impure” include: black, contaminated, corrupt, debased, defiled, desecrated, dirty, filthy, foul, infected, nasty, polluted, profaned, tainted, unclean, and vile.