Friday, December 31, 2004

Twisted

All right -- am I wrong, or is something off here?

This man has a "ceremony" with his 12 year old daughter in which he makes her promise to remain a virgin until she marries, saying he's going to be the special man in her life until she finds a a man to replace him --

All right, okay, the ideas behind all this might be okay. Maybe. A father should support his daughter. He ought to tell his daughter she's beautiful and special.

But a father having a "virginity ceremony" with his 12 year old daughter strikes me as slight creeped out.

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/entertainment/20382004.htm

I might add, obsessively patriarchial and a bit of a control-freak -- but I won't.

And notice the end of the story -- this guy sees his daughter as a "gift" for another man. She's nothing but property to him.

Good heavens.

3 comments:

zelda1 said...

Those virginity ceremonies are real big. Mom and Dad give a little gold ring with a diamond to their special daughter. They stand up in front of the church and the young virginal girl, who is barely out of puberty, swears to first God, then her parents, then the church that she will remain pure for her future husband. That she will not fool around ect. The father, who beams with pride, makes a big speech that he will support her and on the day that she and her future husband stand in front of the church to pledge their love and tie the knot, he will gladly take back that ring.
Now, there is never such a ceremony for the boys. In fact, they offered, back when I was poorer than I am now, to buy the gold ring with a cute diamond for me to give to my daughter. I said, "What about the boy, shouldn't we make him swear to stay out of the woods with the gals, what about masturbation, is that permitted?" Then they were shocked and I added, "No, I don't want my daughter promising anyone that she is not going to do something that her raging hormones are going to incline her to go against." Now don't get me wrong. I didn't want her to whore around or even have sex one time, but I knew that there was a lot of guilt associated with growing up, that entire thing about touching and petting and all of that done with a boyfriend and done alone so I didn't want to compound the guilt that the girl was going to suffer through. As it turned out, she made wise choices, practiced safe sex, didn't have a baby in highschool like most of her class mates9 those same girls who swore they would not have sex). Not to say she didn't have sex; although I don't want to know. She now has two boys and is getting near 30 and I still want to see her as my little girl pure as the driven snow. My point is that all of this making little girls swear to stay pure for daddy to give her over someday to a man that wants a pure little girl. I just think it is sick. It almost reeks of incest or almost incest. I think if a man is so caught up on making his daughter marry him, symbolic, to keep her virginity in tact is way too into his daughter's panties. YUCK!

Diane said...

Simpson's father is sick, and was apparently way too interested in Jessica. And you're right--any man who thinks his "untouched" daughter is the perfect gift is sexist beyond redemption.

Anonymous said...

Weird. There are so many other ways to accomplish the same goal of supporting a daughter's health (assuming the best of intentions), why do it in a public ceremony? It smacks of parental self-interest. I do like the idea of publicly recognizing and honoring the stages of a child's life - puberty rituals for example, I just don't think this would be a ritual that would really mean a lot to the daughter. Maybe it does, I doubt it - it seems to be more about him than her.