Would you pledge your virginity to your father?

[Gabrielle Proctor]

Having sex is a huge ordeal emotionally (at least for girls, I can't speak for guys - since I have a uterus and all). Women DO bond with people they have sex with. It's how we're biologically programmed. It isn't something to be taken lightly - and Sex in the City is a big, fat, dirty LIE.

HUGE ORDEAL? Really? Meh. Not for me. I've slept with men without the slightest intention of getting married to them, or even attached to them. I just enjoyed being with them in the time that we spent together. So, I'm some kind of exception to the programming?

I think that pledging your virginity to your dad is not only weird, but incredibly disgusting. This kind of idea promotes that a woman's virginity is an object that has a price. I know that they have the best intentions, but this just leads to objectification of girls and women.

It basically says, you belong to your father and when you're married you will belong to some other man. I view this as devaluing of your self worth. How is a girl supposed to value who she is when her father/husband owns her?

Speaking about virginity pledges as a whole, here's a quote, and a link:

Abstinence education cynics are pointing to a new study that found teenagers who pledged abstinence are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not make the pledge.

http://www.woai.com/content/blogs/he...8YvbbmX0g.cspx

I read in another report that while pledgers and non-pledgers are just as likely to have sex before marriage, pledgers are less likely to use contraception. If anyone wants a link to that, I'll hunt one down. Now it's time for bed.

[AFPheonix]

Oh, you mean this article? It's something like a 10 point difference between the kids who didn't take pledges and use contraception and those who did take pledges and go bareback.

Bonus New Yorker opinion piece.

[Evandril]

I used to have far more respect for people who 'saved' themselves for marriage, though it was never my style...Until I had a good friend who fell in lust...And HAD to get married so they could fool around (They did wait..and are both stuck in a bad marriage because of it.)

Only a single example, agreed...but it did sour my views on the subject *shrugs*

[kiwi]

I find it very very creepy

[Greenday]

Oh, you mean this article? It's something like a 10 point difference between the kids who didn't take pledges and use contraception and those who did take pledges and go bareback.

I just wanted to point out something funny I found in that article.

"While teens who take virginity pledges do delay sexual activity until an average age of 21 (compared to about age 17 for the average American teen)..."

How many teenagers are 21?

[Slytovhand]

Greenday!!!!

You're one of those who makes comments about low sperm counts in cows!!!

[Tanasi]

How many teenagers are 21?

I'd say the same number that are used to pad the gun deaths stats. The studyers don't say their children demographic contains 25yos.

[goldaries13]

Honestly, a purity ball and pleging virginity to one's father squicks me out a bit. If my father (redneck, racist SOB) had been alive when I was a teen, though, there's no doubt I probably would have done something similar. But he died when I was 7, so that's a counterfactual right there.

As it stands, I lost my virginity when I was 13, with my then boyfriend. I have no doubt if my father were alive, he'd probably have taken a shotgun to the boys I fooled with in my teen years. He'd also probably have shot my now-husband, but whether because of the sex thing or because my husband is (in my late father's viewpoint) a dirty, dirty foreigner is anybody's guess.

Back on point: purity balls make me shake my head. I like to think I would have resisted, but really. Girls at young ages are taught to please everyone, and that right there is the point of the while thing: eventually the desire to please Mummy and Daddy and be a virgin till marriage and honor the purity vow is going to collide with the desire to please the boyfriend and have dirty, sweaty, unprotected pig sex in the backseat of the boyfriend's car.

For the record, this was never a problem at my house. My mother took me to get birth control when I expressed the desire for it (right around the time I first had sex, about two months prior to it), and with five brothers and two half-brothers around, someone always had condoms I could swipe.

[Amethyst Hunter]

Girls at young ages are taught to please everyone

Edited for clarity.

After all, only "nice" girls are "good" girls, as far as this culture is still concerned.

So-called purity balls are just flat-out creepy as hell and I really question the mindset of whoever invented them. I'm not convinced that their intentions are entirely "pure," so to speak.

[tropicsgoddess]

Purity balls and rings are silly to me, but pledging your virginity to your father is incredibly creepy. Saving it until marriage without all this crazy crap is good enough. Then again on the saving it for marriage bit I can't talk since I lost my viriginity at 19 to my my fiance. When I have children, I just want them to use common sense if they're going to have sex and I definitely won't have them do that silly pledging crap either.

[fireheart17]

I'm with tropics....why do people need to get all elaborate about pledging virginity, at least to their dad?
Me? I'm still a virgin, but I'm saving it until I'm with someone I love for real, not just a drunken night with some random guy. I know it sounds like I'm putting sex on a pedestal so to speak, but bear in mind that I'm 18, the legal age is 17 in my state and I grew up in an area where girls were losing their virginity at the age of 15, some as young as 14 and usually because everybody else was doing it. Not that I'm against those who did make that step early, but as long as you are fully informed about sex, contraception, STI's and pregnancy, then I don't see why not.

[Nyoibo]

Hell, I'm going to be that kinda redneck daddy, although not with a shotgun, it'll be having a nice quiet chat with the boy in my weapons room.

I'm probably going to be like that with my baby sister too.

I don't know about waiting until marriage, but I figure make the first time count and be with someone special.

[tropicsgoddess]

Hell, I'm going to be that kinda redneck daddy, although not with a shotgun, it'll be having a nice quiet chat with the boy in my weapons room.

I'm probably going to be like that with my baby sister too.

I don't know about waiting until marriage, but I figure make the first time count and be with someone special.

I can see SO doing that if we have a daughter or two, but imagine that but with a guy that's 6'9" and well over 300lbs (no lie). Now THAT'LL scare the crap out of the boys.

[guywithashovel]

Back when I was a teen, I went to this Evangelical Church that did something similiar to this. I can't remember what the program was called, but the teens to took part in it would take virginity pledges (promising not to do it until they got married), and after doing that they would get either a ring or some kind of badge to wear around their necks that symbolized their virginity. Once they got married, they would give that ring or badge (whatever it was) to their parents. If they had sex before they got married, they had to give it back to their parents after they had that premarital sex.

I think that was how it went. I DO remember that if the participating teens had premarital sex, they had to give the ring/badge to their parents, thus confessing the act.

Now, I was a pious youth at the time, and even then, I thought that whole thing was pretty creepy. And the creepiest thing about it was that, if I did it, I would have to wear a symbol of my virginity for all the world to see, thus advertising my abstinence. My sex life, or lack thereof, is no one's business but my own.

[AFPheonix]

I'm actually kind of impressed that your church got the boys to do it, too. Most of the time those True Love Waits things are geared more for girls than boys.