“I Want to be Clean” — from the St. Petersberg Times, July 25, 2010
CLEARWATER — Wearing a long, white dress, 15-year-old Jasmin Latta walked down the aisle of St. John Primitive Baptist Church in North Greenwood and promised to not have sex until she’s married.
Lance Latta called his daughter’s vow “one of my greatest accomplishments.”
“It’s the fact that she understands the ramification of what can happen when you have premarital sex and that your body should be a treasure that you don’t just give to everybody,” said Latta, 42, who wore a black tuxedo.
Eight other girls, ages 13 to 17, participated in the first-ever Purity Ball at the church on July 17. All the girls wore white dresses and, with their fathers or father-figure by their sides, made the same pledge of abstinence.
The fathers then presented their daughters with a “pure heart ring.” The silver ring has a cross on each side and a heart surrounded by small diamonds in the middle. The girls and their fathers then headed to a ball at the nearby Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center.
“I want to be clean,” said Camille Adams, 14. “I want to be a role model to other girls to let them know they should respect and protect their bodies.”
“What’s most amazing is that they came up with this themselves,” said the Rev. Benjamin Adams, Camille’s uncle, who has been the pastor at St. John Primitive Baptist for 13 years.
“They paid attention to what happens with girls they go to school with and concluded they didn’t want to be a statistic and made this vow to God that they will save themselves until marriage. That’s something I have to support both biblically and morally.”
So unnatural. And if this is their belief, why wouldn’t the entire family be there? Very disturbing.
When I look at this picture I get such a wave of revulsion that I have to click off.
It looks like scene out of a modern day Nathaniel Hawthorne-based morality play. Only in Hawthorne’s writing, there seems to be much more enlightenment than this little tableau.
The little white arms raised up in unison. The next thing they have to do is leap over a bonfire for assured fertility, followed by three or four years of anal and oral sex once they hit puberty.
and many if not most young girls have fantasies about marrying daddy at some point along the way.
another reason for mom to not be present at the party. – again, not that this has been thought through. I’m sure it just seems to them that it’s about dad’n’daughter.
Jude – … the Masterbater March! Hurrah!
How clear that this photo and article touch a real “owie” in so many of us.
I dunno — the picture looks to me like NeoPagan ritual that includes ‘virgins’ dancing around the phallas, costumed and encouraged by the faithful. I do think spending an evening dancing with ones father crowds the boundaries, however. Anyone who doesn’t think there is sexual tension in such a relationship is nuts and more than a dance or two crosses quickly to that line — perhaps best described in the quote, “the girls at the ball twirled for hours with their game but stiff fathers.” Ummm – right.
Perhaps they’d all rethink their position if they attended the Million Masturbator March.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/this-one-could-make-difference-million.html
Sam, I feel your thoughts are so well stated and I am in agreement. Further – there is no one “coming of age” from two points of view
1 each individual person becomes conscious of their own sexuality at a different age, date, time. And from then has opporotunity to make personal conscious choices about sexual activities in which they will participate.
2 we each come into different stages (“coming of age”) all through our lives. That is, we are constantly coming into a new age within ourselves and that includes new ages of personal sexuality. And that’s not limited to models such as maiden, mother, crone, either.
So the idea that there is one set time when we become one set thing is not realistic.
I DO believe that ceremony and ritual are good. However, with you I agree – a generic coming into puberty rite needs honing to be meaningful to any individual – and therefore to the group.
Linda
Want to add a follow up to my longer comment below — when I said, “the emphasis on masturbation can be another kind of prudery” I didn’t mean to imply that Amanda’s comment was prude. I’m concerned it could be read that way. I meant the trend in my childhood to do that.
Sad is just what it is — seems like a wasted opportunity. The translators posted a long response in the letters section, which I haven’t read yet. But the original criticism seems fairly conclusive as far as I can tell.
This is sad. It’s the kind of stuff you sort out in university French. Translation like this is all about idioms, and knowing your verbs.
@ sam. ah – love moi’s piece. thanks for pointing it out. and am happy i am french. her distinctions are quite on point.
p.s. Eric, before you dive into that new translation of The Second Sex, you might want to read this
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n03/toril-moi/the-adulteress-wife
Bowel movement not “bowl movement” I mean. Language really starts to get a little weird sometimes…
Hi Amanda,
I started to write more about why I don’t like the “period party” approach to acknowledging sexual development last night, but I deleted it because I was sleepy and it felt incomplete. Today I see your comment and also Eric’s follow up about Wilhelm Reich and I think he got to the heart of some of what I originally wanted to write.
I’ll add that I think the sexual coming of age event is a bit absurd precisely because sexuality is and it isn’t and is always. There were some period party type “rites” in the community I grew up in, and even at that age — especially that age, in fact — it seemed off the mark, almost laughable. Didn’t they know what we’d been up to for years and years before? Didn’t they know what we brought in with us when we came in through the gate? It’s body and it’s soul too.
I think I quoted something by Foucault once before in these pages — he writes something to the extent that there is no such thing as sexuality, only bodies and pleasure. I think he could add a few more things to that list, but the core meaning here is very important. Who is this more true for than it is for children? While reproduction is done by sexuality, sexuality is not only about reproduction (as you said) and I would also say something a bit illogical like sexuality is not only sexuality. Meaning, the child knows the subtle cocktail of the friend’s shoulder against his own, the smell of that friend’s sweat, the wind on our skins, the sun on our backs, the smell of wet earth, the desire to lick my friends sweaty skin, the desire to look into the friend’s eyes, the desire to feel the mud between our toes, knowing you like the mud too, wondering how you feel beside me, feeling hungry for dinner and that’s good, hungry to rub up against you, scratching my mosquito bites, slaking my thirst. Each is different, but they’re not all that different.
It’s not that the commencement of menstruation isn’t a significant moment, sure it is. And yeah it sucks that people thing the period is yucky. But that strikes me as something of another issue. It’s unfortunate that most people get freaked out when you start discussing your bowl movements too, since these all carry information about the health of our bodies. The antidote to the purity ball is not the period party; it’s not to smear menstrual blood all over the place. The emphasis on menstruation can often be another kind of prudery, a bringing of something into prominence, perhaps unnecessary reactionary prominence, while another thing is still in jail. The problem is that sexuality got carved from the rest of existence and then sold into slavery. So what is an antidote… Teenager running around in the woods naked seems like a good start.
Multiparous conversation? (Heeee… ) But, really, my head is spinning. I want to write about my daughter and how I raised her. My son, and how I raised him. (The two not being altogether different.) My relationship with my mother. My relationship with my father. My relationship with my sister. And, ultimately, my relationship with me. Then husbands, lovers, friends. I suppose, as I get ready to take a bath and then drift off into a sleep that will no doubt bring many bizarre dreams on this night, I can’t help but think that as closure to this most strange day there is a word I long for… Which I cannot think of just yet. A word or words that honour our best selves instead of words that castigate our humanity, sexuality being a part of…
I am looking forward to reading Len in the morning.
This week will be a wild ride, for sure.
Reading all comments through-out the day has been quite informative and a great pleasure.
xm
fiddlefaddle (sorry, couldn’t help it, love ur name)…..ya — it’s like a set up for them to need to put their own daughters through Purity Balls when they grow up in order to stop their (probably incompatable) husbands from cheating on THEM…..and so on and so forth.
Not that these idiots have logically thought that through.
I mean, didn’t he already make that promise (not to cheat) to her mother, WHEN THEY GOT MARRIED??
No one takes into consideration how important sexual compatibility is in long term monogamous commitments. Why would these dads want to set up their daughters to end up being locked in a relationship with someone who is a totally inadequate for them? It is almost sick to me, that fathers would do something as disrespectful to their own children, cut them off before they even get a chance to experience, get to know, and eventually learn to ask for what they want. Women need space to do that, we need a chance to choose our partners in the same way we are encouraged to choose anything else: with sufficient information!
And the promise of a father to his daughter that he will not cheat on HER mother? That just puts the cherry on the cake. Great way to degrade women! It’s funny how these days everything seems to be the opposite game. There is a big difference between being clean, and just being naive.
Eric-
Try reading “Why is Sex Fun” by Jared Diamond. Has some interesting stuff about the “hidden” nature of human ovulation and conception and comparisons to the animal kingdom.
Here’s the perfect anti-O’Donnell campaign button(I touched myself instead of voting for Christine O’Donnell):
http://internetlurker.blogspot.com/2010/09/lurker-wants-this-button.html
The “purity ball” is just another way to use religion to diminish female power and choices. Why not just put a large penis on a Christ figure and ritually deflower them, for heaven’s sake? It would make just as much sense.
No doubt some girls just see this as a way to get attention from their fathers, a pretty dress, and a party. The larger meaning isn’t apparent to them.
Speaking of freezing tomatoes, I think I was doing just that when my then 3 year old decided that while watching her favorite show on the tellie she was going to pleasure herself on the living room floor. Quite poetic as her little mind was quieting down from a busy morning of claiming her independence from the older kids. After it started becoming a ritual, I decided to suggest her going to her room as the rest of the family had to step over her to get to the kitchen. I often wonder if I made the right decision by doing that by instilling a sense it might be wrong however I think I chose the right words (hard to remember now 15 years later!) my point being here is that in her little mind she was doing what felt good. As far as the Christian/death thing it was my experience that no one wanted to die as who the hell knew if you were really going to heaven….. Hence keep my mother on the ventilator even if there is scarce a brain wave present…..or keep the feeding tube in or better yet being a full code yet ridden with cancer….
Peace and love
p
“O’Donnell makes light of witchcraft comment”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i9rv3pJ0e0ju_X-K2vMUfo7Mah-wD9IBAQE80
By RANDALL CHASE (AP) – 59 minutes ago
PS, Amanda, Linda pre-empted me! In SEX AT DAWN, an awesome new book I’m reading, the authors note that humans are among the few animal species that have sex all the time, that is, the females are interested at any point in the ovulation cycle, including numerous days when they are not fertile. Most animals have little interest in sex except when fertile. It’s true that human females are more likely to have sex, to cheat and to not use birth control when they are ovulating; but many if not most are interested at any time of the cycle. So we are one of the species where sex and reproduction are the furthest apart on the continuum.
PPS, I didn’t want your garden tomatoes to get lost in the sauce. They will get their own creation.
I know plenty of men and women who are not the least bit interested in pro-creating but have rockin’good n regular sex.
It seems a common sense question to ask – where in the past couple of thousand years has there been an opportunity to look at sex and pregnancy from “neutral” observation space?
I’m glad that here at PW we often hear it said that we MUST re-think and considering re-tooling pretty much everything we think we “believe” to be true.
I mean, even Darwin had an agenda that put his “species” at the top of the pyramid. We can only think as good as we can think in the moment – then we gotta go round and think again. (Len, that got me singin’ the strawman song again. Maybe I’m in Oz.)
Remember, that doesn’t make Reich right. But he’s worth understanding, for many reasons.
Many would argue the other side but you have to study their arguments and where they are based; is the science still good? Is there a bias? Did “monsanto” do the study? Are the other great apes factored in, or is there a human data and/or orthodox bias?
Reich was one of the few major thinkers on sexuality offering an alternative view to the Christian one (and the Freudian one) which cannot be done well enough or too often. As my mentor Joe has pointed out, we really have no idea what sex was like before the Christians got hold of it. From the beginning, they abhor sex. Early Christianity turns quickly into a death cult (notice the electric chair in the photo above!), and Freud turns to a thanatos cult; a death cult. He says that the urge to die is a healthy part of the psyche. Reich says, yes it’s there — but let’s at least not call that healthy. Let’s call healthy the will to live, work and love, and unhealthy the urge to destroy oneself. Freud would have no part of it — he was pleasing the Nazis, or trying to.
And nobody is doing statistical data studies or interviewing people in a consistent way till Kinsey in the 40s. (Freud at one point figures out that his patients are making shit up — and he then invents the idea that, well, reality and fantasy are really close to one another, so let’s call them equivalent.)
As for the “reproductive body clock,” or “female biological clock” we need to find out the first time those words were uttered in the context of “time is running out.” It sounds like a 20th century construction. Before the 20th century, there was not an issue; most Western women were married off and impregnated whether they liked it or not. It’s only fairly recently that (some) women view reproduction as an option they can exercise, not exercise (in the context of sex rather than abstinence/spinsterhood) or delay. It’s class specific; peasant women across all cultures are basically impregnated young. It is not an option.
I’ll have a gander and see if I can trace that concept. De Beauvoir may have covered it — there is a new translation of The Second Sex.
Also in ’67, The Who on masturbation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaLKob2t6l4&feature=related
Before becoming Prime Minister of Canada, he did this:
As Minister of Justice, Pierre Trudeau was responsible for introducing the landmark Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69, an omnibus bill whose provisions included, among other things, the decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults, the legalization of contraception, abortion and lotteries, new gun ownership restrictions as well as the authorization of breathalyzer tests on suspected drunk drivers. Trudeau famously defended the decriminalization of homosexual acts segment of the bill by telling reporters that “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”, adding that “what’s done in private between adults doesn’t concern the Criminal Code”.[24]
“Amanda — in The Function of the Orgasm, Wilhelm Reich challenges the commonly held idea that reproduction is what is pushing the sex drive. That is an idea that we get from the Christians, who reserve reproduction to be the one allowable function of sex, in one position, only when necessary, thinking of England.”
then i guess i stand corrected.
so how does that all relate to women’s sense of “biological clock” or your comments in various conversations about how certain female bodies trigger the urge to “impregnate” them? just trying to connect all the dots here… it’s a lot to put together.
eric — did you remember to use the tomatoes i threw in your freezer, too?
🙂
Oh, I had banished myself from astrology for the weekend. See, it still works when I’ve got my hands off the strings. That Nessus would be my Pholus, which is located at my Moon-Saturn midpoint. Phil Sedgwick once joked that I should be given the job of alcohol monitor at conferences. It’s actually a bit more troubling than that, but you’ll rarely see me with a drink in my hand.
I spent the day recovering from a cold, and making a huge vat of tomato sauce with ingredients 99% from the farmer’s market yesterday — red and orange tomatoes, local garlic, local onions and basil, but hydroponic live oregano from Hannaford and ordinary dried whole bay leaves (they didn’t have fresh). I do this in the autumn and freeze it in 12 ounce portions — so I have my own original fresh stuff and don’t need to rely on cans or bottles.
That was a lot of chopping! I took a break after I had peeled all the garlic and onions, and read the A section of the Times. Then I came back upstairs chopped the lot of it…like three hours of prep. It’s brewing nicely — I’m gonna give it about 12 hours. Now I have another housekeeping date at my apartment — I plan to burn through the kitchen, put clean sheets on my bed and dream of…whatever.
PS, I just banged in this draft. I plan to totally rework this, may not be barely recognizable…waiting for word back from Betty Dodson on what Masters and Johnson really thought of masturbation. I will work in the Wilhelm Reich quote posted below from the Mass Psychology of Fascism. I will avoid using the title of the book.
Almost forgot astrology.
Near as i can tell this photograph was posted on Planet Waves as the Aquarius Moon was applying to conjunct Nessus. Shadow material indeed.
Also, the other day i made some comments about Venus and Mars in Scorpio having noir-ish connotations. Never thought it would go this far, silly me.
Wow, what a discussion.
Eric, i must agree with you about the photograph. When i first saw it i thought it was a painting, a parody, a wry social comment about the roots of fascism. Then to realize it’s a photograph of an actual event…
Eric, also must agree with you that this is noting new or original. It’s just so much more, more.
Yes, where are the mothers and the brothers? What is really, really up with that?
One cannot help but think that there will be a special place in the afterlife for the Reverend Benjamin Adams. He has no excuse for not knowing better than to facilitate something like this.
pwood – no contest to what you say here – I add: I know “adults” who are uneducated and fuck like bunnies (actually bunnies don’t fuck all that much – but they reproduce like hell) – and the ONLY SAVING GRACE is KNOWLEDGE about where babies come from and the CHOICE not to have them.
Sex happens. We cannot disguise it, hide it. But we can TEACH it.
Not arguing, Eric. Agree with you on just about everything. Just sayin’ …
…those things don’t happen in REAL LIFE. Theory and “WHAT SHOULD BE” are lovely, and like you I am working in my own small way to assist in that process. And for the record, Mine is a small voice in the wilderness, though amid the much louder ones of their sub society, the larger society, the dominant culture, and the Church, in that order. One of my students was prenant last year. She was 15 and in the 7th grade. She was an unidentified Learning Disabled, and could not yet decode words or multiply. I was the one who confronted her with her pregnancy initially and notified the counselors. She’s was already five months pregnant. It was discovered later that in addition to the little boy she got pregnant by (and she had been sexually active with at least three boys in the school by then), she was also being raped by her 19 year old older brother nightly and had been for four years. She was scared to tell.
Some of my students are having vaginal, oral, and anal sex. They are 11-15 years old. We get them out of the building before they turn 16. Most people don’t know that the reason for Social Promotion is not for the child who is leaving. It is for the child who is coming. Do you want your 11 year old sitting next to a 16 year old in the 6th grade??
I don’t want anyone to think that ALL of my kids are like this, but let’s face it-puberty is mating season. However, unlike animals we are not ready to be parents when our bodies mature. And you and I are not going to educate everyone. We do what we can, where we can. The only place where we seem to disagree to whether or not it’s okay and natural for children (and adolescents are still children) to have sex. I say no, you say yes. I am not advocating that there should be no education and that children should be kept in the dark and filled with guilt. In my perfect world we would all operate like the folks in San Francisco in Starhawks The Fifth Sacred Thing. But we don’t live here. I live in Atlanta and teach my students who come from some really rough places and who are by and large some of the most damaged people I’ve ever seen (generationally) , and you live in Kingston in a much freer environment in your circle of friends and acquaintances. My kids are still trying to get to Level Two on Maslow’s Scale. Part of that is that they are fucking like bunnies, and it is jacking up their little lives because they are not ready, on any level, to deal with the consequences. And neither are their parents.
That’s my point.
That’s all’s I’m sayin’, Boo. We all ain’t where you are.
And then, what is happening to help us all get there?
one can be a role model by
respecting, making love to, and protecting their bodies
too, if I pause and reflect: what if I made a film today, or a painting, or staged a photoshoot, something ARTISTIC that featured a scene with adult men taking vows, giving rings, saying blessings, frolicking around phallic symbols with non-adult girls…….
….what would the response be?
….outrage?
….censorship?
….criminal charges?
Me thinks these kiddie-porn raves is one of those spades needs to be called out.
Linda — correct. All the arts except, you know, the proper arts that support the state. Statues of great leaders, pastoral scenes and so forth.
Art has its roots in anarchy as does sex.
One of the deepest issues that the anti-masturbation crowd has with masturbation is that fantasy knows no bounds.
What we lose when we lose this is the impulse toward freedom. We all agree we live in a sexually repressed culture, right? And who among us here has not wondered where is the response to the stolen elections, the oil spill, the wars, the prison torture, the environmental devastation, the banking crisis? Have you wondered where is the anger connected to creative action? Connected to building the solutions of a new world?
Have you connected the two? Have you done so on a personal level? Have you drawn the line between where your sexual repression is rooted and your willingness to participate in the future?
If we want the next generations of kids to be willing to take part in progressive change, in all the arts and sciences that are going to carry humanity forward, and take us past suicidal capitalism and technology, I propose that focusing on healthy values toward pleasure and sex is the way to start.
Michele-
how funny I saw “putrification” ceremony at first glance – clearly you are creating your own lovely ritual – one of love grace and beauty, not one of putrid-ness
I dare say “putrification” sadly befits the situation in today’s featured news article.
I’m going to embrace your idea too – great day to put a little extra light’n’love’n’healthysexuality out into the world.
xo
Eric,
And not being a historian, I will only assume that sexual repression, freedom of speech (creative) and repression/oppression of all the arts all go byebye by way of that Purity Pole.
(Clearly clean little girls can’t be allowed then, to DANCE and certainly not like little virgins around a hard-on.)
For my own purification ritual, after having this topic all too vivid in my head, I think I shall set aside hours this week to read through the “It’s not about sex. It’s about Self” series. Pull out the old Pronoia tome. And do a lot of staring up at the sky. Maybe some mirror-gazing. Oh and spend some time being really grateful that I was raised by the people that raised me, grateful for their impurities.
Pam, before there was AIDS there was something as bad or worse, which is syphilis. Study up on the symptoms and you will see that it’s every bit as bad, it was rampant for centuries and it had no cure.
Herpes has always existed. The consequences, while annoying, are manageable.
HPV has been around forever. Papilomavirus seems to be on an endless dance within human DNA. There has never been a time in history when they were more manageable and preventable. But you have to rise above ignorance to do that. And there’s never been a time in history when they could be turned to paranoia and profits more readily.
The point of the sex conversation is not whether we like the idea that young people have sex. They do it, they will do it, and that is that. We could, like Spain is doing, create a masturbation education program. That would work to help young people explore a creative aspect of their sexuality, and an energy vent, and it’s one that can be as or more social than sex; to do that in the United States you would inflame the pro-purity right wing which goes on about propagating lust in your heart. That view needs to be bulldozed and/or transcended.
We need to teach, approve of, endorse and allow masturbation without guilt. We have a lot of ground to make up. As we can see, we’re still debating John Marten’s thesis published in 1612 that onania is a moral and medical disease. It’s time to go right past that and work from within reality, not some alternate reality of moral purity (that is directed at girls to keep them barefoot and pregnant — and that is the game here).
The real question is, do we prepare kids for what is an inevitability? They WILL have sex sooner or later. Do we tell them about it, or let them twist in the wind? Do we fall for the line that they more they know, the more likely they are to do it, or do we take a more realistic view that they simply need information — and part of that information can be about emotional readiness and the many implications of sex.
Amanda — in The Function of the Orgasm, Wilhelm Reich challenges the commonly held idea that reproduction is what is pushing the sex drive. That is an idea that we get from the Christians, who reserve reproduction to be the one allowable function of sex, in one position, only when necessary, thinking of England.
Reich proposes that the creative impulse moves the sex drive, and out of that, in one expression, kids are created. But there is nothing reproductive about masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, same-sex play, talking about sex, sexual fantasy, watching sex and the numerous forms of non-reproductive sex the existence of which are denied by the Abstinence Only indoctrination movement. Most sex is NOT reproductive and has nothing to do with conceiving a baby, it’s about pleasure, relating to oneself, relating to people and relating to existence. This is what infuriates the anti-sex movement and leads to the whole indoctrination program of denial and deception. It’s an anti-pleasure movement that is, in many other ways, at war with existence and in particular at war with women.
And since it is a marriage and a ‘binding’ based on SEX then surely it is kiddie porn and then some.
And isn’t it swell that the daughters are responsibile for MOMs purity now visavis dad claiming he’s not going to have extra-marital sex (is it that he’s not going to have it ANYMORE?)
But isn’t incest extra-marital?
Didn’t the Nazis get the kids to turn in their parents? Will little suzy tell? on mom maybe?
After all, Mom’s not in The Purity Club.
Anyway, during the incestuous festivities, maybe the moms and sons go out for a nice ice-cream Sunday.
“It’s also good for me,” said Terry Lee, 54, who attended the ball for a second year, this time with his youngest daughter, Rachel, 16. “It inspires me to be spiritual and moral in turn. If I’m holding them to such high standards, you can be sure I won’t be cheating on their mother.”
So, let me get this right. A flippin’ grown man’s fidelity (whatever anyone may think about the concept) rests squarely on the shoulders of a 16-year old girl?
Nice.
As for all the rest of what’s wrong with this picture… I think you’ve all basically addressed the issues. Especially the absence of mothers and sons. Or is there a special little ritual for them, too?
I need to go for a long walk and shake this off.
I meant to write, “… not come across for Mr. Ex.”
And that cross is definitely burning, just not in a literal sense…
There is so much wrong with the purity balls thing that I cannot even puke.
On a tangent but surely related (anyone remember Salem?) here’s a wicked twist:
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/18/christine-odonnell-witchcraft/
Apparently our secondarily virginal odonnell has danced with the devil.
I was being facetious, Eric…
I thought the next statement made that clear. But I guess I was wrong. I found the entire thing so horrible that I didn’t even read the article. I should say though, that I don’t think anyone should have sex until they are grown. I didn’t used to feel that way, but because sex is not honored in this culture and in this era, because it is treated lightly and too often with disdain, it gets twisted into something that is potentially damaging psychically, physically, and emotionally. We mature physically much earlier than we do emotionally and that is a problem. And because the food too many of us eat (especially the poor and uneducated whose children I teach) is laden with hormones, children are going into puberty earlier and earlier, and consequently having sex earlier and earlier. It’s all hormones and no brain. It’s an ugly scenario, and one that is very destructive to society.
Teenagers don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with being sexually active. Many adults don’t either. I know you’ve heard reports of men killing their estranged wives and kids, divorced wives and kids, because the woman had the nerve to be with another man and would come across for Mr. Ex. Then we had the loony astronaut who planned to abduct her ex’s current squeeze and murder her. Those are extreme but they are real. Sex is binding on many levels and most people aren’t where you are, Eric.
We don’t live in a world where sex is free. I remember the days when it was, for a brief moment in certain segments of society. Even then, it got messy on an emotional level, but at least you were not a whore shunned by society if you hooked up with a good friend at a party and had a nice time. That was before herpes, and AIDS, and chlymidia, and drug resistant bacteria. We don’t live there anymore.
And the issues of the daughters and the fathers, with the girl’s dancing around the cross like it is a Maypole (which it is) and a huge phallic symbol (which it also is in it’s original symbology, and probably in this one too seeing that Easter is always celebrated at the full moon after the Spring Equinox), and mothers and sons banished. It’s clear that the whole thing is about “This young, fresh pussy belongs to me.” I know a marriage when I see one.
Hence the statement about the fathers pledging not to have sex with the daughters.
hey sam —
as much as i like the idea of running around in the woods naked together as a sexual development acknowledgment, here’s what i like about celebrating menstruation (though i’m not so sure about the tablecloth idea myself…):
it keeps the procreative power of sexual development in the fore. celebrating the urges and fun sensations is awesome, but it has to be balanced with the awareness of consequences, cause-and-effect, the deeper DNA-driven reason behind the reason we feel horny. yes, a lot of us have sex purely for pleasure, sharing, healing, etc & not to procreate. but there’s still a tie to the rest of the biology.
i realize you may have been half-joking & get all this already, but figured it bore saying here. plus, we’re still in a culture that primarily thinks menstruation needs to be perfumed, is an inconvenience, etc.
and i think the idea of celebrating boys’ wet dreams is a good one, too! sweet, actually. but again, not so sure about the whole tablecloth thing… 😉
i mean, this story has come up before on PW, but there’s something about the visual that is especially disturbing. yes, my first thought about the cross was that it looked like it’s burning; took me several minutes to realize it was not.
and the pose the girls are in… are they little roman soldiers putting it in the ground so they can then switch roles and nail themselves on it?
then the fluffy tutus & choreography on the foreground… this is such a production. can’t call it “ritual” — this is pure show, and for a little while all the actors *feel* it so much as to believe it’s real. it just takes longer for the disconnect to sink in because the whole community is an extended version of this fantasy play space. talk about theater in the round.
oh.
my.
god.
…and i’ve only looked at the photo so far. talk about being worth 1000 words.
ET phone home……
Live from Houston
P
I don’t think emphasizing menstruation is the way to go. The inverse idea is to celebrate sexual development rather than condemning it right? Well, I don’t know. Just let it happen as it will, hither and thither. Maybe let all the teenagers of a certain age run around in the woods naked together.
Maybe there could be a wet dream party where teenage boys cum stained sheets were the table clothes and their mom’s served them all their favorite dishes.
But no I get what you mean. I’ll think about it.
Actually, I don’t really want to make jokes about this because the not so subterranean river of projection from these dads onto these girls is really too awful.
And what Eric mentions about the absence of the other 50% of the population also begs a lot of questions.
So what would be the opposite…I had a friend, a mom of several kids, who proposed that for girls, there should be a coming of age banquet where the blood-stained sheet from their first menstruation would be the table cloth.
Every half-hour, Mr. Wilson stopped the dancing so that fathers could bless their daughters before everyone.
Ewwwwwww! That sounds like it could sting.
No, the pastor is full of shit; the girls did not think of this on their own.
It’s a concept out of the fundamentalist movement. The girls heard about it somewhere else, if anything, and said they want one in their town. But it’s not their original idea; these have been going on for years.
Wow, this is really creepy. Dads pledging not to cheat on their wives in return for their daughter’s chastity? And the girls came up with this on their own? I have big issues with girls pledging themselves to their fathers. Women in this country already have enough “daddy” issues without this kind of crap.
How are they supposed to learn anything when they are being sequestered from life experiences?
I guess we’ll find out soon enough. I can imagine a LOT of Christine O’Donnells coming from this crew.
What is there about this concept to like? You lost me. I agree that we need to open the discussion of fathers and daughters having sex — but good luck with that. At the first utterance, the mandatory reporter pushes the button on the desk. Men, if you need to talk about this with someone, go to an astrologer, not a psychologist, psychiatrist or therapist. Astrologers don’t have to report you. Nearly everyone else does.
There is nothing in these rituals about acknowledging the natural quality of sexuality; no information or sharing about what to do with sexual feelings; no acknowledgment of the many ambiguities involved; no admission that there is no such thing as purity. The statement “I want to be clean” suggests that something else is going on. I would love to know the real inventory of who the men have had sex with. We already know something about how the girls define virginity, in a technical way.
And yes, the boys — the boys that the girls would, and do, have sex with — are banished. The mothers, who teach the girls how to be women, are banished. It is an extremely strange setup. And at the center of the room is an execution device. Imagine an electric chair in place of that cross and you’ll have a better idea what it really is.
I think the most interesting thing is that the entire family is not there, and that the boys and wives are not pledging too. I like the concept, although I would like it more if the fathers were pledging not to have sex with their daughters…
LIKE kiddie porn? It’s a church-approved, live action kiddie-daddy burlesque. Visually, to me the scene evokes a KKK rally. The cross looks like it’s burning. The young girls and middle aged men swimming together in the midst of all that goodness and purity certainly are.
Here’s a NY Times photo gallery. Not that it matters or anything but I’m a fan of the Times’ photo style. Their photographers have a way of slipping in the truth even when the writers cannot, or do not. However here is the article, “Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose.” I thought it was pretty good.
This is like kiddie porn…
TFI Sunday.