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mygif

You weren’t aware of this? I thought all the cool people got creeped out by purity balls like a year ago.

I do enjoy that Time Magazine actually tries to make them sound sympathetic and yet they are still totally, totally creepy.

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mygif

Dulce et decorum est pro patre amari.

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mygif

You know, if you wanted further proof that these people live in a world very different from our own, you could really just look at the fact that nobody involved thought twice about making everybody say the words “purity balls” over and over every time they wanted to reference these things.

–d

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mygif

I’m generally not opposed to kids going to dances with their parents. Mother/Son and Father/Daughter proms are usually in good fun and every kid should get dancing lessons from their parents at one point or another, lest as a species we entirely forget how to dance the polka. But these things really take the cake. Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and not say this is some creepy Freudian practice in sexual claim-staking and even if you’re fine with the religious stuff (which I am), just the idea of children having to swear what amounts to an elaborate, ritualized oath of moral fidelity is one Son of a Bitch of a head-trip. It’s “scare’em them instead of teach’em” at its finest; showing people slide shows of venereal warts at least teaches them to spot venereal warts. Maybe some enterprising daddies are looking to re-establish the dowry — then, at least, there’s a little bit more logic to the trend.

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mygif

Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and not say this is some creepy Freudian practice in sexual claim-staking

Benefit of the doubt? It’s expressly a sexual claim-staking.

The daughter gives her dad a key to her vagina. I mean, !!

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mygif
Cookie McCool said on July 22nd, 2008 at 3:46 pm

That picture is just one big BAD TOUCH. I always thought the fact that my dad wasn’t a baby toucher was the kind of thing I could take for granted, but man oh man, am I grateful that he wasn’t. Is it weird to call your dad up and thank him for not throwing you and all your little friends a molestation party when you were a kid?

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mygif

I’m wondering if LAW & ORDER: SVU has done anything with this yet.

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mygif

Heh. Purity Balls.

I keep seeing Baldwin in a weird mix of the scout uniform and an apron.

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mygif

dan: It is not that I did not already know about the existence of purity balls, but rather I was reminded pointedly that they are fucking creepy.

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mygif

I know, right? This falls squarely into the category of “stuff I am pretending does not exist in the hope that ignoring it will make it go away because JESUS CHRIST I do not want to deal with what this says about the human race”.

It’s a pretty big category. *sigh*

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mygif

It’s better than the African equivalent: baby rape.

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mygif

Andrew:

If by “African equivalent” you mean a SMALL group of people doing something creepy and damaging to children that reflects poorly on the society at large and might, by outside, ignorant eyes, paint the ENTIRE region/country/people in a bad light – then, yes, I suppose you have a point.

…or you could just be an angry racist.

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mygif
Joysweeper said on July 22nd, 2008 at 7:24 pm

I was at a Daddy-Daughter Dance when I was little. Barely remember it at all, but I get a warm feeling thinking about it. But Purity Balls? Make me uneasy.

… Protecting someone’s “purity”? Aside from never letting anyone near her, how can you manage that? And… ugh. I don’t like having children swear vows of any kind. I mean, I got Confirmed as a preteen, and I wish now that I hadn’t been, because it’s really awkward to confess that you don’t and never have really believed when you’ve sworn that you have.

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mygif

dan: It is not that I did not already know about the existence of purity balls, but rather I was reminded pointedly that they are fucking creepy.

Fair enough!

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mygif

Yeah, Andrew, baby-rape is a common practice throughout the entire CONTINENT of Africa. Or, you know, not…

Aside: If my teen one day ever wants to wear a Jonas-esque purity ring, be taken to a purity ball, etc? I will personally go out and buy my kid a pack of condoms and tell them to go at it. It’s far healthier.

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mygif

I’m sorry, I forgot Purity Balls happen 24/7 in America! Shit, I’m behind schedule for mine right now, even though I don’t even have a daughter! It’s totally different!

And of course it’s got to be racism! Can’t be anything else when talking about somewhere black people live!

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mygif

Purity Balls… Sponsored by NAMBLA

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mygif
mightybaldking said on July 23rd, 2008 at 7:24 am

Purity Balls… Sponsored by NAMBLA

Um, what’s the B for in NAMBLA again?

//No, not Brando.

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mygif

“If by “African equivalent” you mean a SMALL group of people doing something creepy and damaging to children that reflects poorly on the society at large and might, by outside, ignorant eyes, paint the ENTIRE region/country/people in a bad light – then, yes, I suppose you have a point.”

Given that you just described purity balls to a T, I’d day that was his point. So why accuse him of racism?

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mygif
Archguru said on July 23rd, 2008 at 10:06 am

Ok, so I teach ballroom dance. About 3 years age, I received a call about doing a lesson at a father / daughter dance. Not thinking anything about it, I took the job only to find out when I got there that it was a purity ball. More than a little disconcerting.
It certainly isn’t my cup of tea, but to be fair, their hearts are in the right place as parents. The good message is that you should be open enough with your children to talk about sex and help guide them through the choices that come with being an adult, particularly in today’s culture where we have swung to the other extreme beyond “sex is okay” to “sex is absolutely mandatory in order to be cool”. The creepy part of course is the huge fundamentalist brainwashing as well as the girls giving up the responsibility for their own choices to their father.
On a side note, I was teaching east coast swing that night and had to fight the urge to play Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young”.

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mygif

MBK: I’m merely suggesting that creepy deserves creepy.

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mygif

The really wrong thing, I feel, is that for all their rambling about how the media and culture is trying to sexualize their kids, these fathers are bringing ten year olds to a place where they are made into nothing but a sexual object. “Everyone wants to have sex with my daughter. I will not allow this.” Eeeew.

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mygif

[…] 23, 2008 · No Comments Dan Solomon commenting on MightyGodKing getting creeped out by a Time Magazine article on so-called “purity balls”: You know, if you wanted further […]

mygif

(watches the pictars)

Heh, this looks like something that came out of a manga writer’s imagination. Except probably nobody exploded into a gigeresque monster with ten prehensile phalluses.

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mygif

Having now read the article, I must add this: all the talk about vows and roses and kneeling under swords and so on made me realize two things. One, this is exactly like something Peach-Pit would have invented, like some kind of a lost chapter of Rozen Maiden, and two, I think I kind of like the idea. See, I love ceremonies, and there’s too few of them nowadays. Even when they’re nonsensical or downright harmful, I love a good, mystical, pompous ceremony that takes itself completely seriously.

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mygif

All I can hear, over and over, is Duke Nukem saying ‘Balls of Steel!’

O.o

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