So deeply fucking wrong. What's weird is that the commenters at Pandagon--or at least some of the early ones--aren't weirded out enough for me. So now I'm wondering about them.
It's like in Fawlty Towers where Basil says "Don't talk about the war!" and of course, he ends up goose-stepping around the dining room to the horror of the German guests.
By making sex the big uber-taboo, fundies just make it all the more likely that it will rear its head, so to speak, and in an extra-creepy fashion.
And the end of that video where the lone "Dad" is surrounded by a bunch of prancing teens is like I'm watching David Koresh on Broadway.
I'm trying to make sense of this, or at least understand what someone would have to believe to make this seem ok. It's weird to us because we think that behind the wholesomeness lurk dark urges, right? So maybe if you don't believe in subconscious motivations, things just are as they appear? But they also have all those beliefs about satan and his ability to deceive his victims, and his victims' ability to deceive others. I guess that they believe that the devout can keep satan at bay, and it's a break from the normal when he wins, and we think that dark thoughts are ever-present?
Anyway, I bet this works just fine for some of the girls (not that there aren't objections to be made on grounds of simple sexism).
Their daughters yearn for that Godly Affection.
Also, they think premarital sex is very very bad. So, for us, we look at that and see "All right, maybe it might reduce premarital sex a couple of percentage points, but that's not particularly a good thing, and it sure looks to up the possibilty of incest, which is a very bad thing." To the advocates (who also probably have a stronger belief in the efficacy of this sort of thing against premarital sex), they think "It makes premarital sex a lot less likely, which is a huge benefit, and if a few more fathers molest their daughters, well, Satan gets into everything, and you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. It's a net benefit."
(I think the Pandagon readers are less shocked because they're more reflexively anti-religious right than we are -- Marcotte spends a lot of time on making fun of this sort of thing. They're jaded.)
In all seriousness, I feel like half the creepiness from that clip is derived from (a) the use of the word "daddy", and (b) that lame-ass music. Even though the end of the video is that incantation which is more bizarre than disturbing (I think), the beginning has the woman talking about about "daughters and daddies," and that pretty much skeeved me out for the rest of the clip.
What really skeeves me is that it starts with a grain of truth, that girls with abusive fathers tend to re-create/seek out similar dysfunction in their adult relationships. But then take take a hard right into Skeeveville by acting like the relationship with her father should be a replacement for having a boyfriend. That prom night feel to the whole thing is beyond wrong.
I know I'm a sap, but the yearning, to use a word prominent in the clip, and good intentions, however wrong-headed in my opinion, are just heartbreaking. I hope a sense of bonding and love, whatever else, sticks with these folks in the lucky cases, anyway. My week's sojourn in the working-class suburbs, amongst people whose flags are bigger than their houses, has softened me towards them.
Even without the specter of the fauther-daughter s3XX0r, there's still the utter repudiation of the idea that parents are supposed to raise their children to be independent people. It's distilled umbilical wackjobbery.
7: I don't know, LB. I think if you see that clip and think, "This is terrible because it teaches young girls to be uncomfortable with sex," you're not so much missing the forest for the trees as missing the forest for the seedlings. That bit of the clip in the daughter's bedroom, with the daughter dancing for her nearby father, is as creepy as anything I can remember seeing.
But I also want an explanation like ogged's. I know some people a bit like that. I grew up in a sufficiently religious household that I can imagine a slightly similar lifestyle given a different denomination. I want a benign explanation because, in my experience, these people really are often among the nicest and most benign people in daily interactions that you're likely to meet. (And I can't tell how much my now-decreasing pre-election Hate Levels are affecting my reaction.)
But creepy.
I think if you see that clip and think, "This is terrible because it teaches young girls to be uncomfortable with sex," you're not so much missing the forest for the trees as missing the forest for the seedlings. That bit of the clip in the daughter's bedroom, with the daughter dancing for her nearby father, is as creepy as anything I can remember seeing.
Well, it's creepy as all get out, but the subservience and anti-sex message is going out to everyone who participates. Actual molestation is pretty rare, even with this sort of freaky behavior -- most of these people are decent reasonable people who aren't molesting their daughters or being molested.
So, to extend the metaphor to the point of breaking, there's a really bad forest, that also has the potential of providing a hiding place for a certain number of grizzly bears. The bears are worse, but not everyone who goes into the forest is getting eaten by a bear. It's also worth talking about how much the forest itself sucks, even if a bear doesn't get you.
I think the metaphor broke, actually.
9 and 10 get it right...
7: and if a few more fathers molest their daughters, well, Satan gets into everything
Is this really a common thought process? I'd rather hope they're simply in denial of the whole incest thing, at least in most cases.
On the other hand, I can't escape the thought that at least some people in this whole scenario must have a sense of precisely what the vibe is.
Just got my flag and put it out. And thank you, LB.
LB, I don't think these people would grant that this makes molestation any more likely. Why would they?
Anyway, to be clear, I think this is bad, not just different, because I think subconscious motivations are real and true, and what I see here doesn't suggest to me that the girls are being given any way or vocabulary to deal with their own desires.
That said, SCMT is right that
>these people really are often among the nicest and most benign people in daily interactions that you're likely to meet
One of my co-workers is a Jehovah's Witness, and she's one of the most decent (and funny) people I know.
Actual molestation is pretty rare
I'm not clear whether you're saying that reported molestation is rare, or estimates that try to account for underreporting indicate that molestation is rare. I guess I'm suspicious about (a) how rare it really is, especially once you start banding people in various ways, and (b) how often something adjacent to molestation--an over-interest in one's daughter's looks, in a peculiarly creepy way--occurs. I've had enough female friends report the latter (though still a very small minority) that I think it happens much more than people realize.
"Cover." Cover? "I choose before God to cover you as your authority and protection in the area of purity." This is creepy beyond description. Gaaah!
Yikes. Even without the possibility of molestation *or* the question of abstinence `covenants' : it is deeply fucked up to think that replacing normal social interactions with boys their own age by some sort of proxy relationship with dad is a good thing. This is really, really dysfunctional, unless I misunderstand something.
I was involved in a daughter-daddy activity group when I was seven. There's an age, around puberty, when all that "come sit on my lap" stuff becomes, with or without genital touching, a kind of emotional molestation. It's extremely bad for young women to be getting "the kind of affection they need and desire from a male" from their fathers.
I have known women who still got into bed with daddy for a few hours until they went to high school. Guess what? They are completely fucked up.
hey, it has the added bonus of socializing the young women into the idea of `going out' to a room full of men they should view as authority figures, too. What's not to like?
21: I meant to say "until college" but then the phone rang and I got distracted.
that "come sit on my lap" stuff becomes [...] a kind of emotional molestation
Why do all these pubescent girls keep sitting on my lap?
I'm imagining the daddy showing up at home with a limo and flowers, breathing hard as he tells his daughter "You look gorgeous tonight." She blushes, smiles, takes his hand, steps into the limo with him...
This would probably not bother anyone at CareNet.
OK, let's say we accept the whole premise of this thing for a second. How come they aren't also sponsoring mother-son purity balls? Why aren't boys likewise encouraged to make purity pledges to their mothers?
Liberals just want to hog all the transgressiveness for themselves. Who on the left would dare go this far? Besides Woody Allen, I mean.
From end to end it's creepy. The daughters' pledge to "give themselves as a gift on their wedding night" makes me just so, so sad.
26: There's a reason Sir Charles Grandison was never as popular as Clarissa.
Also, I think the largest fear about young Christian girls is that they'll lose their precious jewel outside marriage, whereas the largest fear about young Christian men is that they might turn out to be homos.
And being too attached to your mother definitely makes you a homo.
I think this should be played at every Purity Ball.
OK, let's say we accept the whole premise of this thing for a second. How come they aren't also sponsoring mother-son purity balls? Why aren't boys likewise encouraged to make purity pledges to their mothers?
Boys aren't supposed to be terrified on their wedding nights. They can gain experience with sluts if they want to, but they shouldn't brag about it.
You'll need some more songs, FL; those things can go on for a while. Here's another.
The problem here is that we (not liberals per se; the whole culture) think of women as sex objects. So a girl's puberty is basically her transformation into a sex object from (we think) an asexual child.
Now, the impetus behind the video, I think, is admirable. Father/daughter relationships are weird, and uncomfortable, precisely because if a woman is a sex object, then her relationship to her father is . . . what? It's not supposed to be about sex--that's bad--but what is a woman other than a sex object? Given that, either the sex thing gets buried through incest subtext, *or* it gets buried by holding the woman in a perpetual (asexual) childhood. We in this thread think, okay, sex is basically good and women shouldn't be denied sexuality--so we see the incest thing. The folks making the video thinnk sex is basically bad and everyone should be denied sexuality except under very specific circumstances--so they opt to see the asexual extended childhood thing.
Both are kinda gross. To give the purity ball folks their due, at least they're recognizing a real problem in men's discomfort with the sexuality of their daughters, and the ways that screws up the father/daughter relationship. But of course they can't step outside the women=sex paradigm, because it's part of the air we breathe, so the only way to address the problem is to *explicitly* make the whole father/daughter relationship thing *depend* on making women renounce sexuality.
Secondly, the purity pledge is obviously a reference to the femme couverte situation. You're your pop's property until a husband buys you. I think there are much more interesting Christian feminisms out there that support female independence (and secondarily, virginity) that are getting squashed by all this masculinist shit about daughters' vows to daddies.
It's also a fairly new movement that started around when I was in high school, with books like How I Kissed Dating Goodbye, etc. My parents were pretty appalled by the way women get objectified in this model and refused to let me sign the virginity pledge. "Yes, we'd be happy if you didn't mess up your life getting involved with lots of boys and getting pregnant, but God knows you are more than your virginity."
I also wanted to share that my first reading of "purity balls" was as describing objects, not events. As in, a father might give his daughter a set of purity balls to squeeze whenever she felt inappropriate urges.
Both are kinda gross.
Theirs is substantially worse. It is, in fact, possible for guys to have pretty normal relationships with their daughters, even unto their post-pubescent years. That's why Gawd invented women's sports.
38: Yeah, sports good. But I still think it's true that it's pretty rare for dads to weather the transition from child to woman without broadcasting some weirdness along the way, usually by withdrawing physical affection. And I really don't think the same problem obtains for moms and sons. 18yo boy lying on couch reading, with head or feet in mom's lap? What an enviably good relationship they have. 18yo girl doing same, head or feet in dad's lap? Uh....
8yo boy lying on couch reading, with head or feet in mom's lap?
Umm....
I second know. Do you know any such mothers/sons, B? I don't, and would think it weird.
The daughters' pledge to "give themselves as a gift on their wedding night" makes me just so, so sad.
Oh, I don't know. I think a tape-on bow and colored tissue paper on a vagina would be all festive and pretty. Just be sure to keep the gift receipt, in case it's got parts missing or something.
I withdraw myself from the internets today; I am apparantly not worthy to partake. 41 was supposed to say 'I second 40." And I also just realized I read a "naked" into B's comment that wasn't there: "... head or feet in mom's naked lap". Without the "naked" it is substantially less weird. Although, still weird, and still not something I see.
Although, still weird, and still not something I see.
Really? Because we've all mostly seen your mom's naked lap.
Hrm. We were always a rough-housy, wrestly, cuddly family, and I never noticed either a withdrawal of physical affection from Dad, or uncomfortable weirdness. (and I certainly picked up uncomfortable weirdness from other adult men.) I don't think weirdness in the adolescent girl/ father relationship is inevitable.
Why not Ben-wa purity balls? You'd have all these ecstatic girls ignoring the boys entirely. They could call one ball "Jesus" and the other "Daddy", if they wanted.
Ben-wa balls are non-returnable at Amazon.
42: Ok, a bow I can see as being festive and clever. Tissue paper just sounds uncomfortably crinkly.
41: Seriously? You don't know any families where the adolescent sons transition from little boys who love mommy to young men who affectionately tease their mothers, whether to extort privileges ("mom, would you wash my sports gear? Gee thanks, you're the best!") or to express affection with a certain level of deniability. E.g., young man wanders into living room, mom's sitting and reading, son plops down on couch with dramatic sigh and sticks feet in mom's lap as if he's too tall to give her any space on sofa, mom laughs and shifts book and goes on reading. I've seen that kind of interaction a lot, actually.
I don't know why it works when the dad/daughter converse doesn't. I suspect it's a combination of power relationships and gender. Moms are dominant over kids, but then men are dominant over women, so a kid that's also a young man can "dominate" his mother as a way of expressing his emerging masculinity but *also*, if he's affectionate/jokey enough, signalling that he's still her kid. Whereas daughters, being both children and girls, can't really assert themselves around dad in an *affectionate* way without it seeming kinda creepy--the whole daddy's little princess shtick.
Without the "naked" it is substantially less weird.
One of the truest principles I've ever seen.
49: Y'know, I'm not sure B and PK represent the median relationship as regards borderline contact.
I'm waiting for B to write the following:
"Imagine a young man comes home from his first year at college to look after his mom, who has suffered an accident. He might accidentally see her in the shower. Later, both being depressed, they might get drunk, and when drunk, have sex. Totally normal. Yet if the same thing happened between a man and his daughter, people would think it was really weird."
girls, can't really assert themselves around dad in an *affectionate* way without it seeming kinda creepy
I know plenty of women who are non-creepily affectionate with their fathers.
52: Spanking the Monkey was a good movie, but it deeply freaked out several of my friends.
I think I'm saying the same thing as LB in 45. Rough-housey, cuddly is the way to weather the shift, I think. But I *do* think that there's a broad cultural discomfort with girls being rough-housey and cuddly with dad in a way that there isn't when boys do it with mom.
At least, girls can do it if their affect is a little hoydenish (i.e., boyish). But if they are, or you want them to be, feminine or delicate, it becomes really freaky.
My dad stopped being affectionate with me when I started dating men closer to his age. It really fucked with him.
Agree with #53 (and LB, above).
Spanking the Monkey freaked *me* out, because the mom's emotional manipulation was so like my mom, sex or no.
53: Seriously, details. How does this manifest? Are there physical ways for dads and daughters to be affectionate that aren't a little charged? Maybe I just don't know this because my own dad was one of those that completely freaked out and alternated between ignoring me and reacting with bizarre hostility to my dating.
The answer here is to encourage girls to speak in an unnaturally high voice when talking to older men, but in a normal voice when talking to their peers. It seemed to work for the families that ran the Chinese restaurant I used to work at.
Are there physical ways for dads and daughters to be affectionate that aren't a little charged?
If they keep it strictly to butt sex, maybe.
Sometimes apostropher worries me.
When I started dating Max, my mother kept saying, "Your father and I are very worried about what this means. You know, he's technically old enough to be your father!"
And I'd respond, "Yes, but he's not my father. You do recognize the difference, right? I mean, most guys I could date are technically old enough to be my brother, and that never stopped me."
She'd sigh. My dad refused to talk to me about anything but fishing for two and a half years. His creeped-outness was really creepy to me, because I didn't think there was a weird molester-vibe between us, and suddenly, it was introduced by his weird "jealousy" about my boyfriend.
How old were you at the time, AWB? 16? 35? That seems important when gauging their response.
Are there physical ways for dads and daughters to be affectionate that aren't a little charged?
In my experience, it's often exactly the way it often works with sons and mothers: you play at being a kid again. Pulling on arms, kisses on the cheek, head on the shoulder, etc.
63: I was 24 when I started seeing a 42-year-old. My dad was 52 at the time.
62: That's interesting AWB, because I've used the parallel argument with my dad to get him to stop expecting me to buddy-talk with him over hot women my age: "Dad, she's *my* age."
Pretty much. Hugs, interspersed with various sucker-punches and sneak tackles.
Ooh, that's a good question. Is it creepy for unmarried dads to date women as young or younger than their daughters? If so, why?
66: That's the other thing. In the past few years, he's gotten all leery about Paris Hilton and other bimbo sexpots on TV, while my mother harangues him about them being his daughter's age and younger. I think all this constant talk about who is who's age and whether there's an incestuous thing going on there is really creepy.
I would refuse to talk to my dad about whose jugs were more palpable no matter how old or young the jugs were.
I wouldn't care if he were dating them, as long as he treated them as human beings. The problem is the creepy Hooters vibe.
64/67: Huh. I just find that impossible to imagine. Must be my own hangup, I guess.
Creepy generically in the 'huge age differences are creepy if the younger partner is young enough to be kind of immature' sense -- I don't think the presence or absence of a same-age daughter plays into it much.
68: Have you read "A Widow for One Year"?
68: Yes. It's also creepy when you find out your dad has a MySpace page.
70: I think it's harder, the more the father is bought into the, I don't know what to call it, feminine ideal? Non-playful affection comes off as erotic, and femininely kittenish playful affection also comes off as erotic.
71: Lots of people have told me, since the breakup, that Max seemed to them creepily fatherly. I never acted creepily daughterly (I don't think), but he did have a tendency to express his affection in ways like asking how my classes were going and telling me he was afraid when I played catcher during softball.
My daughter insists on affection from me, coming in and lying down etc. And I happily reciprocate, overjoyed, really.
But I can't believe my dad wouldn't have loved it if my sister had done the same to him, but I don't think she did.
We've always been a lot more intimate than my parents were with us, though, in just about every imaginable way.
74: See, what I remember growing up is that the families where the girls were the most girly were the ones where they were allowed to/did play the kitten/princess game. They hugged daddy, but they also lied to him about the guys they hung out with. Whereas the families like mine, where the girls were supposed to go to college and have careers, the dads were a lot more standoffish and just seemed not to know what to do with the daughters at all. Being in the latter, the hugging always seemed kind of ickily flirty/manipulative to me. But at the same time, I just have no earthly idea what other options there could be.
Yeah. We were a third-way family, close and affectionate, but not kittenish-daddy's-little-princess at all. None of that "Daddy can't resist his little girl when she pouts, of course you can borrow the car," stuff, which is, as you say, creepy and manipulative.
Most of the people I knew (daughters and fathers edition) were Third Way families, too.
I don't know what the heck my dad is. Can you be progressive without the feminism? Basically, he's an old school conservative whose second greatest fear is that he had four daughters which means there could be many out of wedlock pregnancies, but his greatest fear is that we'll believe the sexist bullshit around us and decide to drop out of school in favor of being a bubblehead with a French manicure.
Between these two forces, he's hated or ignored all of my boyfriends.
And Purity Balls are creepy. There should be more to a father-daughter relationship than worrying about who's owning her ovaries this week.
The real question here is, why is Amanda kashering her computer?
80: Sure. A lot of non- or anti-feminist fathers historically have done right by their daughters; it's as if their affection for *their* kids overrides the abstractions they have about men and women generally. Charles Burney, the Williams sister's dad, that kind of thing.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Everyone knows, of course, that women just aren't as suited as men to careers, and that women should be submissive to men, but if someone says that about your own daughter, they're obviously a jackass.
How come they aren't also sponsoring mother-son purity balls?
Didn't you see that episode of Arrrested Development where Buster and Lucille attend the annual Motherboy dance? Oh wait. That was satire.
The thing that disturbed me the most was the woman introducing the concept saying that it was an opportunity for daughters to have a good relationship with their fathers and that many daughters don't have that opportunity. Why is a prom-type thing the only opportunity and why shouldn't they just have a healthy relationship with their dad for their whole life?
I know of an 18 year old who is very into cuddling with his mom (like, sitting with his head in her lap e.g.) and I know that I found it just a bit weird. But my 14 year old still loves to cuddle with me (he is a great one for hugging - he hugs everybody in my family) and maybe I am just a bit WASPy and uptight (the family in question were Egyptian and the mother is very physically affectionate generally).
36: AWB, did you ever see Josh Harris speak? He was amazingly eloquent and charismatic. All this stuff is really his fault. It wasn't so much teenage girls replacing boyfriends with their fathers so much as replacing boyfriends with pinups of Josh Harris (who's poster on the wall really cared about them more than any teenaged boy could).
For those of you who have no idea what we're talking about, wikipedia conveniently has an article on Biblical courtship.
86: No, I avoided that whole scene, thank God. In fact, Josh Harris may have had something to do with my renunciation of Christian youth culture and my embrace of late nights, cigars, martinis, and making out with everyone I knew.
There's a very fine line between sitting with one's head in one's mother's lap and cunnilingus.
Pause: where did you hear Harris speak?
Oh, and the whole weird "cover" thing, like many funny christian code words it comes from a Bible verse. In this case presumably they're refering to 1 Corinthians 11:3-10:
Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head--it is just as though her head were shaved. If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head.
One interpretation of this verse is not that women should physically cover their heads, but that the man that they are with is the "cover." So that in order to come before God the woman needs some man to cover her head. Hence the father is playing the role of the husband before God while the daughter is unmarried. Creepy and wrong, sure, but it explains the otherwise even creepier use of the word "cover."
89: Gym at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster PA, circa 1996.
The thing that disturbed me the most was the woman introducing the concept saying that it was an opportunity for daughters to have a good relationship with their fathers and that many daughters don't have that opportunity.
More than that, they seemed to be saying that the only reason teenage girls want boyfriends at all is that they are not getting enough affection from their fathers. The implicit idea is that girls (and by extension, women) don't want sex, they only want affection, and the only reason they have sex with boys is that they are trading sex for affection. Thus, if daddy is more affectionate (and affection can be completely non-sexual,) then the teenage girl no longer has any unfulfilled needs, and therefore no incentive to give up her precious virginity to some horny teenage boy. The idea that girls could have genuine sexual urges of their own would cause this entire edifice to come crumbling down.
jm, what's your question referring to?
92: wow, that was specific. But oddly I still lack the information I was after: did he do speaking tours of Christian youth groups, or something? Or was this some sort of special event? I wasn't aware of him doing anything other than writing silly books.
I'm tempted to point out that there's a bit of room on the spectrum between indulging in princess behavior once in a while and going to freakin' Purity Balls. Is everyone who has her father walk her down the aisle creepy? But I'm not really here anymore. Hate on femmy girls all you like.
96: Special event. Think some combination of "revival" and "book tour."
Oh, very good.
Are you as suprised as I am by the "bipolarity" of so much evangelical culture? The swings from impossible sanctity to utter depravity, from being "good" to being a comic version of "bad?" I think you had a kindly, sheltered Christian education like mine that makes some of this incomprehensible in strictly psychological terms.
93: Yeah, and the ridiculous thing is, girls (like everyone else) do in fact want/need affection, which is not the same thing or interchangeable with sexual desire, and it is just weird how these people seem to equate them or to say that if you have one you won't need the other. Like, all teenage girls who have sex with their boyfriends (which these people seem to think is the worst possible thing that can ever happen) can be blamed on their having cold and distant parents?
It is a prevailing myth, though, that men need only sex and women need only affection and therein lies all the relationship trouble in the entire universe.
Oh, and apparently Josh Harris has a blog now.
97: Not sure we're hating on femmy girls. I'm usually pretty femme, but I'm not doin' no Purity Ball, and them I'm hating on.
I admit that I didn't really see the anti-fem attack being deployed, either.
Wait, and I hesitate to ask this because I fear it will be so badly received, but is 101 really a myth? I mean, of course it is when stated in such cartoonishly stark terms ("only"), and of course nothing's true for everyone, blah blah other appropriate disclaimers, but isn't is actually well documented that women in general are relatively more strongly motivated by affection and men in general are relatively more strongly motivated by sex? I thought there were a lot of psychological books and articles exploring this difference, only a subset of which are crazy and/or sexist.
I'm not doin' no Purity Ball
It would be a little late for you, wouldn't it?
I dunno, IDP. It's not totally incomprehensible to me; the feeling of guilt is hard to shake when you're brought up in a paradigm of sin and salvation. Dostoevsky always made a great deal of sense to me.
105: I don't know, honestly. Speaking only of the people who comment on Unfogged, I have not noticed a huge libido gap between women and men, but that is of course merely anecdotal. Hey, maybe we could do a study here.
I know that's where it's from, and that on some level that is the paradigm, but the spectacle of these wild swings, the drama of it, still puzzles me, and does seem foreign. Everybody I knew believed and wrestled with the doctrine, but their lives didn't take these roller-coaster paths.
I don't think there is a 'libido gap', and that's not what I meant.
97: Criticizing the way femmey stereotypes construct femininity and hating on femmey women isn't the same thing.
I think (and IADNAP) it's more an issue of what's driving libido. Obviously, for both men and women, it's a desire both for physical pleasure and for physical closeness and intimacy. But I thought the relative importance of those two factors differed, on average, for men and women.
I certainly could be wrong.
100
Think reaction formation. And, for the political manifestations of this problem, projection. If I think that I need strong social controls in place to avoid turning into a moral monster, I'm liable to assume that everyone else needs them, too.
But that's because so many of the roller-coastering would be hidden discretely away, IDP, behind euphemistic "spiritual troubles," "problems with their marriage," and "falling away from the Church for a while." My extended family is pretty close, and there is an awful lot that didn't get talked about until it was very very serious indeed.
But if affection's more important to women and sex is more important to men shouldn't there be a libido gap? How else can one understand the whole theory?
Perhaps I am wrong in saying that if you take this to its logical conclusion you could argue that a father's affection should render a girl completely impervious to sex with someone her own age (which is in essence what the purity balls do)? Or do you think these two concepts could conceivably not be related at all? I do have the habit of seeing attitudes as being on a continuum and perhaps I am off here.
112: Ah, I get it. In which case, the affection thing with the fathers in the case of the purity balls becomes an even creepier phenomenon in my view.
Just drew a family tree — concept of "per stirpes," from law school, occurred to me while looking at it — to test your thesis. Plenty of weakness and failure, and embarrassment and unfulfilled promise, but very little along those lines.
Must be the boringest family in No. America, which should give some clue as to the place of origin. Guess I've lived in a bubble.
Perhaps I am wrong in saying that if you take this to its logical conclusion you could argue that a father's affection should render a girl completely impervious to sex with someone her own age (which is in essence what the purity balls do)?
Well, it's certainly true that Christian conservatives often blame female teenage sexuality on insufficiently affectionate fathers. OTOH, I'm pretty sure teenage promiscuity *is* strongly correlated with a lack of fatherly affection, right?
The difference between the truth and the whack jobs might therefore just be in that they view *any and all* teenage sexual activity as dangerous promiscuity, and (I guess) think they can prevent it through being good fathers.
I can't believe I might actually get away with saying all of this here without provoking a firestorm or some sort.
OTOH, I'm pretty sure teenage promiscuity *is* strongly correlated with a lack of fatherly affection, right?
Huh?
The closest I have come to hearing this was a second hand account in Salon of a study that showed
1. When mothers talk to sons about sex, they postpone sex
2. When mothers talk to daughters about sex, they postpone sex
3. When fathers talk to daughters about sex, they postpone sex.
4. When fathers talk to sons about sex, they have sex sooner.
The title of the Salon article was "go out and get a piece, son"
Well, it's certainly true that Christian conservatives often blame female teenage sexuality on insufficiently affectionate fathers.
This is interesting because it seems like an ingression of secular "feely-touchy" pop psychology into right-wing Christianity. I doubt that many conservative Christians were saying that 50-60 years ago. (Certainly not in my experience, but Lutherans are some of the least feely-touchy people in the world.)
Charismatics and related groups always were more into the hugginess, I think. (Of course, it was the emotionalism of the charismatics that caused jazz, rock and roll and other such evils).
S/B "touchy-feely". I'm spoonerizing my buzzwords. Not a good sign.
121: It makes sense that extremely religious people who are used to believing what authority figures tell them to believe may also believe in all sorts of other "woo" including pop-psych.
122: No, you got it right the first time; "feely-touchy" is exactly the kind of squickiness that has us all concerned.
4. When fathers talk to sons about sex, they have sex sooner.
I'm certain I've told this here before, but what the hell: my mother tried The Sex Talk when I was twelve. She hemmed and hawed and then blurted out, "Gay people really mess up their rectums." I'm not making that up. I wish I were. (It has been long enough now that I may have missed her subject in the sentence; I can't now remember whether she said "gay people," "gay men" or, more likely, the nicely clinical "homosexuals.")
My father tried again when I was 17, and it consisted of him walking into the kitchen, where I was eating lunch, sitting down, plugging a big wad of tobacco into one cheek and then announcing with no preamble that he thought it was natural for a young man to sew a few wild oats at my age. Then he stood back up and walked out.
Was he clueless or had he accepted you?
The simple version of a complicated answer is, "Yes."
They say they'd known since I was very young, but hoped I would turn out otherwise. I have never asked whether that was supposed to be a quiet rubber-stamp or whether he was hoping I'd knock up the young woman across the street, with whom they tried to encourage a dalliance.
McManly, the story about your mom is too funny. Were you out at twelve?
If your dad actually said "sew," then I'd say he was condoning your gayness.
"Gay people really mess up their rectums."
Like freedom, rectums are messy.
A friend of mine got the hand-on-the-shoulder, "son, we understand and it's okay and we love you" talk when he was about 14. While he wasn't gay---just gothy--he always appreciated the intent behind it.
I don't remember a sex talk, but in a misguided moment, Borat my mom told the newly pubescent me that I shouldn't play with my penis, because that would make it big and thick, "like a tree." I'm sorry it took me so long to post this comment.
They're still not wholly accepting, but getting better over time. Anyway, Purity Balls?
Heh heh m heh.
I see this as someone who honestly thought it was a good idea - we'll take a celebration (good thing 1) and chastity (good thing 2) and combine them! They had no idea how creepy this would be until it was enacted, most likely. I would love to have them look at the video, really see it outside of context, and then get an honest guage of what they think. I bet they'd be squicked, too. In my experience, even in places or denominations or whatever where this sort of "strong families produce no sluts" thinking goes on, there is a great awareness of molestation and lesser but still inappropriate misbehavior. I suspect these people are simply blind to it in their own behavior but would be totally squicked by seeing someone else do it. When they look at their own child, they don't see the sexual being and thus don't see the creepy sexual element of the interaction.
I'm trying really hard to see the best in them, in other words.
big and thick, "like a tree." And yet again we have a new motto.
The closest I got to a sex talk was my mom's telling the story of getting birth controls pills as a wedding present. (Her out gay uncle was a doctor; he gave her about twenty packets in the reception line, and she ended up stuffing them into the bouquet.) Other than that, though, it was just "no dating before 16" and "well, you can't really trust boys."
Like freedom, rectums are messy.
At least I know when to greet someone as a liberator.
Flowers & candy are nice, too.
My parents did own The Joy of Sex, though, and my mother always had a stash of Victorian pr0n novels. Finding those was sorta like sex ed.
I once asked my dad why I'd never got a sex talk, and he said 1) He thought it was covered in school; and 2) That he doubted he'd have anything worth adding to what he was sure I would already have picked up, from the culture.
His own father was distant. I'm not sure my dad had any idea what to say, or that he should say anything.
Again, Ogged's mom has got it goin' on.
My parents never had The Talk with me. They were too embarrassed. They just bought really cheesy age-appropriate books and left them in my room.
On preview, my parents owned Joy, too. The hairy hippies in it were really gross.
Actual Victorian Pron or bodice rippers?
I never got a sex talk. I got a book called "The Science Book", which had a chapter about how to make ginger beer, and a chapter about how the lights in your house work, and a chapter about Wintergreen Life Savers, and a chapter about how animals communicate, and a chapter about sex. It worked pretty well because I loved the book for its other chapters, but I read the sex one thoroughly as well. Presumably there was no talk because I showed no signs of being likely to take any risks.
Also, my dad did the Ted Haggard-approved maneuver of making sure I saw his penis a couple times when we were both peeing, so I wouldn't think I was abnormal or something. I'm pretty sure it was intentional, at least.
As for this sort of thing:
Other than that, though, it was just "no dating before 16" and "well, you can't really trust boys."
I got the same exact advice. Except with "girls" instead of "boys".
And I think I've said this before but my father has always (and still) fast forwards through any movie scenes involving nudity while muttering "why do they have to ruin movies with this crap?"
144: Mine too. And I do that as well, if I'm watching them by myself.
My brother had a copy, which I would study during major holidays at his house. It was interesting to read Orwell's review of Alex Comfort's poetry during WWII, some years later. He was a conscientious objector during the war.
At least I know when to greet someone as a liberator.
Speaking of invasions...
The hairy hippies just kinda looked like everybody in the Bay Area, so that was ok.
Actual Victorian naughty stories, IDP. I don't know whether their being my mother's choice was determinative, but all the ones I read seemed rather jolly, quite unlike what little contemporary pr0n I've seen.
Analyze this:
I was reading the paper around the age of six, I think, and asked my mom what rape was b/c of some crime report. She hedged by asking what I thought it was, and I said, well, the guys broke into the house and tied the husband up? And she said yes, and then they have sex with the wife. Of course, I had to ask what sex was, and then mom explained, and I said well if people enjoy it, why is rape bad and she said well when you're not relaxed, your vagina doesn't lubricate and then it's painful.
Later, around puberty, I got the "if you decide to have sex, use birth control" talk and, god help me, the "you're a woman!" expostulation when I had to ask mom where she kept her pads. Then she found my bcp and asked if I were getting headaches, and I said no, and she said, well, if you do go to the doctor.
Bless her, she really did a good job. But I could always tell she was just squirming with discomfort, which always made me feel just awful about these talks. I've tried to reproduce the content (with perhaps a little more nuance on the rape discussion, when it comes up hopefully a long time from now), but I hope I don't come across to PK as if the entire subject fills me with the screaming horrors.
What creeps me out about "cover" is that it's also an agricultural euphemism. When the ram "covers" the ewe, the result is a dear little lamb.
91: St. Paul's paragraph on charity is the only reason I don't find him entirely detestable.
I remember there was a collection of stories once published in a (ahem!) specialized magazine called "The Pearl." Also: Fanny Hill, of course, but that's a bit earlier.
I once asked my mom what a dildo was. She thought for a while, and said "It's an artificial penis." I then wandered off. One can only imagine how relieved she was that I didn't follow up by asking what the purpose of such a thing would be.
Certain Victorian pr0n exists as a trade paperback.
Or perhaps disappointed at having lost the opportunity to explain that you'd need one if yours fell off because you touched it too much.
I once asked my French teacher what a "godemicher" was. She answered but then asked me what I'd been reading lately.
The Pearl is just as you describe, and a good thing for a girl to have found.
I wouldn't say it was an unproblematically good thing, but then I don't remember much in the way of details about it. (And it's not available, as far as I can tell, on Amazon.)
Reading backwards in time from 157, I was confused why Idp thought Pearl would be a particularly good thing for a girl to have found.
I am confused as to why you think this is a good thing to ask.
I am utterly confused as to everything regarding 160.
135: I suspect that's pretty close to it. And I'm willing to bet it's often explained as 'girls grow up so fast these days, with [TV/movies/clothing/whatever] sexualizing them while they're still so innocent. Having a strong father figure means that she won't feel like she needs to get a boyfriend in order to be accepted.'
Still, step back and look at it, and it's creepy.
I wonder how many of the Purity Belles will ever mention to Daddy that oral and anal sex aren't "sex", therefore they can come fully hymened to the marriage bed and still have been doing the dirty with the boyfriends they don't "need".
I'm not sure whether it was The Pearl and other Victorian pron in which women were always enjoying themselves vastly that shed a positive light on what was a taboo subject in my parents household, thereby saving me from a lifetime of closing my eyes and thinking of the Empire, or whether it was being little-sister friends with my father's mistresses, or just being a part of the Free Love era. I do know that my kid brother can't have sex with the lights on - his college girlfriend blurted that out one drunken evening - and my kid sister won't let the word "orgasm" be uttered in her household [she styles it "an obscenity"], so I'm going to assume it was the pron.
If my Offspring rested body parts on my lap, I'd be surprised. Of course, it may be that, when I'm sitting on the couch, I'm usually reading, and I have been known to beat people with books for disturbing me. OTOH, he has no compunctions about hugging, even in front of his friends. It may help that the Biophysicist and I are given to PDAs around the house, unlike my parents, whose WASP creds depended upon them never actually touching each other in public.
BTW: It was creepy when my father's mistresses were no more than a couple of years older than I; it's been even creepier when his four successive wives after my mother were progressively younger, until the latest was a decade younger than I am.
Your kid brother may have gotten over that by now.
158: It is available; you have to put in "The Pearl" and "anonymous" in order the get past the Steinbeck et al.
167: I doubt it; his second ex-wife pronounced him to be "uptight". I have no idea what his third wife thinks, but her father was totally freaked when he found out his daughter's sister-in-law was his age.
"Daddy can't resist his little girl when she pouts, of course you can borrow the car,"
"pouts" s/b "puts out"
I never had The Talk with my son. I think that once when a specific question came up he said "Dad, I already know that. What do you think schools are for?" The mother of one of his good friends was the condom lady who went from school to school explaining birth control.
111: Equating having a touch of daddy's little girl about you with participating in purity balls is to label large numbers of women "creepy." Lots of people here don't seem to be making a distinction between a relationship with some traditional femininity about it and all out purity balldom. They may be on a continuum, but you seem to be effectively saying that all girls who use any manipulation/pretty pleases with sugar on top= incest.
Me and Hobbes here in the clubhouse think that you are misrepresenting our point of view, ac.
What about 78? Anything pouty/kittenish is described as "creepy and manipulative." The distinction is between the "third way" and anything else. While having a relationship to your daughter through sports is the great alternative.
Calvin and I refuse to sink to your level, Susy.
If my Offspring rested body parts on my lap, I'd be surprised.
Well, that's b/c he's gay.
I never had The Talk with my son.
Given your proclivities, John, that's probably a good thing.
172: I don't think anyone's said that. What I am saying is that the daddy's little princess meme is about girls using stereotypically sexualized feminine tactics of manipulation to charm their fathers. While this isn't incest, it's not okay. Perhaps a helpful analogy is to think of it like the relationship between being gay and homoerotic behavior. Most men who snap one another in the ass with locker-room towels aren't actually gay; nonetheless the behavior is homoerotic.
But this is on a thread in which we're discussing the deep deep incestuous end of father-daughter relations. It would be nice to keep the large middle in mind, and separate from total horror. Throwing "creepy" around in that context gives it a certain extra punch.
This is the anti-priss blog, John. This theme comes up a lot.
I kind of operate with the assumption that most people know that being a girly girl doesn't mean your father is fucking you.
But the tone of condemnation sounds similar here. Honestly, it does.
What? 179 is not responsive to 177.
It may just be a rhetorical effect of using the same word, but there's a definite echo.
I think it's creepy for fathers to encourage their daughters to flirt with them for favors. And I do condemn parents sexualizing their kids in ways that take advantage of their parental power, whether or not they realize that's what they're doing. As you said, it's on a continuum.
179 was responding to "keep the large middle in mind"; I assume that most people do.
using stereotypically sexualized feminine tactics of manipulation to charm their fathers. While this isn't incest, it's not okay
Aw, sure it is. It ought not be one's primary method of persuasion, and it certainly shouldn't exclude more "adult" kinds of communication, but being cutesy now and again is ok, whether boys or girls do it. Hell, I do it sometimes, and it's well known that I've said I'm the apotheosis of anti-prissy manliness.
All right, well, as I said at least once upthread, it grosses me out.
Will no one here stand up for incest?
I thought we were all open-minded liberals here.
Prom-night is at or near the age of consent. If father and daughter want to get freaky, whose business is it to object?
I did not by 78 intend to imply that all girls with a flirtatious relationship with their fathers have been molested, nor that every girl with such a relationship with her father is morally culpable. I do think that a father-daughter relationship that involves a lot of flirtatious manipulation is not a healthy one, but I do not intend to condemn all femmy women by that.
Some of my best friends are femmy. I own makeup.
You write RED RUM on the mirror with it, isn't that right?
Make vain attempts to cover breakouts when they occur, and end up looking as though I've been spackled, mostly.
62 -- what's up with this? I had similar stuff happen when I took up with my wife, who is technically old enough to be my mother (though like Max, not in fact my mother) -- not from my family (or not as much) but from hers. They have still I think not completely gotten over it -- always clouding the air a little when I interact with them.
BTW: It was creepy when my father's mistresses were no more than a couple of years older than I; it's been even creepier when his four successive wives after my mother were progressively younger, until the latest was a decade younger than I am.
Is it wrong of me to say that your dad is now my hero? He's like the man in the park.
Though like Max, not in fact my mother
I'm sure that Max is not your mother, but Sophocles and Shakespeare tell me that you can't be sure about your wife.
Her dark secret + babies switched in the hospital -- all very common events -- is all it would take.
Good point -- I had not considered that.
I know I have some unfortunate habits of defaulting to... oh, I don't know, kittenish or puppyish behavior when I'm nervous and trying to please. I'm trying to tamp it down, because that kind of charm (if it's charming at all) doesn't go very well with presenting myself as a serious academic. I don't think it's sexual as such, but it's surely gendered, and I don't like it in myself. Is it creepy, too? I hope not.
Oh, I do it all the time.
The point isn't that the *girl* who learns to be girly is creepy. The point is that *teaching* girls to be girly as a way of getting what they want is creepy. Especially if they're your daughters. Because teaching daughters to be girly/manipulative is basically a way of teaching them to lack agency and to be dependent. Which, ick.
137: Did anyone get pictures when your mom threw the bouquet? (Huzzah! Free love for everyone!)
#196
I think we're going to need details to properly evaluate this.
details
Well, like her brother and his wife sort of sniffily not talking about it but avoiding relating to me in any kind of peer way, and meanwhile you know what is the topic of conversation around their dinner table because whenever the nieces (8 and 5 at the time) are over they do stuff like gigglingly asking how old I am. And then when she confronts her sister-in-law about it, she gets a talk about how it't the emperor's new clothes, everybody is very appalled but nervous about saying anything, and then I get pissed off at the brother and sister-in-law and cause a scene of some kind (I've forgotten), this goes back and forth a couple of times.
Oy -- never mind. For some reason I thought you were asking me for details, when I see now that your request was directed toward rfts.
197: Especially that last sentence. The Biophysicist has a niece who interacts with Daddy in a baby-talk/kitten/ princess sort of way. It was obvious to all and sundry that her father's interactions with her - rewarding her for her little-girl helplessness, getting her a job with his firm, paying her bills, taking her on shopping jaunts - only encouraged this behaviour and discouraged her from becoming an independent adult.
The Biophysicist's daughter, OTOH, calls up Daddy to ask his opinion on firearms she's thinking about purchasing.
Well, that's b/c he's gay.
Heterosexist!
The Biophysicist's daughter, OTOH, calls up Daddy to ask his opinion on firearms she's thinking about purchasing.
Awesome.
Gswift: Perhaps you'll get a chance to evaluate it in person someday. On any hiring committees?
you know what grosses me out? blogging a blow job involving ben w-lfs-n.
all children pout and act gay, and if it works, they keep doing it. if you don't like that behavior in your own kids, it's probably easy to beat it out of them.
I imagine them both in bed all day, like John and Yoko, with two laptops, in silence. Tomorrow Ben will be cutting his hair for peace.
"peace" s/b "correct parallel construction"
193: Re: Mistresses and serial marriages to ever younger brides: Not to harsh your mellow, as the ancients say, but behaviour that demonstrates that women are thought of as fungible objects, discardable for next year's model on whim, is A Bad Thing. On a scale of 1 to 10, it probably matches in damage and creepiness the Purity Ball's ickiness.
