I'm watching this purity ball thing where it talks about the movement for girls to pledge to not be intimate until their marriage. "Be intimate," by the way, is a very broad term. It does include kissing and, for one girl, hand holding.
The idea behind this movement is that in every girl there is a question about her worthiness that can only be answered by her father. If her father isn't part of her life, then she forever feels worthless and goes to men to feel worthy.
I can't begin to say just how wrongly this strikes me. First, the only thing this attitude is teaching this girl is that her worthiness is based on someone else's view of her. Every one, boy or girl, should be taught that their worthiness comes from within. They certainly shouldn't be taught that without their father's approval they aren't good enough, which is where building such a dependency heads.
I haven't seen the full story yet, but there is one girl on here who broke her purity vow and has been treated like shit by her parents since then. She's living with her boyfriend, but they won't even respect her relationship with that boyfriend.
Basically, such drastic means of controlling their daughters just comes across like a power struggle.
Secondly, the mother is completely devalued, at least in the way it's been presented so far. I'm sorry, but mother's are very important in helping a woman define herself as she grows up and acting like it's all about the father's role in her life is idiotic.
Thirdly, I take issue to just how much is defined as unacceptable. I honestly think that waiting to have sex until you're in a steady, long term relationship or married is the best way to go. But not even holding hands? Thinking that even that kind of physical touch distracts from getting to know a person? That's... I don't know what to think of that. Physical touch is very important to creating a bond. I mean, consider how important touch is for infants and their development. I seriously doubt that the importance of touch becomes devalued as we grow older. Acting like touching somehow takes away from a connection to a person is ridiculous.
(I also find it very strange that for people who are so strict, even the little girls are painted up like dolls with their hair all hair sprayed into up-dos.)
I think the thing that gets me is that the values beneath it are good values. The idea is to teach their daughters that they are good women and should value themselves enough to pick a man who will respect them, but they do it in such a way that her value becomes totally dependent on her father's view of her and on living by his rules. It's not helping to build a person who can stand on her own two feet. It's building someone who will always be dependent on someone else- a man, at that.
Edited to add:
I also wanted to talk about this spiel that was given by one of the mothers on the show about how women get emotionally involved (more so than men, apparently- and I won't even go into what kind of shit that is) and give away pieces of their heart. So by being in multiple relationships they give away this piece and that piece and when they finally marry their husbands, they don't have a whole heart to give to him.
She also said that it was a bad thing to get your heart broken, and implied that it somehow makes you less of a wife to have had heartbreak in your life.
Seriously, what kind of bullshit is this? Just because you might have loved one person, you can't fully love someone else? I don't get this logic. I also don't see how having your heartbroken somehow makes you less of a person, or less worthy of the man you will marry in the future. How are you supposed to grow or learn anything if you don't actually, you know, experience anything?
It just boggles my mind. The whole thing just devalues women in an unbelievable way.