Fahs and Levine- Initial Post Diablog #7

The two articles we read for this week are Fahs's Daddy's Little Girls: On the Perils of Chastity Clubs, Purity Balls, and Ritualized Abstinence, and Harmful to Minors by Judith Levine. They are both about abstinence programs aimed usually at young girls in attempts to keep them pure and childlike for as long as possible. In Daddy's Little Girls they talk about having chastity clubs where youth will sign something pledging that they wont have sex until they are married. They also mention purity balls, which are creepy events where 10-12 year old girls and their fathers will dress up and go to a ball with others such couplings and pledge to stay "virgins" until they are wed to a man that is similar to and blessed by their father. All of these events praise so-called normality and heterosexuality, and refuse to teach girls about any kinds of protection because that would destroy their innocence (rather then educating them.) Because of this lack of communication and education, the girls tend to define sex as whatever seems the most convenient, leaving them unprepared for actual sex. The statistics in Daddy's Little Girls show that more often the girls who were raised this way engage in more unprotected anal and oral sex then teens taught in a different manner. Without proper sexual education, Fahs says that girls are more likely candidates for sexual violence, pregnancy, and STDs.