What is wrong with the world today?
I'll warn you--this is a rant.
I was in the kitchen this morning when I heard on the news that some teenage girls are wearing 'purity' rings to signify that they want to wait until marriage for sex. I thought I'd like to hear the girls' reasonings behind the decision--and hoped they were talking about marrying the person they loved, whether male or female. So I went into the living room to see the segment and found a middle-aged man kneeling before a young girl (12 or 13 yo) and saying, 'this signifies that God is your boyfriend'. (The link isn't up yet, but it should appear here.)
What the hell?
I spent a significant part of my teens and young adulthood supporting the right for women to be treated as human beings capable of making their own decisions and pursuing their own careers. I've spent most of my adulthood trying to encourage young girls to believe they can think outside the small box of marriage-and-motherhood.
I'll state here that there's absolutely nothing wrong with being a full-time stay-at-home wife and mother, but it has to be the chosen path--not the expected one.
I have a lot of personal problems with the 'purity' ring idea as it was presented:
There was no indication that the girls are making that decision for themselves.It's couched in words that indicate the girls must have a boyfriend to be complete people. In this case 'God' is the boyfriend and that makes it okay not to have another one.What if the girl wants a girlfriend but still wants to wait for marriage (to her girl)?And what about the boys? Are they going to wear 'purity' rings too? Or are they going to be expected to 'sow their wild oats', like always?This is just one of a number of things I've read and heard this week that makes me think we're slipping back into the old 'control-the-woman-keep-her-in-the-home' idea that was so prevalent until the 1970s. Women have fought, shed blood and died to have basic human rights, and there are still people out there who are trying to control them rather than teach all children to make well-thought-out life decisions for themselves.
It goes further than women's rights, too. Recently there've been a number of scary attempts in the US to pass laws that will effectively bring back discrimination and abuse of, not only women, but GLBTQI people too.
The really scary think is that there are a lot of people out there who don't understand or accept that human rights and equal rights don't apply only to them and people exactly like them. Human rights and equal rights apply to EVERYONE, no exceptions, and none of us have the right to deny others their basic human rights, whether we have the power to or not. These people seem to be gathering more power to themselves.
I was in the kitchen this morning when I heard on the news that some teenage girls are wearing 'purity' rings to signify that they want to wait until marriage for sex. I thought I'd like to hear the girls' reasonings behind the decision--and hoped they were talking about marrying the person they loved, whether male or female. So I went into the living room to see the segment and found a middle-aged man kneeling before a young girl (12 or 13 yo) and saying, 'this signifies that God is your boyfriend'. (The link isn't up yet, but it should appear here.)
What the hell?
I spent a significant part of my teens and young adulthood supporting the right for women to be treated as human beings capable of making their own decisions and pursuing their own careers. I've spent most of my adulthood trying to encourage young girls to believe they can think outside the small box of marriage-and-motherhood.
I'll state here that there's absolutely nothing wrong with being a full-time stay-at-home wife and mother, but it has to be the chosen path--not the expected one.
I have a lot of personal problems with the 'purity' ring idea as it was presented:
There was no indication that the girls are making that decision for themselves.It's couched in words that indicate the girls must have a boyfriend to be complete people. In this case 'God' is the boyfriend and that makes it okay not to have another one.What if the girl wants a girlfriend but still wants to wait for marriage (to her girl)?And what about the boys? Are they going to wear 'purity' rings too? Or are they going to be expected to 'sow their wild oats', like always?This is just one of a number of things I've read and heard this week that makes me think we're slipping back into the old 'control-the-woman-keep-her-in-the-home' idea that was so prevalent until the 1970s. Women have fought, shed blood and died to have basic human rights, and there are still people out there who are trying to control them rather than teach all children to make well-thought-out life decisions for themselves.
It goes further than women's rights, too. Recently there've been a number of scary attempts in the US to pass laws that will effectively bring back discrimination and abuse of, not only women, but GLBTQI people too.
The really scary think is that there are a lot of people out there who don't understand or accept that human rights and equal rights don't apply only to them and people exactly like them. Human rights and equal rights apply to EVERYONE, no exceptions, and none of us have the right to deny others their basic human rights, whether we have the power to or not. These people seem to be gathering more power to themselves.
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